Intentionally didn't limit myself or try to cut down on the topics in this vid, wanted to cover as many angles on the patch as possible Timestamps: 0:00 What is going on? 1:10 Early Game Protoss vs Terran 5:39 Ultralisk & Motherhsip 9:20 Random Terran Changes 13:56 Ghost Nerf & Zerg vs Protoss 17:15 Blizzard & Conflict of Interest 23:10 Full Protoss Changes 32:00 Full Terran Changes 40:25 Full Zerg Changes 47:00 Quality of Life Changes 49:45 The Protoss Problem 56:53 MAPS ARE A BIG DEAL 1:01:15 The Protoss Problem Part 2 1:03:58 Is the Patch Good? 1:07:16 Summary - Too Long Didn't Watch
@@lonewolfranger "There's only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch." -Nigel Powers (Just kidding, Harstem and Lowko are good lads)
@@lonewolfranger It's completely unacceptable how those scoundrels keep beating grandmasters with stupid stuff and casually inviting world champions to play silly mods.
Yeah, I Don't know about the whole balance council composed of pros anymore. You need professional players there, of course, but there is just too much bias in it. There should be people who's monetary wellbeing is not dependant on their race staying strong but on the game being entertaining to watch. Guys like Lowko, Pig, if Winter doesn't want to be a part of a council, we can settle with only Brenda and Jimmy there. Also, It's not like protoss had a problem just in the last patch. Protoss was discussed as a weakest race for, at least, last two years. I, personally, haven't felt like Protoss was in a good spot since the double stargate ZvT. Council is only decisive when there is something they can confidently nerf in Toss, when its time to give back they buff things that they know, won't change balance in any meaningful way like Tempest being a able to turn faster or upgrades 10 seconds less. Judging their decisions, I believe the only reason they left energy overcharge in, is because they know its, at least, not a buff. On the other hand, they are happy to unleash madness like their cyclones and, in general, experiment with terran, unlike protoss (or zerg, for that matter), they always compensate. I believe, the only reason this absurd depo ability was left in the game is because of the ghost nerf. Compensation. Now, having said all that. Did you know, zealot rush used to have +8 WHOLE damage on impact? It did. It was removed by blizzard. Straight up. No halving, just removed. Imagine a marine loosing combat shield one day. Bring it back. Just halve it and bring it back. We already had it and we were like 2x stronger back then, Serral won anyway. Just cure Zealot's arthritis.
Lowko is zerg biased and so is winter. Zerg has been the winning race by% since the game came out but somehow needs buffs vs Terran their best match up
They should make a system where people post suggestions and feedback and the most liked are shown at top. If the likes are tied, then the one with more dislikes go below it. And if they're still tied, then first come first serve. This is if they don't want to get overwhelmed by suggestions and feedback.
It wasn't even really +8 damage the Zealots had... it was just a guarantee that the Zealot would hit when it was using its charge ability and the enemy units were kiting back.
My thought on the balance patch?... They couldn't balance a perfectly flat board on a perfectly flat floor. It would still come out crooked and out of wack...
@@chloesmith4065as a zerg: its a sad reality. I always root for Toss in PvT, cause they always get nerfed and never compensated for that and Terran is as versatile as all races combined with 100 spammable „tech-spells“ Path of Exile 2 in 8 days is the only thing keeping me sane right now. Too much rage inside thanks to the Balance Council again
i was thinking perhaps a Guardian sheild can block 1 emp and then be destroyed? so there can actually be abit more usefullness between the interaction? so bring 4-5 sentries and activate the shield push forward, either terran can throw 4-5 emps to destroy it and then go for the engage. other alternative could be slower proejctile speed.. I mean i prefer that one, but additionally i imagine its really difficult to split everything up for toss with disruptors/hts all clumping up and being very clumsy to controll for splits.. Not really sure
+1 for the idea of moving EMP to the Raven. I have advocated for this change a lot personally. You can mess with the timings of putting it behind Armory or making it an upgrade if needed if there is a timing problem. It makes Terran have to make decisions on what they want producing from their Starport and have to weigh in the effectiveness of EMP vs having medivac/banshee production. It makes late game micro involve more than one unit. I feel like the only reason it hasn't been done is the ego trip of admitting that the Science Vessel is actually well designed and that they just want SC2 to be different from Brood War.
im just a spectator but to me it feels so crazy how versatile terran units look. like the medivac being a dropship AND provides healing imagine if warp prism was able to also be a mobile shield battery. or how zerg has to make corruptors to have anti air but cant shoot down but vikings can just swap to be able to fight ground units when theres nothing left to shoot at in the air.
@@yamine_Q_ray I agree but I don't think the prism is a good example, it is one of the best units on the protoss roster: it may not heal but it does act like a mobile spawn point which is a pretty big skill.
It’s so obvious that the Balance Council just picks little things and little things at random to change in Zerg and Protoss to be able to say: yeah we buffed them, despite the changes being useless in 99/100 games. Meanwhile Terran gets as little nerf as possible as always since 2010
terran pros in the council did a genius move. They were already the best race, but some zerg players were able to win against them , so they buffed protoss, but it was only a good buff against zerg. So good actually that the good zerg player may be knocked out of tournments by weaker protoss, and then the terrans can win against the protoss remaining.
@@rsanghi24 Since balance council terran incremented how much they win (+10% earning in prize in 2023, an additional +8% in 2024 reaching a 48% of the total prize pools earnings). Since council toss winrate vs zerg improved but vs terran plummeted HARD. All toss have been eliminated always by terran in the last 2 years. They straight admit in this patch that tvZ is screwed for zerg but still give nothing to compensate, just a"we will watch". (you can read it at 19:15) Terran won world yet they got overall buffed (Average of 2 medium buffs for every small nerf) Meanwhile the shark infestor that was pulled successfully only by Serral was instantly nerfed. (even considering the shark too strong it still show a clear and unhealthy bias approach for the fairness of competitive) Community full outrage to get a ghost nerf, kneejerk reaction with 4 nerfs to zerg. Then there is how terran has been 5/8 to 7/8 in top 8 of the last ear tournaments which isn't a good sign for good balance work. There is believing in mental gymnastics and just watching the facts. The facts scream that the council is overly terran biased and it's at a point that is bad for the sake of the competitive scene. This is straight rigging the odds in terran favour. I'm all for good tournaments and different races winning and this is not the way.
@@LorisEnsatzuken Main issue for me is that most matdch ups, and especially TvZ is that they are just repetetive. If you have seen 1 modern TvZ, you have seen all of them. If you have seen 1 modern TvP, you have seen all of them. If you have seen 1 modern ZvP, you have seen all of them. The games are just samt strategy. Beeing greedy, for 5-6 minutes, while both sit at their respective side. Both get a maxed army. And then they might eventually interact with each other. Since one got an advantage in the start due to some microscopic interactions in the first 5-6 minutes. The other is slowly dieing for 20 minutes while 1 sits at 10k/10k bank (but doesnt dare attack). And then the game ends. Strategy is largely removed from SC2, now it is mostly just mechanics. A game like SCBW have way more depth in strategy.
I want to make blankets for the ultralisks, they must be cold this winter since no one sells blankets or clothes big enough for them. Maybe someone else can work on some hot chocolate for them too.
They are squishy, if you can catch them, the problem is the Medivac that give a "out of jail free card" any Bio units. Maybe increase the carry supply of Ghost to 4, so a Medivac can only save 2 instead of 4 Ghost.
@@tigera6 the pajamas they are wearing are tougher than marine's power armor. They aren't even categorized as light or heavy so there's not even a unit to counter hit them. they are tougher than high templars and infestors.
thanks for putting out this video, as a diamond tier 3 protoss player, losing the battery shield overcharge makes it really difficult for early defence if i want to expand quickly, especially to terran, now there are more early aggression like mass reapers and terran two base all in, very difficult to defend. enercy overcharge is very weak and limited, when being attacked, i am already busy and i have to overcharge my unit for example, high templars are small, and then storm them, it's APM intensive, and enemy can focus attack my unit that has been overcharged, rendering it useless. the only way to make it usable is to remove overcharge cooldown, so i can overcharge multiple batteries and units, and i think that's fair.
In this situation it might be fair, but not so much in ZvP, considering you could just pop out 3 high templars carrying 6 storms or just fill the energy bar of oracles and kill both the army, tumors in the early game, overall helping you win a matchup already not the hardest for Protoss in the late game.
I'm masters level toss and never once used overcharge lol . Energy buff is a great addition. Oracle's go all day . What's currently broken is cyclones . Infinite damage
1:00:33 i feel like there hasn't been enough talk about balancing races versus balancing maps. Good to hear this brought up again. Also, would love more transparency on who makes up the balance council
I have mixed opinions on this. On one hand, balancing via maps could be a vary powerful tool. On the other hand the more you rely on maps to balance the game, the more homogenized the maps have to be, because any deviation will heavily affect balance. The fact that even now almost every sc2 map is so similar is one of my least favorite parts about it as a spectator. I generally think sc2 is a more fun game to watch but broodwar has a HUGE advantage when it comes to interesting maps. I don't even differentiate between sc2 maps as a spectator, the tiny little details matter a lot to the players when doing timings that need to be perfect down to the second, but as someone watching they have 0 distinct gameplay features and have almost no impact on the larger scope of the game that I'm seeing as a spectator.
Remember when you could upgrade High templars to have extra energy and do 2 dmge per energy on feedback. That was great, it was easier to help against medivac drops etc
Feedback nerf needs to be reverted. And thors/bc need energy again. Lol. It should oneshot ghost and medivacs. It won't matter anyway cuz you still get emp'd or sniped.
Seeing that community council comment for the ghost just tells me there are a bunch of children in the council Council members and their individual votes should be made public. There should also be a way for the community to vote members in or out, so the the "community" part of their name actually makes sense
Thanks for coming at these patches from a viewer perspective. I watch the game much more than I play it at this point. I'm far more interested, as a fan, of the idea of seeing more Protoss in finals or even (*gasp*) winning a tournament than I am with any particular play balance. "Balance" to me means I don't know exactly how the game is going to start on either side and I don't know who is going to win. I'm terrified of PvZ being even more formulaic from these changes - Protoss opening with Oracles even more often and fewer aggressive zerg openers that work. In TvP, I just don't see Protoss having more interesting attacks or tactics they can now do. The biggest change seems to be that they can now.... scout better. Maybe that will result in more options for them, but I'm not seeing it right noe.
As a casual viewer, I appreciate it too, especially since he was casting some games on the new patch, and I could actually SEE the effect that the Ghost nerf had. The fact that Terran had to choose between 10 more Ghosts or an extra Medivac full of marines instead of just being able to have their cake and eat it too is HUGE! It could be the difference between a stronger army or shutting down an expansion instead of being able to do both.
Radical idea - hear me out. Switch Gateway and Warp Gates effective build times, strategically. That is, buff the Protoss core units by a LOT, and then add a bit more cooldown on the Warp Gates so that warping in units across the field is a significant cost. Warp Gate cooldown from a Zealot is 20, right? Make that the Gateway cooldown and increase the Warp Gate cooldown from a Zealot warp in be, like 36 seconds - way more than the standard Gateway cooldown. That way, you can remax very quickly anywhere on the map, but it's going to HURT your intermediate spawn rate after it. The concept here is to replace Protoss' default warping in Warp Gate spawn with just regular Gateway production. This preserves the normal defender's advantage and fairly normal production mechanics, even for Protoss. Easier to balance. Can have basic units be good. BUT Once the Protoss is maxxed, they can change the Gateways to Warp Gates to sacrifice intermediate spawn rates with faster reinforcement. The immediate reinforcements are almost instant, but your throughput gets massively cut in the intermediate term. Alternately, Protoss can still rely on Air Units or Robo units as main army components, and reserve the Warp Gates for instant reinforcements - also a good concept. More like a variation on Nydus Worms than a problematic mechanic that makes balancing difficult. I would like to see Protoss players changing their Gateways to Warp Gates and back again, and for that to be a significant thing that Terrans and Zerg would want to track.
Great idea. The Gateway and Warp gate transition would be able to communicate what protoss is planning to viewers and also, massive transition in late game will be epic to watch.
@@alzzaMain Right? I'm thinking that in the midgame, Protoss could have maybe 2-4 Warp Gates to preserve the ability to warp in small numbers of troops all over the map, but they can't just reinforce all their supply in that location, without twice as many Warp Gates as they currently need. In the late game, Protoss can aggressively remax with core units in a massive attack wave, but if the enemy survives the onslaught, they have a chance for a devastating swingback as all the Toss Warp Gates will be on cooldown for half a minute or more.
