My suggestions for sc2 balance at the moment.
Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 10:49 am
(redirected from a battle.net post)
Hey everyone my name is Whiplash, I am a rank 4 random plat player (could easily hold rank 1 if I just played protoss but who cares about that) that has done many events such as craftcup, omfg, shoutcraft, and am part of vT gaming (http://www.vtgaming.net). I would like to share my thoughts on the current balance issues in Starcraft 2 at this point in time. Everything that I say is back from personal experience from both sides of the balance. I have the most experience with protoss so many of my balance issues will be from their perspective.
As of now, Zerg is the most powerful race, then Protoss, then Terran. The main issue with zerg is that they have a huge production ability mid game and can generally drone hard early game with ease. I am directing the balance issue from a Protoss's perspective, not a Terrans. Popular builds like 4 gate and 3 gate robo have been effective at forcing zerg to get more units early on but now GOOD zergs are learning how to block these timing pushes with relative ease and they leave the Protoss player behind if no economic damage is done. I am pretty sure that something with the inject larve mechanic needs to change to balance this out. In my opinion this is 1 of the most important issues in sc2 atm that I hope the next patch adjusts.
Zerg's mid game army lacks diversity. This is another obvious issue that everyone can see. Zerg's mid game army is roach/hydra in 90%+ of their games. Infestors are rarely used. Corruptors are only used to counter colossi. IN ZvT banelings are sometimes used, but the bulk of the army remains the same ol' Roach/Hydra. Honestly I am not a fan of the roach and I would love for it to be removed and replaced, but it needs to keep zerg balanced through out the game which is easier said then done. If they got an additional tier 2 unit, maybe a specialized unit morphed from the roach that was more of a support unit or caster (and they buffed infestor enough to make it hive tech), then maybe we could see some more diversity.
Protoss templar tech is inferior to robo tech in every matchup. Robos allow you to get observers and immortals off the bat, which are invaluable units in every matchup, and they come quicker then both high templar and dark templar. In addition, both templar units require a lot more gas and time to get operational, and are frail units compared to the colossi and immortal. The Dark Obelisk is a terrible design and it makes no sense to not have dark templar require the templar archives due to the relatively small use that the templar archives gets as of now. High templars are decent vs terran bio armies but in the end robo is just as, if not more effective. Storm is currently not that useful vs zerg due to roach's insane health and the fact that in realistic settings roaches generally only lose 1/3 of their health per storm wave. I don't understand why Blizzard wants Archons to be such a useless unit as well, with all the time and gas you spend just getting templar, it would be nice if Archons at least were a hard counter to 1 unit or had a unique ability.
If you want to make templar tech more appealing then it would be wise to buff storm's damage to make it a viable alternative to robo tech. I think buffing the damage and not bringing back it's old radius is the proper way to buff the spell. I think that Archon's splash radius needs to be significantly increased, so they can give protoss an actual decent counter versus mutalisks. Mutalisks are still a very good vs protoss, especially en masse (but not against terran, so buff a protoss unit to deal with mutalisks not nerf mutalisks). I was also thinking that if you want to give the archon and templars more viability then you could simply give archons a passive which regenerated their health whenever they were hit by templar storms. This would make them a decent tanking unit alternative to the immortal under the right circumstances and encourage more strategic play.
Mauradurs are still too all purpose. I think if their health gets nerfed by 5-10 (along with a nerf to how much stim does to them by 20 to 10) and change their base damage from 10(+10 armored) to 8(+12 armored) they would move away from being an "unholy trinity unit". I would support a change to the immortal's damage values as well if this happened.
Banshee range needs to be nerfed by 2, I believe it is at 6 now and it would be better around 4. It is a very powerful harassment unit that is also great vs ground units, even if they can attack air.
Phoenixes are a cool unit, but are terrible at their job: Anti air. The reason that the corsair was so good at it's job in SC1 is beacuse it had splash damage. Phoenixes need to get scout like anti air damage or splash damage so they can be a decent anti air unit. I wouldn't mind it losing graviton beam (will explain this next) for a support spell, survival spell, or a spell that makes it more effective vs air units.
Remove the Mothership already. Dustin Browder, this isn't battle for middle earth or CnC, we don't want super units. A lot of people want the Arbiter back, and I think something similar, maybe a Dark Arbiter, would be a good fit. Make it's role close to the Arbiter from sc1 (passive cloak and recall) but instead of wormhole give it graviton beam, except it isn't channeled and can pick up massive units.
Reduce force field's radius to about 2/3's of it's current radius. Force field is relied on a LOT by Protoss so I am not sure how bad the nerf will be, but I think it's necessary seeing how good it is at blocking ramps and splitting armies. An alternative would be to have the force fields destructible and have around 500 health.
