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I didn't make a thread before because I figured there was a chance Blizzard would see how bad invulnerability is in testing the unit and change it of their own volition. As of 2.5.3, the Disruptor has been made even more invulnerable than it ever was in the past, so it's thread-making time.
Invulnerability is very bad for the game. It's an artificial gimmick that allows for the possibility of things that should not under any circumstances be possible. Even if it leads to gameplay that appears on average totally "balanced," it is bad, just like the Mothership Core was bad, just like instantly attacking Medivaced Siege Tanks are bad. Here's why:
1. Invulnerability introduces an artificial cushion for very bad plays.
Didn't bother to scout the Zerg's side of the map to make sure he's not preparing to flank you from every angle? Forgot to check the highground for defensive Siege Tanks that could rip up your units before they even get in range? Accidentally misclicked your Disruptors and sent them to the wrong part of the battlefield?
Don't worry, it doesn't matter that you suck. Your units are invulnerable and took literally zero damage.
How are T/Z supposed to punish bad Disruptor plays if the unit cannot be hurt?
2. Invulnerability introduces the possibility for Protoss to capitalize big on something they shouldn't.
Opponent looks away from his 50 supply bio/Hydraball for a couple of seconds to macro? That's all it takes for three ultra-fast Disruptors to close the distance and massacre the entire army at an absurd cost-efficiency ratio... and then get the hell out without taking any damage!
Does SC2 really need more "you looked away from your army for 1 second and now you die" dynamics? The amount of damage Disruptors can dish out to inattentive enemies, at 140 damage per guaranteed hit, is going to make WMs vs Probes look like a friendly game of squash.
The solution is incredibly simple - give bonus armor to shields!
I'm not talking about a nerf, I'm talking about a change that would keep the Disruptor at its intended level of efficiency versus evenly-matched armies, and make it properly worthless against armies it should be properly worthless against.
Figure out what degree of cost efficiency you're going for in Disruptor vs. Bio/Hydra interactions, and give Disruptors enough bonus shield armor during their nova to keep them alive and well for that ratio - and only for that ratio.
Whether that means giving them enough shield armor to prevent ANY hull damage from 10 Marines, or it means giving them enough to prevent CRITICAL hull damage from 10 Marines, a balanced ratio exists and it's up to Blizzard to know what that is.
When I read "Invulnerable," I see a tournament a year from now when someone like Has beats someone like Jaedong because Invulnerability fundamentally changes the way unit relationships function, and it's going to be dumb all over again. Can we not?
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I agree so much with this. Two things in LOTV are simply so absurd that they should never been tested: 1. Invulnerable Disruptors. 2. Invulnerable Nydus network.
Why waste time testing changes that are clearly broken? Better to test things that might be too good or too bad and do not waste time on things are obviously broken.
In both cased an armour buff would be a better solution.
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Bisutopia19028 Posts
I agree. I think the invulnerable aspect on anything doesn't fit at all. One of the first changes I really really really dislike in LoTV. We have had invulnerable force fields since WoL and that's been a major complaint for everyone too.
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with all the love and respect you all 3 have no clue what ur talkning about if they would remove the invulnerabily of the distruptor and add whatever armor bonus u want the distruptor is gonna die until it's gonna do dmg .
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On July 17 2015 16:53 NightEnD wrote: with all the love and respect you all 3 have no clue what ur talkning about if they would remove the invulnerabily of the distruptor and add whatever armor bonus u want the distruptor is gonna die until it's gonna do dmg .
...then give it more armor?
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ok let's make a test of imagination let's say distruptor gets 10 armor , u got 2 of them heading in to the terran army how much dmg can they do and how much time will take the terran to kill both ?
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On July 17 2015 17:00 NightEnD wrote: ok let's make a test of imagination let's say distruptor gets 10 armor , u got 2 of them heading in to the terran army how much dmg can they do and how much time will take the terran to kill both ?
The point is that that's a question Blizzard should have an actual answer for. That's what the Beta is for. Blizzard asks themselves "is the magic number 10 armor?" They release a patch with 10 armor and let us play with it. Maybe 10 armor turns out to be too much. "Is the magic number 5 armor?" 5 armor isn't enough. So on and so forth until they arrive at a satisfactory answer.
If I decide to siege up in the middle of the map and my tanks get flanked from three sides by Lings, I made a bad play, and the punishment is I lose my tanks.
There has to be such a thing as a "bad Disruptor play," as there is with every other unit, and one of the things that defines bad plays is engaging a force that is too strong and losing your units for absolutely no value.
It should be possible to lose Disruptors for very little, or absolutely no value, and I don't mean sniping the Warp Prism that's transporting them. This is standard RTS logic.
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I'm not saying I don't agree, I like the general concept of not having too hard counters. But your arguing doesn't make much sense in my head.
