1.4 PTR Notes

[Rainbow Dash]

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1213111662


Balance

General
Unit vision up ramps has been reduced by 1.

PROTOSS
Immortal
Attack range increased from 5 to 6.
Mothership
Acceleration increased from 0.3 to 1.375.
The Mothership’s Cloaking Field no longer cloaks all units instantaneously, but rather adds units to the cloak field over time (maximum of 25 per second). This should alleviate “Mothership Lag” issue when a Mothership comes online.
Stalker
Blink research time increased from 110 to 140.
Warp Prism
Shields increased from 40 to 100.

TERRAN
Barracks
Build time increased from 60 to 65.
Hellion
Infernal Pre-Igniter damage upgrade decreased from 10 to 5.
Raven
Seeker missile movement speed increased from 2.5 to 2.953.

ZERG
Infestor
Fungal Growth damage changed from 36 (+30% armored) to 30 (40 vs Armored).
Overseer
Morph cost decreased from 50/100 to 50/50.
Contaminate energy cost increased from 75 to 125.
Ultralisk
Build time decreased from 70 to 55.

Dunno about the barracks, or infestor nerfs.

The problem with terran early game was the marine, not the barracks, but whatever lets run with it and see what happens.

The issue with infestors was that they could just immobilize everything permanently, but I guess the damage nerf will probably be fine.

Mothership buff is welcome, but I doubt it'll change much.

Warp prism buff is great too, but what it really needs is to be able to make more intimidating drops without forcing you to commit units that you are more or less guaranteed to lose. Perhaps something like teleporting units via warp prism power fields to anywhere else you have power? idk

BFH nerf is good too, though the issue with hellions is that they don't cost any gas, and have a rather huge amount of hp for a unit you can mass produce no problem and effectively guarantee worker line obliteration with if you get enough of them.

Ultra buff, and ramp nerf are both very welcome too, the latter was really all they had to do to fix the 4gate if it behaves how everyone seems to think, instead of fucking with the pylon radius.

Either way it's definitely a start.

[Phopojijo]

I still say Mothership needs detection. Give people a reason to push further down Star-tech rather than cower to Robo if they need mobile detection.

[Bodzilla]

phopo, you would never get a mothership and skip the observer ever.

in any way.
mothership isl ike somehting you consider at 4+ base's tech, and if the only detection you had till then is cannons then your just being silly, and suicidal.

[n00b1n8R]

Give warp prisms their speed upgrade for free, then it'd be great~

[Rainbow Dash]

Maybe move Warp Prisms to nexus (require cyber core), and put the speed upgrade in the cyber core?

[Zeph]

ZERG
Infestor
Fungal Growth damage changed from 36 (+30% armored) to 30 (40 vs Armored).
:ugh:

Overseer
Morph cost decreased from 50/100 to 50/50.
:iamafag::iamafag::iamafag:

Contaminate energy cost increased from 75 to 125.
:ohdear:

Ultralisk
Build time decreased from 70 to 55.
:woop:

[Rainbow Dash]

Also the Zealot charge change is really dumb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-vl8dMyE38

Sure fix the exploit, but not that way jesus christ.

Additionally why fix it at all? By the time you have charge you're going to have a lot more than one zealot, and no one with an army is going to micro a single zealot in an attempt to get more than one hit with charge.

[n00b1n8R]

You can't get more than 1 hit as that cancles the buff. You could however leapfrog the zealot all the way through their army which might be cool for scouting :o

[Phopojijo]

phopo, you would never get a mothership and skip the observer ever.

in any way.
mothership isl ike somehting you consider at 4+ base's tech, and if the only detection you had till then is cannons then your just being silly, and suicidal.That's the problem... Stargate tech is only something you barely delve into (in non-lean army mixes with other tech) during normal play or what you tech to after you already crippled your opponent in order to make a lead a bigger lead.

This makes Protoss very predictable. The point is not to have the Mothership be a badass unit... the point is to encourage people to go down that tech path once in a while. A more common Fleet Beacon tech will help you even if you never even go Stargate at all... because it is one more thing the opponent needs to think about... because you might. You don't need to be a better race, just a less predictable one.