Have Ultralisks start with the speed ability. I think Ultralisks are currently underused a lot and a buff like this would help them be more useful off the bat.
Make broodlords only spawn 1 broodling per attack. These units are insanely good and I win many battles just because I have a few of them in my army.
Reapers need a re-design. Originally reapers could throw mines on the ground that detonated after a few seconds, but this was taken out. It sounded really powerful but now Reapers have turned into a gimicky unit, used in early game harass and thats it. I think some type of later game upgrade to them to make them viable in mid or late game would be a welcome change to the unit in exchange for having them require an engineering bay to build or increase their build time.
Reduce the cybernetic core's build time by 5-10 seconds to help counter fast reapers. Not needed if Reaper build time or tech requirements is changed.
Move Nydus canal to tier 3, or have it require the infestor pit. I feel that this building is preventing protoss fast expand vs zerg from being viable at all, and a small change like this would allow more longer macro games to take place in this matchup and less 1 base protoss builds.
Set a max amount of scvs that can repair a planetary fortress at once. It is suppose to be a powerful defense structure, not indestructible.
Change storm's graphic to properly reflect the radius of the spell's damage.
Creep should increase health regeneration of zerg units by 1-2 per second, I don't see why they should make zerg units faster since creep provides nourishment to the zerg units. It would also allow the other races to scout the zerg beyond zerglings (and even then its pretty easy to kill workers with lings). Buff the speed of zerg units like the queen to compensate.
Remove that second of delay between hellion attacks. This is incredibly annoying when trying to micro hellions and it would open up a lot more options with hellions if you could micro them better.
That sums up the unit balances I can think of at the moment, but there are still some map issues which I feel are encouraging cheese, 1 base play, and gimmicky play which wouldn't be viable on a good, balanced map. Once map makers get their hands on the editor we can see some new, better balanced maps that I assume will be slightly larger then the average maps used now, more akin to the size of shakuras plateau if it was a 1v1 map. Maps with large ramps, expansions with multiple chokes, and bases with easily breakable back doors are in my opinion bad map design and encourage less solid play and more play focused on abusing map mechanics. Almost every map has something 1 race can abuse, and I hope blizz can get rid of these annoying problems.
That about sums it up, I think the game is awesome and fun to play and I know Blizzard will help make this a successful esport (assuming they heed the community's requests).
Hey everyone my name is Whiplash, I am a rank 4 random plat player (could easily hold rank 1 if I just played protoss but who cares about that) that has done many events such as craftcup, omfg, shoutcraft, and am part of vT gaming (http://www.vtgaming.net). I would like to share my thoughts on the current balance issues in Starcraft 2 at this point in time. Everything that I say is back from personal experience from both sides of the balance. I have the most experience with protoss so many of my balance issues will be from their perspective.
As of now, Zerg is the most powerful race, then Protoss, then Terran. The main issue with zerg is that they have a huge production ability mid game and can generally drone hard early game with ease. I am directing the balance issue from a Protoss's perspective, not a Terrans. Popular builds like 4 gate and 3 gate robo have been effective at forcing zerg to get more units early on but now GOOD zergs are learning how to block these timing pushes with relative ease and they leave the Protoss player behind if no economic damage is done. I am pretty sure that something with the inject larve mechanic needs to change to balance this out. In my opinion this is 1 of the most important issues in sc2 atm that I hope the next patch adjusts.
Zerg's mid game army lacks diversity. This is another obvious issue that everyone can see. Zerg's mid game army is roach/hydra in 90%+ of their games. Infestors are rarely used. Corruptors are only used to counter colossi. IN ZvT banelings are sometimes used, but the bulk of the army remains the same ol' Roach/Hydra. Honestly I am not a fan of the roach and I would love for it to be removed and replaced, but it needs to keep zerg balanced through out the game which is easier said then done. If they got an additional tier 2 unit, maybe a specialized unit morphed from the roach that was more of a support unit or caster (and they buffed infestor enough to make it hive tech), then maybe we could see some more diversity.
Protoss templar tech is inferior to robo tech in every matchup. Robos allow you to get observers and immortals off the bat, which are invaluable units in every matchup, and they come quicker then both high templar and dark templar. In addition, both templar units require a lot more gas and time to get operational, and are frail units compared to the colossi and immortal. The Dark Obelisk is a terrible design and it makes no sense to not have dark templar require the templar archives due to the relatively small use that the templar archives gets as of now. High templars are decent vs terran bio armies but in the end robo is just as, if not more effective. Storm is currently not that useful vs zerg due to roach's insane health and the fact that in realistic settings roaches generally only lose 1/3 of their health per storm wave. I don't understand why Blizzard wants Archons to be such a useless unit as well, with all the time and gas you spend just getting templar, it would be nice if Archons at least were a hard counter to 1 unit or had a unique ability.