I've been watching brood war lately and it's so satisfying that the zealots are these mighty warriors - a balance decision that is only possible because they can't instantly have an army of them anywhere on the map.
@@EllipticalReasoning Even with this proposed concept, the fact that you can transition all your Gateways to Warp Gates in the late game gives Protoss a powerful "Oversupply" mechanic, similar to Zerg stockpiling Larva. So we can't have Zealots being as powerful as they are in Brood War. Unless, we lock away that power in a Tier 3 upgrade for the Zealot specifically. Hard Shields or something. Something that makes them super tough can make them a match for Adrenalings, and also makes them a powerful instant reinforce option. At the same time, boosting their toughness rather than their offense mitigates the problems posed by Warp Gate mechanics. That is, if the Zealots aren't dying too much, then being able to warp in more of them instantly isn't as powerful of a mechanic. That will make them tanks rather than potent damage dealers.
@@lawrencecelestino3444 You're right 😄 I was talking about the potential of your proposal in spectating. It could balance the power between two modes and mitigate gateway units' instability for every stages of a game.
It needs to be a streamer for sure. Everyone knows where Pig's heart is. This is the perfect idea. People will trust Pig, and Pig would be great at explaining the current thoughts and get the right people around the table to discuss the why's and how's out in the open.
PiGs take on Protoss dominating ladder and being over 50% of GM, but still buffing them for pro play is awful though. He just wants to ignore the way buffing Protoss will further the issue of them being a pubstomp all the way into GM because "the game is designed around Protoss being simple and I'm tired of that as an excuse not to buff them for pro". He wants to ignore the 95% of the player base so we can see some Protoss win tournaments. Almost like casting variety games is his job or something. Ohhh... Wait...
Protoss rank % is the result of lower skill ceiling and high efficiency until it reaches a cap limit. Each races have been designed with different priority to maintain their characteristics other than just fair otherwise we just need to play 3 races that similar to each other. If you feel your skill is justified to be higher if you play other races then switch. Serial or Clem or whoever top players are obviously outlier.
@@Sketchy-- You can buff the protoss for the pros without being a pub stomp. Actually buff their abilities to matter while stop making them a hyperfocused specialist army where they die against a single tech switch. Maybe if they actually had a generalist unit they could stop going for cheeses on the ladder for every single win and actually play a macro game that people want to play and see.
I feel like they don’t even try to hide their Terran bias, like why so begrudgingly nerf the ghost? It clear they have needed a nerf for like a decade now lol
We need you (Winter) Pig, and Lowko on that balance council with authority to make the big decisions. Get ALL the pros out of there and you three take over. Done ✅
We can all petition blizzard to allow these changes and the three of you can create a new shared RUclips Channel to have more transparency/contact with the community and also split the revenue to make it worth your while-there’s plenty of people who would watch/support (on patreon or similar) including myself the three of you leading changes on a new balance council. Make it happen-reach out to Blizzard! You, Pig, and Lowko
@@tytar1037 winter and pig play all three races pretty equally these days (Lowko is the only main Zerg) but despite that the most unbiased and with the most consistent contact with the community. It would be the perfect trio to lead this PLUS since it’s three people (not just 1) no one person would have to take all the heat
Yeah i dont understand why high templars feedback was nerfed to useless, it was fun to counter enrmy units, even battlecruisers. And ghosts has a direct counter..
Because back when the nerf was made, the Templar vs Ghost dynamic was 95% chance that a Ghost died and 5% that an EMP hit something. It also obliterated Medivacs, making it a worse than Ghosts are considered today, as they countered everything and there was no counterplay to them.
@@AlexanderVoroncov Nah. It's closer to 80% tops. And that's with the current crop of Protoss players, which is... Not something I respect much in the first place. Maybe if they figured out multi-pronged attacks and controlling Templars again, things would be great.
It seems to me that making emp a dot effect , like the psi storm, would be reasonable. You do not see psi storm do all of its dmg upfront, i do not see why emp does, especially since emp does dmg to shields in addition to draining energy and revealing units.
@@paulhamtorlia3039 They've specifically said that they are trying to balance around pro play AND ladder, which is why it's so hard. Toss is over represented on the ladder, particularly in GM, but under represented at the top of tournaments, because once it's no longer a best of 1, Protoss struggles.
People forgot that this comment section function akin to an echo chamber and not effectively represent the entire dataset of the game. Yes, you can draw samples from it. But just because you speak up doesn’t mean you have more right that the player base with people that don’t comment here, or Lowko, or Pigs etc. I am just stating statistic fact. Your voice matter but consideration for you is the same for the people who didn’t bother talking. You can say reasonable things but that doesn’t make you correct. Anyone can have a reason for something and they can be reasonable but that doesn’t mean it’s right. It’s a correlation and but not the same. The difference in race distribution in ladder does not reflect the game as a whole and the distribution about the about of Terran op or Zerg op also doesn’t represent the game as a whole especially for RUclips comment section (or Reddit or Blizzard forum etc they are sampling bias which you can use data but you have to be aware of its nature) since so many people just watch instead. So the quality output is uneven. What is the goal of the balance system and what is the weight distribution of each choice (criteria and complaints). All improvements take time and experiments. In the end, it’s just the game, it does not worth losing your temper over it. It’s weird seeing people losing their shieeet over a big change in just a few days and think that will be their final opinion and final outcome. The resource for changing and balancing this game is limited. At least someone still care to try and fix this. No hate for anyone but a lot of people said they want nothing to do with council balancing and complain about it anyway. It means they don’t care enough to give more input on direct level and like to make contents around it. Not saying they don’t care but they don’t care as much as a lot of people think they are. Human function is based on their own priority list, it’s just being part of the counsel doesn’t appeal to them and it’s ok. If you look at players distribution, Terran is the most popular race. Meaning pissing a ton of Terran that don’t voice their comments here may give more harm that pissing people comment here. It’s the nature of risk based decision.
If the new energy recharge ability has a global cooldown and can only be used on one unit… Why is there a Terran ability, that collects intel for free on a huge scale, which can’t be countered WITH no cooldown on it?
I feel like everything from orbital command should be like a 60-second cool down. Including mule and especially scan. Infinite vision without having to work for it is one of the biggest advantages Terran has in the late game
LOL! Wtf am I reading?? Do you know that SCV produce way slower than other races workers?? Each scan, unless it's pass minute 12, it's so expensive and it hurts the terran economy so badly.. I guess the only case where it's "free" it's in late game when the terran gets a lot of CCs.. Still, as a protoss, you could have 2 obs in the entrance of the terran bases since minute 3 and also zerg has it's overlord.. WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?? We us a flying invisible unit that doesn't deal damage and we can spread them across the map just like Protoss or Zerg.. What a stupid statement.. Why don't you play Terran then if they are so broken?
My idea for some GvP (ghost v protoss) changes coming from a LONG time viewer and not a player cuz i suck at RTS games 1. EMP make it an actual throwable GRENADE like ability where you can see the Ghost prime and Throw and the grenade doesnt IMMEDIATELY EXPLODE on impact and it can sit on the ground VISIBLE for you to move your units away like a real grenade. 1.5. OR give the emp time charges you can set on the spell cast bar so if you want a strong emp it takes longer to explode but it takes MORE shield and energy away and the radius is bigger, or a quick instant that takes less shields and energy but smaller radius explosion. 2. Make emp take the same amount of energy but take HALF that amount of shields. 2.5. And make emps a debuff effect that is not stackable against shields specifically so you dont just go 4 emps half Hp go bye bye against a 100 supply army for 12 supply but can still take away energy from templars and such 3. Give the ghost longer range for their AA but have to walk up to throw emps at closer range, making them a double edge sword to be charged by Zealots or get clipped by disruptors or stand back and deal actual SNIPING type damage 4. I dont understand how a race like the Protoss dont have ANY counters to Terran emps. like they should have developed some sort of technology by now to be able to regen faster or dampen its ability by any capacity other than just waving a white flag. Give them a upgrade to reduce emps effects (like gain +1 shield armor against spells) so any aoe spell will do less damage to shields in general. 4.5. Or not have EMP also take away cloaking as well. Terran already have Scans they just spam out against motherships to counter cloaking so why should EMPs also take away a psionic cloaking ability? Give them a consequence if they run out of scan energy (like that would ever happen anyways) like at least let the DTs and Observer have chance of running away or kill the ghost 5. Give the terran players the Shotgun unit from the single player campaign with explosive belts like the reaper grenades but bigger more fun explosions more to counter light unit swarms like zealots and zerglings to give the terrain another flesh unit so its not just MMMG spam late game so we can nerf ghosts and spread out units who can drop nukes to give army comps variety for TVP and TVZ. Giving the Terrans more late game choices means not always defaulting to Ghosts for literally everything Take everything here with a grain of salt, i know probably ALL of them suck ass cuz i dont play the game, but its just some sort of ideas to have a conversation about or spark some new epiphany amongst any of the few who actual read the whole comment. I do appreciate everyone who took the time to read this
19:55 It would be so awesome to have a great creator like PiG actively discussing the balance changes through his channel and then pushing them forward!
I think it just needs to be nerfed by having layers within its "splash attack" like a siege tank: x1/x0.5/x/1/4 "damage" and to the duration of decloaking units. Energy and shields are combined "hit points" to the EMP. Example: Instead of a high templar losing 40 shields and 100 energy from a direct EMP strike, it would instead loses 40 shields and 60 energy. Plasma shield upgrades should also reduce the damage of EMP as stronger plasma shields should mean more EMP needed. I believe Plasma Shield Upgrade should be separated into two upgrades. Ground Shields(more expensive than the other as it affects structures too) and Plasma Air Shield(put in Cybernetics Core).
5:08 as of late, i have changed my mind about maxpax and the bogus-nonsence that he is just dark on another computer... as you can change the race you play, but you can't change who you are, the playstile of maxpax is 100% proof that it was rogue on another computer all along! edit: 43:48 "oh, hi honey! did you just finish your 'muscular swell' upgrade or are you just happy to see me?"
this balance counsel kinda sucks, at least pig cares about the health and viewerbase of the game while not having personal interest in pushing his own race forward for prize money reasons. this balance counsel says nerf camping as an excuse to get rid of overcharge and then give a defensive wall tool to orbital. and what the fuck are these map pools? i play both zerg and toss and cannot fathom these choices. void ray isn't a unit anymore, collosus sucks, adepts have no purpose post 6 min. oracle vs zerg is mandatory opening, blink opening vs terran mandatory. they have no concept of what makes the game fun and just think that making mothership an actual unit makes up for every game on ladder as toss being holding early pressure and then getting called shit for not doing anything unique, meanwhile there's like 2 viable build orders and everything else is shit if you're not maxpax
@@simplysmiley4670 it's for both. comp scene doesn't make money without a viewerbase, and playerbase dwindles without a comp scene. you're trying to patch the game towards a balance that's both fun to play and watch.
@@benk9773 And it has to be shaken up to be fun to watch, without overdoing it on the nerfs side so there is some fun in playing. Wish adepts and reapers for example weren't a meme after 5 minutes of a match playing. But oh well, wishful thinking.
I’m getting into this game recently and your words seem to be true. Protoss seem to have the short end of the stick. How is there no portable shield recharger?
They literally fixed a bug for the Broodlords, then unfix it after realizing the Broodlords is actually good and could back in a straight up engagement vs Thors. Obviously, we can't ever have Terran losing on equal value army, so of course they revert back the fix. Not to mention there's also a stealth "bug" that increased the attack speed of Cyclones. Granting around +25% damage.
They spent literally over a year making changes to mech so it would be more viable. Only to revert half the changes. That was a major "theme" of one of their "balance" patches. Skytoss is a thing at the lower ranks of the ladder, zerg is literally more codependent on queens than Jimmy is on Winter, Protoss gets dumpstered so hard in PvT that there are literally pro Terrans with a losing record against all races except Protoss (including mirrors), but theyre investing time into.....making the thor better? The orbital more useful? The cyclone more viable? What a clown show. An inexcusable clown show. I dont care if the balance council isnt getting paid, its a couple meetings a month to literally determine how easy or hard it is for them to win prize money. Literally every athlete in every sport would take that trade. Obviously Blizzard is to blame the most, but the balance council isnt oblivious. Theres no way. Especially when guys like Mana are commenting on how Terran favored the ESL "head" for the council appeared to be.
