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I fully agree that having a separate rank for arcade games and mods would bring a lot to the custom-mapping community! Thank you for giving the pointer to this petition
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Experimental Branch Changes
- Chronoboost cost: 25 -> 50
- MULE cost: 50 -> 100
- Spawn Larvae cost: 25 -> 35
- Spawn Larvae duration: 40 -> 60
It is an overall nerf to all macro mechanics. I believe it is a good compromise between HotS and a completely removal of macro mechanics. This way - they are less impactful, but still present.. My hope is that these will still give the best players to show their skill and gain an edge, while at the same time being less punishing at lower league levels for someone being sloppy in this area. There are always other domains where skill can be shown!
The reason I don't want to completely remove macro mechanics is that their usage diversifies build orders. To you put more chrono on upgrades or units? To you delay your Orbital to get other stuff fast? For the Zerg, the nerf is not as strong, which aligns what was suggested in LotV. To clarify:
- In LotV it was tested a complete removal of macro mechanics for Protoss and Terran (thus nerf by 100%), while Zerg was nerfed by 50%.
- The change I propose here, Protoss and Terran are nerfed by 50%, while Zerg is by 33%.
Last, but not least - it also solves the power spike problem with the Cybernetics Core we were facing
How do you feel about these?
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I personally dont like it. I just dislike the macro mechanics in general. Perhaps how about this: MULE: Drops a regular SCV (no mineral costs, but costs supply) instead of a MULE. This is helpful, but definitely not overpowered.
Chrono: I actually like what blizzard did. It still gives access to strategic usage, is less powerful but easier to use.
Larva: I would really like a channeled ability that increases the larva spawn rate by 20% (or so) as long as the queen keeps channeling. The ability costs energy over time so that at some point the queen will run out and stop. This would remove the burst in production that leads to super fast tech switches (which are hard to counter and impossible to scout) it would remove the constant APM sink but it would still give a nice benefit. It would also encourage more macro hatcheries and thus more structures being build by zerg => more "active" macro.
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Keep in mind that previous changes to SCI macro mechanics are still in effect. In particular, in case of Spawn Larvae, it is still on autocast, but cannot be casted on a hatchery having more than 3 larvae. The rhythm of sudden larva count increase is unique to Zerg and I believe it should remain. At the same time, sudden tech switches are limited to 7 larvae per Hatchery which already encourages more macro hatcheries, as well as spending those extra larvae as soon as they pop (mimicing similar requirement when not queueing units in other races' production facilities)
If you think it is still a concern, we could - for example - revert the Spawn Larvae costs, but make them spawn 3 larvae instead of 4, effectively capping their count to 6 per hatchery.
Blizzard removed energy cost on Chronoboost. In the SCI setting this removes energy tension between it and Photon Overcharge - which is also casted from the Nexus. For balance reasons, Blizzard also removed energy cost from MULE, removing energy tension against supply drops and scan. I would prefer to avoid the removal of this tension, as it removes active decision making.
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Has anything interesting happened lately? Were you able to test your mod?
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Testing? Yes. Something interesting? Not really.
I think I will remove the AA from Immortal, push it to Master branch and then continue with further itching tweaks on the list...
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Is the stalker really not "armored" and the immortal really shooting air? What comp could possibly stop a death ball of Stalker/Immortal? That would trade efficiently against every last in game composition.
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How are you doing in terms of numbers of test players? I am really curious to hear how many people show interest in mods like these.
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On October 09 2015 02:42 CannonsNCarriers wrote: Is the stalker really not "armored" and the immortal really shooting air? What comp could possibly stop a death ball of Stalker/Immortal? That would trade efficiently against every last in game composition. First of all, Stalker/Immortal does not scale well in numbers due to bulkyness of the units. How many Stalkers can you squeeze in a given region - compare that to, say: - marines - roach/hydra - stalker+colossus+void ray (those are bigger units, but can overlap very well)
Immortal is going to lose its AA very soon. I acknowledge that it was a bad decission which has to be reverted.
As such, Stalker-Immortal shouldn't be hard to outdps - at least on paper. Ultimately, with the changes new compositions and responses have to be found - something that games will answer better than theorycrafting. And - if given combination is proven to be too strong - we will adjust.
