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On October 26 2012 09:39 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 07:54 Whitewing wrote:On October 26 2012 07:09 Laurens wrote:On October 26 2012 07:05 Whitewing wrote: Solution: give tanks an upgrade that requires armory that gives tanks bonus damage vs. shields.
Bam, mech becomes better in TvP (and based around the tank, which is great, it shouldn't be based around anything else), and it would have no impact at all on TvT or TvZ.
Requiring the armory would also make it a less viable upgrade to nab in time for the 1/1/1 all-in. I don't think you understand the problem with TvP mech if this is your proposed solution. The problem is that A: the mech army is significantly less mobile than the protoss force (Which is how it is supposed to work), and B: it is not sufficiently more powerful than the protoss army that in a straight engagement with equal micro and positioning, that the terran army wins handidly enough to push through and kill with protoss warp ins. A is supposed to be the case, you're supposed to have a mobility disadvantage, and if you didn't, it would be lame as all hell. B can be fixed by buffing the power of the mech army, and this solution does that without impacting TvT or TvZ where mech is a fairly popular strategy already. By buffing the tank in this way, you add to the composite power of the terran mech army without significantly increasing it's strength in small numbers. The mech army is meant to be powerful as a cohesive whole. By adding power to the tank in particular, you encourage the use of tank lines and positional play, the hallmarks of mech. Mech in TvP would be best improved by a siege tank buff, and you need to do it in a way that does not buff them in TvT or TvZ. That said: I'm not convinced mech is quite as weak against protoss harass as people seem to think, you can zone blink stalkers pretty well with defensive structures and well placed tanks, and with building upgrades. I do agree that it doesn't beat the protoss army head to head as well as it should in max army situations. Mech floats a lot of minerals quite naturally, most players dump this into extra orbital commands (which frankly should only be used for scans since you don't need more mules at that point) or hellions which are frequently wasted on runbys. Consider instead researching things like building armor and hi sec auto tracking and making extensive use of missile turrets and planetary fortresses. There is also the problem of air. Carriers are actually quite good against mech as they don't trade too badly with vikings, especially if protoss is one upgrade ahead. Considering protoss can often just plain outmacro a meching terran a carrier switch is one of the better ways to deal with mech. So what if they go viking and beat your carriers slightly, you've reduced the ground armies and warped in zealot/stalker beats the remade mech quite easily if the numbers are low.
Not only that but a few storms can really kill off the vikings. Overmake vikings and just barely kill off the carriers? here comes the mass warp in tech switch.
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On October 26 2012 02:53 Sapphire.lux wrote: Dustin Browder one h ago:
" You guys do forget the meta game. We have no control over it directly. As the developers we do make all the units and all the rules, so we have some control, but we cannot MAKE anybody do anything. We do our best to make sure that lots of play styles are viable. We are working now towards making PvT mech a more viable strategy. "
They are trying.
Actually, that is bullshit, as developers, they have TOTAL control. They can 'MAKE' any build overpowered if they want. Give SCVs max speed and blink, and 1000 damage per hit. I am sure all players will switch to Terran. As you can see with previous balance patches, units that they nerf will see less use and units that they buff will see more use. Is that even debatable?
You make all the units and all the rules, thus, you have FULL control. Don't try to hide behind the 'meta-game'.
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On October 26 2012 07:54 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 07:09 Laurens wrote:On October 26 2012 07:05 Whitewing wrote: Solution: give tanks an upgrade that requires armory that gives tanks bonus damage vs. shields.
Bam, mech becomes better in TvP (and based around the tank, which is great, it shouldn't be based around anything else), and it would have no impact at all on TvT or TvZ.
Requiring the armory would also make it a less viable upgrade to nab in time for the 1/1/1 all-in. I don't think you understand the problem with TvP mech if this is your proposed solution. The problem is that A: the mech army is significantly less mobile than the protoss force (Which is how it is supposed to work), and B: it is not sufficiently more powerful than the protoss army that in a straight engagement with equal micro and positioning, that the terran army wins handidly enough to push through and kill with protoss warp ins. A is supposed to be the case, you're supposed to have a mobility disadvantage, and if you didn't, it would be lame as all hell. B can be fixed by buffing the power of the mech army, and this solution does that without impacting TvT or TvZ where mech is a fairly popular strategy already. By buffing the tank in this way, you add to the composite power of the terran mech army without significantly increasing it's strength in small numbers. The mech army is meant to be powerful as a cohesive whole. By adding power to the tank in particular, you encourage the use of tank lines and positional play, the hallmarks of mech. Mech in TvP would be best improved by a siege tank buff, and you need to do it in a way that does not buff them in TvT or TvZ. That said: I'm not convinced mech is quite as weak against protoss harass as people seem to think, you can zone blink stalkers pretty well with defensive structures and well placed tanks, and with building upgrades. I do agree that it doesn't beat the protoss army head to head as well as it should in max army situations. Mech floats a lot of minerals quite naturally, most players dump this into extra orbital commands (which frankly should only be used for scans since you don't need more mules at that point) or hellions which are frequently wasted on runbys. Consider instead researching things like building armor and hi sec auto tracking and making extensive use of missile turrets and planetary fortresses.