They could change broodlings' duration to losing health over time so broodlings' total damage would be punished if they aren't supported by other units or/and the defenders can limit their damage. Then they can balance the broodlord and broodlings from there. This can be applied to locusts. As for the cyclone. Lock-on should just be a passive that allows the cyclone attack while moving but without the attack speed bonus. And has to load up ammo like the Reaver but free and automated but slow to reload each ammo. Each missile just deals damage with no bonus, is weak by itself but together with other missiles in successful rapid fire deals great burst DPS but terrible full DPS. Cyclone would go 1 range closer than their actual range to be able to fire on the move. The downside is that they would be fragile and slow. They're meant to be versatile fire support. Have 8 range(or 9 depending if they can shoot at ground targets behind thors) to support behind marauders while chasing targets. Prioritizes air units. As for the Thor, I feel it's too sluggish , bulky and can't fly without extra micro with a medivac to chase light air units with its missiles that it should just be removed and liberator should be the new anti light air with bonus damage vs light.
What I'd love to see: 1.) Protoss: keep shield battery overcharge and include energy overcharge. Share a cooldown. Force the decision to do either or have a trade-off: advanced scouting/early game aggression vs defending better against all-in timings. 2.) Terran: Make EMP be on Ravens now. Ghost is just TOO versatile with its hard counters to so many things late game. 3.) Zerg: Create another hydralisk evolution that specializes in anti-air (i.e you can morph a Hydra into a lurker or this new unit). Let's call it a javalisk. It can hit BOTH air and ground, but does more damage to flying units. Also longer range to air than a standard hydra. Also slower attack speed so you're trading off hydra DPS to invest in the AA. Still requires hive tech. This helps not having to build too may corruptors to deal with an ms late game and a few tempests and then having nothing to stop the toss ground army. Similarly mass liberators against terran. OR, give swarm hosts the ability to produce either ground attacking OR an air attacking locusts in a single volley (not both). Allows SHs to be anti-air now when needed (i.e. divebomb a mothership with aa, without corrupter investment or having a unit that just dies immediately to storms as a counter).
I don't know about the zerg buffs - 'we have to build mass corruptors' is one of the most pathetic complaints I've ever heard, that your weakness is having a unit that just beats every otherwise-viable air army in the game, even at lower cost and supply.
@@EllipticalReasoningthis is mostly to address the new mothership buffs. If you've been watching a lot of the new casts, making a new MS forces out tons of Corruptors for Zerg to deal with it (remember, it can't be abducted in the new patch), which can no longer support your army once it's dead. But if you don't overbuild them, they just die immediately to storms+stalkers. And Zerg doesn't really have any other AA. Sure, Corruptors can upgrade to broodlords, but that's assuming the protoss death ball ever gives you the time to build up the resources for them (they won't). It just isn't viable.
@@KraftMacNCheesier Hm, that makes some sense. It seems like a dedicated anti-air specialist hydra evolution would have the same problem, though - maybe buff the range of corruptors and reduce their durability slightly, to give them kind of a viking-like ability to pressure from range, or increase hydra range more against air units?
It's incredible that this part gets so little attention. This is a huge fucking nerf, and it's not intended, and yet it's only mentioned in passing. Remember how huge the range bug discussion on the Colossus was? I agree that P needs the most love atm, but still, damn. Broods are weak af at the moment, and there's a vig bug that nerfs their damage, and nobody even cares.
@@antearesgamer Sure... but relying on the same few units for every stage of every game is not satisfying or particularly interesting. An example in this context: We see ling-bling roll into production lines so often that it barely even rates a mention anymore, other than an observation that another bunch of workers have been lost.
Extra Supplies should prevent Supply Depots from being lowered. That way there's a downside (other than spending energy on that in lieu of a Mule or a Scan) to using it to heal your wall: that wall off becomes a lot more restrictive.
17:00 I don't think it's fair to blame them for how long it took. It's not their day job to balance the game, so not spending as much time on it is normal... but that's all I have to say in their defense. It's ridiculous how stupidly terran biased these patches are. Like wtf is this? Keep a BUG on brood lord just because it might make zerg somewhat competitive?
@@chloesmith4065 It wouldn't have mattered with how obviously passive aggressive that wording was on the Ghost nerf. They CLEARLY didn't want to, but felt obliged to.
@@justnuke7109 Two years ago (around the last time I watched casts), professional Protoss players still struggled with techniques Terrans had to learn 12 years ago and zergs had to learn like 8 years ago. And when I mean "had to", I genuinely mean had to; Without it, they would just no longer stay competetive. Have they fixed that yet, or are you just demanding that Protoss should be able to win tournaments without ever learning the basics of the game?
lol, as it was so easy to snipe all zerg units when you have a thousand enemy units on screen charging at you.. And snipe is interrupted if the ghosts receives damage lol as a Master 3 player, I hate the ghosts cuz they are expensive as shit, and trying to snipe shit is way too difficult and takes a lot of APM.. It's funny reading protoss complaining about protoss being more APM intensely when the only thing they have to do now is just survive early game to A move at minute 12 lol.. Now with the cyclone bug we can finally just A move and have an easy time as protoss and zerg, but of course, that is "BUGGED" and "broken" lol
@@estebancantero4751 "so easy to snipe all zerg units when you have a thousand enemy units on screen charging at you" ... Rapid fire hot-keying exists.
I'd love to see them both tied to the same global cooldown. Gives the toss more utility (like the Terran), but forces them to make decisions with trade-offs. Want early energy to have an oracle try to murder drones at maximum potential or a sentry to keep tabs on early Terran direction? Great, but better be ready to micro hard or make sure you scouted well enough to have the right counter when the army goes to hit if your shield battery overcharge is still on cooldown.
If anyone was curious and doesn't want to do the math, Disruptor nova is now a 19% larger area. The area before was 5.94 units² the area now is 7.07 units².
The thing about Blink is that it is kind of like the Protoss equivalent of Marine-Medivac, in that it is versatile hits air and ground and has huge micro potential. But Marine Medivac has all these other units you can add to it that also synergize. Blink Stalkers are one unit, and the second you add something else the mobility is gone. Protoss support is glacially slow Sentries and Templars, whereas Zealots and Archons are basically disposable munitions who always die when they engage. Colossi and Disruptors are kind of like Siege Tanks but just worse. The Immortal is good.
The difference though, is that Blink only feels like Marine-Medivac at the highest levels when they have the skill and APM to pull it off. For the average ladder player though, Stalkers are infinitely worse than Marine-Medivac, if for no other reason that healing is a thing. You can afford to make some mistakes with Marine-Medivac, but the same can't really be said with Blink Stalkers. 1 particularly bad blink, and you could be dead.
Maybe an extra +1 armor should be added onto charge to help with early bio pushes? It's one of the most conservative buffs I can think of for a race that's quite strong later on.
That feels scary for early game Zerg, all their best tools to counter runbys (queens, kings and lisks) are high ROF, low damage, getting a free +1 armour could make them really hard to deal with.
@MrSpleenface They still won't be doing much damage at all to Ultralisks, and mixing in a few banes always helps when so few players actually bother splitting a unit that dives into the enemy at the first chance.
My solution is simple but efficient. Add a fourth race that is absolutely terrible. Then, Protoss feel less bad because they know there is someone beneath them.
Ghosts are hard to use? INFESTORS ARE HARD TO USE!! They dont have auto attack preventing them from walking into enemy range. They have armored tag. They dont murder light units. They dont hard couter every spellcaster. Ghosts are dirt cheap easy to use. You dont even need a separate control group for them. Which outher caster uses rapid fire spam to great success? Yeah, gosts so hard.
They don't need to burrow, they are invisible lol 🤣 And they counters vision by snapshot, they counter any casters by emp, they counters any Zerg unit by snapshots except links bains, but those are counters automatically by tanks, mines, liberators that don't need any control. So stop your bla bla bla
@art_of_joice4336 but casters can also counter them wtf you talking about? If I click emp faster than someone with his fat fingers it's not because ghost is OP
I’ve watched so many TvP casts since these patches came out. I don’t think I’ve seen more than two immortals in any of those games (or enough to actually say, hey look mass immortal). The theme of TvX now is X just in general, must beat Terran in early all-in or pray to survive mid game (near impossible). On the flip side, ZvP has seemed to seesaw - meaning one mistake doesn’t snowball and tends to get into later game short of all-ins. It feels more like a chess match, a game of building advantages. Watching a Clem maxpax game, the loss of a handful of Protoss units is practically a gg. The loss of two tanks due to sim city failure is a gg, just boring to watch beyond the micro.
I mean that's pretty much pro play in general. I wouldn't understand half of what's going on, especially in the middle of huge fights, without Winter's cast, let alone how he can tell what the build is just from the looks of things. So if you aren't watching for the insane micro and efficient macro, then what are you watching for?
@ what I mean is that the entire game is about that early micro. Whoever wins that just wins. It’s a distinctive lack of strategy, which by definition includes foresight and is about building small advantages. TvP right now is very vanilla. MaxPax strategy vs Clem is to build 4 total units. One adept, probes, a warp prism, and Stalkers for the majority of the game. And the higher that number goes, the lower his chances are of winning. 😂
@@adrenaline98 I mean it's natural for the early micro and macro to matter. If you do a push or all-in early, your economy suffers. If they survive with a bigger economy they will of course have the advantage. So the strategy comes in terms of scouting, knowing your opponent's tendencies, etc. If you don't see a cheese, you are likely to die to it. If you scout it late, you have to fight through it. If you scout it early, they are massively behind. That's just the nature of things unless both players just macro it out with minimal fighting early.
@ that’s what is supposed to happen. Early micro/macro wins are supposed to give you an advantage, and the opponent needs to strategize and execute to recover from early mistakes. My point is the early Protoss mistakes in TvP just ends the game at the very top.
How about this? Protoss shield upgrade (from Forge) should give them EMP resistance, Level 1 gives +1 shield armor + 30% emp resistance, +2/40% emp resistance at level 2 and +3/50% emp resistance at level 3. This would give players incentive to upgrade shields even in TvP. With this you can still remove zealot shields with 1 EMP but it will require multiple for other units that have higher shields
30:23 How about if Gateway units were buffed overall, and then when warped in by a Warp Gate, they start with for example -50% shield? That could potentially solve the issue that you are addressing.
Dude thats why I always said. It is so obvious this game gets "balanced" by Terrans and some Protoss. But definitly not Zerg players. I mean to be fair, Terrans got nerfs this time as well, but overall it feels bad.
@@Falorikthan the Protoss don’t have a say. And they don’t have. Probably outnumbered by cringe grandmaster terrans that find snipe to be too weak. I can’t
So it can more reliably push units aside? They made it smaller so that it could be more maneuverable, but now that it can push things aside, it doesn't need to be as maneuverable.
Thanks for your videos Winter, completely agree with all of your Protoss discussion. The horribly terra-favoured balance council have been killing what could be such a great game. If everyone with any knowledge of sc2 knows how utterly, utterly 1 sided early game tvp is in favour of terran why has the balance council utterly failed at their most basic of tasks - which is give some buff to protoss to give them any chance at all at surviving the first few minutes of the game vs terran. Any, any sort of early game aggression against protoss and they crumple like paper and, discontent with the already band-aid solution of them needing shield overcharge to give protoss any hope of surviving with the stupid imbalance, they in their infinite wisdom have removed even that. Oh but you can use an earlier hallucinated phoenix to see the army coming to crush you. I play a ton of competitive multiplayer games and I've never seen such an egregious imbalance in a mainstream popular multiplayer game as what terran vs protoss has been over the last few years, at least one that i think is so blindly obvious and feels so awful to play with. Today competitive matches between the 2 are a joke, you know the result as soon as you see the matchup, unless its literally 1 guy in the entire world who dedicates his time to using 1 - that is ONE strategy: blink micro that has a hope in the matchup. It's very sad, because the game itself, the engine and everything is outstanding and a dream to play, but play a few matches and you realise what a broken mess it is. The protoss players sadly give up and go play other things, viewership/interest/players go down, so the terran chucklers can continue to not have to play a game and take their win. Balance council, take some pride in the game you supposedly love and truly try to balance early pvt. Maybe (shock horror), nerf something of terran or give protoss outright buffs. Then you'll be able to take satisfaction out of a terran win other than what is currently 'yea but a 5 year old can win so why would you be proud of that?'.
13:00 about the depo buff: It's 100% correct to buff HP on a building that has more money/energy invested in it. Like with any other upgradeable Building: CC->PF. Hatch->Lair ->Hive. Spire->Greater Spire., etc.
