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On December 26 2012 17:17 larse wrote: Maybe they should change the immortal shield from taking only 10 damage into "30% damage reduction", so that smaller damage to immortal will change very little, but large damage to immortal will still be powerful. Marine still does 5 damage (6 -(6 x 30%) = 5 (rounded), but tank does 35 damage (50-(50 x 30%) = 35).
Actually it's excellent because Roaches would still do ~10 damages to immortals (16-0.3*16 = 11) Marines would still do ~5 damages to immortals Tanks would be able to damage the immortals (50-0.3*50 = 35)
We need to make blizz know about this suggestion ! The easier one to apply, and the best !
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Yes it is easy to apply since you can just boost his shield HP with roughly 50%. An overall relative damage resistance is exactly the same for high damage and low damage attacks.
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On December 26 2012 20:54 Insoleet wrote: Hey guys
I was having a chat on supernova stream, when a terran said that in TvT, bio is imba since the last medivac upgrade. Mech loosing direct fights against bio ? ! Wow. Tanks need a buff.
But, for tanks to be strong lategame without breaking the 1 1 1 and early tanks pressure... i suggest this
- Add an upgrade in the fusion core or laboratory named "Armor Piercing Shot" This upgrade would change the weapon of the tanks so that it would do Pure damages. Pure damages means, no armor to reduce the tank damages. Immortals shield ? No way, immortals finally dies to tanks. 3 3 + medivac bio ? Still die to 3 3 tanks.
This way, tanks get their strenght back, without breaking the early game.
What do you guys think about it ? I think this could be good, but it would be kinda silly because if the bio player gets his medivac upgrade faster, you would still kinda die. I'm the guy who complained about mech losing direct fights btw, and, well to compare, in Wol late game, you can slightly mess up and only siege up your tanks once he already has entered the 9 range, and you will still win almost every fight, but in hots one slight mistake of sieging just a fraction of a second too late can mean you get absolutely thrashed... Especially if he is up in upgrades, and that is a very common thing vs mech. Dealing with drops is also way harder because of the new medivac speed sometimes they can just go right past your turret ring , so you're kinda forced to leave widow mines to defend too.. since if they get in, with the new medivac healing, it's really hard to kill it off
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just to dive in a little bit just wanna say u shouldnt be afraid to "break 111 in tvp" when your thinking of changes because toss has mothership core which is very great for defending any types of attacks in early game (planetary nexus)
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On December 26 2012 17:00 ledarsi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 16:47 Lime-on wrote: What I don't understand is why out of all the races Terran are the only ones that have friendly fire damage. Why not remove that from the tank.
First off, the idea of the Terrans spending money to stop their tanks from killing their own guys is pretty hilarious. It's pretty significant to their racial identity that all their weapons are bloody unsafe and kill their own guys as often as the enemy. For Terrans, life is cheap, but tanks are expensive. But that's a lore justification, and is useless. Nevertheless, what about all the interesting gameplay that springs from having large amounts of friendly fire damage? Protoss dropping zealots on tanks to get them to kill each other, for a start. This is also true for other sources of friendly fire, such as mine dragging. The friendly fire is exploitable by a clever and skilled opponent. Secondly, friendly fire also creates an incentive to spread your units to avoid taking unnecessary damage when the enemy closes to range- they only kill one tank instead of multiple clustered ones from the friendly splash. And lastly, the fact of friendly fire enables a weapon to be more powerful than it would otherwise be. If incompetently used, or if well exploited by the opponent, the friendly firing unit can do more harm than good.
I would really like to see a "hold fire" or "target fire only" command on tanks. That would be helpful especially in late game TvZ against broodlords, but also somewhat against toss.
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The core idea of making a unit that is arbitrarily more durable against high damage weapons than low damage weapons is mistaken. The Immortal needs to be reworked, or rethought from the beginning. You want to make a Dragoon that counters Siege Tanks, Browder? You do know they have the exact opposite relationship in Brood War, right? Making an expensive, high-HP unit like the Immortal that is good against enemies with high damage attacks, and weak against low-damage attacks is nothing short of madness. If you give it too much HP or other normal durability, it will be great against units like marines and zerglings. If you make it high HP but not extremely high HP, it is right in the kill zone for high damage weapons. And if you make it medium or squishy then you've defeated your fundamental design concept and you have a glass cannon.
The Immortal, in order to be survivable against tanks, and simultaneously weak against little attackers like marines and zerglings, is put in an impossible position that can only work by contorting itself in knots: using Hardened Shield and its insane +Armored damage bonus.