The problem is indeed B, but your solution doesn't help at all. B is caused by the chargelot immortal composition, as well as protoss air being too good vs mech + vikings.
Buffing tank damage vs shields doesn't help at all vs immortals, since their shields are hardened. Chargelots only have 50 shields, that won't change much either, they'll still cause crazy splash on your own army. And obviously tanks don't hit air.
Really what is the point of increased tank damage to shields, make them better vs stalker/colossi? Who goes stalker colossi vs mech..?
edit: mech should be accompanied by ghosts anyway.
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The problem is a combination of properly positioned Mech not being able to dominate a Toss ground army AND that vikings just BLOW against protoss air. You have to over make vikings or die, then your victorious vikings are useless on the ground.
1. Battle hellions need to be reverted back to non-bio to make them not insta-die against Archons.
2. Immortals should have a max damage absorbtion amount on their Hardened Shields.
3. Assault mode vikings need to be buffed so that overproducing vikings isn't punished as hard as it is now. (You are never punished for overproducing carriers/tempests vs mech since they are generalist units)
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A huge problem right now is mech anti-air...does not exist. I've played a ton of mech lategames now vs protoss, as well as verifying some theories in the unit tester...
A protoss that is able to get up to 16-17 tempests in the lategame...you need a minimum of 26-27 vikings to beat that. There is no other anti-air option for a mech Terran that can fight back to this lategame tempest ball, and with templars underneath it's even more impossible.
This is plain and simply bad and shows that mech does need an anti-air unit that is capable of roaming around much like blizzard's original concept of the warhound. Keep in mind 27 vikings is around the minimum you need to deal with the 16 or so tempests, and with psi storm involved, it's even worse of a scenario. Ghosts will not be able to get in range to EMP because of observers/15 range.
The problem is that right now the only solution is to "make a bajillion vikings." Then, if you trade with the tempests, protoss simply warps in blink stalkers/chargelots/archons and has 3/0/3 ground units vs 0/0 vikings, making any further trade non-existent.
Ironically, tempests+templar vs mech is the same thing as broodlord/infestor vs Terran because the only real answer is "ravens" and we all know how that is a gamble on whether or not you have the time for the energy, bla bla, etc.
27 vikings with 4 point defense drones, vs 17 tempests...27 vikings remain alive after the fight. So point defense drone is technically the counter to tempests in lategame mech vs protoss, but once again, the fact that you're forced to make 8000 vikings that are useless vs everything else is just terrible design and a repeat of wings of liberty.
If people are curious how thors do against Tempests...they are essentially non-existent. 5-6 tempests will 1 shot a thor without the thor ever getting close enough to fire back, and adding in any other DPS from protoss ground, feedback, or storm...thors suck as anti-air.
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I think it's ok for anti air to be relatively weak, IF on ground you absolutely decimate. Protoss going air vs mech is a choice, not a need. This is the problem. TvZ, TvT, the mech army forces air in late game, but Protoss can fight on ground no problem.
Buff Tanks in some way to get the "dominate on ground" part done and go from there. Right now you use 35 dmg tanks on all Protoss units (high hp) except stalkers...of course it's not very good.
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On October 27 2012 03:31 avilo wrote: A huge problem right now is mech anti-air...does not exist. I've played a ton of mech lategames now vs protoss, as well as verifying some theories in the unit tester...
A protoss that is able to get up to 16-17 tempests in the lategame...you need a minimum of 26-27 vikings to beat that. There is no other anti-air option for a mech Terran that can fight back to this lategame tempest ball, and with templars underneath it's even more impossible.
This is plain and simply bad and shows that mech does need an anti-air unit that is capable of roaming around much like blizzard's original concept of the warhound. Keep in mind 27 vikings is around the minimum you need to deal with the 16 or so tempests, and with psi storm involved, it's even worse of a scenario. Ghosts will not be able to get in range to EMP because of observers/15 range.