Heavily nerf Warp gate cooldowns but not the normalgateway timers, then you can buff protoss gateway units. Make Zealots faster and tankier. Give protoss a way to slowly heal units. Maybe just an aura around a nexus or something
(Okay, this turned out really long. But I'd REALLY appreciate you reading it and sharing your thoughts.) I've never cared much for RTS games and I've only interacted with SC2 as a spectator (really like your videos and personality!), but it's interesting to see the clash in viewpoints from pro players who never make mistakes and never die to early cheese compared to Joey Bag-o-Doughnuts on the ladder who exclusively moves his army with the F2 key. It can seem easy to say "there are too many Ghosts so we should nerf Ghosts" but if you don't address the underlying problem then there'll just be a new poster boy for Terran supremacy. Here's a fairly famous anecdote from a fighting game called Killer Instinct, released in 2013. Every character had a power-up mode called Instinct that could be activated once per game which would give the character a unique buff. The protagonist character Jago (fireball, uppercut, simple attacks, etc.) had an Instinct mode that let him heal enormous amounts of life, and it wasn't uncommon for him to recover 30-50% of his life bar if he could get an opening, activate Instinct, and do a normal combo. People recognized him as a top tier character and wanted him nerfed, because they thought the healing was too strong. Instead, the devs took a more nuanced approach and examined why Jago was so good. Turns out, he was strong up close, comfortable far away, and if he was ever an an awkward middle distance then he could just do his safe special move Wind Kick and instantly advance into his opponent's face, where he was good again. So the devs nerfed Wind Kick. People were furious, but after a bit of time things settled out and people began finding Jago more manageable, and he dropped a bit in tier lists. The underlying problem was that Jago was never at a disadvantage anywhere on the screen, and that was what needed changing. I think the underlying issue with the Ghost is that it's too easy for Terran to assemble a unit composition that does everything, and then devote spare resources/APM to teching up behind it. You fill two medivacs with marines, and they can be anywhere on the map in under 15 seconds, threaten to doom drop into your opponent's mineral line, ignore any kind of terrain, abuse the pick-up mechanics to dodge projectiles, and escape with Afterburner even when they get caught out of position. What does a melee race like Zerg do to counter this? Build banelings and set up a burrow trap? Build two queens and two spore crawler at every hatchery? I think nerfing the medivac, or making some kind of change to drop ship units (medivac, warp prism, overlords/nydus) such that terrain and map navigation becomes more of a factor could help make the actual unit composition of your army more relevant. Past a certain point in the game, reapers are totally inferior to marines, and I think that's a shame. If dropships travelled more slowly the more units they had, or if there were limits on how quickly you could pick up units and retreat from unfavorable fights, then there might be a reason to mass produce something that is worse at combat but more self-sustainable (the reaper) compared to something that's better at combat but requires another unit to help it move around (marines/marauders). It seems to me that building a unit composition is a core part of RTS games, and it's too easy for Terran to mash their face against the keyboard and get a unit composition that can stand up to everything their opponents have. Perhaps the reason why Terrans find it so easy to camp is because their opponents need to worry about a phantom dropship and 8 stimmed marines melting their mineral lines at every point in the game.
As a Shield battery buff. What if they can drop hardened Shields on an area of units, global cool down. When defending against hard counters like tanks, Protoss will be able to use a one minute buff on a squad of assassin's every minute, offering a defensive choice, a small squad that cyclones and marines can fight but the siege tank is more vulnerable to. And such an ability would at best block a bile shit against Zerg offering little defensive power there, although being able to tank banelings could be horrific, it will only protect a small squad and the rest of your army will hate you regardless. Just a thought
@chloesmith4065 you want the shield battery ability on the Void Prism? I mean. Why would you want to have more Archon drops being played Iike medivacs? Aren't Medivacs cancer enough? The fact they decided to merge the medic and the drop ship was too strong even on release.
I dunno if it'd be balanced but making a gateway upgrade that gives an alternative to warpgate would be neat, something like gateway-spawned units are a lil' stronger than their warpgate spawned counterparts could be cool, if only so warpgate isn't the only possibility? If the problem to buffing protoss base units is that they get overwhelming when warped in, just give'em a buff when made normally? People better informed than me prolly read this and see a horrible idea but its an idea nonetheless
Why not just keep overcharge and also give protoss the new ability? You could even nerf overcharge a bit if it's too strong, just let them have the tool to deal with the period the game where they need it. Also why not just give EMP a damage cap, so if it hits a ton of units it'll only wipe out a certain amount of shield/energy.
IF that ghost nerf doesnt work, i think making emp dmg overtime or the effect expand slowly, so Protoss can in both case micro against it is something to explore. Other possiblites shield upgrades gives emp dmg reduction, guardian shield helpes againt it...
We have already seen it work in at least 1 game so far, maybe more. Having to choose between 10 more Ghosts for the army or a Medivac full of Marines to shut down an expansion is a pretty big choice, especially since Zerg basically need to mine an extra base to be competitive.
My feedback on your feedback on Feedback is that as I recall the impetus for that change was Medivacs? The ability for a single Templar to blow up multiple loaded Medivacs was very scary.
Between the balance decisions, the wording they choose to use, bug problems, and issues like the easily addressable map pool, it really does feel like “amateur hour” as you said…
EMP removing 50% of current shields and energy seems like a strong but reasonable nerf. Maybe even having affected units have some sort of immunity to another EMP for X amount of seconds. Still majorly disrupts any protoss situation without completely invalidating a protoss composition.
I always tough that the ghost EMP should be a projectile, like the infestors, that triggers at the first unit that impact and unit closed by, instead of a point and click without counterplay to it
Terran is like the favorite child , Zerg is the red headed step child an Protoss is the first born the parents are disapointed about the choices they made 😂
@@singularityphoenixx yes and no I have a horrible win rate against Zerg but usually is because they out play me so I cannot complain I just think the queen nerf is stupid they rely on it so much I suck at orical micro an I even sometimes destroy 5-8 drones before an adequate response or you can stop all the mining at one base
@@Astartesparty I think nerfing queens is a great idea... on the condition that they actually address the issue of zerg having no other early anti-air.
What about if warp gate warped in with no shields, to limit what you were talking about at 30:25 , to then allow Zealots and Stalkers to be adjusted a bit more. Building them from the gate way took same train time, but they came out with full shields. To prevent those massive warp in run bys.
I'm old enough to remember why the ghost became the way it is. The seige tank at the outset of lotv could be moved in seige mode by the medivav giving them mobile damage at a critical point to counter ravager corrosive bile. Well it didn't take long before the ability was removed and the seige tank turned into its current form. The ghost became the go to counter. Imo you got to up the damage of steady targeting back to 170.
If only Protoss had some kind of flying unit from really early on that you could only make 1 but it could help early game protoss survive into mid game. That'd be the "core" of protoss defense
Concerning the Ghost, i think one way to make it less of a jack of all trades, master of all (pun intended), would be to move EMP over to the Raven, a unit that dosent see much use in TvZ or TvP. Removes power from the ghost and gives a reason to build ravens in those matchups.
Chrono boost always felt like it should have been the first of multiple abilities for the nexus. I'm glad recall and overcharge were added but I wish it was as developed and as concrete as Orbital commands
I’m a Protoss main, but don’t like spectating Protoss games because it feels like they always lose. Plus SC2 pro games in general all feel so same-y now
Protoss has extremely limited viable openers at the top level. There's like 20 build orders for Terran, but for protoss the only choices are do you want to do two three or four gate blink. Robo and Stargate openers just aren't viable; phoenix Colossus is a joke, immortal nerfed again, etc...
Same. I've completely stopped watching PvT. It is not fun watching MaxPax 4gate blink Clem for the millionth time. If Clem survives the 4gate he wins. Boring.
I mean, there's a meta for a reason, lol. If you are doing a non-meta build, there's a reason you generally have to win early or lose late, and that's because it won't be as efficient.
Ghost is just so frustrating to balance, I recall you mentioning ages ago, and hammering it in every chance you get that EMP should have projectile speed reduced, so instead of your opponent actually having good strategy in not having their army out of place or being able to micro-back from one, now it's just your opponent only has to worry about killing the two to three ghosts since you can't mass them without it being effective- supply wise, BUT you still run into the problem of the ghost existing in the first place!!! since all that ghost needs to do is get on top of the clump of templar/infestor/protoss-death-ball and sacrifice itself for that one EMP without your opponent being able to do anything about it.
Ghost is just raven pre missile dmg nerf. Mass single unit is always stupidly boring to watch. I would suggest to remove the dmg Or change emp to single unit
I'm not sure I understand the statement about people not watching anymore if late game air-toss becomes more common. Carriers, tempests, and the mother ship are box art units. Some of the coolest to see in a real game, watching interceptors swarm an army or tempests siege down positions. I totally understand how that would be frustrating to actually play against, but I think Winter might have a poor read on the spectator viewpoint of skytoss. It's the same with every super late game big unit, I've never heard anyone watching starcraft for entertainment complain that they see too many battle cruisers, or thors, or ultralisks.
One could argue that Terran and to a lesser extent Zerg have never had to shake their build orders up and "re-learn" their race's early game. Protoss gets a rework that shakes the foundations every couple years. Mothership core, pylon overcharge, shield battery overcharge and now energy whatever it's called. There's no long term stability. I expect this will last one patch because who wants a single build viable at the top level? I've always thought a solution could be a special gateway unit that is only able to be built or warped in at a nexus sharing a pylon with a gateway. Effectively it would be the Protoss equivalent of a Queen, maybe give it +damage in range of a nexus/pylon. Just something to be stable between a stalker and immortal in power level.
Yeah, but when the world champion, who likely won with Ghosts, can admit that they might be too strong, how can you not listen to him? If you are trying to balance around pro play, at least partially, because you are also trying to balance the ladder, how can you not take the opinion of the world champion into account?
@LucianDevine There's a point in this video where Winter basically says that Ghosts don't need the balance nerf they got because of the way Clem controls them sounding like he's ignoring the fact that several other top level Terrans aren't able to micro Ghosts effectively.
@@randomfriendlygamerRFG But if you are going to talk about Ghost micro, why wouldn't you reference the world champion, especially when he is of the opinion that they need to be nerfed? Yeah, he could name drop the rest, but it's just easier to say Clem.
@LucianDevine He doesn't need to name drop other players because it sounds like he's saying other players can't be effective with Ghosts. That is not the case, we know other players can be plenty effective with Ghosts, not just Clem so his reasoning for thinking the Ghost nerf is too much doesn't hold much weight.
@@randomfriendlygamerRFG He never said the Ghost nerf was too much. He just said that it was the most blunt way to do it instead of changing how EMP worked, switching EMP to Ravens, etc. The Ghost does a LOT of things and is vital to the TvZ matchup, but there should be a price for building 25 of them. There wasn't before.
Is there no way to hold the council accountable? your casting is literally the only reason this game is worth watching. Thank you for bringing up that any match with a protoss in the title is spoiled before you even hit play. The balance councils Terran members are so low in intellectual capacity, and can only flap their lips to try and make sounds louder than everyone else to get their way. There is ZERO accountability, so being a bully and a nuisance in the meetings is 100% the best tactic, there is no conversing there is no fair discussion, it is ran by the few members who are the loudest and most ignorant and this wont end until the "council" (its honestly a joke to even call it that anymore) have to deal with repercussions. You have a few people playing god with the health of the game, and they are all completely corrupt and biased. /endrant. I am VERY salty. love your content, I cant believe i still watch this corrupt game but your casting talent is fun to watch. Sorry for the massive QQ on my end.
The supply calldown basically for unscouted 2 gate or ling flood because this maps have long distance on ramps its basically maybe prevent game ending scenario in early game still thou rare occasion that timing you almost mule all the time so yeah. Its basically hard to do on reflex yet hope it helps regular joe like me.
Hasn't tournaments in Korea been balancing SCBW for decades now through map design? Why not give SC2 to those organizations to balance since they have a proven track record. Surely, they could also redesign not only the maps but also the races themselves.
Idea:Nano repair for protoss. Passive. Works only on ground mechanical out of combat and needs a tech structure, either support bay or Fleet beacon. Bio gate units can be replaced
It's funny because even pro players admit that they would just try to make the game better for them if they were on the balance council. And then you find out that some of them are on the balance council. Big conflict of interest.
Exactly! There is potentially a lot of money on the line. Clem won £400k at the world championships, you damn right I would try manipulate balance (in my favour) if I was on the council. There is a good video with Showtime talking about the council and he said there is a very vocal pro Terran player who basically dominates the council. Showtime didn't name who it was but said they are a top level pro player and use their influence to push through all the changes they want and stop the changes they don't want. This is why we saw a lot of random changes no one asked for, hellion blue flame buff, supply depo drop thing, salvage missile turrets/sensor towers, liberator 56% area increase, no nerf to the ghost etc. etc. My money is on Gumiho.
Woulda been cool if they made the mothership abduct-able but only with 3 units. First unit can grab onto it and it can still move/attk but very slow, second unit grabs and holds it into place but it can still attack, then 3rd unit pulls it back giving Zerg the same effect as the old abduct ability pre patch.
