Official TBA StarCraft II Thread

[Sinitron]

yeah but their reduced damage is what makes them so-so against protoss, the range and splash is what makes them effective vs zerg and terran where the basic units are a lot more fragile

i'd rather have somewhat improved primary target damage with a little reduced aoe damage since hellions already deal with lings and the like

either that or maybe make tank mode a bit more potent so it's not a total waste

[rtil]

protoss just needs a huge overhaul

or the warhound could come back with some tweaks

[Sinitron]

yeah i miss the warhound

also i think we should make a new sc thread when hots comes out and get all the new buddy codes and shit up

i mean yeah i've missed a couple like seanny that i didn't add but the whole list is outdated and a lot of people stopped playing

[cipher]

The great migration to sc2 thread #3 is nearly upon us

but yeah we should wait for hots to go live first

[rtil]

3 months to go

[zwimmy]

Fuck the warhound.

[Sinitron]

based on what

i mean i love the thor but less super units is just good business for everyone

[Sinitron]

according to recent qq the ultralisk is overpowered

who'd have thunk it, the zerg unit i was always happy nobody made turns out to be a source of non-stop bitching after infestors

[rtil]

uh yeah that's cuz they buffed their attack after removing burrow charge. now they do 35 base damage to all units

[Sinitron]

oh i thought it was wol

[psi43]

Beta Balance Update #11 - January 9, 2013

Terran
Barracks

• Train Reaper no longer requires a Tech Lab Addon.

Hellbat

• Attack speed changed from 1.9 to 2.
• The Infernal Pre-Igniter upgrade no longer increases Hellbat weapon damage.
• Napalm Spray weapon damage increased from 10 +9 vs. light to 18 +12 vs. light.
• Splash damage radius decreased from 110 to 45.

Medivac

• Caduceus Reactor
• No longer improves the healing rate of Medivacs.
• Upgrade cost decreased from 150/150 and 110 seconds to 100/100 and 80 seconds.
• Emergency Thrusters ability renamed Ignite Afterburners.

Raven

• Seeker missile
• Energy cost decreased from 125 to 75.
• Primary target damage reverted from 300 to 100.
• Seeker Missile once again deals splash damage.
• The delay time prior to firing has been increased from 3 to 5 seconds.

Reaper

• The Battlefield Awareness passive ability has been removed from the game.
• Movement speed increased from 3.38 to 3.75.
• The Nitro Packs upgrade has been removed from the game.
• P-45 Gauss Pistol weapon damage decreased from 4 +5 vs. Light to 4.

Siege Tank

• Siege Tanks no longer require an upgrade in order to enter Siege Mode.

Protoss
Mothership

• The Vortex ability has been removed from the game.

Mothership Core

• The Envision ability has been moved to Oracle.

Oracle

• The Time Warp ability has been moved to the Mothership Core and the Mothership.

Zerg
Infestor

• Fungal Growth damage decreased from 30 +10 vs. Armored to 30.

Mutalisk

• Mutalisk Regeneration passive ability renamed Tissue Regeneration and its tooltip has been updated to improve clarity.

Terran:
Reaper don't require the Tech Lab Addon anymore. When I read that for the first time I thought "Bullshit. Now they can reactor-produce 4 additional reapers for the first attack and almost certainly pick off at least one Queen".
Then I read that their battlefield awareness (looking up cliffs, if I'm not mistaken) which is good for Roach placement. And their Nitro Pack was removed (with the base speed increased though). And most importantly, they're not drone snipers anymore so all in all, I am happy with the Reaper changes.

Medivac's Caduceus Reactor "No longer improves the healing rage of Medivacs", which left me wondering what the upgrade does then. I could probably just look it up I guess.

Raven upgrades, I'm fine with those. It's basically back to the way it was with the exception of how the missile handles, I think.

Instant Siege Mode, no idea what to think of that. Will have to see how it influences the game after playing against T a few times.

Protoss:
Vortex removed. Well well well Blizzard, you sneaky devils. First you make it useless, because removing it without it being useless would cause fans to complain, and then you outright remove it. I don't have a problem with that, but they could've just said that the Vortex ability wasn't going to work with SC2 being a competitive game anymore. I mean it was borderline useless as the normal Vortex as well in my opinion, unless you devised some cool strategy around it or had exceptionally good Vortex placement.

Mother Core and Oracle switcharoo - somewhat annoying. Use the Oracle to quickly fly through your opponent's base and cast Envision on a unit that is currently moving around. Have fun with your free vision.
Time warp for the Mothership Core and Mothership makes sense, cause it's kind of a heavy support unit that can be used in large battles. Or at least I always viewed it as such.

Zerg:
FG nerf. Well, shucks but I'll have to see it in-game.

[Crabarms]

I don't think they can save the reaper at this rate. Removing everything that made it cool and just making it something that doesn't do much of anything.

Surprised the swarmhost hasn't been adjusted because that is ridiculously op in larger numbers you can't really fight against them even with higher upgrades.
I could just be really bad facing them though.

Siege tank buff is pretty huge, which will probably outshine the use of widowmines early game.

[rtil]

the reaper is a useless unit now, more useless than it is in WoL, probably only good for an early scout. could save terrans the cost of a scan and use a MULE instead while using a reaper to scout the enemy base. other than that it doesn't have much use.

the seige tank "buff" was described as trying to help mech vs protoss. but all it does is encourage early mm+tank rush play. doesn't make mech any more effective vs protoss at all if not for an extremely small window of time.

swarm host is just bad unit design. it's useless in small numbers effective in large numbers, so if you go swarm host tech it's all-in or nothing and your entire gameplan relies on the unit. it needs to be tweaked.

protoss changes made no sense besides vortex removal , but we all knew they were going to do that anyway.

i think this patch was plain stupid and poorly thought out. they're not properly addressing any of the issues with the units.

[Sinitron]

the problem with tanks vs toss is simple

- protoss units are tough
- sieged tanks have low dps
- protoss units are mobile
- sieged tanks are not

buffing siege tech is pointless, because it was intentionally nerfed to be where it is due to smartfire and because they don't want tanks to completely wreck all zerg/terran ground - they either need to rework how the whole tank works, or just straight-up buff the high-dps single target tank mode to not be almost useless

it worked in brood war because zealots were fast, but didn't have charge, and dragoons weren't able to teleport + tanks were dumb as fuck yet did a potential of 70 damage + splash per volley

the work-around to this was, of course, to simply space your tanks out a little instead of just keeping them in a massive blob, which good mech terrans do anyway, and maximize damage

smartfire makes tanks 'better' for less competent players, but ultimately worse as a whole which is why they're so ineffective against protoss

the final nail in the coffin was the sheer mobility of protoss units compared to brood war, especially the cliff-scaling colossus versus the fragile and slow reaver

low damage = need to stick together to be effective = tanks can't be spaced out to cover multiple areas = can't deal with highly mobile forces = only works vs complete fucking retards whoc charge into 20 tanks and cries terran op

that's why tanks are fundamentally broken, they're really not fun to use (i always preferred hellion/thor), were designed for a totally different game, are hard to balance in all matchups, and the driver looks depressed instead of being an angry sergeant

[rtil]

tanks aren't broken
protoss is broken

[Sinitron]

Tanks are broken in the sense that they aren't actually all that fun to use.

[rtil]

if you think tanks aren't fun you should try swarm hosts

[rtil]

NEW Heart of the Swarm Dances!

[cipher]

overlord is the best

[psi43]

tanks aren't broken

they will be, once i get my 3 vipers and fuck 'em up. I love doing that blinding cloud on tanks thing, thank you 4 telling me.