**If you deny scouting well enough.

[Bodzilla]

What your basically suggesting is to put it equivilently. is Rush to BC, before you can leave your base because BC's have detection.

see how rediculous that sounds :/

your not comprehending how far down the tech path the mothership is and how expensive it is to get one, something thats only really accessable at 3+ protoss base's.
you will not be able to get to this stage if you dont have some form of detection other then cannons because you'll ned to pressure your opponent so he takes the map and you wont be able to have map control because you have nothing protecting you from detected units.
OR
you could rush to MS, and have hte slowest detection in the game, have no army and get steam rolled because you have NO UNITS.

I understand what your trying to do, but you cant do it off the current tech structure cause it's too late, too expensive and at the end of the day you will still have no idea what they're building, cause you cant scout.

[Phopojijo]

What your basically suggesting is to put it equivilently. is Rush to BC, before you can leave your base because BC's have detection.

see how rediculous that sounds :/

your not comprehending how far down the tech path the mothership is and how expensive it is to get one, something thats only really accessable at 3+ protoss base's.
you will not be able to get to this stage if you dont have some form of detection other then cannons because you'll ned to pressure your opponent so he takes the map and you wont be able to have map control because you have nothing protecting you from detected units.
OR
you could rush to MS, and have hte slowest detection in the game, have no army and get steam rolled because you have NO UNITS.

I understand what your trying to do, but you cant do it off the current tech structure cause it's too late, too expensive and at the end of the day you will still have no idea what they're building, cause you cant scout.Uh no, that's not what I said at all. You're REALLY missing the point there Bod.

No harass? You have air!
{{Not to mention the low (and possibly high-gate if it's a less lean build) units.}}

The problem is mostly people's fear of needing detection even when they may not. Instead of forcing people down Robo -- let them, if necessary, go further up Stargate. Who knows, we might be able to see +2 or +3 voidray + gateway pushes without a mothership. Maybe midgame carriers. If you see them try to go cloaked units -- get a mothership up... and when they start to attack your units -- mass recall.

That's ONE of MANY possibilities. And ultimately that's what is the problem with Protoss, a lack of possibilities. It's TOO EASY to predict Protoss. The point is to find the MINIMUM changes required to give more options... not just for the player... but for the opponent to need to consider.

This isn't Zerg, we can't just tech-switch on a dime and be on as much production as we have Larva and cash.

[Rainbow Dash]

Just move observers to the Nexus, and make it either require cyber, or one advanced tech building.

Boom, no more toss feeling forced to go robo just for detection.

[Bodzilla]

you know whats great against toss air? burrowed anything and cloaked ghosts.

[Bodzilla]

literally if i saw you go for pure air and have no detection, i'd literally just NP your shit and infested terran my way to victory.

[Rainbow Dash]

I'm glad you have a promising strategy for getting easy wins vs toss in the silver league.

[TPBlinD]

I'm glad you have a promising strategy for getting easy wins vs toss in the silver league.whoa this wolf has STINGERS

[Bodzilla]

he's saying that mass toss air would be an option.... if mothership had detection.

and it's just..... a terrible terrible idea.
P.s. I'm diamond nao bro.

[TPBlinD]

im gonna have my own copy of sc2 in like two weeks one of you guys should padawan me

[Rainbow Dash]

you could be the next idra.



P.s. I'm diamond nao bro.

Considering you played the first day of the new season when it's easiest to inflate your rank, and haven't really played much since then bragging about your rank isn't really too much of a valuable contribution to this thread.

[Zeph]

If by inflate your rank you mean catch up on where your MMR went during the lockout, then yeah.

[Phopojijo]

literally if i saw you go for pure air and have no detection, i'd literally just NP your shit and infested terran my way to victory.Lol you still don't get it. Seriously, you *don't get it*.

Firstly, pure air? No... Air and Low Gate... maybe air and high gate... you get out infestors? I'd get out high templar and feedback and psystorm the shit out of you.

See how an argument like that is meaningless? Get the hint?

The point is to not be reliant on Robo tech... open up new POTENTIAL timings and unit mixes... while changing the bare minimum to gameplay as possible.

[Rainbow Dash]

The point is to not be reliant on Robo tech... open up new POTENTIAL timings and unit mixes... while changing the bare minimum to gameplay as possible.