I'm just going to say it... EMP shouldn't impact shields (may shield regen). EMP should only impact energy bar. If the argument is that shields use energy well so do robo units but they can still move/shoot after EMP (at least until the next "balance" patch).
Simplest change would just be to reduce the shield damage that emp does, having it counter both other caster units AND deal massive instant aoe damage against all Protoss is too much. If you need to preserve it against archons maybe make it do 50%-60% of current shields rounded up. It still wipes massive chunks of health off archons but can't completely expose them, and while the damage is still significant against other units you don'y have a ghost drive-by removing all the blue from the entire Protoss army. With this they could even revert the AOE size reduction nerf on EMP as it would go back to being an anti-caster tool.
Disruptor having a splash damage/death animation would be an interesting trade off. also an even larger nova attack radius would make up for the damage nerf
I really must thank the Terran council. Because of this patch I dont feel the urge to play and can do something else with my life. And only watch sc2 from Winter casts.
Some ideas that will get lost in the sea of comments 1 - first thing to do is nerf the attack point of marines so that everything isn't just built around stutter step micro. 2 - Do something with Contaminate - its the most expensive spell in the game and does barely anything 3 - guardian shield giving a 3-4 second buff outside the shield 4 - slow EMP projectile 5 - Make protoss shield upgrades reduce EMP damage by 10-20 per upgrade 6 - siege mode needs researching on libs 7 - reduce calldown of nukes 8 - Make gateway units slower with warps, faster when built from gateway 9 - Scan/mules costs 75 energy and/or much less duration 10 - hellbats not biological 11- increase speed of disruptor or allow reduced movement when using attack (they get one shot off at most usually then die) 12 - Mines cost minerals to replenish 13 - caustic spray range increase 14 - Mothership repair drones to fix damaged protoss mech
I´m a medium to low Masters Protoss player... And even though I can accept that I suck at this game more than the next guy, I can see a big step backwards on this patch, and it´s coming from the early and middle part of the game. The reason why they created Pylon Overcharge, Nexus Overcharge, Battery Overcharge, and everything overcharge on the first place, was simple because Protoss can´t produce enough units on the early game to match the cost efficiency of the other two races, so in order to balance it up, they added a 14 sec life saving, that helped to stay alive at least until the next wave of cheap and fast units comes in. Now Protoss has to focus on surviving the first 5 min, promoting camping and slower games (that was the general thing they were supposed to reduce). Then, going into mid game with also nerfed units (less damage from Disruptors and less dps Inmortals)... And to compensate all that, they buffed the Mothership?. So, if for any reason we manage to survive to late game, the way of going "stronger" is doing the only sinlge giant unit in the entire game? I guess al least T&Z players must be happy to erase all the Protoss from existence the first 5 min of every game.
I predict that there will be an increase in the usage of Nukes across all match ups where ghosts would be used. If the ghost is 1 more supply, then the relative cost of the same amount of supply in ghosts is actuallly less than it used to be - which means you have more money to spend on Nukes. Thanks for the vids Winter always enjoy the casts
Here’s a wild idea, how about the balance patch takes a page out of the terran buff book and gives the shield battery overcharge option, the energy recharge option, or a health regeneration option. Only one can be used at a time though with maybe a cooldown. I’ve always thought it was dumb that Protoss can’t heal, when their shields can just be EMP’d away before a fight even starts.
I’d take it a step further and say that Nexus recall should be removed, and only the mothership recall skill should be an option, but instead of using it to recall units TO the mothership, it teleports the mothership itself and all units to a nexus of choice. This is a retreat/defensive ability to counter base trades in my opinion. But in return, the health/energy/shield overcharge abilities become available but only one at a time with an active cooldown. Protoss aggressions should be left to actively pushing out on the map or using a warp prism. It’s been my experience watching these professional replays that most nexus recalls end up with 3/5 stalkers dying in a recall animation when they would have been more cost efficient to just trade out.
![[ENG] 2024 SSL AUTUMN | Ro.16 Group A (Tastosis)](/img/1.gif)
Intentionally didn't limit myself or try to cut down on the topics in this vid, wanted to cover as many angles on the patch as possible
Timestamps:
0:00 What is going on?
1:10 Early Game Protoss vs Terran
5:39 Ultralisk & Motherhsip
9:20 Random Terran Changes
13:56 Ghost Nerf & Zerg vs Protoss
17:15 Blizzard & Conflict of Interest
23:10 Full Protoss Changes
32:00 Full Terran Changes
40:25 Full Zerg Changes
47:00 Quality of Life Changes
49:45 The Protoss Problem
56:53 MAPS ARE A BIG DEAL
1:01:15 The Protoss Problem Part 2
1:03:58 Is the Patch Good?
1:07:16 Summary - Too Long Didn't Watch
You forgot the part where you said to subscribe
0:24 Subscribe
@@WinterStarcraft and the part where you called my mother fat 😅
Love that you say things as they are. When it's BS you say it's BS. Best Patch videos out there!
It deleted my comment
0:24 Subscribe
Winter that opening line was evil, don't stress me out more.
lol - got your attention.
What else would he do with his life?
Truly, I was terrified
For real! I paused and had a heart attack until I unpaused and heard the rest lmao
Dammit Winter❤
Was legit sad for a moment, lmao
Don't scare us like that! You can't just abandon us to those scoundrelous Dutch casters.
Why the hate?
@@lonewolfranger "There's only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch." -Nigel Powers
(Just kidding, Harstem and Lowko are good lads)
@@lonewolfranger It's completely unacceptable how those scoundrels keep beating grandmasters with stupid stuff and casually inviting world champions to play silly mods.
Or Artosis and his erotic donos 💀
@@lonewolfranger he's joking, the other castors are great
Yeah, I Don't know about the whole balance council composed of pros anymore. You need professional players there, of course, but there is just too much bias in it. There should be people who's monetary wellbeing is not dependant on their race staying strong but on the game being entertaining to watch. Guys like Lowko, Pig, if Winter doesn't want to be a part of a council, we can settle with only Brenda and Jimmy there.
Also, It's not like protoss had a problem just in the last patch. Protoss was discussed as a weakest race for, at least, last two years. I, personally, haven't felt like Protoss was in a good spot since the double stargate ZvT.
Council is only decisive when there is something they can confidently nerf in Toss, when its time to give back they buff things that they know, won't change balance in any meaningful way like Tempest being a able to turn faster or upgrades 10 seconds less. Judging their decisions, I believe the only reason they left energy overcharge in, is because they know its, at least, not a buff.
On the other hand, they are happy to unleash madness like their cyclones and, in general, experiment with terran, unlike protoss (or zerg, for that matter), they always compensate. I believe, the only reason this absurd depo ability was left in the game is because of the ghost nerf. Compensation.
Now, having said all that. Did you know, zealot rush used to have +8 WHOLE damage on impact? It did. It was removed by blizzard. Straight up. No halving, just removed. Imagine a marine loosing combat shield one day.
Bring it back. Just halve it and bring it back. We already had it and we were like 2x stronger back then, Serral won anyway. Just cure Zealot's arthritis.
a couple years ago Protoss felt semi ok, like end of 2022; only nerfs since then
Lowko is zerg biased and so is winter. Zerg has been the winning race by% since the game came out but somehow needs buffs vs Terran their best match up
Need a hunger games style game maker, with knowledge of game theory
They should make a system where people post suggestions and feedback and the most liked are shown at top. If the likes are tied, then the one with more dislikes go below it. And if they're still tied, then first come first serve. This is if they don't want to get overwhelmed by suggestions and feedback.
It wasn't even really +8 damage the Zealots had... it was just a guarantee that the Zealot would hit when it was using its charge ability and the enemy units were kiting back.
My thought on the balance patch?...
They couldn't balance a perfectly flat board on a perfectly flat floor.
It would still come out crooked and out of wack...
Guardian shield should block emp. Done ✅
This would give Protoss counterplay and therefore can never be implemented.
Emp have to drain shields before draining energy?
Reduces emp damage by 2 combined with my other idea in response to @mattcat83
@@chloesmith4065as a zerg: its a sad reality. I always root for Toss in PvT, cause they always get nerfed and never compensated for that and Terran is as versatile as all races combined with 100 spammable „tech-spells“
Path of Exile 2 in 8 days is the only thing keeping me sane right now. Too much rage inside thanks to the Balance Council again
i was thinking perhaps a Guardian sheild can block 1 emp and then be destroyed? so there can actually be abit more usefullness between the interaction? so bring 4-5 sentries and activate the shield push forward, either terran can throw 4-5 emps to destroy it and then go for the engage.
other alternative could be slower proejctile speed.. I mean i prefer that one, but additionally i imagine its really difficult to split everything up for toss with disruptors/hts all clumping up and being very clumsy to controll for splits.. Not really sure
+1 for the idea of moving EMP to the Raven. I have advocated for this change a lot personally. You can mess with the timings of putting it behind Armory or making it an upgrade if needed if there is a timing problem. It makes Terran have to make decisions on what they want producing from their Starport and have to weigh in the effectiveness of EMP vs having medivac/banshee production. It makes late game micro involve more than one unit.
I feel like the only reason it hasn't been done is the ego trip of admitting that the Science Vessel is actually well designed and that they just want SC2 to be different from Brood War.
im just a spectator but to me it feels so crazy how versatile terran units look. like the medivac being a dropship AND provides healing imagine if warp prism was able to also be a mobile shield battery. or how zerg has to make corruptors to have anti air but cant shoot down but vikings can just swap to be able to fight ground units when theres nothing left to shoot at in the air.
I agree. If a unit isn't relevant, need to give it an important role. Broodwar has some really solid points that sc2 has lost.
@@yamine_Q_ray I agree but I don't think the prism is a good example, it is one of the best units on the protoss roster: it may not heal but it does act like a mobile spawn point which is a pretty big skill.
@@yamine_Q_ray bro but warp prism can fucking WARP THE UNITS and medivac can not.
@@d.r.643 you right it is a pretty bad example sorry
It’s so obvious that the Balance Council just picks little things and little things at random to change in Zerg and Protoss to be able to say: yeah we buffed them, despite the changes being useless in 99/100 games. Meanwhile Terran gets as little nerf as possible as always since 2010
terran pros in the council did a genius move. They were already the best race, but some zerg players were able to win against them , so they buffed protoss, but it was only a good buff against zerg. So good actually that the good zerg player may be knocked out of tournments by weaker protoss, and then the terrans can win against the protoss remaining.
oh that's evil, and brillant.
What mental gymnastics are you doing to balance whine bro
@@rsanghi24 Since balance council terran incremented how much they win (+10% earning in prize in 2023, an additional +8% in 2024 reaching a 48% of the total prize pools earnings).
Since council toss winrate vs zerg improved but vs terran plummeted HARD. All toss have been eliminated always by terran in the last 2 years.
They straight admit in this patch that tvZ is screwed for zerg but still give nothing to compensate, just a"we will watch". (you can read it at 19:15)
Terran won world yet they got overall buffed (Average of 2 medium buffs for every small nerf) Meanwhile the shark infestor that was pulled successfully only by Serral was instantly nerfed. (even considering the shark too strong it still show a clear and unhealthy bias approach for the fairness of competitive)
Community full outrage to get a ghost nerf, kneejerk reaction with 4 nerfs to zerg.
Then there is how terran has been 5/8 to 7/8 in top 8 of the last ear tournaments which isn't a good sign for good balance work.
There is believing in mental gymnastics and just watching the facts.
The facts scream that the council is overly terran biased and it's at a point that is bad for the sake of the competitive scene. This is straight rigging the odds in terran favour.
I'm all for good tournaments and different races winning and this is not the way.
I hope you're joking
@@LorisEnsatzuken Main issue for me is that most matdch ups, and especially TvZ is that they are just repetetive. If you have seen 1 modern TvZ, you have seen all of them. If you have seen 1 modern TvP, you have seen all of them. If you have seen 1 modern ZvP, you have seen all of them.
The games are just samt strategy. Beeing greedy, for 5-6 minutes, while both sit at their respective side. Both get a maxed army. And then they might eventually interact with each other. Since one got an advantage in the start due to some microscopic interactions in the first 5-6 minutes. The other is slowly dieing for 20 minutes while 1 sits at 10k/10k bank (but doesnt dare attack). And then the game ends. Strategy is largely removed from SC2, now it is mostly just mechanics.
A game like SCBW have way more depth in strategy.
I want to make blankets for the ultralisks, they must be cold this winter since no one sells blankets or clothes big enough for them. Maybe someone else can work on some hot chocolate for them too.