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On October 10 2015 05:37 RoomOfMush wrote: How are you doing in terms of numbers of test players? I am really curious to hear how many people show interest in mods like these. Not very well. Only few of us are there
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On October 11 2015 17:04 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2015 05:37 RoomOfMush wrote: How are you doing in terms of numbers of test players? I am really curious to hear how many people show interest in mods like these. Not very well. Only few of us are there Thats a bummer. Is it consistent though? I wonder how TheDwf is doing.
I am still thinking all the people who want a custom mod should come together. There is just too few players out there for all the mods.
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On October 11 2015 19:54 RoomOfMush wrote: I am still thinking all the people who want a custom mod should come together. There is just too few players out there for all the mods. I think a better advertisement, or maybe even a platform for custom SC2 games would help. But that is kind of a job I have no idea how to do successfully...
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This seems interesting. I should check this out when I have the chance, and try out the changes. So until then, I don't want to be too quick to judge on the changes. Also, I have read a few of the pages so far, but planning to read them.
So until I can try this out, I still want to comment on ome of the Blanace Changes, and probably question some of the intended design choices (Note, I only focus on the Protoss since that's the race I genearlly play).
1) Why are you guys introducing the Charging mechanic on the Void Ray? Unless you guys intend to make a Void Ray not part of any main army, the Charge mechanic is counter-intuitive to having more units assisting the Void Ray, making Void Ray worster the army grows.
2) You wrote:
We are looking for ways to make a Warpgate a choice rather than a must-have, at least in the early-to-mid stages of the game. I purpose a different alternative for the issue for 'Morphing into Warpgate', and 'Photon Overcharge'. You remove the research require to acquire them from the Cybernatic Core, and make 'Morphing into Warpgate' tied to the Nexus energy (it no longer cost extra minerals).
This way, you now force Protoss player to diverge their build into 2 main focus, early warpgate power or faster tech expansion, while Photo Overcharge just becomes a last ditch defense. Say, something like Chrono= 50 energy, Warpgate=75 energy, PO=100 energy. (While I'm at it, increase Nexus starting energy to 25 and maximum to 200) Just a suggestion.
3) Why is the Stalker getting their armor tagged removed? I am for making the Gateway units better, but I more into having a more diverse gateway composition during the early game and would perfer seeing Zealots being also a more viable choice. And I'm not ignoring the +10 shield to Zealot. I just don't personally like the direction since in-battle, Zealots are great against most early game units already.
4) I would comment about the Immortal, but I see above that you are already changing that so I have no important comment. So I'll just ask, what was the reason why you gave the Immortal the ability to attack Air? (I'm not really against giving Protoss better anti-air from the ground)
5) I actually have a radical balance change for most of the Massive units and was still wondering if you guys were still in the stage of wiling to make such a change.
I would comment more, like the MSC(I would actually like to see the MSC stay though admit it's role needs to change), and but I sort of need to test out the mod.
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Thank you for your comments Clear World. Let me answer it in the sequence.
- "Why are you guys introducing the Charging mechanic on the Void Ray? Unless you guys intend to make a Void Ray not part of any main army, the Charge mechanic is counter-intuitive to having more units assisting the Void Ray, making Void Ray worster the army grows."
Let me answer this one in steps.
- Why chaniging VR at all?
Void Ray is decent against all kind of threats, akin to a core unit. As it was pointed by RoomOfMush - it is a bad design and no other air unit has this property. The reason for that is that air units can stack up, which - in the case of VR - can become a mobile deathball which is hard to deal with. In the pursuit of better air micro we also introduced dynamic air separation which allows even more stacking of units, making VR potentially even stronger. The only real counter to such scenario is mobile AA with splash - a combination which is hard to find. LotV are introducing more splash AA, (e.g. the new Viper ability) but that is a hardcountery solution to the problem.
However, we don't want to completely change the roles of the units. Void Ray should stay similar to what was before. That is why I believe the solution is to reduce the scalability to Void Ray.
- Why changing charging ability?
In WoL uninterruptable charging lead to gimmicky use where you fired on rocks or even your own units to charge up and then unleash the power on unsuspecting enemy. It also allowed VR to deal with mass small units efficiently. HotS introduced a simple and uninteresting buff button of "do moar damage" kind.