The best way to make high damage weapons ineffective is to give them a low rate of fire, and to throw more individual targets at it. This is why Siege Tanks are actually pretty bad against Zerg in Brood War- mostly used to outrange Lurkers and kill them safely. Zealots are the Protoss' go-to ground unit to counter tanks, due to their low cost and high durability. An even cheaper unit would be even better, but that's the best the Protoss has got.
So, the answer the dev team found was to literally make the Immortal do massive special damage to only targets with the tag Armored, thus making it strong against tanks, and weak against little units like marines and zerglings. Rock paper scissors non-negotiable, non-microable, number-defined balance, straight up. Because the Immortal's fundamental properties paint it quite clearly as exactly the kind of unit the tank should counter- if only it were not expressly created with raw arbitrary game-developer will which overpowers its nature.
Long story short- the Immortal was an astonishingly bad and boring idea, as was the Marauder and Roach. "Universally strong unit that does not shoot air" is an extremely common and stupid RTS trope that has never produced good games.
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I for one do not think tanks are too weak in TvT or TvZ, which means you can't really buff them without a lot of other consequences. That leaves nerfing P, or more importantly the immortal. It is being abused in PvZ together with force fields and completely shuts down a lot of mech play in PvT which I think is a better angle to approach this issue. I was thinking about the mechanics of the immortal and the following is what I came up with. It might not be interesting to most people but I think it still is a pretty interesting set of numbers.
The problem seemed to be the dps at first, with so much damage coming from the +to armored component it would make the immortal a super hard counter to armor and not much else. Then I realised that immortals do considerable overkill on the most common units apart from one, the roach. This means that only roaches would benefit from a damage reduction unless you went as far as -10 damage to armor, in which case tanks would also survive a bit longer. Also, with less damage done, immortals struggle to be cost effective against roaches in a straight up fight which is silly to me.
So while damage reduction would surely be quite nice on the immortal, the only thing it will do is make roaches and stalkers better against it, not much at all to tanks or thors.
The issue is hardened shields. They are too strong versus high damage units, with 400 damage mitigated from siege tank fire on the shields alone. On the other hand, only 60 damage is mitigated from roaches. Bear in mind that immortals are absolutely vital to pvp as well. With weaker immortals you would see blink vs blink every game.
So if you want to reduce the damage output vs armored on the immortal, which I think you do (40 damage also 3 shots a stimmed marauder but not a full health one), hardened shields need to be stronger against attacks in the range of 10-20 damage. Only units with more than 20 are ultras, thors, archons, tanks and immortals. The units affected would be roaches, hydras, marauders, stalkers, colossus and banshees.
If hardened shields took 50% less damage from attacks over 10, you would always mitigate 100 damage from these sources. That means the immortal is buffed rather heavily in some cases (80 less damage from banshee/hydra, 60 less from stalkers and 40 less from roaches, 50 less from colossus). It also means that siege tanks take 6 less shots to break the shield, thors take one less volley and deals 40 more damage with those 4 volleys.
The big issue is hydras, which take a lot longer to kill immortals with this kind of change, but by the looks of things the hydra is not so amazing either way, If you were to change the way hydras deal damage so that it was unaffected by hardened shields, hydras would be unchanged versus immortals.
Still, I think this is a more preferable situation as the immortal will be less good behind force fields or in short time frames but better in prolonged games where shield regenerate versus roaches or stalkers. And it will kill tanks cost effectively, just not as much.
Is this a good direction to aim for with a unit like the immortal?
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On December 26 2012 17:17 larse wrote: Maybe they should change the immortal shield from taking only 10 damage into "30% damage reduction", so that smaller damage to immortal will change very little, but large damage to immortal will still be powerful. Marine still does 5 damage (6 -(6 x 30%) = 5 (rounded), but tank does 35 damage (50-(50 x 30%) = 35). Nice idea, but I wonder if it would break early immortal-centric all ins. Marines and lings play a big role in defending against them after all.
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On December 26 2012 21:57 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 17:17 larse wrote: Maybe they should change the immortal shield from taking only 10 damage into "30% damage reduction", so that smaller damage to immortal will change very little, but large damage to immortal will still be powerful. Marine still does 5 damage (6 -(6 x 30%) = 5 (rounded), but tank does 35 damage (50-(50 x 30%) = 35). Nice idea, but I wonder if it would break early immortal-centric all ins. Marines and lings play a big role in defending against them after all.
It changes nothing, lings and marines still do their full damages to immortals
(6 - 6*0.3 = 6)
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You are fairly bad at math I guess? The answer is 4.2 (yes SC2 uses floats for damage). The damage source would be completely irrelevant since it is always 30% reduction. Doesnt matter if it is 100 damage done by siege tanks or by lings.