Abathur get on it
especially Scarletts ultras, theyre in Canada
Talking about the real issues
Nah, Ultralisk sweaters; like the kind dogs wear.
ghost should be squishy like infestors and templar
They are squishy, if you can catch them, the problem is the Medivac that give a "out of jail free card" any Bio units. Maybe increase the carry supply of Ghost to 4, so a Medivac can only save 2 instead of 4 Ghost.
@@tigera6 the pajamas they are wearing are tougher than marine's power armor. They aren't even categorized as light or heavy so there's not even a unit to counter hit them. they are tougher than high templars and infestors.
thanks for putting out this video, as a diamond tier 3 protoss player, losing the battery shield overcharge makes it really difficult for early defence if i want to expand quickly, especially to terran, now there are more early aggression like mass reapers and terran two base all in, very difficult to defend. enercy overcharge is very weak and limited, when being attacked, i am already busy and i have to overcharge my unit for example, high templars are small, and then storm them, it's APM intensive, and enemy can focus attack my unit that has been overcharged, rendering it useless. the only way to make it usable is to remove overcharge cooldown, so i can overcharge multiple batteries and units, and i think that's fair.
they need to buff guardian shield or forcefield somehow or else the energy boost is pointless in the early game
In this situation it might be fair, but not so much in ZvP, considering you could just pop out 3 high templars carrying 6 storms or just fill the energy bar of oracles and kill both the army, tumors in the early game, overall helping you win a matchup already not the hardest for Protoss in the late game.
@@chloesmith4065 then stronger guardian shield will imbalance late game
ghosts require the same apm to emp.
I'm masters level toss and never once used overcharge lol . Energy buff is a great addition. Oracle's go all day . What's currently broken is cyclones . Infinite damage
1:00:33 i feel like there hasn't been enough talk about balancing races versus balancing maps. Good to hear this brought up again.
Also, would love more transparency on who makes up the balance council
I have mixed opinions on this. On one hand, balancing via maps could be a vary powerful tool. On the other hand the more you rely on maps to balance the game, the more homogenized the maps have to be, because any deviation will heavily affect balance. The fact that even now almost every sc2 map is so similar is one of my least favorite parts about it as a spectator. I generally think sc2 is a more fun game to watch but broodwar has a HUGE advantage when it comes to interesting maps. I don't even differentiate between sc2 maps as a spectator, the tiny little details matter a lot to the players when doing timings that need to be perfect down to the second, but as someone watching they have 0 distinct gameplay features and have almost no impact on the larger scope of the game that I'm seeing as a spectator.
Remember when you could upgrade High templars to have extra energy and do 2 dmge per energy on feedback. That was great, it was easier to help against medivac drops etc
Feedback nerf needs to be reverted. And thors/bc need energy again. Lol. It should oneshot ghost and medivacs. It won't matter anyway cuz you still get emp'd or sniped.
Seeing that community council comment for the ghost just tells me there are a bunch of children in the council
Council members and their individual votes should be made public. There should also be a way for the community to vote members in or out, so the the "community" part of their name actually makes sense
thisss
Yes
Thanks for coming at these patches from a viewer perspective. I watch the game much more than I play it at this point. I'm far more interested, as a fan, of the idea of seeing more Protoss in finals or even (*gasp*) winning a tournament than I am with any particular play balance. "Balance" to me means I don't know exactly how the game is going to start on either side and I don't know who is going to win.
I'm terrified of PvZ being even more formulaic from these changes - Protoss opening with Oracles even more often and fewer aggressive zerg openers that work.
In TvP, I just don't see Protoss having more interesting attacks or tactics they can now do. The biggest change seems to be that they can now.... scout better. Maybe that will result in more options for them, but I'm not seeing it right noe.
As a casual viewer, I appreciate it too, especially since he was casting some games on the new patch, and I could actually SEE the effect that the Ghost nerf had. The fact that Terran had to choose between 10 more Ghosts or an extra Medivac full of marines instead of just being able to have their cake and eat it too is HUGE! It could be the difference between a stronger army or shutting down an expansion instead of being able to do both.
Radical idea - hear me out. Switch Gateway and Warp Gates effective build times, strategically. That is, buff the Protoss core units by a LOT, and then add a bit more cooldown on the Warp Gates so that warping in units across the field is a significant cost. Warp Gate cooldown from a Zealot is 20, right? Make that the Gateway cooldown and increase the Warp Gate cooldown from a Zealot warp in be, like 36 seconds - way more than the standard Gateway cooldown. That way, you can remax very quickly anywhere on the map, but it's going to HURT your intermediate spawn rate after it.
The concept here is to replace Protoss' default warping in Warp Gate spawn with just regular Gateway production. This preserves the normal defender's advantage and fairly normal production mechanics, even for Protoss. Easier to balance. Can have basic units be good.
BUT
Once the Protoss is maxxed, they can change the Gateways to Warp Gates to sacrifice intermediate spawn rates with faster reinforcement. The immediate reinforcements are almost instant, but your throughput gets massively cut in the intermediate term. Alternately, Protoss can still rely on Air Units or Robo units as main army components, and reserve the Warp Gates for instant reinforcements - also a good concept. More like a variation on Nydus Worms than a problematic mechanic that makes balancing difficult.
I would like to see Protoss players changing their Gateways to Warp Gates and back again, and for that to be a significant thing that Terrans and Zerg would want to track.
Great idea. The Gateway and Warp gate transition would be able to communicate what protoss is planning to viewers and also, massive transition in late game will be epic to watch.
@@alzzaMain Right? I'm thinking that in the midgame, Protoss could have maybe 2-4 Warp Gates to preserve the ability to warp in small numbers of troops all over the map, but they can't just reinforce all their supply in that location, without twice as many Warp Gates as they currently need.
In the late game, Protoss can aggressively remax with core units in a massive attack wave, but if the enemy survives the onslaught, they have a chance for a devastating swingback as all the Toss Warp Gates will be on cooldown for half a minute or more.
I've been watching brood war lately and it's so satisfying that the zealots are these mighty warriors - a balance decision that is only possible because they can't instantly have an army of them anywhere on the map.
@@EllipticalReasoning Even with this proposed concept, the fact that you can transition all your Gateways to Warp Gates in the late game gives Protoss a powerful "Oversupply" mechanic, similar to Zerg stockpiling Larva. So we can't have Zealots being as powerful as they are in Brood War.
Unless, we lock away that power in a Tier 3 upgrade for the Zealot specifically. Hard Shields or something. Something that makes them super tough can make them a match for Adrenalings, and also makes them a powerful instant reinforce option. At the same time, boosting their toughness rather than their offense mitigates the problems posed by Warp Gate mechanics. That is, if the Zealots aren't dying too much, then being able to warp in more of them instantly isn't as powerful of a mechanic. That will make them tanks rather than potent damage dealers.
@@lawrencecelestino3444 You're right 😄 I was talking about the potential of your proposal in spectating. It could balance the power between two modes and mitigate gateway units' instability for every stages of a game.
why is EMP a thing in the first place if it kills half the eHP of toss AND takes away energy they rely on to actually fight a terran army?
I never understood why there is an ability especially only designed against Protoss, since the launch of the game.
@@tertozer3543 it is essential in pro play against infestors and vipers.. snipe isn't always a viable option
@@tertozer3543but yes, it is the one thing that seems to be a hard, one sided counter... Why both shield AND energy!?? Op status
Preach
@@growtocycle6992so remove the shield drain of tos? Terran are one of the most broken races in the game period
It needs to be a streamer for sure. Everyone knows where Pig's heart is. This is the perfect idea. People will trust Pig, and Pig would be great at explaining the current thoughts and get the right people around the table to discuss the why's and how's out in the open.
And he has a thick enough skin to wheather the inevitable criticism for his changes.
@@MichelMichelMann exactly. He is knowledgeable, engaged and can take criticism.
PiGs take on Protoss dominating ladder and being over 50% of GM, but still buffing them for pro play is awful though.
He just wants to ignore the way buffing Protoss will further the issue of them being a pubstomp all the way into GM because "the game is designed around Protoss being simple and I'm tired of that as an excuse not to buff them for pro". He wants to ignore the 95% of the player base so we can see some Protoss win tournaments.
Almost like casting variety games is his job or something. Ohhh... Wait...
Protoss rank % is the result of lower skill ceiling and high efficiency until it reaches a cap limit.
Each races have been designed with different priority to maintain their characteristics other than just fair otherwise we just need to play 3 races that similar to each other.
If you feel your skill is justified to be higher if you play other races then switch.
Serial or Clem or whoever top players are obviously outlier.
@@Sketchy-- You can buff the protoss for the pros without being a pub stomp. Actually buff their abilities to matter while stop making them a hyperfocused specialist army where they die against a single tech switch.
Maybe if they actually had a generalist unit they could stop going for cheeses on the ladder for every single win and actually play a macro game that people want to play and see.
I feel like they don’t even try to hide their Terran bias, like why so begrudgingly nerf the ghost? It clear they have needed a nerf for like a decade now lol
Yeah, the way they worded that, you could literally FEEL their hate for the nerf, lol.
Because they did not. Oh well, guess only Clem is allowed to win as Terran now.
Say how many players up to gml league can effectively use them.
Ghost has been nerfed for 2-3 times in the past couple years, maybe revert Snipe back to WOL/HOTS version, less damage and less energy.
Terran players best strategy is whine 😂
We need you (Winter) Pig, and Lowko on that balance council with authority to make the big decisions. Get ALL the pros out of there and you three take over. Done ✅
We can all petition blizzard to allow these changes and the three of you can create a new shared RUclips Channel to have more transparency/contact with the community and also split the revenue to make it worth your while-there’s plenty of people who would watch/support (on patreon or similar) including myself the three of you leading changes on a new balance council. Make it happen-reach out to Blizzard! You, Pig, and Lowko
Those three plus Florencio
They’re all Zergs though lol. I’m a Zerg myself so that would be great.
@@tytar1037 winter and pig play all three races pretty equally these days (Lowko is the only main Zerg) but despite that the most unbiased and with the most consistent contact with the community. It would be the perfect trio to lead this PLUS since it’s three people (not just 1) no one person would have to take all the heat
@@tytar1037PiG plays plenty of Terran
Yeah i dont understand why high templars feedback was nerfed to useless, it was fun to counter enrmy units, even battlecruisers. And ghosts has a direct counter..
and BCs for example dont even have the energy anymore. Neither do Thors or the Mothership....
Because back when the nerf was made, the Templar vs Ghost dynamic was 95% chance that a Ghost died and 5% that an EMP hit something.
It also obliterated Medivacs, making it a worse than Ghosts are considered today, as they countered everything and there was no counterplay to them.
@@OzixiThrill now its 100% chance that emp hit something. Glad that they nerf ghost
@@AlexanderVoroncov Nah. It's closer to 80% tops.
And that's with the current crop of Protoss players, which is... Not something I respect much in the first place.
Maybe if they figured out multi-pronged attacks and controlling Templars again, things would be great.
It seems to me that making emp a dot effect , like the psi storm, would be reasonable. You do not see psi storm do all of its dmg upfront, i do not see why emp does, especially since emp does dmg to shields in addition to draining energy and revealing units.
The funny thing is that ghost would still be built and used in the matchup because it still negates psionic storm
Zerg = balanced around Serral
Protoss = balanced around ladder
If they want to balance all races around ladder, they should just give QoL changes.
@@paulhamtorlia3039 They've specifically said that they are trying to balance around pro play AND ladder, which is why it's so hard. Toss is over represented on the ladder, particularly in GM, but under represented at the top of tournaments, because once it's no longer a best of 1, Protoss struggles.
@@LucianDevine Then they just need to give T and Z QoL changes rather than simply nerfing protoss when around ladder.
People forgot that this comment section function akin to an echo chamber and not effectively represent the entire dataset of the game.
Yes, you can draw samples from it. But just because you speak up doesn’t mean you have more right that the player base with people that don’t comment here, or Lowko, or Pigs etc.
I am just stating statistic fact. Your voice matter but consideration for you is the same for the people who didn’t bother talking.
You can say reasonable things but that doesn’t make you correct. Anyone can have a reason for something and they can be reasonable but that doesn’t mean it’s right. It’s a correlation and but not the same.
The difference in race distribution in ladder does not reflect the game as a whole and the distribution about the about of Terran op or Zerg op also doesn’t represent the game as a whole especially for RUclips comment section (or Reddit or Blizzard forum etc they are sampling bias which you can use data but you have to be aware of its nature) since so many people just watch instead.
So the quality output is uneven. What is the goal of the balance system and what is the weight distribution of each choice (criteria and complaints).