- So finally: why interruptible charging?
- It stick close to the original idea of WoL - something most players should be familiar with.
- Charging up reduces scalability: having a second VR targetting the same unit will not reduce TTK by 50%. This is most apparent against small and medium units.
- Interruption prevents VRs from being effective against a mass of small units (e.g. marines, zerglings)
- By manually assigning beefy targets for your VRs you have a chance to increase your effective DPS. As such it promotes ability-less kind of micro.
Ultimately, I hope to see a few VRs in small armies, or even lone VR harassment, but not a mass of units that add up to a Protoss deathball.
Regarding the charging being unintuitive - yes, it may be a bit surprising. Fortunately the necessary animation is already there to provide visual feedback. We also changd the code a bit so that the increased damage output is actually visible in the stats when you click on the unit - something that was absent even in WoL. Now, what are the consequences of such mechanic and how to use VR efficiently - that is something players will have to figure out on their own - we shouldn't force upon players the one true and only way of playing the game Maybe there will be other uses that we simply don't see now.
- "I purpose a different alternative for the issue for 'Morphing into Warpgate', and 'Photon Overcharge'. You remove the research require to acquire them from the Cybernatic Core, and make 'Morphing into Warpgate' tied to the Nexus energy (it no longer cost extra minerals). [...]"
The divergence between fast Warpgate and fast Tech/Expansion is already happening due to mineral pressure. It also gives a substantion defender's advantage during 4-gate scenario (the aggressor has 400 less minerals). I fear your solution would introduce less difference between those two paths. On the other hand, it could be an interesting tool to increase the energy tension on the Nexus. Still, at this point I would prefer to stick to the present solution and revisit yours only if the current is proven to be broken beyond repair. Otherwise we will end up circling around the same design problems over and over and never moving forward.
- "Why is the Stalker getting their armor tagged removed? I am for making the Gateway units better, but I more into having a more diverse gateway composition during the early game and would prefer seeing Zealots being also a more viable choice. And I'm not ignoring the +10 shield to Zealot. I just don't personally like the direction since in-battle, Zealots are great against most early game units already."
I am a bit confused here. You initially ask about Stalker change and finish that Zealots are great against early game units already. Or did you mean to say that Stalkers are great against most early game units already?
Let's start with Zealots: In low numbers, Zealots are pretty weak, especially in PvT since they can be microed to death. Only when forciefields comes to play things change. But we significantly reduced the FF cast range and it is now hard to put them behind enemy marines. FF is now more a tool to separate yourself from the enemy, rather than splitting enemy ball in half. But when you split yourself - zealots become completely useless. This applies to other ranged early game units, such as Roaches and Stalkers.
With the Stalker removal of Armored flag: we were looking for a way to buff the unit without altering its actual hard stats much. We decided on reducing the damage point promoting its mobility, and removing "Armored" flag - aligning to the concept of a light/mobile Stalker. The removal of the flag allows the unit to be a bit more versatile and harder to hardcounter (we don't like hardcounters in general). Most prominently, it helps Stalkers when facing Marauders. In LotV, Marauder got its damage output nerfed, here we change the Stalker instead.
If you meant to comment that it is Stalkers which are already good early game - the armor flag does not change early game much. It is actually affecting it less than if a Stalker was changed stat-wise. Damage point is much more influential in small battles.
Now that I am thinking about it... Maybe we could reduce Stalker damage output, but increase the bonus it gets from the upgrades?
- "So I'll just ask, what was the reason why you gave the Immortal the ability to attack Air? (I'm not really against giving Protoss better anti-air from the ground)"
You answered it yourself We are trying to promote ground-to-air and nerf air-to-air. Zerg got Hydra supply cost reduced (effectively to 1.5), Terran got simpler Thor AA with wider splash and higher range, and Protoss - in order to avoid another Stalker buff - we tried adding AA to Immortal. Having such high anti-armor damage hitting air from a healthy unit is not good though. We may need to find another solution. We also removed high-regen on Mutalisks (something that not everyone is happy about), which was severely reducing the viability of ground-based AA.
