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Hi everybody,
So I'm playing the beta quite a lot, as terran and zerg, and I'd like to ask the community about something.
I am perfectly aware that LOTV is a beta build, and that therefore balance isn't supposed to be taken into account. The viper in LOTV reveals I guess a design logic issue that translate itself in imbalance. This is what I would like to write about here, not about balance, since I feel it's pointless.
The HOTS viper has a very good place in the zerg armada. It's a late game support caster, that can be used both in the general late game and in a timing attack. In fact, it reaches the sweet spot of the support unit :
=> it does not deny some ennemy units. Sure it kinda forces protosses to go templars before colossi, but that's ok, it doesn't denies collossi from PvZ => it's not really massable since there are counters both in as terran and protoss => it has specific but strong use, especially against non-mobile armies
It's a much better designed unit than the HOTS raven in that regard, since the raven :
=> it denies ennemy units : it suppresses any zerg anti air => it's extremly massable, just look at some pro player's TvT => it doesn't have specific use but general use, from zone control, to engagement and counter engagement abilities
The LOTV viper, with the addition of the parasitic bomb, completly wrecks it very fine HOTS state since it now hard counters its natural counters. I'm talking specifically of ZvT here. It just destroys vikings, liberators and ravens, and its range and the fact it's flying doesn't allow ghosts to efficiently counter it. When a support caster starts to hard counter its supposedly natural counter, the design of the unit fails. That's what happends with the HOTS raven, which denies vikings, corruptors and hydras attacks while possessing a very strong zone attack that is especially strong against these units. I wont elaborate on the balance issues it induces, with the sole mention of its great synergy with BL/corru which makes terran rather terrible against these times of army.
What I would propose as a change : => remove the parasitic bomb, and give the infestor a good AA spell.
If we look at the design of the parasitic bomb, it's quite awefull. It's very punishing, forces a great deal of micro and pre-fight setup for the opponent while requiring very little control. As I stated earlier, the HOTS viper has a great spot in the zerg army. The HOTS and LOTV infestor don't. Therefore, it seems much more intelligent to give a good AA spell to an underused caster than to screw the design of a very well designed unit. Moreover, I feel the fact that the infestor is a ground unit would make the counterplay much more interesing : you have to get ground units to protect your air army against infestors, while the infestors can protect themselves with a well placed fungal.
EDIT : following the discussion, a very good idea (I think) would be to remove the parasitic bomb, the neural parasite, and give the infestor a new spell : "summon scourges". Just like the infested terrans, for 50 energy you can invoque a limited lifespawn scourge that works like in BW (an air baneling so to speak). That would be a non punishing spell that would force micro on both sides, while giving zerg a very good AA option. This would also passively buff corruptors who can then buffer for the scourges.
Thanks for reading and don't hesitate to state your opinion about this.
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WoL fungal growth and upgradable infested terran combo are excellent AA, the problem is probably they are a little bit too good against ground army as well
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Yes, this is an issue.
Parasitic bomb makes you want to camp into the ultimate composition of Broodlords/Vipers/Corruptors, possibly with Hydra support so you can abduct key units into your flying deathball should there be the need for that. It reminds me the dark era of Broodlord/Infestor so much.
There is just no counter to that. Vikings die in seconds to the Parasitic bomb, even if you try to micro as hard as you can. Meanwhile, your whole ground army is eaten alive by Broodlords. Lets not even imagine what would happen should decent Zerg player added few Infestors to their army.
The whole thing is very easy to execute. In the Broodlord/Infestor era, you had at least a shot. Now there is nothing you can do to at least stale the situation. It is certain and stressful death. Also, due to the new insane economy fitting zerg so much, there is not even this window that existed in WoL (not let them get there). Once good zerg players figure out how to deal with the early bullshit from terran (like liberator timings - they are figuring it already, i.e - early corruptors), they will consistently get to their Broodlord/Viper/Corruptor composition, ultimately killig the fun and the game itself as we have witnessed once before.