The problem is that right now the only solution is to "make a bajillion vikings." Then, if you trade with the tempests, protoss simply warps in blink stalkers/chargelots/archons and has 3/0/3 ground units vs 0/0 vikings, making any further trade non-existent.
Ironically, tempests+templar vs mech is the same thing as broodlord/infestor vs Terran because the only real answer is "ravens" and we all know how that is a gamble on whether or not you have the time for the energy, bla bla, etc.
27 vikings with 4 point defense drones, vs 17 tempests...27 vikings remain alive after the fight. So point defense drone is technically the counter to tempests in lategame mech vs protoss, but once again, the fact that you're forced to make 8000 vikings that are useless vs everything else is just terrible design and a repeat of wings of liberty.
If people are curious how thors do against Tempests...they are essentially non-existent. 5-6 tempests will 1 shot a thor without the thor ever getting close enough to fire back, and adding in any other DPS from protoss ground, feedback, or storm...thors suck as anti-air.
That's why I would make the viking in groundmode an imba unit. Make it sick strong so terrans can actually use them after an air battle.
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United States7483 Posts
On October 27 2012 02:44 Laurens wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 07:54 Whitewing wrote:On October 26 2012 07:09 Laurens wrote:On October 26 2012 07:05 Whitewing wrote: Solution: give tanks an upgrade that requires armory that gives tanks bonus damage vs. shields.
Bam, mech becomes better in TvP (and based around the tank, which is great, it shouldn't be based around anything else), and it would have no impact at all on TvT or TvZ.
Requiring the armory would also make it a less viable upgrade to nab in time for the 1/1/1 all-in. I don't think you understand the problem with TvP mech if this is your proposed solution. The problem is that A: the mech army is significantly less mobile than the protoss force (Which is how it is supposed to work), and B: it is not sufficiently more powerful than the protoss army that in a straight engagement with equal micro and positioning, that the terran army wins handidly enough to push through and kill with protoss warp ins. A is supposed to be the case, you're supposed to have a mobility disadvantage, and if you didn't, it would be lame as all hell. B can be fixed by buffing the power of the mech army, and this solution does that without impacting TvT or TvZ where mech is a fairly popular strategy already. By buffing the tank in this way, you add to the composite power of the terran mech army without significantly increasing it's strength in small numbers. The mech army is meant to be powerful as a cohesive whole. By adding power to the tank in particular, you encourage the use of tank lines and positional play, the hallmarks of mech. Mech in TvP would be best improved by a siege tank buff, and you need to do it in a way that does not buff them in TvT or TvZ. That said: I'm not convinced mech is quite as weak against protoss harass as people seem to think, you can zone blink stalkers pretty well with defensive structures and well placed tanks, and with building upgrades. I do agree that it doesn't beat the protoss army head to head as well as it should in max army situations. Mech floats a lot of minerals quite naturally, most players dump this into extra orbital commands (which frankly should only be used for scans since you don't need more mules at that point) or hellions which are frequently wasted on runbys. Consider instead researching things like building armor and hi sec auto tracking and making extensive use of missile turrets and planetary fortresses. The problem is indeed B, but your solution doesn't help at all. B is caused by the chargelot immortal composition, as well as protoss air being too good vs mech + vikings. Buffing tank damage vs shields doesn't help at all vs immortals, since their shields are hardened. Chargelots only have 50 shields, that won't change much either, they'll still cause crazy splash on your own army. And obviously tanks don't hit air. Really what is the point of increased tank damage to shields, make them better vs stalker/colossi? Who goes stalker colossi vs mech..? edit: mech should be accompanied by ghosts anyway.
There are other units in the protoss composition besides chargelot/immortal, otherwise you'd just roll it over with pure hellion, which do well vs. any non-aoe unit in large numbers due to splash damage, and zealots suck against them if they're upgraded. This would help with that. And people typically make lots of stalkers vs. mech to harass with blink, it's one of the best ways of fighting against mech. This would help make tanks better when spread out vs. harass, and would help against colossi (people make colossi against mech all the time, they're useful for clearing out hellions).
The upgrade could also do something like make them penetrate hardened shields a little better, but I actually don't think it's reasonable for them to crush immortals. And frankly, if you have enough tanks, they kinda do tear immortals apart. 10-12 tanks gank immortals if you target fire properly, just gotta have a hellion buffer
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On October 27 2012 03:50 Sapphire.lux wrote: I think it's ok for anti air to be relatively weak, IF on ground you absolutely decimate. Protoss going air vs mech is a choice, not a need. This is the problem. TvZ, TvT, the mech army forces air in late game, but Protoss can fight on ground no problem.