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On December 26 2012 22:04 Sissors wrote: You are fairly bad at math I guess? The answer is 4.2 (yes SC2 uses floats for damage). The damage source would be completely irrelevant since it is always 30% reduction. Doesnt matter if it is 100 damage done by siege tanks or by lings.
Ahaha actually i didnt do the math, a guy said it above
Well, you are right. But for a fast-dps unit, doing 1 less damage is not so important actually.
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On December 26 2012 22:06 Insoleet wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 22:04 Sissors wrote: You are fairly bad at math I guess? The answer is 4.2 (yes SC2 uses floats for damage). The damage source would be completely irrelevant since it is always 30% reduction. Doesnt matter if it is 100 damage done by siege tanks or by lings. Ahaha actually i didnt do the math, a guy said it above Well, you are right. But for a fast-dps unit, doing 1 less damage is not so important actually. It's actually a huge difference. With your logic armor upgrades wouldn't matter at all.
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Why not just make the hardened shield an ability that lasts X seconds while halving any incoming damage as long as it has shields? What does this do?
-Removes the hardcore counter and makes it soft against tanks. -Opens up a timing window where the immortal is vulnerable and take normal damage. -Immortal can tank against all types of units now compared to just high burst damage dealing units (tank/roach/thor etc). It stops it from being a specialised armoured sniper role to more of the tanking role that it was designed to be originally. -During the immortal all-in, the immortals can be vulernable at times due to the ability being on cool down. -Forces Protoss to actually think when they a-move these units especially into a siege line. -Opens up situations where players with great micro ability to micro individual immortals/hardened shield to minimize the damage.
Just some food for thought.
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Immortals shields weakness is against fast attacks, the problem is Terran has no fast attacks when going mech (apart from the banshee with multiple attacks and the Viking on the ground that gets melted by the immortal attack because low hp unit with armored)
Not much more needed against the Immortal. Then you just have too peel of their shields with one unit and kill it with the heavy hitter. Really like this mechanic with Marines and Marauders against Immortals since it is bloody hard. So far only the Ghost/banshees really do it well against masses though. But thats the +1 immortal ranges fault, making the Immortal massable and easy to use.
Personally I think they Immortal shields and hull+armor is perfectly design and shouldn't be changed, shields need to be taken down by small hits and the hull will need a heavy attack to crack. But they don't work on a unit that can stay behind and deal damage from there. It needs to be on a unit that has to run into the enemy.
To keep it easy mode they could add an option, transfer your shield energy to your weapon and get your 6 range.
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On December 26 2012 22:10 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 22:06 Insoleet wrote:On December 26 2012 22:04 Sissors wrote: You are fairly bad at math I guess? The answer is 4.2 (yes SC2 uses floats for damage). The damage source would be completely irrelevant since it is always 30% reduction. Doesnt matter if it is 100 damage done by siege tanks or by lings. Ahaha actually i didnt do the math, a guy said it above Well, you are right. But for a fast-dps unit, doing 1 less damage is not so important actually. It's actually a huge difference. With your logic armor upgrades wouldn't matter at all.
Well so it's not the good fix actually
Maybe add a fast dps unit to the mech army. Like a viking with a gatling gun... ?
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On December 26 2012 22:12 YyapSsap wrote: Why not just make the hardened shield an ability that lasts X seconds while halving any incoming damage as long as it has shields? What does this do?
-Removes the hardcore counter and makes it soft against tanks. -Opens up a timing window where the immortal is vulnerable and take normal damage. -Immortal can tank against all types of units now compared to just high burst damage dealing units (tank/roach/thor etc). It stops it from being a specialised armoured sniper role to more of the tanking role that it was designed to be originally. -During the immortal all-in, the immortals can be vulernable at times due to the ability being on cool down. -Forces Protoss to actually think when they a-move these units especially into a siege line. -Opens up situations where players with great micro ability to micro individual immortals/hardened shield to minimize the damage.
Just some food for thought.
You need to be careful with these things imo.Not only does it sound subjective, but it assumes something about the unit which is just not true if you ask me.
Immortals are not tanks, they are damage dealers. In almost no case do you want them to take any fire unless they are the only units left.
