|
Hi everyone!
Widow mine nerf seems a good idea since now protoss players will be able to clean them easier in the early game and prevents the game from ending in less than 5 minutes just because the terran player burrowed two widow mines in a mineral line.
This tweak has been made to address early WM harass in the TvP matchup, but it's also a nerf to TvZ bio, especially against LBM (and Hydra Bane). TvZ is probably the most balanced matchup and this WM nerf could disrupt the game a little bit.
This is my suggestion: Drilling Claws upgrade now brings back cloak to Widow Mines after they shoot (current version of the unit) in addition to the fast burrow.
This upgrade is only researched in TvZ when Terran is at least on 3 bases and he's facing LBM (and sometimes against Hydra Bane). The upgrade is never used in TvP besides mech players yet it gets researched in the mid-late game, so it shouldn't affect early game harass and game ending situations.
With this little change, protoss players will still be able to defend early WM drops and the WM nerf will not affect the TvZ matchup that much in favor of zerg.
Thanks for reading!
|
Sounds good, but i think it would be even better if we would rebalance some units instead of just nerfing widow mines.
Banelings or burrowed fungals for example are just as game ending as widow mines can be, so why would you only nerf the widow mine ?
I know how frustrating it can be to fight widow mines, so i understand this design change, but other units deserve the same treatment if we follow this logic.
|
Good idea if Blizzard persists with this chagne. Although I think it would be best if widow mines are left like they are in the live version.
The game is balanced live, widow mines are balanced live. Every race has the tools for getting detection early so the wm nerf is completely unnecessary.
|
Norway839 Posts
The WM change is dumb as a whole imo. It sucks; I do better than my peers at cleaning up widow mines in ZvT ... Bringing overseers around, being good with detection/spores early, etc, it's a fun part of the match-up that I enjoy and excel at. If that part of the game is removed, in favor of low-skill plays, it'll mean less fun things for me to do in the match-up and more of Zergs becoming 'they're all the same' - general ez2p dumbing down of the game.
I didn't mind the inject change, because injecting is fairly uninteresting to me personally - but playing around mines takes some skill and actual decisions have to be made. So I'm not very happy about the design team's direction on this one.
I will take a real world example from a game I had on the ladder to illustrate things we'd miss out on after this nerf:
"Widow mine drop comes in! souL spots that Snute has spores ready in all the bases, and proceeds to unload the mine on the ramp... Snute baits out the shot with a single zergling, and un-roots a spore, it's going closer to the mine, in order to clear it up! But look at this tasteless, souL's banshee with cloak comes in to the base the spore was unrooted from! Big mistake from Snute, wanting to clean up a single widow mine on cooldown! It wasn't that big of a threat, compared to this banshee! Sick plays"
The widow mine change in my opinion should be centered around redesigning its damage. From the beginning, it should have been designed to have a hard/soft meteor splash radius rather than being a binary all or nothing circle. That way you can even consider doing changes like increasing its damage radius to help in large scale battles. Early game mines would still be powerful early but maybe not as devastating.
But the most important of all: If protoss needs help with early detection so desperately ... then I'd hope the design team would focus on that rather than making the game worse for skilled Zergs.
tldr: good ideas but it's better to focus on protoss detection issues rather than nerfing the mine imo.
|
On August 19 2017 23:57 Liquid`Snute wrote: The widow mine change in my opinion should be centered around redesigning its damage. From the beginning, it should have been designed to have a hard/soft meteor splash radius rather than being a binary all or nothing circle. That way you can even consider doing changes like increasing its damage radius to help in large scale battles. Early game mines would still be powerful early but maybe not as devastating.
This is good on principle, but I'm having a tricky time figuring out what the proper values would be, now that Blings get 35 HP after centrifugal hooks. On principle, it seems as if the damage zones should dissuade especially large clumps of Blings, while not outright one-shotting lings, at least in the larger radius. But now that they have the same HP, I'm not sure how to do that. There was a 45/30/15 splash damage in radius 1.75/1.25/0.7812 number that I used to throw around back during HotS, patch 2.13 (before the damage got reverted to be the same across the entire 1.75 radius zone), with the innermost radius being the same size as a Siege Tank's 2nd ring of damage. But the whole point of that set of numbers is that the inner radii slaughter Blings, but the outer radii leave lings standing with a bit of health remaining. Without a discrepancy in health between the two units, there is less room for an elegant solution.
But the most important of all: If protoss needs help with early detection so desperately ... then I'd hope the design team would focus on that rather than making the game worse for skilled Zergs. tldr: good ideas but it's better to focus on protoss detection issues rather than nerfing the mine imo. Maybe the Nexus should have an energy-based detection ability.
|
I'd like to see the widow mine's damage be made more reliable instead. It's still just as easy for zerg to run a flock of mutas over 4 mines and lose the game. It's still just as easy to lose big chunks of army to unseen widowmines.
I feel like this nerf targets the only fun part of widow mines, the part where you know their location and you get to play around them.
I am not sure how you could make the widow mine more consistent, maybe a shorter firing time and a shorter aoe range.
The current nerf fixes non of the issues players have with the widowmine, while significantly nerfing bio.
|
It's still just as easy for zerg to run a flock of mutas over 4 mines and lose the game. It's still just as easy to lose big chunks of army to unseen widowmines.
Just as easy to lose all your marines to burrowed banelings. Just as easy to lose all your army to a couple of disruptor shots. Just as easy to lose your army to a burrowed fungal...
|
On August 20 2017 01:24 Papachango wrote:Show nested quote + It's still just as easy for zerg to run a flock of mutas over 4 mines and lose the game. It's still just as easy to lose big chunks of army to unseen widowmines. Just as easy to lose all your marines to burrowed banelings. Just as easy to lose all your army to a couple of disruptor shots. Just as easy to lose your army to a burrowed fungal...
And that's terrible too! I am a terran player myself, so I know exactly how bad it feels to lose your entire army to a fungal. However, just because every race has stupid mechanics doesn't justify the existence of said mechanics.
|
Widow Mines are tiny rockets, more interesting would be a real exploding mine as Snute mentioned.
Also, if they're made more powerful, just increase the cost - to cut down on spam.
|
Meh, I'd prefer a supply cost reduction over anything else. That way it doesn't eat into your army supply as much to have a mine or two defending an area. Terran lacks a defensive structure that isn't a PF to defend an area on its own, why not let 1 supply mines fill the gap a bit?
If they're going to be real mines as some have suggested, they shouldn't cost any supply, just give them a bit higher build times to discourge mass mine fields.
|
I feel like the problem isn't so much that the unit can be so game ending, but that the terran player doesn't need to do much to make it that way. I know terran has a lot of things to do, I'm not calling out the unit as "easy," more that it just isnt interesting to see a terran work with widow mines. All the interaction with it come from the opposing player.
What if we made the widow mine no longer target a unit specifically, but rather target the ground under said unit? This way, there is still opportunity to micro around it, but also lets the terran interact with the unit, herding the opponent into certain spaces. This would also make defending widow mine drops much easier, as you simply need to move workers out of the mineral line for a second, then bring them back- stacking is no longer and issue.
|
jesus, totally read that as widow mine vs black lives matter
|
|
|
|