All improvements take time and experiments. In the end, it’s just the game, it does not worth losing your temper over it. It’s weird seeing people losing their shieeet over a big change in just a few days and think that will be their final opinion and final outcome. The resource for changing and balancing this game is limited. At least someone still care to try and fix this.
No hate for anyone but a lot of people said they want nothing to do with council balancing and complain about it anyway. It means they don’t care enough to give more input on direct level and like to make contents around it. Not saying they don’t care but they don’t care as much as a lot of people think they are. Human function is based on their own priority list, it’s just being part of the counsel doesn’t appeal to them and it’s ok.
If you look at players distribution, Terran is the most popular race. Meaning pissing a ton of Terran that don’t voice their comments here may give more harm that pissing people comment here. It’s the nature of risk based decision.
@@paulhamtorlia3039I agree, terran and zerg just struggle in the ladder because of lack of APM
If the new energy recharge ability has a global cooldown and can only be used on one unit…
Why is there a Terran ability, that collects intel for free on a huge scale, which can’t be countered WITH no cooldown on it?
True, spamable scan is pure cringe
I feel like everything from orbital command should be like a 60-second cool down. Including mule and especially scan. Infinite vision without having to work for it is one of the biggest advantages Terran has in the late game
Absolutly agree. Both Scan and Mule spam are game breaking
LOL! Wtf am I reading?? Do you know that SCV produce way slower than other races workers?? Each scan, unless it's pass minute 12, it's so expensive and it hurts the terran economy so badly.. I guess the only case where it's "free" it's in late game when the terran gets a lot of CCs.. Still, as a protoss, you could have 2 obs in the entrance of the terran bases since minute 3 and also zerg has it's overlord.. WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?? We us a flying invisible unit that doesn't deal damage and we can spread them across the map just like Protoss or Zerg.. What a stupid statement.. Why don't you play Terran then if they are so broken?
@estebancantero4751 I think most of us are talking about the late game...
My idea for some GvP (ghost v protoss) changes coming from a LONG time viewer and not a player cuz i suck at RTS games
1. EMP make it an actual throwable GRENADE like ability where you can see the Ghost prime and Throw and the grenade doesnt IMMEDIATELY EXPLODE on impact and it can sit on the ground VISIBLE for you to move your units away like a real grenade.
1.5. OR give the emp time charges you can set on the spell cast bar so if you want a strong emp it takes longer to explode but it takes MORE shield and energy away and the radius is bigger, or a quick instant that takes less shields and energy but smaller radius explosion.
2. Make emp take the same amount of energy but take HALF that amount of shields.
2.5. And make emps a debuff effect that is not stackable against shields specifically so you dont just go 4 emps half Hp go bye bye against a 100 supply army for 12 supply but can still take away energy from templars and such
3. Give the ghost longer range for their AA but have to walk up to throw emps at closer range, making them a double edge sword to be charged by Zealots or get clipped by disruptors or stand back and deal actual SNIPING type damage
4. I dont understand how a race like the Protoss dont have ANY counters to Terran emps. like they should have developed some sort of technology by now to be able to regen faster or dampen its ability by any capacity other than just waving a white flag. Give them a upgrade to reduce emps effects (like gain +1 shield armor against spells) so any aoe spell will do less damage to shields in general.
4.5. Or not have EMP also take away cloaking as well. Terran already have Scans they just spam out against motherships to counter cloaking so why should EMPs also take away a psionic cloaking ability? Give them a consequence if they run out of scan energy (like that would ever happen anyways) like at least let the DTs and Observer have chance of running away or kill the ghost
5. Give the terran players the Shotgun unit from the single player campaign with explosive belts like the reaper grenades but bigger more fun explosions more to counter light unit swarms like zealots and zerglings to give the terrain another flesh unit so its not just MMMG spam late game so we can nerf ghosts and spread out units who can drop nukes to give army comps variety for TVP and TVZ. Giving the Terrans more late game choices means not always defaulting to Ghosts for literally everything
Take everything here with a grain of salt, i know probably ALL of them suck ass cuz i dont play the game, but its just some sort of ideas to have a conversation about or spark some new epiphany amongst any of the few who actual read the whole comment. I do appreciate everyone who took the time to read this
19:55 It would be so awesome to have a great creator like PiG actively discussing the balance changes through his channel and then pushing them forward!
Remember when you could build Thors using SCVs instead of Factories? We should bring that back. /s
that was actually a really cool idea back in the day
EMP needs to be two abilities on two different units, one that reduces shields and another that reduces energy and decloaks.
A single unit just to be build against protos shield is weird though
@@spitzhorneuleits weird either way
just move it to the raven
Zerg needs less ability to defend their economy and spread creep slower then
I think it just needs to be nerfed by having layers within its "splash attack" like a siege tank: x1/x0.5/x/1/4 "damage" and to the duration of decloaking units. Energy and shields are combined "hit points" to the EMP. Example: Instead of a high templar losing 40 shields and 100 energy from a direct EMP strike, it would instead loses 40 shields and 60 energy. Plasma shield upgrades should also reduce the damage of EMP as stronger plasma shields should mean more EMP needed. I believe Plasma Shield Upgrade should be separated into two upgrades. Ground Shields(more expensive than the other as it affects structures too) and Plasma Air Shield(put in Cybernetics Core).
5:08 as of late, i have changed my mind about maxpax and the bogus-nonsence that he is just dark on another computer...
as you can change the race you play, but you can't change who you are, the playstile of maxpax is 100% proof that it was rogue on another computer all along!
edit: 43:48 "oh, hi honey! did you just finish your 'muscular swell' upgrade or are you just happy to see me?"
this balance counsel kinda sucks, at least pig cares about the health and viewerbase of the game while not having personal interest in pushing his own race forward for prize money reasons. this balance counsel says nerf camping as an excuse to get rid of overcharge and then give a defensive wall tool to orbital. and what the fuck are these map pools?
i play both zerg and toss and cannot fathom these choices. void ray isn't a unit anymore, collosus sucks, adepts have no purpose post 6 min. oracle vs zerg is mandatory opening, blink opening vs terran mandatory.
they have no concept of what makes the game fun and just think that making mothership an actual unit makes up for every game on ladder as toss being holding early pressure and then getting called shit for not doing anything unique, meanwhile there's like 2 viable build orders and everything else is shit if you're not maxpax
Viewerbase?
I thought these are balance changes for a game with a playerbase
@@simplysmiley4670 it's for both. comp scene doesn't make money without a viewerbase, and playerbase dwindles without a comp scene. you're trying to patch the game towards a balance that's both fun to play and watch.
@@benk9773 And it has to be shaken up to be fun to watch, without overdoing it on the nerfs side so there is some fun in playing.
Wish adepts and reapers for example weren't a meme after 5 minutes of a match playing. But oh well, wishful thinking.
I’m getting into this game recently and your words seem to be true. Protoss seem to have the short end of the stick.
How is there no portable shield recharger?
They literally fixed a bug for the Broodlords, then unfix it after realizing the Broodlords is actually good and could back in a straight up engagement vs Thors. Obviously, we can't ever have Terran losing on equal value army, so of course they revert back the fix.
Not to mention there's also a stealth "bug" that increased the attack speed of Cyclones. Granting around +25% damage.
What is the cyclone bug? from 5.0.11?
@@VictorF0326it deals 25% more damage while locked on for no apparent reason.
@@Wwillswords bame galance
They spent literally over a year making changes to mech so it would be more viable. Only to revert half the changes.
That was a major "theme" of one of their "balance" patches. Skytoss is a thing at the lower ranks of the ladder, zerg is literally more codependent on queens than Jimmy is on Winter, Protoss gets dumpstered so hard in PvT that there are literally pro Terrans with a losing record against all races except Protoss (including mirrors), but theyre investing time into.....making the thor better? The orbital more useful? The cyclone more viable?
What a clown show. An inexcusable clown show. I dont care if the balance council isnt getting paid, its a couple meetings a month to literally determine how easy or hard it is for them to win prize money. Literally every athlete in every sport would take that trade.
Obviously Blizzard is to blame the most, but the balance council isnt oblivious. Theres no way. Especially when guys like Mana are commenting on how Terran favored the ESL "head" for the council appeared to be.
They could change broodlings' duration to losing health over time so broodlings' total damage would be punished if they aren't supported by other units or/and the defenders can limit their damage. Then they can balance the broodlord and broodlings from there. This can be applied to locusts. As for the cyclone. Lock-on should just be a passive that allows the cyclone attack while moving but without the attack speed bonus. And has to load up ammo like the Reaver but free and automated but slow to reload each ammo. Each missile just deals damage with no bonus, is weak by itself but together with other missiles in successful rapid fire deals great burst DPS but terrible full DPS. Cyclone would go 1 range closer than their actual range to be able to fire on the move. The downside is that they would be fragile and slow. They're meant to be versatile fire support. Have 8 range(or 9 depending if they can shoot at ground targets behind thors) to support behind marauders while chasing targets. Prioritizes air units. As for the Thor, I feel it's too sluggish , bulky and can't fly without extra micro with a medivac to chase light air units with its missiles that it should just be removed and liberator should be the new anti light air with bonus damage vs light.
What I'd love to see:
1.) Protoss: keep shield battery overcharge and include energy overcharge. Share a cooldown. Force the decision to do either or have a trade-off: advanced scouting/early game aggression vs defending better against all-in timings.
2.) Terran: Make EMP be on Ravens now. Ghost is just TOO versatile with its hard counters to so many things late game.
3.) Zerg: Create another hydralisk evolution that specializes in anti-air (i.e you can morph a Hydra into a lurker or this new unit). Let's call it a javalisk. It can hit BOTH air and ground, but does more damage to flying units. Also longer range to air than a standard hydra. Also slower attack speed so you're trading off hydra DPS to invest in the AA. Still requires hive tech. This helps not having to build too may corruptors to deal with an ms late game and a few tempests and then having nothing to stop the toss ground army. Similarly mass liberators against terran. OR, give swarm hosts the ability to produce either ground attacking OR an air attacking locusts in a single volley (not both). Allows SHs to be anti-air now when needed (i.e. divebomb a mothership with aa, without corrupter investment or having a unit that just dies immediately to storms as a counter).
I don't know about the zerg buffs - 'we have to build mass corruptors' is one of the most pathetic complaints I've ever heard, that your weakness is having a unit that just beats every otherwise-viable air army in the game, even at lower cost and supply.
@@EllipticalReasoningthis is mostly to address the new mothership buffs. If you've been watching a lot of the new casts, making a new MS forces out tons of Corruptors for Zerg to deal with it (remember, it can't be abducted in the new patch), which can no longer support your army once it's dead. But if you don't overbuild them, they just die immediately to storms+stalkers. And Zerg doesn't really have any other AA. Sure, Corruptors can upgrade to broodlords, but that's assuming the protoss death ball ever gives you the time to build up the resources for them (they won't). It just isn't viable.
@@KraftMacNCheesier Hm, that makes some sense. It seems like a dedicated anti-air specialist hydra evolution would have the same problem, though - maybe buff the range of corruptors and reduce their durability slightly, to give them kind of a viking-like ability to pressure from range, or increase hydra range more against air units?
OMG FIX BROODLORD BUG so they do something before ghosts snipe them holy FUCKKK
Hilariously they fixed it then unfixed it.
Broodlords aren't the problem, snipe is. It is absurd that one unit hard counters the entire Zerg end-game.
It's incredible that this part gets so little attention. This is a huge fucking nerf, and it's not intended, and yet it's only mentioned in passing. Remember how huge the range bug discussion on the Colossus was? I agree that P needs the most love atm, but still, damn. Broods are weak af at the moment, and there's a vig bug that nerfs their damage, and nobody even cares.
@@kyneticist baneling exist
@@antearesgamer Sure... but relying on the same few units for every stage of every game is not satisfying or particularly interesting.
An example in this context: We see ling-bling roll into production lines so often that it barely even rates a mention anymore, other than an observation that another bunch of workers have been lost.
Extra Supplies should prevent Supply Depots from being lowered. That way there's a downside (other than spending energy on that in lieu of a Mule or a Scan) to using it to heal your wall: that wall off becomes a lot more restrictive.
At least Nanomuscular Swell is a cool research name and lunge makes sense.
Better than dash.
17:00 I don't think it's fair to blame them for how long it took. It's not their day job to balance the game, so not spending as much time on it is normal... but that's all I have to say in their defense.
It's ridiculous how stupidly terran biased these patches are. Like wtf is this? Keep a BUG on brood lord just because it might make zerg somewhat competitive?
YES PLEASE BUFF PROTOSS AND NERF TERRAN
If anything it should've been on PTR even longer and more revisions before going live.
@@chloesmith4065 It wouldn't have mattered with how obviously passive aggressive that wording was on the Ghost nerf. They CLEARLY didn't want to, but felt obliged to.