The next thing is that they made the Raven useless again by increasing the cost of Seeker Missile. That was the thing saving the game from the Broodlord/Infestor bullshit. Not that it actually mattered, because all your Ravens would die to Parasitic Bomb anyways now. But it shows they have no idea how fragile late-game TvZ (at least) is and what kind of changes they need to avoid not to go few years back.
Also, Ghosts are not the counter that. They get overrun by Broodlings in seconds.
The only good thing about all this is, that due to the insane economy, you don't suffer as long as in Broodlord/Infestor era as this bullshit comes so much faster and you can't really fight back because the Vipers counter their natural counters so badly. So you just die very, very fast.
Nerfing Raven is fine, splitting mech upgrades is also fine. But going back to the Broodlord/Infestor era while cutting the answers from Terran perspective on top of that is a bit too much.
I can't believe they managed to put Blinding Cloud, Parasitic Bomb an Abduct on a single unit an on top of that they gave it an ability to make sure it never runs out of energy. It's the hardest counter to mech we had in the game so far. I was not expecting them to come up with something more broken or stupid then Immortals, Blinding Cloud or Tempests.
It just needs to go away.
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The LOTV viper, with the addition of the parasitic bomb, completly wrecks it very fine HOTS state since it now hard counters its natural counters. I'm talking specifically of ZvT here. It just destroys vikings, liberators and ravens, and its range and the fact it's flying doesn't allow ghosts to efficiently counter it. When a support caster starts to hard counter its supposedly natural counter, the design of the unit fails.
I pointed this out previously as well. Parasitic Bombs doesn't fit the current kit of the Viper at all. While we should try to avoid direct hardcounters, there needs to be weakness's to building certain units, and Parasitic prevents that atm. In fact the whole Cyclone vs Zerg and Viper vs terran dynamic is based on unit design that dominates other units. It's really bad.
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Parasitic bomb would be fine if it didn't stack. It stacking is what kills so much so fast.
Infestor BroodLord viper is insanely hard to beat. Combined with BroodLord range upgrade, ground units can't approach BLS nor can air units due to lack of cover from ground so infestors have free reigns to fungal or even get close as vipers can have 9 range parasitic bomb range they just need few shots off of.
Pre split mass liberators kill BLS fast enough if you suicide them but that requires massive prep vs zerg air switch that follows usually after a big fight and it's not like zerg doesnt have AA that will easily pick off split units
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I like the spell by concept. Bt the Op covers very well its biggest issue which is that it turns the Viper from an excellently designed support caster into a main combat unit that can fight on its on and in particular against former counters. Additionally I think the spell is just too strong right now.
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Ah i guess my other post was taken down -_- about vipers
The more the merrier. It needs attention asap. The sooner parasitic bomb is deleted the better imo. I know it's really overboard to some people to say "deleted" but the viper honestly is a super raven right now overloaded with abilities.
To be honest, parasitic bomb is stronger than the pre-nerf "insta-amazing-fungals" that you would chain fungal onto vikings.
Blizzard will have to patch something with the viper, the question is how soon. From my experience the last week of beta, every single TvZ i've played Zergs have started going brood/viper/corruptor every single game @_@ and you either "kill them before they get there" or you lose.
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I'm glad to see the feedback is kinda uniform on this matter. I don't really know if I like the concept of the spell. I mean I would like it if it was on ground units, but air units stack so much and the animation is so blurry it's just impossible to back the unit that's targeted.
Balance wise, it's true that terran face a dead end against zerg in the beta. I mean bio is terrible atm (lurker/crackling/ultra), and mech just gets obliterated by BL/corru/viper. I've tried to go cyclones instead of vikings to fight against it, but when there's more than 7 BL it gets impossible.
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Parasitic bomb is simply Irradiate from BW done badly. And without the nice few cool tricks you could do with Irradiate (aka eraser).
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On August 03 2015 00:41 JackONeill wrote: I'm glad to see the feedback is kinda uniform on this matter. I don't really know if I like the concept of the spell. I mean I would like it if it was on ground units, but air units stack so much and the animation is so blurry it's just impossible to back the unit that's targeted.