- "I actually have a radical balance change for most of the Massive units and was still wondering if you guys were still in the stage of wiling to make such a change."
You mean: a general change of what "Massive" flag does, or a set of individual changes to big units? Do voice your ideas. I will add that to the TODO list and we can have a look at the right time. I just want to keep some order in the discussion and avoid discussing everything at the same time.
I am looking forward to your MSC idea as well. If you check my initial posts, I was hoping to keep MSCs in-game. I still like the idea of having chronoboost on it instead of Nexus, but massing MSC early game was actually gamebreaking due to lack of proper AA response. However I am open to other, completely different ideas for MSC.
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So I tried about 3 games so far, and 1 unit tester, and finally read all 11 pages. Don't know everything, but have a better grash of it all, compare to yesterday.
1) I agree with RoomofMush's point. I understand your reasoning and purpose and have nothing against it. My problem with the mechanic is, "What purpose is the Void Ray supposed to serve now?" It's current design doesnt really lean itself to be useful much else other than a high DPS unit, but the charge mechanic makes it bad for rather large battles.
In a few games testing with my friend, I found it constantly having to recharge annoying and it kept failing to take out the vikings or the battlecrusier before the vikings took them out.
Base on just testing on Unit tester (based on supply): 1 Void Ray loses to: 2 Vikings, 1 Battlecrusier, 2 Phoenxis, 1 Carrier. 1 Void Ray barely beats 2 corruptors. (ended with less than 25 health out of the 10 tries) 1 Void Ray beats 2 Mutalisk (base on your current numbers to Hots version, I say you made the Void Ray better against Non-armor units and worst against armor units)
This only gets worst for the VR when army size increases over the course of a game. The VR and their target needs to surive for like 3-5 seconds, which is asking a lot when more units are fighting at once. Let's also not forget the fact, focus firing is better than spreading out single target damage.
Now, if the main purpose of the VR was to be like a harassment tool, or to be use outside of army clashing, than I would see the Charging mechanic as a good method to gate the VR outside of battles. But you're not going that direction.
I'm not trying to hate on the idea and I like your intend, but this does not stop the enemy from making large death balls themselves. This in turn means, the VR either fights in large groups battles, making their mirco pointless since too many units are dying, or die due to being overwhelmed from numbers. So do you balance for the assumption of being able to get fully charge or not, because in one case, it can be too strong, but another, too weak.
Personally, if I was allowed to make any balance changes I deem fit, the VR would be the only unit I remove from the game, due to: * Protoss has like 3 more units compared to the Zerg and Terran race * VR provide the least amount different gameplay or stragetic value compared to Protoss other Air units ** VR are slow, average range, basically a single target channel attack, and has like zero form of mirco on them without major addtions. ** Almost any balance issue can be sloved by changing Tempests (a lot of changes) to fill the VR role if they are removed.
2) I raise this alternative of Nexus and Warpgate because:
* I feel weird having Nexus that has energy, but unable to do anything with it until I make a Cybernetic Core. * What is your intended purpose of PhotoOvercharge? Is it supposed to be an important form of defense or like a last restort form of defense. Because of its closer to the latter, making people have to reseach an ability that they shouldn't be using often seem like poor design. * I just find it weird how you have to research Warpgate at Cybernetic Core, and then still have to pay extra minerals to warp the actual gateway to a warpgate. So, I attempted to simplfied the step. Cut out the research and change the minerals to energy (and the energy would now act as the delaying tactic). ** This is attempting to follow the Transporting Overlord change in LotV beta. Allowing a few Warpgate to appear at a time instead all at once, but stopping the 4/7/8gate timing all-in as energy doesn't generate fast enough, * This remove both upgrades from the Cybernatic Core and requirement of CyberCore, something I just see as nothing more but delaying tactics.
That's just my thought on that matter, though, seeing your reply, I doubt we'll ever come back to this. I don't see your current form as broken, but simply, a few unnecessary requirements/steps.
3) Let me try to clarify. I want diversity for the Protoss early game. I want to see Zealot be use as well, instead of Stalker heavy usage.
The armor tag removal. This affects way more than just marauders. The Siege tank and immortal also now rather meh against the Stalker, or possibly pointless when considering blink play. But really, I think Stalkers make a horrible core units, only being used because there is no other option.