^^^^^

I have brought this up several times before, it's really not worth arguing here, seems that no one here is capable of understanding why toss being predictable is a bad thing.

[Bodzilla]

and you just like sel arnt understanding other important factors in the game. it's no build this unit, spend this much money, receive this much damage E.G. STALKERS ARE A FUCKING UTILITY UNIT NOT A GODDAM ROACH.

Look I've said my piece it's not even worth trying to help you understand it because you guys strategy wise are still stuck in the stone age.
your not comprehending the sacrifices you are forced to take for a protoss air composition, your not understanding the significance of a delayed detection, your not comprehending the problems with trying to expand when you have NO detection OR MAP CONTROL, your not understanding the trade off you have in going for heavily expensive units, early which you'll be forced to do if you wanna move out if the mothership becomes your source of detection.....


theres a hell of alot of shit you just dont understand yet.

[CN3089]

Lol you still don't get it. Seriously, you *don't get it*.

Firstly, pure air? No... Air and Low Gate... maybe air and high gate... you get out infestors? I'd get out high templar and feedback and psystorm the shit out of you.

See how an argument like that is meaningless? Get the hint?

The point is to not be reliant on Robo tech... open up new POTENTIAL timings and unit mixes... while changing the bare minimum to gameplay as possible.

I'll sum bodzilla's point up: simply giving the mothership detection isn't going to change anything. Beacon tech needs more than that to be viable, and you'll still need observers for detection.

[Rainbow Dash]

It's ok Phobo, bod is just terrible at the game, doesn't play anything other than Zerg, and can't seem to figure out why protoss is broken.

Not much of a point trying to argue with him~

If you can't figure out why toss being forced to go robo for detection, otherwise face needing to gg because they didn't, when they have no other scouting options besides phoenixes, hallucinated phoenixes, and observers, all of which come at around the same time, is broken then you're not worth arguing with. Sorry~~

[n00b1n8R]

Please ban phopo and Sel from this thread they're just embarrassing themselves :lmao:

[Zeph]

But what would I laugh at then?

[Rainbow Dash]

Must be great in your happy perfect world where you think sc2 is a perfectly balanced game :allears:

[n00b1n8R]

Must be great in your happy perfect world where you think sc2 is a perfectly balanced game :allears:
It's all right. The game is ballanced, especially for your skill level. At the top it might be tough for some races but I'm not a top level player so it doesn't matter.
There are certainly design issues though (protoss harass) but it's nothing game breaking and it's what HotS is for.

Still, at least I don't need to blame my personal failures as a player on blizzard having it in for my race :downs:

(and I'm not dumb enough to suggest completely retarded changes rofl rofl)
(ob at nexus on stargate/robo would be p neat though!)

[Rainbow Dash]

I love it when people break out the, "but its not op at the highest level of play xdxd" argument. It's so colossally stupid but everyone keeps spewing it out.

If a race is easier than the others, if a single unit in a family of units is easier to use, regardless of the level of play then an imbalance exists, shut the fuck up with your idiotic arguments.

[Phopojijo]

I'll sum bodzilla's point up: simply giving the mothership detection isn't going to change anything. Beacon tech needs more than that to be viable, and you'll still need observers for detection.The thing is, he's actually NOT saying that... entirely: ("and you just like sel arnt understanding other important factors in the game. it's no build this unit, spend this much money, receive this much damage E.G. STALKERS ARE A FUCKING UTILITY UNIT NOT A GODDAM ROACH." has nothing to do with that, and it's not even a coherent statement). And I'm NOT saying that mothership detection is the 1-stop fix for all balance issues in Protoss.

I'm saying that in order for Stargate tech to be viable there needs to be some detection down it, and the Mothership is the most likely candidate due to its role as a support unit (think like the Science Vessel).

You could re-order units or create wholly new ones but with the game balanced as it is the smallest change that could have the biggest effect on Protoss' fundamental problem (lack of entropy due to so much falling through Robo tech) would be giving detection to something down Stargate... and it would need to be sufficiently different enough from the Observer to make sense.

Remember, the point of patches is for SMALL tweaks to address SPECIFIC problems.