Buff Tanks in some way to get the "dominate on ground" part done and go from there. Right now you use 35 dmg tanks on all Protoss units (high hp) except stalkers...of course it's not very good.
It's true tanks do not dominate on the ground still vs protoss. We all know about the past tank damage nerf, along with the zealot armor change that made tanks completely suck.
As is right now, mech does not dominate the ground (not that it even should) and mech has no reliable AA. Mines are great in the early and mid-game to defend things in wings of liberty that were more difficult to defend with mech, such as blink stalkers and void ray openings, but in the lategame vs a good Protoss and the tempest accumulation (similar to broods) mines do nada.
Hopefully blizzard recognizes this and adds in mech long range AA options to help deal with the tempest, or buffs the tank damage, or buffs vikings in a way that make them good on the ground too, thor strike cannon changed to be a long ranged anti-armored gun/missile...they have a lot of avenues they can take, any of them is better than leaving it as it currently is.
The interesting thing is blizzard has come across this exact situation previously in SC1 vanilla. Terran vs Protoss in SC1 vanilla, Terran had no answer to lategame carriers.
What the SC1 design team did was add in the goliath missile range upgrade which suddenly allowed Terran to deal with carriers. They took it a step further and looked ahead to possible balance issues where the goliath could be too powerful vs carriers (obv this is not the case) and they added in the disruption web to the corsair as a possible future solution to mass goliaths.
Now, brood war did not exactly pan out with disruption web being used in PvT much, but i'm just illustrating an example of how the design team placed in safeguard balance units and abilities. Whenever they introduced a new unit to one race, they made sure that the other two races were given either an ability to an existing unit, or a new unit to oppose the other races new unit.
Just some examples:
SC1 Vanilla Imbalances: Plague vs Terran/Protoss Carriers vs Terran mech Mass mutalisk vs every race Ultra/Ling cost effective vs everything lategame Guardians vs T/P
Brood War Units/Abilities Introduced: Medic -> soft counters plague, allows cost efficiency of marines vs mutalisks/all Zerg units Restoration ability -> hard counters defiler plague, queen parasite Lurker -> line AOE introduced to counter new marine/medic +2 ultralisk armor -> another safeguard against the new possible imbalance of marine/medic vs Zerg, as well as a safeguard so that ultras still remain useful lategame ZvP vs the new dark archons in combination with existing units
Valkrie/Corsair -> splash damage air to air units specifically meant to address the mass mutalisk balance issue both are also able to help counter guardians Devourer -> the new Zerg unit meant to directly counter the new T/P corsair/valkries
Goliath range upgrade -> meant to allow Terran a way to finally deal with mass carriers Disruption web ability -> added to the corsair as a balance safeguard and possible soft counter to mech + mass goliaths
Dark templar -> protoss harrass unit Dark archon -> maelstrom literally counters all biological units. This is a balance safeguard against potential future imbalances of marine/medic vs protoss, as well as a cost effective option vs mass ultra/ling lategame.
For people wondering why Brood Wars the best game ever, and how it turned out so perfectly balanced, it's because the brood war design team seem to have a very calculated approach to how they introduced new units, and they very aggressively addressed the balance issues of the original game with the new unit additions.
The above approach that the brood war design team took is very simple in nature. Whenever they introduced something new, they always made sure that they looked to the future imbalances their new additions were creating and added a second unit to prevent that future balance issue. Every RTS developer can take a lot from this design.
So really, whenever you add a new unit into a game, you're actually should be adding two new things. a) the new unit b) a counter option to the new unit, either in the form of another unit for another race, or an interesting ability to the other races to counter the new addition.
/wall of text disengage
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Yeah, there is a lot of stuff they can play around with.
One of the things they did that i think does a lot more harm then good is making the Battle Hellion biological. It wasn't bad enough that the Archon tanked as much dmg as an Immortal, now they kill BH super fast.
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Get 15 Tempests and it destroys mech. With Templar under-neath, No way to kill those buggers while they pick off your tanks!!
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Protoss air currently hardcounters terran mech+viking combo. Especially with addition of tempests and its buffs. This is a bigger issue for mech right now than even immortals just to put it in perspective.