- getting flanked my more units than expected will kill an army with disruptors as much as an army of any other unit. Actually, flanking is more effective against an immortal disruptor than against a non-immortal one, as it is harder to focus down the disruptor if you have your forces split up.
- The siege tanks can still kill your army, even if they wont damage the disruptors while immortal. You will notice them though, and will get a chance to pull back, but I don't see how that is so bad. It seems to contradict what you say later about having your army killed in a short time being bad.
- I think you can escape with a misclicked disruptor almost as well with increased shield as immortal. The big difference will be if go straight into the middle of an army. And anyway, if you dont want misclicked units to be recoverable, shouldn't we address speedlings, boost on medivacs and other fast units? Not to mention recall? I think the recall-dynamics are pretty sweet, allowing toss to harass early on, even though some other certain abilities on the MSC are pretty annoying. Again, I feel this is contradicting your later statement about your army dying immediately.
- The hydras dying in a few seconds is very similar to TvZ and banes vs bio, and many regard ZvT bio as the most entertaining MUs. Also contradicts the two previous things about the forgivingness of immortality being bad.
Apart from that, the obvious problem with setting a limit to how much damage they can handle is that the disruptor suddenly is countered by a densely packed deathball, which is what it was designed to discourge in the first hand.
So well, again, I am not saying the idea is bad, but I feel you are hugely oversimplifying the argument and making up random situation that you claim are "bad" to the extent that you are contradicting yourself.
That said, let me oversimply some myself: Maybe to avoid being countered by deathballs, you can have it detonate and deal damage if killed while activated, like a baneling? Maybe it can deal a bit less damage if killed. Then to make sure it deals damage the toss only needs to escort it to the front of the enemy army, which you can do by sending a few zealots ahead with it or something. That'd also give the opportunity to more counter-micro, not only by splitting, but you can also target-fire it behind the escort and you can have it deal friendly splash on the escort with some luck. You also get the choise every time you see it coming: run or target down. All in all, it'd become a giant baneling, which everyone likes. "SOOO MANY DISRUPTORS!!!"? :D
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On July 17 2015 17:10 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2015 17:00 NightEnD wrote: ok let's make a test of imagination let's say distruptor gets 10 armor , u got 2 of them heading in to the terran army how much dmg can they do and how much time will take the terran to kill both ? The point is that that's a question Blizzard should have an actual answer for. That's what the Beta is for. Blizzard asks themselves "is the magic number 10 armor?" They release a patch with 10 armor and let us play with it. Maybe 10 armor turns out to be too much. "Is the magic number 5 armor?" 5 armor isn't enough. So on and so forth until they arrive at a satisfactory answer. If I decide to siege up in the middle of the map and my tanks get flanked from three sides by Lings, I made a bad play, and the punishment is I lose my tanks. There has to be such a thing as a "bad Disruptor play," as there is with every other unit, and one of the things that defines bad plays is engaging a force that is too strong and losing your units for absolutely no value. It should be possible to lose Disruptors for very little, or absolutely no value, and I don't mean sniping the Warp Prism that's transporting them. This is standard RTS logic. To be fair, isn't it perfectly possible to send a disruptor into a very mobile army with bad timing, have it miss completely, or maybe hit one or two units, and then be killed before you have time to pick it up again?
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At the end of the day disruptors are barely worth making, the damage they do to mineral lines is that of a good mine shot now.
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On July 17 2015 17:00 NightEnD wrote: ok let's make a test of imagination let's say distruptor gets 10 armor , u got 2 of them heading in to the terran army how much dmg can they do and how much time will take the terran to kill both ? If it's bio, they're taking .5 damage per shot from Marines and 1 damage per shot from Marauders, before upgrades. Let's take a Terran army of 20 Marines and 10 Marauders for this example. The Disruptor will take 200 damage (its entire health pool) over the course of just BARELY over 7 seconds. It doesn't become thoroughly ineffective until the bio ball gets very large.
I think 10 armor could work, so long as it's accepted that the Disruptor is not intended to be used against any Terran who has mech units largely in play. A better solution, in my opinion, would be to give it both 10 temporary armor and a secondary 200hp shield, only in place during nova form. It would be especially interesting if said shield also had to regenerate health the normal way, by being out of combat.
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Invulnerability is very bad for the game. It's an artificial gimmick that allows for the possibility of things that should not under any circumstances be possible.
You might as well say everything in the game is artifical. Why isn't Dark Swarm invulnerability artifical too? The only way you can explain this is if you yourself is making up "artifical rules" about what is "natural" in Starcraft. Focus on the gameplay implications instead of applying meaningless terms to defend your reasoning.
How are T/Z supposed to punish bad Disruptor plays if the unit cannot be hurt?
Can you be specific? Are you talking about 3 second post invul or invul before explosion goes of? 3 second post might indeed not have a lot of counterplay, but if you could kill it after it went off, it would certainly be possible to kill it. So from a general perspective, invulnerability is not a flawed concept, but just needs to be implemented correctly.