If you want to make templar tech more appealing then it would be wise to buff storm's damage to make it a viable alternative to robo tech. I think buffing the damage and not bringing back it's old radius is the proper way to buff the spell. I think that Archon's splash radius needs to be significantly increased, so they can give protoss an actual decent counter versus mutalisks. Mutalisks are still a very good vs protoss, especially en masse (but not against terran, so buff a protoss unit to deal with mutalisks not nerf mutalisks). I was also thinking that if you want to give the archon and templars more viability then you could simply give archons a passive which regenerated their health whenever they were hit by templar storms. This would make them a decent tanking unit alternative to the immortal under the right circumstances and encourage more strategic play.
Mauradurs are still too all purpose. I think if their health gets nerfed by 5-10 (along with a nerf to how much stim does to them by 20 to 10) and change their base damage from 10(+10 armored) to 8(+12 armored) they would move away from being an "unholy trinity unit". I would support a change to the immortal's damage values as well if this happened.
Banshee range needs to be nerfed by 2, I believe it is at 6 now and it would be better around 4. It is a very powerful harassment unit that is also great vs ground units, even if they can attack air.
Phoenixes are a cool unit, but are terrible at their job: Anti air. The reason that the corsair was so good at it's job in SC1 is beacuse it had splash damage. Phoenixes need to get scout like anti air damage or splash damage so they can be a decent anti air unit. I wouldn't mind it losing graviton beam (will explain this next) for a support spell, survival spell, or a spell that makes it more effective vs air units.
Remove the Mothership already. Dustin Browder, this isn't battle for middle earth or CnC, we don't want super units. A lot of people want the Arbiter back, and I think something similar, maybe a Dark Arbiter, would be a good fit. Make it's role close to the Arbiter from sc1 (passive cloak and recall) but instead of wormhole give it graviton beam, except it isn't channeled and can pick up massive units.
Reduce force field's radius to about 2/3's of it's current radius. Force field is relied on a LOT by Protoss so I am not sure how bad the nerf will be, but I think it's necessary seeing how good it is at blocking ramps and splitting armies. An alternative would be to have the force fields destructible and have around 500 health.
Have Ultralisks start with the speed ability. I think Ultralisks are currently underused a lot and a buff like this would help them be more useful off the bat.
Make broodlords only spawn 1 broodling per attack. These units are insanely good and I win many battles just because I have a few of them in my army.
Reapers need a re-design. Originally reapers could throw mines on the ground that detonated after a few seconds, but this was taken out. It sounded really powerful but now Reapers have turned into a gimicky unit, used in early game harass and thats it. I think some type of later game upgrade to them to make them viable in mid or late game would be a welcome change to the unit in exchange for having them require an engineering bay to build or increase their build time.
Reduce the cybernetic core's build time by 5-10 seconds to help counter fast reapers. Not needed if Reaper build time or tech requirements is changed.
Move Nydus canal to tier 3, or have it require the infestor pit. I feel that this building is preventing protoss fast expand vs zerg from being viable at all, and a small change like this would allow more longer macro games to take place in this matchup and less 1 base protoss builds.
Set a max amount of scvs that can repair a planetary fortress at once. It is suppose to be a powerful defense structure, not indestructible.
Change storm's graphic to properly reflect the radius of the spell's damage.
Creep should increase health regeneration of zerg units by 1-2 per second, I don't see why they should make zerg units faster since creep provides nourishment to the zerg units. It would also allow the other races to scout the zerg beyond zerglings (and even then its pretty easy to kill workers with lings). Buff the speed of zerg units like the queen to compensate.
Remove that second of delay between hellion attacks. This is incredibly annoying when trying to micro hellions and it would open up a lot more options with hellions if you could micro them better.
That sums up the unit balances I can think of at the moment, but there are still some map issues which I feel are encouraging cheese, 1 base play, and gimmicky play which wouldn't be viable on a good, balanced map. Once map makers get their hands on the editor we can see some new, better balanced maps that I assume will be slightly larger then the average maps used now, more akin to the size of shakuras plateau if it was a 1v1 map. Maps with large ramps, expansions with multiple chokes, and bases with easily breakable back doors are in my opinion bad map design and encourage less solid play and more play focused on abusing map mechanics. Almost every map has something 1 race can abuse, and I hope blizz can get rid of these annoying problems.
That about sums it up, I think the game is awesome and fun to play and I know Blizzard will help make this a successful esport (assuming they heed the community's requests).