Balance wise, it's true that terran face a dead end against zerg in the beta. I mean bio is terrible atm (lurker/crackling/ultra), and mech just gets obliterated by BL/corru/viper. I've tried to go cyclones instead of vikings to fight against it, but when there's more than 7 BL it gets impossible. Funny, i saw bio winning on top tier GM ladder. I also saw cyclones winning against broodlords. You should watch vibe vod's playing against TOP/Supernova. Mech seems unbeatable. What you are saying is simply bullshit.
On August 02 2015 22:44 avilo wrote: Ah i guess my other post was taken down -_- about vipers
The more the merrier. It needs attention asap. The sooner parasitic bomb is deleted the better imo. I know it's really overboard to some people to say "deleted" but the viper honestly is a super raven right now overloaded with abilities.
To be honest, parasitic bomb is stronger than the pre-nerf "insta-amazing-fungals" that you would chain fungal onto vikings.
Blizzard will have to patch something with the viper, the question is how soon. From my experience the last week of beta, every single TvZ i've played Zergs have started going brood/viper/corruptor every single game @_@ and you either "kill them before they get there" or you lose.
Counts for you as well: Pick up some VibE vods and watch how top/supernova wins games. But i guess your balance suggestions are just part of your acting role, right? You said that the original prenerf cyclones were fine. HAHAHA
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Yea, Viper Irradiate should get revamped. I usually don't trash whole spells but it doesn't belong with Zerg. They should get Defensive Matrix. Grab is already pretty great at taking expensive things too.
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On August 03 2015 00:58 Henno12 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2015 00:41 JackONeill wrote: I'm glad to see the feedback is kinda uniform on this matter. I don't really know if I like the concept of the spell. I mean I would like it if it was on ground units, but air units stack so much and the animation is so blurry it's just impossible to back the unit that's targeted.
Balance wise, it's true that terran face a dead end against zerg in the beta. I mean bio is terrible atm (lurker/crackling/ultra), and mech just gets obliterated by BL/corru/viper. I've tried to go cyclones instead of vikings to fight against it, but when there's more than 7 BL it gets impossible. Funny, i saw bio winning on top tier GM ladder. I also saw cyclones winning against broodlords. You should watch vibe vod's playing against TOP/Supernova. Mech seems unbeatable. What you are saying is simply bullshit. Show nested quote +On August 02 2015 22:44 avilo wrote: Ah i guess my other post was taken down -_- about vipers
The more the merrier. It needs attention asap. The sooner parasitic bomb is deleted the better imo. I know it's really overboard to some people to say "deleted" but the viper honestly is a super raven right now overloaded with abilities.
To be honest, parasitic bomb is stronger than the pre-nerf "insta-amazing-fungals" that you would chain fungal onto vikings.
Blizzard will have to patch something with the viper, the question is how soon. From my experience the last week of beta, every single TvZ i've played Zergs have started going brood/viper/corruptor every single game @_@ and you either "kill them before they get there" or you lose.
Counts for you as well: Pick up some VibE vods and watch how top/supernova wins games. But i guess your balance suggestions are just part of your acting role, right? You said that the original prenerf cyclones were fine. HAHAHA
I'm going to watch the vods now. Could you point me to some specific day/vod/time to watch? Are we talking about mech, right? Not bio + cyclones.
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On August 03 2015 01:14 Everlong wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2015 00:58 Henno12 wrote:On August 03 2015 00:41 JackONeill wrote: I'm glad to see the feedback is kinda uniform on this matter. I don't really know if I like the concept of the spell. I mean I would like it if it was on ground units, but air units stack so much and the animation is so blurry it's just impossible to back the unit that's targeted.
Balance wise, it's true that terran face a dead end against zerg in the beta. I mean bio is terrible atm (lurker/crackling/ultra), and mech just gets obliterated by BL/corru/viper. I've tried to go cyclones instead of vikings to fight against it, but when there's more than 7 BL it gets impossible. Funny, i saw bio winning on top tier GM ladder. I also saw cyclones winning against broodlords. You should watch vibe vod's playing against TOP/Supernova. Mech seems unbeatable. What you are saying is simply bullshit. On August 02 2015 22:44 avilo wrote: Ah i guess my other post was taken down -_- about vipers
The more the merrier. It needs attention asap. The sooner parasitic bomb is deleted the better imo. I know it's really overboard to some people to say "deleted" but the viper honestly is a super raven right now overloaded with abilities.