What do YOU (Bod et al.) suggest is Protoss' primary problem?
What SMALL CHANGE do you suggest is required to (fully or partially) fix it?

[Rainbow Dash]

The problem with protoss is the lack of ability to scout between everything past first probe until observer/phoenix/hallucinated phoenix, their ability to react is based strictly on educated guesses, from sending a probe or zealot up the other player's ramp, this is exceptionally unreliable anyway, since most good players won't put their entire army at the front of the ramp anyway, and will make an effort to keep it hidden. Terrans have scans, zerg have overlords, protosses don't have anything that really fits that gap.

And even then, what reason isn't there to go robo first?

Stargates are entirely useless vs terran, sure rush to it, guess what, he has 50 marines, and once a zerg has hydras out toss air isn't much of a threat anymore either.

With robo you get detection, drops (albeit shit ones), something to transition to (high robo is very useful in all matchups). The stargate on the other hand offers no transition into high air tech, because carriers and motherships are pretty trash (terran just scans), and zerg usually has atleast got spores if you've reveled air units in the past.

I'd also argue that toss gateway units being the least cost efficient in the game, and early toss compositions relying entirely on sentry spells which require heavy micro compared to zergs and terrans in order to keep themselves from losing to any early pressure is just outright silly. It'd be far less imbalanced to equalize the strength of the protoss units with their counterparts from the other races, and move the sentry to a later tier, so that you don't have protoss relying on heavy micro, while the other races can just A+ move in and usually win unless the protoss player has perfect micro.

It would also help justify protoss drops if zealots and stalkers were actually effective without sentry support.

Also buffing the zealot's speed by something like 0.25 would solve a lot of early game issues too, allowing them to catch up to marines and marauders and actually inflict some damage, instead of just getting kited all day long.

PS the stalker's damage bonus almost applying only to units that HARD COUNTER it is just outright dumb, please rework this unit blizzard.

[Phopojijo]

Those (apart from Zealot speed) aren't really minor game-play tweaks though. You're basically calling for a complete rework.

[Phobias]

[off-topic] Could everyone post their leagues please? I'm sensing alot of plat/diamonds players on modacity and think we should organise a few games on the NA server and have an actual discussion via party chat/ventrilo etc ( I have a ventrilo server if anyone is interested in this)

Phobalic 691 if anyone is interested.

[Rainbow Dash]

Those (apart from Zealot speed) aren't really minor game-play tweaks though. You're basically calling for a complete rework.

I was listing the main problems with protoss, not minor solutions to make them viable before HoTS

[TPBlinD]

i just bought the game yesterday and im plat in 1v1.

[n00b1n8R]

New changes to the PTR update! (bold are the latest changes)


Infestor’s Neural Parasite can no longer target Massive units.

Fixed an issue where Broodlords on the high ground would not be revealed when attacking enemy units on the low ground.[
Fixed an issue where Bunkers would not display their refunded minerals to the owner or allies when they are salvaged.

[Phobias]

Thank fuck they changed neural, I never liked having to learn the hotkey for another spell on my infestors.

(fuck the neural change)

[Bodzilla]

"we heard that players could defend from collossi, thors, BC's, Broodlords, carriers and motherships if they rushed to the tech with superb positioning, getting the infestors ahead of time so they build up energy and upgrading an expensive upgrade.... we didnt like that so we decided to see what it'd be like if it was next to useless."

[CN3089]

so basically neurals are just for ghosts/high templars emping/feedbacking/storming themselves now? talk about owned, zerg scrubs

[CN3089]

Siege tanks and Immortals too I guess??

synpe

[Zeph]

As far as I know, Thor, Battlecruiser, Collosus, Carrier, Archon, Mothership, Ultralisk, and Brood Lord are the only massive units. Sucky thing about that is those units are the prime choice for neural parasite because of their large amounts of HP. Considering that the benefit of researching the ability was to augment your army supply over what Zerg normally could get instead of relying on quick macro of a large army, it'll be a worthless ability when this comes around.

[Rainbow Dash]

"we heard that players could defend from collossi, thors, BC's, Broodlords, carriers and motherships if they rushed to the tech with superb positioning, getting the infestors ahead of time so they build up energy and upgrading an expensive upgrade.... we didnt like that so we decided to see what it'd be like if it was next to useless."

