Sunday, May 1, 2011

LOL POOR, Thoughts on specific units, & PTR Balance changes

So yeah lost my internet for a while there due to not paying the bill. Money's been fairly tight especially since I'm taking CompTIA A+/N+ courses. I feel like I'm trying to squeeze blood from a stone at this point. I'm even behind on rent money.


Anyway I seen an interesting thread on Teamliquid. A user had made a discussion thread talking about these following abilities:

Concussive Shell
Forcefield
Fungal Growth

Now the reason why they were mentioned was because they can potentially remove the "micro" aspect of battles, which was unanimously agreed upon; Is bad.

Concussive Shells devastate units like stalkers. Once a marauders out it shuts down early stalker pressure. Because if you get clipped by one that unit is pretty much dead. It's quite annoying. Zealots and roaches are also completely destroyed by this ability. Zerglings are only spared because of the high volume you can produce it overwhelms the marauder(s).

Forcefield allows a player to completely encircle, cut off, or cut in half a whole army. This is clearly overpowered since there's no real counter to it other than massive units. Once again this cuts down the micro aspects of early game and even middle game at times. A separate issue I have with this ability is the fact that Protoss NEEDS it to survive early game pressure from Z and T. I don't think a race should be completely dependable on an ability like this just to survive.

Fungal Growth isn't as bad as the other two I'd say since it's fairly high up the tech tree and harder to acquire and use. However it still has that problem of completely mobilizing an army removing micro. I just wish plague would have been in the game instead.

I'm not sure what Blizzard is so content with those abilities. Starcraft 2 is very heavily macro orientated. I miss the micro days of Broodwar.

PTR Balance Changelog...

Balance

* PROTOSS

o Archons are now a massive unit.

o Pylon power radius has been decreased from 7.5 to 6.5.

o Cybernetics Core
+ Research Warp Gate time increased from 140 to 180.

o Gateway
+ Sentry train time decreased from 42 to 37.
+ Stalker train time decreased from 42 to 37.
+ Zealot train time decreased from 38 to 33.
+ Warp Gate unit train times remain unchanged.


* TERRAN

o Ghost
+ Cost changed from 150/150 to 200/100.

o Bunker
+ Salvage resource return reduced from 100% to 75%.


* ZERG

o Spore Crawler
+ Root time decreased from 12 to 6.




I actually like most of these changes. However everyone will have to be more weary of proxy gateways now. They really plagued the game during launch due to the fast production time of zealots. So we'll see how this goes. I think it's a step in the right direction though given how powerful 4 gating is.

Anyway I'm out of things to say at the moment.

25 comments:

Pony said...

I play zerg so almost every update makes me happy haha. Toss early game is going to change pretty radically though, we're sure to see a lot more powerful early toss pushes. (As if 2 gate proxy rushes weren't annoying as hell already)

sp3nny said...

great blog for a great game! i really love SC II,thanks

DanZel said...

how big is the Starcraft community?

Pappa Püllï said...

Nice blog sir!

ALSO: ding, 300! muhahah

YOURMAMA said...

"o Archons are now a massive unit."

now ghosts ownage is bigger...

great blog !

Clint Mullins said...

My brother loves SCII

Splinter cell II right?


;)

Unknown said...

Love SC2, please keep the good info coming.

Alpha said...

Mixed feelings over those P details...

Xiism said...

Don't really like the new update :/

Wingweaver said...

I think if they let Forcefields be destroyable, then perhaps they wont seem so Overpowered.

Pappa Püllï said...

ZERG is always a good thing to take in consideration!

Sean said...

I think I commented on this on TL forums. I'm sure Blizzard is going to slowly work on balancing it out

Watchvideogames.com said...

Amazing blog, thanks for the work you put in.

Linux Ninjas said...

FINALLY!!! Loving all the new zerg updates!

Volpes said...

actually, I also like to play zerg more than anything.

w8

zerg, pro, terr in that order

Mike said...

I loved SC2. I played it till about Platinum in 2's and gold flying solo. Haven't played it in months but it was an awesome game.

Vav said...

Terrans are pretty bad now :[

i.Mo said...

great blog. didn't played the game for a long time. will play it tomorrow again.

Anonymous said...

Interesting balance decisions. I also like your comments on the microing aspect of the game. Concussive shells really do make a world of difference when trying to micro and bring the pain to stalkers and zealots.

Volpes said...

soooo... now protoss would be a badass

Oivvad said...

Interesting stuff. Still yet to buy it though :(

CPH said...

Great blog! +1 following!

Anonymous said...

starcraft has been around for a while now
must have some hardcore fans

SeanExact said...

protoss over everything!

pokemonalldayerrday said...

ah dude sucks about your money problems, hope everything's cool now