The Stalker can't trade efficently against any of the units (i.e, zealots, marine, marauder, zergling, roaches, hydralisk). Because of this, Player's have to play a defensive-poke style with Stalkers, preventing enemies from getting off too many hits or abe to kill a single Stalker with good blink play. To me and I know someone else already brought this up. The Stalker seems best suited for being an anti-harass/air unit and harass unit themselves. Their high movement and blink is best suited for that role, though not exclusive to that 1 role.
I bring up the Zealot, claiming they are actual great "IN-BATTLE" against other units, not that they're actually good early units. With zero mirco, they trade between evenly to cost-efficent against Marines, Marauders, Zerglings, Roaches, Hydralisk, and would destory Stalkers. But because of mirco, kiting, clumping up, cliffs, or walls, The Zealot is almost useless.
That's why I suggest you move Charge to be at the Cybernetic Core. You allow Zealots to actualy reach their target. You do this, and the Zealot's early game will shine, covering a lot of Protoss early game issues but not all. With another bright side of being, Charge doesn't make Zealot's oppressive power of all-in better since actual in-battle stats doesn't increase (*cough, like the shield increase). Also, base on the range reduction to ForceFields, I fail to make it useful for Zealots without having my sentry be killed.
4) So why not choose the Stalker for this anti-air role? Though, I make this suggestion with assumption of nerfs to the Stalker in other areas.
5) I don't really want to go into details because it would require massive amount of changes, so the general. Increase Massive unit's supply, reduce their cost and maybe their build time, and remove the armor type from the massive units. It would require a ton of balance changes, so doing this now would be rather time consuming so... so I second guess my own idea.
Lastly, about the MSC, I'm not in the same realm as you. Unlike a lot of people, I don't personally see an issue with being a 'Hero' unit. I think the concept could work. It just can't be an unit that the Protoss really depends on nor a unit useful in battle, but rather a unit that just provides another option.
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First of all I would like to thank you for taking your time reading and testing stuff as well as writing this highly constructive feedback!
Void Rays I think this requires a separate discussion. I am adding this to the TODO list. Maybe directing VR towards harassment/outside-of-army unit is the way to go indeed. I agree that as a capital-target sniping tool Tempests seems as a better candidate.
Nexus energy The fact that you have an energy that cannot be used on the Nexus is a side-effect of a combination:
- We want to delay access to chronoboost
- We don't want an upgrade on the Nexus
- Giving energy to the Nexus only when Cybernetics is available becomes a problem when the said Cybernetics gets destroyed at a later stage of the game.
We could add some additional ability without a tech, but I would prefer avoiding adding completely new abilities.
Photon Overcharge Role You bring a valid point about a research of an ability that should be avoided in the first place. Let us revisit that - adding to the TODO list.
Warpgate research "This remove both upgrades from the Cybernatic Core and requirement of CyberCore, something I just see as nothing more but delaying tactics." Nearly all research is about delaying. Extended thermal lance is a must-have tech if you go Colossus, and all it does is delay and soak resources. Same goes for Storm if teching Templar (and not going immediate Archon), zergling speed, stim, etc... As such I don't think it is a bad thing.
The current change significantly increase the cost of obtaining warpgate, and at the same time removes the build-time penality for not having it. As such we hope to see games when Protoss chooses to research it at much later stage (after nat or even 3-rd taken) and reduce the annoying search of those pesky hidden pylons in the early game. Your approach actually seepds up the time when warpgate is possible at a mild cost of not using chronoboost. I fear this may push the Protoss game way into the 1-base all-in area.
Zealots Those are really hard units to balance. In one scenario they are useless, in another are very good and hard to deal with. Zealot speed and charge is problematic on the receiver's side, because once the Zealot "glues" to your unit, it is hard to "unglue". We already have Terrans complaining about charge late game, and not without a reason.
I fear moving charge to Cybernetics would make it too easy and too early accessible.
I am adding Zealot to the TODO list in order to expand this topic later on, but I don't see any good solutions at the moment.
Stalker as an AA Stalker has the same type of attack versus ground as versus air. As such se shouldn't diversify its damage output. AA units need to stay mobile or have a very nice range. Finding a good buff/nerf combination to strengthen AA and weaken other areas may be challenging.
