First off, I want to say that I know it's beta, and I know that "by definition" that implies that it is imbalanced. Having said that...
The Terrans seem OP to me.
- The Reaper is ridiculous. The thing is available early, it can jump cliffs, it's fast as hell, it's strong, it can harass your eco big-time, and to add insult to injury, it has a ridiculously strong special ability against buildings, and can take them down in no time. The effort required by you to counter this thing early game is not matched by the ease with which the Terran player can deploy this thing and harass your eco to death, as well as take down buildings.
- That Hellion is a nasty early harass unit too. It is strong against early light units (i.e. probes, drones, zerglings, basic infantry) and it is fast as hell. I mean, between the Reaper and the Hellion, the average Terran opponent can kiss the game goodbye.
- Marauders just seem overly powerful to me.
- That EMP shockwave from the Ghost just seems to royally fuck Protoss.
Protoss seem UP to me.
- The Stalker seems too weak in terms of hit points and attack (they drop like flies to Terrans), and blink seems to take a long time to recharge, where as Terrans just seem to spam the hell out of their special abilities.
- The Collossus just seems to be a totally underpowered hunk of junk that auto-explodes every time an enemy unit gets within sight range. I mean, they pop like helium balloons. Weirdly, they seem to have nerfed it even more with their last patch, where as if anything it needed a substantial buff.
I mean, the only time I see a Protoss or Zerg beat a Terran is if the Protoss/Zerg is just a way better player.
Your thoughts?
The only thing I see probes build in your base is the occasional extractor block. However, both protoss and terran can proxy near your base for earlier rush times.
I have no problem with reapers in general. The problem I do have is that they can get into your base before you can build anything to counter it. If you are doing a strat for the sole purpose of stopping another, it should work. And simply put, nothing as protoss stops an early reaper. The only possible way is early cannons and then you lost the game anyways.
Protoss can proxy pylon your base without risking a bigger building. This is partially why they made it easier to kill units whilst they warp in. Everything stops a reaper man. You can't just run around forever in someone's base attacking everything in sight and not get focused down. It's not like reapers can attack while moving like stalkers. If you right click a click spam very, very well in the back of the mineral line, you might take out 3 probes before 2 zealots can box you in. I've seen Nostalgiatag do this on his stream like 10 times before he decided it just wasn't worth it.
I guess Nostalgiatag micro isn't up to par with others because I've seen Reapers outmanuever 3 zealots at time when they were actually moving seperatly and not just following in a pack.
And if you get proxy pylon'd then you need to keep an eye on your base better. It takes way too long to get warp gates for any kind of effective rush. And yes, that is why they made them vunerable during warp in.
Since this convo seems to be going no where I'll just finish with me laughing when next patch tech labs get a time increase, gas increase, or both. So bye.
The problem is though it is far to easy to get a Reaper out against Protoss before they can get an appropriate counter to it. Microing some Zealots to pin a Reaper takes attention away from other things such as building units to prepare for the incoming attack wave.
EDIT: Ninja'd by Myles.
Yeah. These are among the worst and most maddening types of imbalances.
EDIT: I have a sore spot when it comes to cheese that targets my economy, when I don't have counter-cheese to target the enemy's economy. It's way worse when, as Frogboy says, the counter strategy requires far more thought/energy/micro/whatever than the original strategy.
Don't know if anyone here played Universe at War: Earth Assault. I used to play the Hierarchy. Anyway, when the game was released, Hierarchy had SHITTY anti-air. Worse than that, their economy is based on expensive, fragile, vulnerable drones that you have to send out all over the map to get resources, and you can only have 7 of them. Meanwhile, the other 2 factions have totally nonvulernable economies (in both cases, you build economic buildings inside your base, and resources are sort of generated automatically). You can see where this is headed. The other 2 factions would just go straight air, and then go "drone hunting" against the Hierarchy. It sucked.
Anyway, that's what I really hate about reaper/hellion cheese. It goes straight for my economy, it does it early, it costs me a hell of a lot more trouble to counter it than it does the other guy to pull it, and I can't just do the same thing back to him.
I'll go watch all of the live streaming Terrans on team liquid, because I've never seen this reaper build that will ultimately crush any Protoss player, but I'll be on the look out for it.
You are setting up a straw man. It isn't about "ultimately crush." Maybe it will, maybe it won't, depending on the 2 player's skill levels. It is just something that is very difficult to counter (while being easy to execute for the terran) and puts the victim of it in a very difficult situation. It is something that gives an edge to the terran. If the victim is of higher skill than the perpetrator, maybe the edge is slight. If they are of equal skill, the edge is significant. If the victim is of lower skill, he'll probably be crushed by the strat.
Just saw another pro game from an invitational. Another zerg mineral line toasted by early hellions. If this were so easy to counter, you'd think that these pros playing in invitationals would be countering it, but this never seems to be the case.
Maybe I missed it but, link to a video or replay would be nice with you telling us what time in the video this happened.
Early rush isn't the only Terran problem. Marauders need a rebalance due to overreliance and massing, not fun gameplay. Maybe a nerf in dmg and an equally large buff to stim? The player would have to choose roles between slowing debuff or additional damage until medivacs arrive on scene.
Nerfing damage but increasing the boost from stim would be a definite nerf to Terran. They don't need to be nerfed, the need buffs guys! Blizzard agrees with me:
Q. Playing StarCraft II before beta and playing StarCraft II today do you think balance between races is better? A. The race balance has improved greatly since before BlizzCon of last year and has continued to improve during the beta. Though really we don't even know yet how good the balance really is since the community has been playing for such a short time. We are currently looking at the Protoss vs. Protoss matchup as well as Terrans. Terrans are losing a little too frequently in almost every match up and the Protoss vs Protoss game is currently a little stale with a few strategies dominating both the early and the end game.