To be honest, parasitic bomb is stronger than the pre-nerf "insta-amazing-fungals" that you would chain fungal onto vikings.
Blizzard will have to patch something with the viper, the question is how soon. From my experience the last week of beta, every single TvZ i've played Zergs have started going brood/viper/corruptor every single game @_@ and you either "kill them before they get there" or you lose.
Counts for you as well: Pick up some VibE vods and watch how top/supernova wins games. But i guess your balance suggestions are just part of your acting role, right? You said that the original prenerf cyclones were fine. HAHAHA I'm going to watch the vods now. Could you point me to some specific day/vod/time to watch? Are we talking about mech, right? Not bio + cyclones. He plays against them all the time. Mostly mech, sometimes bio. Bio maybe 2-3 day ago.
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On August 03 2015 01:16 Henno12 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2015 01:14 Everlong wrote:On August 03 2015 00:58 Henno12 wrote:On August 03 2015 00:41 JackONeill wrote: I'm glad to see the feedback is kinda uniform on this matter. I don't really know if I like the concept of the spell. I mean I would like it if it was on ground units, but air units stack so much and the animation is so blurry it's just impossible to back the unit that's targeted.
Balance wise, it's true that terran face a dead end against zerg in the beta. I mean bio is terrible atm (lurker/crackling/ultra), and mech just gets obliterated by BL/corru/viper. I've tried to go cyclones instead of vikings to fight against it, but when there's more than 7 BL it gets impossible. Funny, i saw bio winning on top tier GM ladder. I also saw cyclones winning against broodlords. You should watch vibe vod's playing against TOP/Supernova. Mech seems unbeatable. What you are saying is simply bullshit. On August 02 2015 22:44 avilo wrote: Ah i guess my other post was taken down -_- about vipers
The more the merrier. It needs attention asap. The sooner parasitic bomb is deleted the better imo. I know it's really overboard to some people to say "deleted" but the viper honestly is a super raven right now overloaded with abilities.
To be honest, parasitic bomb is stronger than the pre-nerf "insta-amazing-fungals" that you would chain fungal onto vikings.
Blizzard will have to patch something with the viper, the question is how soon. From my experience the last week of beta, every single TvZ i've played Zergs have started going brood/viper/corruptor every single game @_@ and you either "kill them before they get there" or you lose.
Counts for you as well: Pick up some VibE vods and watch how top/supernova wins games. But i guess your balance suggestions are just part of your acting role, right? You said that the original prenerf cyclones were fine. HAHAHA I'm going to watch the vods now. Could you point me to some specific day/vod/time to watch? Are we talking about mech, right? Not bio + cyclones. He plays against them all the time. Mostly mech, sometimes bio. Bio maybe 2-3 day ago.
Alright, watching right now. I'm really curious how Supernova/Top deals with Broodlords/Corruptors/Vipers with mech as I find it almost impossible to engage that army with any combination of stuff that factory/starport can produce.
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the problem with removing parasitic bomb is, you will get people like avilo just playing cancer mech again and declaring how great he is. the whole point of parasitic bomb was to stop stupid air armies, its probably too strong but you've got to find some middle ground of it not being too strong but still deterring ridiculous air deathballs.
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If you ask me, parasitic bomb is fine. Maybe it shouldn't stack. But it's not half as broken as Liberators/Cyclones/Adepts early game/8 armor ultras.