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I'm glad you like my feedback. I'll try to keep this dicussion more focused only on the early game of the Protoss for now, considering that the Void Ray more or less just depend on what role you want it to serve. And I know you already talk at lenght on Gateway units earlier, though, I really want to add my input as well since I do have more suggestions and I'm not sure if you're final with your thoughts.
Personally, I don't see why we shouldn't attempt to make the lesser used Gateway units scale better as the game progresses, so it's not just all Stalkers production for most of the game.
Nexus / Warping In / Timing Attacks I read that you want their to be energy tension, but realistically, there is no energy tension. The better a player is, that person is more likly to lean away from considering using PhotoOvercharge. There is no offensive or aggressive usage with that ability (unless you count proxy nexus). Just a pure defensive use, unlike Scan which can be use offensivily.
I know where you guys are coming from, wanting to delay these All-in pushes. Though I wonder why not much thoughts were put in actually targting the actual act of warping-in. I think you breifly mentioned it but it sort of just never got brought up again.
I know Warpgate issues don't just consist of timing attacks. I know people find them hard to balance for the late game as well, when Protoss can instantly reinforced right during a big battle, which is a huge factor to the Snowball that eventually leads to the All-In situations. And a slight swap in Gateway and Warpgate build times doesn't really affect this. If it's an all-in situation, Warpgate is still better in both the defensive and offensive side. Warpgate is frontloaded in production +no travel time while Gateway is backloaded. You would have to survive around 5-6 rounds of warp-in before Gateway production rate would bring net gains over Warpgate production rate.
Let alone, the whole, 'warp-gate negate defender's advantage'.
No devs' solution to this? As in, warp-in duration being changed. Or something else?
Gateway Units - Zealot
Not to sound like I'm nitpicking, but citing a late game issue and while giving a +10 extra shield seems to also make the late game issue worst. Part of the issue of the 'glue' issue is that a person doesn't feel like they can fight head on, and I make this assumption because this issue doesn't seem to arise for the Zergling who is far better at sticking to targets than Zealots.
You say the Zealot is a hard unit to balance, but keeping Zealot's unable to actually reach their enemy will only enforce this binary balance. Now, this doesn't mean that Charge has to stay at its strenght. For example, I like your change to Charge already, and if Charge itself is too strong early on, there is a lot of room to nerf Charge. (i.e, like cooldown, or duration)
Actually, I know someone already did a bunch of test and posted the result with the Zealot with 60 shield, and if you look at the resources lost for both side, you will see that the Zealot side is clearly winning the resource battle by landslides. I don't think that wouldn't be idea balance for you.
Second, I have done a lot of tests with the Zealot in combat with other units. The Zealot are not really stronger against any early game unit. Charge doesn't really affect this. Assumign roughly equal supply, somewhere close to equal research, and zero mirco. Zealots:
- Break even in terms of cost against: Marines, Zerglings, Roaches.
- Can beat: Marauder, Stalker, Hydralisk (assuming Hydralisk don't have meat shields)
With Mirco, the result shifts away from Zealots The biggest balance issue I foresee would actually be Zerg combating Zealots, since Charge Zealots are no better in battle against regular Zealots (sadly, MSC doesn't exist in this mod), and Terran have widow mines, hellbat, medivac, and can wall in.
Third, melee units can't attack over walls, cliffs, suffers more in tight spaces, and naturally scales worst as the game progresses. As units clump up, the surface area to attack becomes worst, let alone the amount of splash damage that gets added. In other words, Zealots get worst as the game progresses, compounded by the fact they aren't even that good to begin with.
And to my final rebuttal, that's the point of moving Charge to Cybernetic Core. It's supposed to be fast & easy to access. Ideally, it's supposed to come out the same period when Marine and Zergling upgrade hits. The issue with keeping Charge at Twilight Coucil is that it competes with Blink, and Blink is really the better ability, and Stalkers with their range, able to attack air, and mobility are way better for the mid to late game. Meaning, Charge tends to come out very late in the game.