If you don't think having 20 infestors, and neural parasiting every single unit that made the protoss army capable of hurting the zerg's blob of units which completely rape their gateway tech, along with fungalling them over and over so they take huge damage and can't move was broken you're deluding yourself.

It was a huge problem with the game, but obviously this isn't the way to fix it.

Well, not so much with zerg v terran, but they didn't use thors or bcs anyway lol.

[Zeph]

Oh, look, I let the zerg put 3000 gas into infestors. If you're that stupid, you're gonna run straight into them and die anyways. Not like you can't kill the infestors when they parasite and regain control :rolleyes:.

[Rainbow Dash]

oh yeah my bad it's so easy, they're no problem to counter, the fact that they can stop any approaching units in their tracks and do huge damage to them regardless of whether they're air or ground or stealthed, is 100% irrelevant, they're so ez to beat!

Actually you're really not worth arguing with on this, you're like, the one person on the face of the planet who can't even figure out why carriers are shitty units and no one uses them seriously lol.

[Zeph]

I hear blink is pretty useful to get close to them and pick them off.
Works the same way as zerg does against collosus. You've got to trade armies to pick them off and keep the numbers down.

[Rainbow Dash]

I hear you don't even play this game.

And if that response is any indication, well golly, I can't be too far off!

[CN3089]

trading armies against zerg late game this is a Good Idea

[TPBlinD]

welp scouting their base and killing them if they rush to infestors

[Phobias]

oh yeah my bad it's so easy, they're no problem to counter, the fact that they can stop any approaching units in their tracks and do huge damage to them regardless of whether they're air or ground or stealthed, is 100% irrelevant, they're so ez to beat!

Actually you're really not worth arguing with on this, you're like, the one person on the face of the planet who can't even figure out why carriers are shitty units and no one uses them seriously lol.

Everything you say sounds like you watch starcraft and don't play it.

[Rainbow Dash]

That's especially funny coming from someone with less than 1/7th of my melee games played, and who plays 4v4 more than he plays 1v1 (http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/211153/1/Phobalic/) =]

[Phobias]

Funny thing about buying a SEA version of sc2 is you get access to both the SEA and NA ladder.

[Rainbow Dash]

Which you also only have a small handful of matches on!

Incredible!

[Rainbow Dash]

In addition to that you're obviously a biased zerg anyway, after all you have maybe 20 games as the other races put together, and all you do is sit in balance threads whining about zerg nerfs, and praising everything else, while contributing no in depth discussion or facts.

So really, until you're ready to explaining your opinions a little more you really shouldn't be posting at all =]

[Bodzilla]

phobo's got a far deeper understanding them most people on this game.

the kids a natural.

[Rainbow Dash]

That may be, but you'd never know from his posts, since he refuses to ever contribute anything useful to balance discussions.

=]

[n00b1n8R]

That may be, but you'd never know from his posts, since he refuses to ever contribute anything useful to balance discussions.

=]
So he's no worse than you :3

[Rainbow Dash]

Good read here.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=263636

[Bodzilla]

Hey remember how i've been saying that FOR MONTHS ON END? NOPE?

[Rainbow Dash]

We thank those of you who participated in the 1.4 PTR and appreciate your feedback regarding changes to the Infestor unit. In response to that feedback, we have chosen a different course of action regarding adjustment of Neural Parasite. Rather than preventing this ability from targeting Massive Units, the range of Neural Parasite will instead be reduced from 9 to 7. We believe that this change will make choices regarding positioning and unit composition more important when using the Infestor.

This change will not be reflected on the PTR, but we wanted to ensure that you were aware of the new changes before the StarCraft II Patch 1.4 is live.

What

what is the point of the ptr if you're not going to test every change you make?

Also this change sucks, it still doesn't address what is wrong with neural parasite, and is no better than the previous change :S

[n00b1n8R]

What's wrong with Neural?

[Rainbow Dash]

As it currently is in PvZ if your colossi get neuralled there isn't shit you can do about it, because of fungal preventing stalkers from being able to deal with the infestors casting neural, and even if you blinked up pre-emptively to deal with them, they take a while to kill infestors, have no chance of retreat because of fungal, and virtually _EVERY_ unit in the zerg army beats stalkers if they can hit them, with the exception of perhaps mutalisks.