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I think (an adapted version of) parasitic bomb would be a great replacement for fungal growth. Reasoning:
1) fungal currently is pidgeonholed into destroying clumps of air units anyways. It doesn't really have a purpose outside of that in the HotS-metagame. 2) fungal as a rooting spell by concept isn't quite loved anyways. The projectile allows for microing against it being casted, but after you get hit you still can get chained to death, which is the only real application of infestor play at the moment. Parasitic bomb is a much more interesting micro-dependend spell than fungal growth. Granted, I would like to see a more visual indicator of the parasitic bomb. Maybe the same animation as a HSM-targeted unit in greenish-yellow would be cool to allow for easier countermicro. 3) the infestor by concept has always been an aggressive spellcaster. The Viper a supportive spellcaster. A destructive spell fits the infestor better than the viper. I'd go so far as to say it kills what made the Viper such a great unit in HotS. 4) because the infestor cannot load up its energy and because it cannot catch air units as easily as the flying viper, the (very powerful) parasitic bomb spell probably leads to more interesting gameplay on the infestor than on the viper. The infestors weaknesses can be abused better to counteract the power of the spell, which allows the spell to stay powerful. This argument basically implies that in my opinion the spell has to get nerfed if it stays on the viper, while on the infestor I think further testing needed to be done to come to a conclusion. Though I think it would have to be a 100energy version on the infestor. 5) Infestor as T2 unit is a dead tech. Getting Infestors at the earlier possible timings is basically useless, because the infestor is too universal for that techlevel and hence cannot be very powerful - that's what we have learned from BL/Infestor days. Giving the Infestor a more powerful, yet more specialized ability than the universally hitting fungal growth (parasitic is only antiair) would revive midgame infestors for specific purposes while removing the mass infestor possibility as lategame "composition". (note: this composition is still happening in lategame TvZ; 20+ infestors against mech are no rarity and there are even examples of bio-TvZ in which the zerg plays would ultimately transition into extremely infestorheavy play to devastate whole armies with pure energy; the possibility is still there, it is just extremely hard to reach in HotS)
*) I think a really cool version of parasitic bomb would also keep the fungal projectile and attach the parasitic bomb to the first enemy unit on its path. I think such a spell - dodgemicro to prevent hits + splitmicro to minimize damage - on a ground unit against air units could keep the powerlevel of parasitic bomb and allow for really cool micro play.
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A while back i made this topic which got closed to censor me
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/closed-threads/489563-parasite-bomb-infestor-broodlord-has-no-counter
I basically just say what the OP says, parasite bomb makes corruptors redundant because it simply does their job, i mean the warhound could shoot air so its way more different from a marauder then a corruptor is to the viper
however its not only bad design, its also too strong against the only counters you have to broodlord infestor which is fixable by making fungal not root, but only a damage spell.
can someone link me the closed avilo post?
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Ok, so from Vibe Vod's, I've observed the following:
1) Most if not all the games he loses to mech involve some kind of game breaking push, basically the "don't let them get there" kind of scenario.
2) The only game against SuperNove I've seen him use Broodlord/Corruptor/Viper was like a 45 min game where he suddenly decided to switch to Ultras (defendable I guess since Zerg is supposed to tech switch a lot). But I'm almost 100% sure he would've won the game if he stayed on Broodlord/Corruptor/Viper.
3) Vibe himself explained to some Terran player named FenerWolf that he is not supposed to "let him get there" and that he is not supposed to fight/win in a 200 vs 200 army scenario. The guy asked him (after his Vikings were erased from air by Vipers) how is he supposed to counter Vipers and the only answer Vibe gave him was in a fashion of "don't let me get there".
The argument "don't let me get there" would be kind of valid and defendable I'd say (it forces active mech play) if it was not for our experience with Broodlord/Infestor era in 2011 (or around this time). The problem is that as the time passes, Zerg players will almost always figure out how to delay the game (they are good at adapting and they are supposed to be good at it) and eventually get the ultimate composition. So, please, in all politeness, try to come up with some valid argument that would prove me wrong when I say that the history is repeating here and nothing good can come out of this logic.
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On August 03 2015 01:49 FoxDog wrote:A while back i made this topic which got closed to censor me http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/closed-threads/489563-parasite-bomb-infestor-broodlord-has-no-counterI basically just say what the OP says, parasite bomb makes corruptors redundant because it simply does their job, i mean the warhound could shoot air so its way more different from a marauder then a corruptor is to the viper however its not only bad design, its also too strong against the only counters you have to broodlord infestor which is fixable by making fungal not root, but only a damage spell. can someone link me the closed avilo post?
I'd be interested in avilo's closed thread too. I know, it's avilo, blablabla. I don't care. I want to bring attention to this issue before it gets out of hand.
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