The solution is incredibly simple - give bonus armor to shields!
The reason why this suggestion is bad is that it then ends up countering a small army count while being useless against a large army count. Thus the Disruptor would be a deathball-unit with this suggestion, which is exactly what we do NOT want.
Opponent looks away from his 50 supply bio/Hydraball for a couple of seconds to macro? That's all it takes for three ultra-fast Disruptors to close the distance and massacre the entire army at an absurd cost-efficiency ratio... and then get the hell out without taking any damage!
Did you read the patch notes or test out the new Disruptor? They reduced the radius significantly in order to make the unit more forgiveable to play against.
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at 140 damage per guaranteed hit, is going to make WMs vs Probes look like a friendly game of squash.
I am not disagreeing with your post, just wanted to point out that still, widowmines do more dmg against protoss than a disruptor (they do 165) and they only cost 1/12 of the gas.
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invulnerability is their way to make the game more error-forgiving (read: newbie friendly). i think it is a very lazy way of doing this!
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I am more in favor of an extra shield like the immortal AFTER the detonation. I am fine with invulnerability before the detonation. Show off your splitting skills when he comes. Do not let it escape and kill it afterwards if you had better control. More armor..meh. More units beats more armor, so the counter to Disruptor would be the death ball.
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Invulnerability is not strategy, my 2 cents
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Thanks for the conversation, I'll post more tomorrow. Just wanted to address one point before going to bed:
On July 17 2015 18:54 Archiatrus wrote: I am more in favor of an extra shield like the immortal AFTER the detonation. I am fine with invulnerability before the detonation. Show off your splitting skills when he comes. Do not let it escape and kill it afterwards if you had better control. More armor..meh. More units beats more armor, so the counter to Disruptor would be the death ball.
On July 17 2015 17:13 Cascade wrote: Apart from that, the obvious problem with setting a limit to how much damage they can handle is that the disruptor suddenly is countered by a densely packed deathball, which is what it was designed to discourge in the first hand.
On July 17 2015 18:04 Hider wrote: The reason why this suggestion is bad is that it then ends up countering a small army count while being useless against a large army count. Thus the Disruptor would be a deathball-unit with this suggestion, which is exactly what we do NOT want.
I'm very confused by this repeated concern. Every single unit in the game works on the principle that it becomes markedly less effective when there are more enemies. That's not "promoting deathballs," that's giving the player in the lead an advantage that he has earned. There's nothing wrong with it.
Take the same number of Banelings (let's say 10). Are they more likely to deal damage to 10 Marines, or 50 Marines and 5 WMs planted ahead of the Marines? Obviously 10 Marines. That doesn't make Banelings "deathball units." In fact, the TvZ tug-of-war is as anti-deathball as SC2 ever gets.
Deathballs come from armies relying on tech rather than finesse to win advantages... not the completely standard dynamic of units being less effectual when up against a higher supply count.
This is completely ignoring the fact that the burden of deathballery does not fall evenly on both Protoss and Terran in PvT. Terran would be perfectly happy to play tug-of-war, and did so back when HT openings were a thing. HTs didn't have invulnerability but that was still the most exciting that the MU's ever been.
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On July 17 2015 18:04 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Invulnerability is very bad for the game. It's an artificial gimmick that allows for the possibility of things that should not under any circumstances be possible. You might as well say everything in the game is artifical. Why isn't Dark Swarm invulnerability artifical too? The only way you can explain this is if you yourself is making up "artifical rules" about what is "natural" in Starcraft. Focus on the gameplay implications instead of applying meaningless terms to defend your reasoning. Show nested quote + How are T/Z supposed to punish bad Disruptor plays if the unit cannot be hurt?
Can you be specific? Are you talking about 3 second post invul or invul before explosion goes of? 3 second post might indeed not have a lot of counterplay, but if you could kill it after it went off, it would certainly be possible to kill it. So from a general perspective, invulnerability is not a flawed concept, but just needs to be implemented correctly. The reason why this suggestion is bad is that it then ends up countering a small army count while being useless against a large army count. Thus the Disruptor would be a deathball-unit with this suggestion, which is exactly what we do NOT want. Show nested quote +Opponent looks away from his 50 supply bio/Hydraball for a couple of seconds to macro? That's all it takes for three ultra-fast Disruptors to close the distance and massacre the entire army at an absurd cost-efficiency ratio... and then get the hell out without taking any damage! Did you read the patch notes or test out the new Disruptor? They reduced the radius significantly in order to make the unit more forgiveable to play against. except darkswarm doesnt make units literally invulnerable.
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why problem? is more like reaver now... ^.*
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Could not agree more. Invulnerability is a very bad mechanic. Increase shields, give hardened shields like ability while purification nova is active... But invulnerability is just lame.
So many things in this game are just gimmicky... It's rather unnerving. No elegance, no simplicity. Just layers and layers of gimmicky stuff.
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