Meanwhile zealots can't do anything because of fungal, so that leaves the high templar, and if you think the protoss' only "counter" to an infestor should be a unit that comes later, and will likely not be ready in time since every toss has to go robo anyway for detection + effective AoE (a roach has to sit in two storms for the entire duration to die to it, come on)

With this change the Zerg now has to practically walk within 2 range of the stalkers to reach the collosi, unless they somehow come from behind, which is incredibly unlikely.

Not to mention that the collosi now outrange the infestors with thermal lance.

That's more or less the reason that you don't see infestors using neural vs terran very often either, since tanks will kill them long before they can get in range to neural them.


All this does is make neural useless, and before all it did was effortlessly declaw protoss armies if used even remotely decently.

[Bodzilla]

you do realize that if you even lay a finger on infestors, they stop every command you give them and run.

literally.

[Zeph]

As it currently is in PvZ if your colossi get neuralled there isn't shit you can do about it, because of fungal preventing stalkers from being able to deal with the infestors casting neural, and even if you blinked up pre-emptively to deal with them, they take a while to kill infestors, have no chance of retreat because of fungal, and virtually _EVERY_ unit in the zerg army beats stalkers if they can hit them, with the exception of perhaps mutalisks.

Meanwhile zealots can't do anything because of fungal, so that leaves the high templar, and if you think the protoss' only "counter" to an infestor should be a unit that comes later, and will likely not be ready in time since every toss has to go robo anyway for detection + effective AoE (a roach has to sit in two storms for the entire duration to die to it, come on)

With this change the Zerg now has to practically walk within 2 range of the stalkers to reach the collosi, unless they somehow come from behind, which is incredibly unlikely.

Not to mention that the collosi now outrange the infestors with thermal lance.

That's more or less the reason that you don't see infestors using neural vs terran very often either, since tanks will kill them long before they can get in range to neural them.


All this does is make neural useless, and before all it did was effortlessly declaw protoss armies if used even remotely decently.

I hear there's this thing you can do with your units. Instead of a-move like you normally do, you spend a couple of clicks to arrange your units and position them in prime spots to take advantage of terrain and what your opponent has.

And as a zerg, I'd rather spend infestor energy on nerualing thors or fungaling marines. Infested terran the tanks to cost the terran apm more than they'd normally spend to avoid fodder units.

[Rainbow Dash]

thanks for contributing so much to the discussion zeph

clearly everything I said is just wrong because any good protoss would know how to arrange his units perfectly, there just aren't any good protosses that's all :allears:

[Zeph]

thanks for contributing so much to the discussion zeph

clearly everything I said is just wrong because any good protoss would know how to arrange his units perfectly, there just aren't any good protosses that's all :allears:

Well, it is the race that coined the term death ball.

[Rainbow Dash]

Because protoss units in small groups work sooooooo well :allears:

[Bodzilla]

check out liquid hero, that guy does small zealot drops and warp prisms all over the place. so does JYP

[Rainbow Dash]

I'm not sure what's so difficult about this.

Mathematically there is no way protoss drops can be as effective as terran ones.

There isn't really a WAY you can argue with this, especially not with, OH THIS ONE PLAYER DOES THEM REALLY WELL.

[Zeph]

Are you suggesting that because there is such a wide spread in skill with a race it is a horrible race?

One of the first things you learn in statistics is that outliers aren't always out there as a fluke.

[n00b1n8R]

I'm not sure what's so difficult about this.

Mathematically there is no way protoss drops can be as effective as terran ones.

Why do they need to be? With terran, if you're not being aggressive you're probably loosing. With protoss, it's not so much of an issue.

[Rainbow Dash]

I'm just not even going to try to talk any sense into you lot and assume you are being willfully dense or you're just retarded.

So you can just continue to insist that the game is balanced, and that terran isn't the best race, and that protoss has just as much ability to win as everyone else~

anyway

http://mengsk.com/

[ODX]

It sounds like you want all the races to be equal, where the only differences comes from their appearance.

:|

[Rainbow Dash]

what