Q. What race are the developers least happy about as far as balance goes? Who needs the most work or a major change? A. Terrans are currently losing more games than they are winning at gold and platinum skill levels. We are going to be looking to address some of these issues in future patches.
Q. Are there any specific units that you are unsatisfied with that you plan on changing but have not yet changed? Which? A. We are still working on the Infestor (see today's patch) and we will continue to evaluate every unit until we ship. We have a "watch list" for units which means we are concerned about their balance and we are looking for data that will prove the unit has issues or prove that it is okay. The Roach and the Reaper are currently on our watch list.
All I have to say is that if reapers are nerfed/change in any way, Terran will need a gigantic buff to compensate. They're already the weakest race in the game and the one unit they have that people think is good is going to be nerfed. Bunkers are made of paper now, marines are as weak as workers, and a giant blob of missile turrets can't stand up to 5 mutalisks.
I'll say I didn't lie because I'm not arguing strategy anymore, but congratulations on posting developer thoughts from a month ago. There's been 2 patches since then, plus one that was released nearly the same time the developer chat was. If you think things are the same now then you really need to get yourself checked.
And Maruaders are also heavily discussed as being OP. You really need to get your facts straight, because most of the non-opinion statements you've made have been wrong.
I saw a Korean streamer tonight do an 8 rax reaper rush. He showed up and fought a zealot, and the second he killed it, a stalker popped out and killed the reaper.
This may not be a bad thing. Nerf the cheese reaper (or do something else to make it more counterable), and provide additional compensating buffs elsewhere, if needed.
The thing that makes terran viable shouldn't be cheese reapers and cheese hellions for early economic harass and rush. Terran should be viable without "gimmicks" and early unbalanced cheese. If their viability is dependent on these two forms of cheese, I say rework them.
The Terrans need the Goliath back.
Awesome epic game between 2 pros at a tournament (4 parts):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGP1-R9rugo&feature=related
Blizzard did the last thing I expected them to as far as Tech Lab units were concerned. Instead of pushing back their timing, they made it so the maruader transition is nowhere near as effective. Now zealots will actually be able to counter maruaders in the early game like their supposed to. I'm very surprised.
Marauders seemed a little much to me, as I said in the original post.
As a Protoss player I'm lovin' this new patch =] The marauder cheese had to be toned down.
I suspect incoming toss nerfs, though. Mainly Immortal damage decreased and sentry force field energy cost increased.
Protoss has been continuously nerfed every single patch. So I also expect incoming nerfs - warranted or not. Why? That's simply the way of things. Once devs start nerfing a faction, they just go "nerf happy" and tend to keep doing it until that faction is UP.
I do suspect some adjustment needs to be made to the force fields, though. I say this because I never see it countered. Whenever I never see something countered, I think one of three things: 1) there isn't a counter, 2) the counter is too difficult to pull off, or 3) nobody knows how to counter it.
I think immortals are just fine. I have never seen immortals massed a single time, in a couple hundred games I've watched. Sure, they'll be nerfed though.
I don't think collossi deserved their nerf.
Well most other damage modifiers that apply to a certain unit type like armored got nerved (and compensated with a general damage increase). the immortal is one of the few remaining units with a huge damage modifier.
the problem with protoss balance was more in late game, a sentry + colossus (or to a lesser extend) sentry + high templar was nearly unbeatable with zerg due to forcefield spam.
I think there just needs to be an ability to counter. For instance, ghost emp shockwave could pop the force shields. And maybe allow zerg units to tunnel under a force shield. Thing is, if anything, blizzard will just be lazy and either nerf the hell out of it so it is never used, or remove it from the game entirely. That's just the way devs are.
Patch 9 - Protoss just got nerfed again. So did Zerg. Terran just got buffed again.
I really don't see why immortals got nerfed. It's not like I've ever seen them massed in my life (unlike any unit in the terran army, i.e. marines, marauders, banshees, hell even thors). Like I said above, once devs in any game start nerfing a faction, something seizes up their brain and they just continue to do it over and over again in an addictive-compulsive fashion.
I tried to figure out the rationale behind the queen speed nerf. The only think I could come up with is that it was possible to micro 1 queen between the main and the natural expansion and spawn larva at both, and the speed nerf would require a 2nd queen to be built?
Any thoughts?
Also... purposefully nerfing the user interface (the way the hotkeys work while macro'ing) to make it more difficult to use, supposedly to inject more "skill" into the game? I actually find that infuriating - to the point that I won't buy the game if they keep it that way.
Do people out there really support that? Your thoughts?
Queen speed off-creep was nerfed because of some pretty bad cheese involving the use of 1 or more queens with creep tumor, a canceled hatchery, and spine crawlers.
From an interview posted on TeamLiquid, Protoss is still winning roughly 55% of the time, while Terran and Zerg are within 1-2% of even, prompting the continued Protoss nerfs. Immortals have been a topic of discussion for some time now so I wasn't surprised to see them get hit.
And I haven't seen a Protoss or Zerg who likes that you can't click building portraits anymore.
Hotkeys as a Terran is a pain.
I need a hot key for my command centers. A hot key for my Factories. A hot key for my barracks with a reactor and then another one with a tech lab and then another hot key for my starports with a tech lab and another one for starports with a reactor.
That's 7 hot keys before I even get to put hot keys for my armies which, ideally, I could have 3 or so hot keys PER group.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