Morrow posted on the issue here:
anyone who understands rts remotely will know that vikings need to not only go toe to toe with toss air, but to beat it supply wise. vikings do right now, when its pure viking vs pure tempest, or pure phoenix etc. but as soon as combinations start coming in vikings get beaten not only supply-wise, but also in cost efficiency as well.
this is one of the major fundamental flaws of why mech doesnt work in theory
oh and btw, this was accurate before patch #7 #6 and any other patch in hots so far, the best part? protoss air has gotten even stronger by patch vs vikings
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6998949831?page=4#new-post
Vikings or mech AA need help. As well as mech ground. A sad predicament really.
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Mech will never be viable because blizzard doesnt want to make it viable. It's sad, because more diversity in playstyles means the game becomes less stale.
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just buff Viking ground mode to make them trade somewhat better with stalkers. Make air upgrades scale very well for Viking ground. Problem solved.
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From MorroW's post:
anyone who understands rts remotely will know that vikings need to not only go toe to toe with toss air, but to beat it supply wise. vikings do right now, when its pure viking vs pure tempest, or pure phoenix etc. but as soon as combinations start coming in vikings get beaten not only supply-wise, but also in cost efficiency as well.
The problem is not that vikings are not effective enough. The idea that a single unit should shut down an entire tech tree for the opponent in every scenario does not belong in a strategy game.
The problem, if there even is one, is that vikings + X compositions are not as effective as tempest + X compositions. There are plenty of units that could be used here, such as ghosts, marines and ravens, for example.
I also don't like the argument "but I can't build marines, I'm going mech!". Again, _if_ mech can be completely stand alone versus every unit composition, then there is no longer any tactical choice. If anything, the "+X" of your anti tempest composition is what needs to change. Preferably by making diversified terran builds more viable.
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On October 27 2012 18:08 Fenris420 wrote:From MorroW's post: Show nested quote +anyone who understands rts remotely will know that vikings need to not only go toe to toe with toss air, but to beat it supply wise. vikings do right now, when its pure viking vs pure tempest, or pure phoenix etc. but as soon as combinations start coming in vikings get beaten not only supply-wise, but also in cost efficiency as well. The problem is not that vikings are not effective enough. The idea that a single unit should shut down an entire tech tree for the opponent in every scenario does not belong in a strategy game. The problem, if there even is one, is that vikings + X compositions are not as effective as tempest + X compositions. There are plenty of units that could be used here, such as ghosts, marines and ravens, for example. I also don't like the argument "but I can't build marines, I'm going mech!". Again, _if_ mech can be completely stand alone versus every unit composition, then there is no longer any tactical choice. If anything, the "+X" of your anti tempest composition is what needs to change. Preferably by making diversified terran builds more viable. Mech isn't being done stand alone. Ghosts are bio and vikings are air units.
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On October 27 2012 18:08 Fenris420 wrote:From MorroW's post: Show nested quote +anyone who understands rts remotely will know that vikings need to not only go toe to toe with toss air, but to beat it supply wise. vikings do right now, when its pure viking vs pure tempest, or pure phoenix etc. but as soon as combinations start coming in vikings get beaten not only supply-wise, but also in cost efficiency as well. The problem is not that vikings are not effective enough. The idea that a single unit should shut down an entire tech tree for the opponent in every scenario does not belong in a strategy game. The problem, if there even is one, is that vikings + X compositions are not as effective as tempest + X compositions. There are plenty of units that could be used here, such as ghosts, marines and ravens, for example. I also don't like the argument "but I can't build marines, I'm going mech!". Again, _if_ mech can be completely stand alone versus every unit composition, then there is no longer any tactical choice. If anything, the "+X" of your anti tempest composition is what needs to change. Preferably by making diversified terran builds more viable. 10 rax + addons, 8 factories + addons, 3 starports + addons. Stim+combat shield+mobius reactor+cloak, 3-3 for bio, siege mode, 3-3 for mech, 3-3 for air. Yes i think you are right, there are many other ways not just vikings. Once you get all that you can just pick and choose what ever you want to build!
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But in all seriousness, watching Morrow play mech shows all the problems. He is playing against far worse opponents and still barely hanging in there. With bio he would win 99% of those matches. Tune in to Morrow's stream if interested.
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Let's bring back anti-air warhounds with a mediocre ground DPS (goliaths basically). Mech player would have to choose how to balance their warhoud/tank ratio, but gets a possible answer to big air units (combined with some vikings).
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Haywire missles should be given to the thor as a special ability. Make them decent against immortals. Tanks need more damage vs. slower transformation. Hellions and widow mine seem fine.
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