Siege tanks and thors might be the only exception, but even against them you want to lead with zealots and archons. There is a reason Parting does not get +1 armor for his immortal push, and there is a reason you have 8-10 sentries with you as you move out. The only difference between immortals and stalkers in this kind of allin is the damage per second immortals do to roaches. You wont be taking a lot of damage to your immortals either way and if you do it is because your sentries are dry and you are about to lose anyway,
Protoss do not have the luxury of retreating from a bad engagement like you can with terran bio or with zerg. If your immortals are in combat, they need a prism to micro or they need a meat shield. Either way, they die to roach/ling or pure marauder cost for cost. I do not think it is wise to balance the immortal around a situation that does not occur in actual games.
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I think they could start with reverting the +1 range buff immortals got, the only reason it was put in the game was the 1-1-1 and the MsC is more than enough to deal with that now.
There are other changes too that were to address an issue but the issue has since been fixed in other ways. For example, I don't understand why Blizzard doesn't try to adjust reaper build time. It was made ridiculously long because of how strong they were against zerg, but since then both queens and roaches have become viable counters. One of the big reasons reapers suck ass is because they take up all your production.
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On December 26 2012 23:03 Bagi wrote: I think they could start with reverting the +1 range buff immortals got, the only reason it was put in the game was the 1-1-1 and the MsC is more than enough to deal with that now.
There are other changes too that were to address an issue but the issue has since been fixed in other ways. For example, I don't understand why Blizzard doesn't try to adjust reaper build time. It was made ridiculously long because of how strong they were against zerg, but since then both queens and roaches have become viable counters. One of the big reasons reapers suck ass is because they take up all your production.
Reverting the immortal range would be a bad idea imo. It wasent just for the 1-1-1 they buffed it but also because immortals tended to get stuck behind stalker lines due to their small range. Nerfing the immortal range would also be a huge buff to zerg, wich is something they most certainly dont need. Buffing the tank would be the best course of action imo. The platora of nerfs for the tanks was largely due to maps in early WoL where you could practically siege the other guy from your own main due to the small as shit maps
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On December 27 2012 00:33 Solarist wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 23:03 Bagi wrote: I think they could start with reverting the +1 range buff immortals got, the only reason it was put in the game was the 1-1-1 and the MsC is more than enough to deal with that now.
There are other changes too that were to address an issue but the issue has since been fixed in other ways. For example, I don't understand why Blizzard doesn't try to adjust reaper build time. It was made ridiculously long because of how strong they were against zerg, but since then both queens and roaches have become viable counters. One of the big reasons reapers suck ass is because they take up all your production. Reverting the immortal range would be a bad idea imo. It wasent just for the 1-1-1 they buffed it but also because immortals tended to get stuck behind stalker lines due to their small range. Nerfing the immortal range would also be a huge buff to zerg, wich is something they most certainly dont need. Buffing the tank would be the best course of action imo. The platora of nerfs for the tanks was largely due to maps in early WoL where you could practically siege the other guy from your own main due to the small as shit maps Immortals getting stuck behind stalkers because the player fails at proper positioning is a good thing. At least the old immortal required some micro and planning, it wasnt just a stalker that did more damage than the others.
What comes to PvZ, a immortal range nerf could help with the bullshit that is the immortal/sentry all-in. I see it as a win-win solution.
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Finally a TvP without me dying to random attack immediatly, so tried the idea of hellbat + marines + tanks. Dont have whole BOs and stuff, just pressing random buttons until I got the combo I want.
Idea is straightforward: Hellbat/tank (/thor) loses to everything related to air, and against immortals they rely completely on ghosts doing good, which is a bit too random for me. Marine/tank is a horrible idea because zealots will cause splash damage of tanks to rip through your own marines. So lets combine them: hellbat, tank, marine, medivac, and vikings just with their normal anti-colossi role if needed. (Also forward observer, scout, anti drop, etc).
Then the plan is simple, hellbat are literally meatshield against zealots. Their only role is surviving long enough for other units to kill all zealots (and of course do nice splash damage). They are simply on a-move, so you dont have to pay attention to them, you can use that on dodging storms with marines/targeting HTs with tanks. Now since the enemy zealots are down you dont have to stutter step back with marines which exposes the tanks. So the usual tank killers, immortals, can't get to the tanks without trying to go through your marines. Archons could be more problematic, you might need ghosts, but I think you can deal with them. HTs, sentries and stalkers are food for siege tanks. And the handy part is you got a solid core of marines to deal with air shenanigans. Also for raids in mid/late game I rather got marines than hellions, although you got both available now.
Downside is obviously you got to get infrastructure and upgrades for both bio and mech. My first game where I could really try it went quite nice, so will continue with it to see if it works. Note for next time: just because you killed someones natural, third, and you send all your marines away to kill his 4th, doesnt mean he doesnt have a large carrier army. Luckily carrier armies are fairly easy to slow down late game, just make a ton of missile turrets.
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