Finally, I'm still trying to figure out how to code it so you can use Zealot's Charge at targeted locations and ally units, while still maintainning the auto-cast against enemy units. Versitlity would definity help the Zealot. :p
Gateway Units - Stalker
Actually, why can't you split the ground and air attack? It's not flawed designed by any means and doesn't require any more knowledge compared to changing the Stalker's damage output.
Gateway Units - Sentry Forcefield I actually don't find your change to Forcefield good. It's makes the usablity of it worst, making it more just for defensive use, while still keeping most of the 'oftened-disliked' situations at roughly the same power. Would it be possible to do a different change, more following what Edyworth suggested quiet a few times before in other threads: Reduce Forcefield duration to 5 seconds from 15.
This would weaken more of its unliked features (endless walls that opponent's can't pass), while still making it somewhat useful by trapping enemies for a short period.
Guardian Shield I say, you should amp this ability up to eleven. You should make it Reduce ALL incoming damage by 50% when in the bubble. That was not a typo.
This change plus your current change, this ability would become a siege breaking tool, or a final defense bubbe. Too many spine crawlers, Guardian Shield. Too many Siege Tanks, Guardian Shield. Too many Carriers, Guardian Shield. Basically a Dark Swarm, but for Protoss.
Of course, nerfs will have to come along, Like, reduce the bubble radius to 3.25, reduce the duration to 6 seconds, increase energy cost to 125, and require research at the Twilight Council. ... Maybe I'm going too far with this, but a change like this would definity allow the Sentry to serve a purpose in the late game.
Hallunication I know someone suggested this already, reduce the cost to 75 energy. Hallunication could fill Guardian Shield current role. Absorbing damage, though now this include melee units & with the added benefit of still able to scout with hallunication. It's just so much more useful than current Guardian Shield.
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Well, those are my suggestions and thoughts on how to improve the Gateway units and make them useful. The Zealots could use a late game upgrade if their late game is really bad. Though if i was to go through with a Stalker ground attack damage nerf, the immortal would become more important to being a very well-rounded ground unit.
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Experimental Branch Changes
- Immortal cannot shoot air again (tooltip may be wrong about it)
- Halluciation cost: 100 -> 75
- Forcefield duration: 15s -> 8s (Edyworth suggestion)
I feel that nerf to 5s forcefield may be too much, but reduced it to 8 from 15.
"while still keeping most of the 'oftened-disliked' situations at roughly the same power" What exactly is the "often-disliked" situation? My understanding was that biggest problem is the splitting of enemy army, trapping half of your forces on the wrong side. This is now much harder to pull off.
Note, I am ignoring further discussion about Zealots and Stalkers at the moment. We will get to that topic in due time... It is a bigger design change.
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Merging of Balance and Economy components A rather technical change: A new Experimental version of Starcraft Improved has been published, merging changes coming from Balance and Economy parts. The reason for that is that certain abilities and units affect both aspects, but can be reliably edited only in one file. Hopefully I didn't break anything horribly by doing it so.
I had to perform the merging manually using XML files. The newly released merging tools failed me
In the next few days (probably just tomorrow) I will make a general pass over all changes made; make sure nothing is missed or invalid, and publish all changes to Stable and Master branches (finally!). Afterwards I hope to resume working over the TODO list.
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A few things I noticed while playing 2 more games of this mod:
Animation:
- The Immortal performs 1 attack animation, that deals damage, than another rapid attack right afterwards that does nothing. So animation error.
- The new Colossus attack animation is really unproductive. Why did you make it start at 3 range for any attack? It visually has no reason to be starting at 3 range if the target is like 8 range away. I assume you're doing this for 'mirco' potential, but this literally makes the Colossus bad against any moving target and also ruins any good 'mirco' potential for the Colossus itself when it already consist of so little. The Colossus attack animation is pretty long, so you really can't move the Colossus in the middle of an attack if you hope to deal damage, also meaning, you can't even move if the opponent is moving back. I suggest you make it so that the Colossus can at least hit its target the majority of the time, while the AoE can be dodged.
- To add on the Colossus's attack animation. When attacking an Ultralisk or Thor, the damage occurred only once, dealing 15 instead of 30.
Balance concern:
- Viking beats every Protoss air unit in the game now that Phoenix attack period went up.
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