It’s in their interest to get the most buffs they can for their own race. Huge conflict of interest.
@@justnuke7109 Two years ago (around the last time I watched casts), professional Protoss players still struggled with techniques Terrans had to learn 12 years ago and zergs had to learn like 8 years ago. And when I mean "had to", I genuinely mean had to; Without it, they would just no longer stay competetive.
Have they fixed that yet, or are you just demanding that Protoss should be able to win tournaments without ever learning the basics of the game?
OMG, so hard to wave the snipe wand over the zerg army and watch 80 supply of units turn into a bloody pool on the ground.
I love the carnage. Need to put plague on the infestor so they can do the same in return, but then you'd need restoration on the medic.
They cried endlessly about some infestors using plagued marines for AA and the slow and shitty parasitic bomb, but point and click adventures is ok.
That's why the mass Overseer strat started becoming popular, to try and fight the snipe wave.
lol, as it was so easy to snipe all zerg units when you have a thousand enemy units on screen charging at you.. And snipe is interrupted if the ghosts receives damage lol as a Master 3 player, I hate the ghosts cuz they are expensive as shit, and trying to snipe shit is way too difficult and takes a lot of APM.. It's funny reading protoss complaining about protoss being more APM intensely when the only thing they have to do now is just survive early game to A move at minute 12 lol.. Now with the cyclone bug we can finally just A move and have an easy time as protoss and zerg, but of course, that is "BUGGED" and "broken" lol
@@estebancantero4751 "so easy to snipe all zerg units when you have a thousand enemy units on screen charging at you"
...
Rapid fire hot-keying exists.
Shield Battery overcharge didn't need to go anywhere, and energy overcharge should have just been given to us as a buff.
There's no reason EMP should affect shields AND energy. Energy only. A unit should not be able to remove the entire racial ability.
I'd love to see them both tied to the same global cooldown. Gives the toss more utility (like the Terran), but forces them to make decisions with trade-offs. Want early energy to have an oracle try to murder drones at maximum potential or a sentry to keep tabs on early Terran direction? Great, but better be ready to micro hard or make sure you scouted well enough to have the right counter when the army goes to hit if your shield battery overcharge is still on cooldown.
Pretty sure Thor is fine, the real problem is that terran bio is just so strong.
Comment for engagement. Thanks for voicing our frustrations about ghosts.
If anyone was curious and doesn't want to do the math, Disruptor nova is now a 19% larger area. The area before was 5.94 units² the area now is 7.07 units².
Man I hit like every time. I can’t believe you made me think you wouldn’t do another one.
The thing about Blink is that it is kind of like the Protoss equivalent of Marine-Medivac, in that it is versatile hits air and ground and has huge micro potential. But Marine Medivac has all these other units you can add to it that also synergize.
Blink Stalkers are one unit, and the second you add something else the mobility is gone. Protoss support is glacially slow Sentries and Templars, whereas Zealots and Archons are basically disposable munitions who always die when they engage. Colossi and Disruptors are kind of like Siege Tanks but just worse. The Immortal is good.
The immortal ***was*** good. Now it's not.
The difference though, is that Blink only feels like Marine-Medivac at the highest levels when they have the skill and APM to pull it off. For the average ladder player though, Stalkers are infinitely worse than Marine-Medivac, if for no other reason that healing is a thing. You can afford to make some mistakes with Marine-Medivac, but the same can't really be said with Blink Stalkers. 1 particularly bad blink, and you could be dead.
Maybe an extra +1 armor should be added onto charge to help with early bio pushes? It's one of the most conservative buffs I can think of for a race that's quite strong later on.
That feels scary for early game Zerg, all their best tools to counter runbys (queens, kings and lisks) are high ROF, low damage, getting a free +1 armour could make them really hard to deal with.
@MrSpleenface They still won't be doing much damage at all to Ultralisks, and mixing in a few banes always helps when so few players actually bother splitting a unit that dives into the enemy at the first chance.
My solution is simple but efficient. Add a fourth race that is absolutely terrible. Then, Protoss feel less bad because they know there is someone beneath them.
Ghosts are hard to use?
INFESTORS ARE HARD TO USE!! They dont have auto attack preventing them from walking into enemy range. They have armored tag. They dont murder light units. They dont hard couter every spellcaster. Ghosts are dirt cheap easy to use. You dont even need a separate control group for them. Which outher caster uses rapid fire spam to great success? Yeah, gosts so hard.
blah blah blah. and ghost does not have parasitic bombs for example and ghosts cant burrow.
They don't need to burrow, they are invisible lol 🤣
And they counters vision by snapshot, they counter any casters by emp, they counters any Zerg unit by snapshots except links bains, but those are counters automatically by tanks, mines, liberators that don't need any control.
So stop your bla bla bla
@art_of_joice4336 but casters can also counter them wtf you talking about? If I click emp faster than someone with his fat fingers it's not because ghost is OP
@@sky9t_sulia it's so stupid then even not need to be answered 🤣🤣🤣
@@art_of_joice4336 but you still answered 😉 not that stupid then😁
I’ve watched so many TvP casts since these patches came out.
I don’t think I’ve seen more than two immortals in any of those games (or enough to actually say, hey look mass immortal).
The theme of TvX now is X just in general, must beat Terran in early all-in or pray to survive mid game (near impossible).
On the flip side, ZvP has seemed to seesaw - meaning one mistake doesn’t snowball and tends to get into later game short of all-ins. It feels more like a chess match, a game of building advantages.
Watching a Clem maxpax game, the loss of a handful of Protoss units is practically a gg. The loss of two tanks due to sim city failure is a gg, just boring to watch beyond the micro.
I mean that's pretty much pro play in general. I wouldn't understand half of what's going on, especially in the middle of huge fights, without Winter's cast, let alone how he can tell what the build is just from the looks of things. So if you aren't watching for the insane micro and efficient macro, then what are you watching for?
@ what I mean is that the entire game is about that early micro. Whoever wins that just wins. It’s a distinctive lack of strategy, which by definition includes foresight and is about building small advantages. TvP right now is very vanilla.
MaxPax strategy vs Clem is to build 4 total units. One adept, probes, a warp prism, and Stalkers for the majority of the game. And the higher that number goes, the lower his chances are of winning. 😂
@@adrenaline98 I mean it's natural for the early micro and macro to matter. If you do a push or all-in early, your economy suffers. If they survive with a bigger economy they will of course have the advantage. So the strategy comes in terms of scouting, knowing your opponent's tendencies, etc. If you don't see a cheese, you are likely to die to it. If you scout it late, you have to fight through it. If you scout it early, they are massively behind. That's just the nature of things unless both players just macro it out with minimal fighting early.
@ that’s what is supposed to happen. Early micro/macro wins are supposed to give you an advantage, and the opponent needs to strategize and execute to recover from early mistakes. My point is the early Protoss mistakes in TvP just ends the game at the very top.
How about this? Protoss shield upgrade (from Forge) should give them EMP resistance, Level 1 gives +1 shield armor + 30% emp resistance, +2/40% emp resistance at level 2 and +3/50% emp resistance at level 3. This would give players incentive to upgrade shields even in TvP. With this you can still remove zealot shields with 1 EMP but it will require multiple for other units that have higher shields
I'm sad about ultras, they got a stealth nerf when they were getting a buff
30:23 How about if Gateway units were buffed overall, and then when warped in by a Warp Gate, they start with for example -50% shield? That could potentially solve the issue that you are addressing.
You don't even need to be a pro to see that terran is the "favorite child" in this.
Always has been
Dude thats why I always said. It is so obvious this game gets "balanced" by Terrans and some Protoss. But definitly not Zerg players. I mean to be fair, Terrans got nerfs this time as well, but overall it feels bad.
Sure it is....
Not if you're a ladder hero. Ladder is filled to the brim with protoss and these changes won't do anything to change it.
@@Falorikthan the Protoss don’t have a say. And they don’t have. Probably outnumbered by cringe grandmaster terrans that find snipe to be too weak. I can’t
Why revert the ultralisk size? God damn it, the balance council is full of clowns.
So it can more reliably push units aside? They made it smaller so that it could be more maneuverable, but now that it can push things aside, it doesn't need to be as maneuverable.
It feels like it really needed to go through a test. I like a big boi ultra but... what the heck are we doing not putting it on the PTR
ultras should have phasewalking imo and possibly give units underneath slight damage reduction. Would make them actually good units.
@@ChrisZukowski88 Does the Colossus get the same thing then, given that they are even taller and can actually have units walk under them?
0:28 I like how you started to point at Jimmy, and then realized it was his day off...
Thanks for your videos Winter, completely agree with all of your Protoss discussion. The horribly terra-favoured balance council have been killing what could be such a great game. If everyone with any knowledge of sc2 knows how utterly, utterly 1 sided early game tvp is in favour of terran why has the balance council utterly failed at their most basic of tasks - which is give some buff to protoss to give them any chance at all at surviving the first few minutes of the game vs terran. Any, any sort of early game aggression against protoss and they crumple like paper and, discontent with the already band-aid solution of them needing shield overcharge to give protoss any hope of surviving with the stupid imbalance, they in their infinite wisdom have removed even that. Oh but you can use an earlier hallucinated phoenix to see the army coming to crush you. I play a ton of competitive multiplayer games and I've never seen such an egregious imbalance in a mainstream popular multiplayer game as what terran vs protoss has been over the last few years, at least one that i think is so blindly obvious and feels so awful to play with. Today competitive matches between the 2 are a joke, you know the result as soon as you see the matchup, unless its literally 1 guy in the entire world who dedicates his time to using 1 - that is ONE strategy: blink micro that has a hope in the matchup. It's very sad, because the game itself, the engine and everything is outstanding and a dream to play, but play a few matches and you realise what a broken mess it is. The protoss players sadly give up and go play other things, viewership/interest/players go down, so the terran chucklers can continue to not have to play a game and take their win. Balance council, take some pride in the game you supposedly love and truly try to balance early pvt. Maybe (shock horror), nerf something of terran or give protoss outright buffs. Then you'll be able to take satisfaction out of a terran win other than what is currently 'yea but a 5 year old can win so why would you be proud of that?'.
13:00 about the depo buff: It's 100% correct to buff HP on a building that has more money/energy invested in it. Like with any other upgradeable Building: CC->PF. Hatch->Lair ->Hive. Spire->Greater Spire., etc.
Heavily nerf Warp gate cooldowns but not the normalgateway timers, then you can buff protoss gateway units. Make Zealots faster and tankier.
Give protoss a way to slowly heal units. Maybe just an aura around a nexus or something
(Okay, this turned out really long. But I'd REALLY appreciate you reading it and sharing your thoughts.)
I've never cared much for RTS games and I've only interacted with SC2 as a spectator (really like your videos and personality!), but it's interesting to see the clash in viewpoints from pro players who never make mistakes and never die to early cheese compared to Joey Bag-o-Doughnuts on the ladder who exclusively moves his army with the F2 key. It can seem easy to say "there are too many Ghosts so we should nerf Ghosts" but if you don't address the underlying problem then there'll just be a new poster boy for Terran supremacy.
Here's a fairly famous anecdote from a fighting game called Killer Instinct, released in 2013. Every character had a power-up mode called Instinct that could be activated once per game which would give the character a unique buff. The protagonist character Jago (fireball, uppercut, simple attacks, etc.) had an Instinct mode that let him heal enormous amounts of life, and it wasn't uncommon for him to recover 30-50% of his life bar if he could get an opening, activate Instinct, and do a normal combo. People recognized him as a top tier character and wanted him nerfed, because they thought the healing was too strong.
Instead, the devs took a more nuanced approach and examined why Jago was so good. Turns out, he was strong up close, comfortable far away, and if he was ever an an awkward middle distance then he could just do his safe special move Wind Kick and instantly advance into his opponent's face, where he was good again. So the devs nerfed Wind Kick. People were furious, but after a bit of time things settled out and people began finding Jago more manageable, and he dropped a bit in tier lists. The underlying problem was that Jago was never at a disadvantage anywhere on the screen, and that was what needed changing.
I think the underlying issue with the Ghost is that it's too easy for Terran to assemble a unit composition that does everything, and then devote spare resources/APM to teching up behind it. You fill two medivacs with marines, and they can be anywhere on the map in under 15 seconds, threaten to doom drop into your opponent's mineral line, ignore any kind of terrain, abuse the pick-up mechanics to dodge projectiles, and escape with Afterburner even when they get caught out of position. What does a melee race like Zerg do to counter this? Build banelings and set up a burrow trap? Build two queens and two spore crawler at every hatchery?
I think nerfing the medivac, or making some kind of change to drop ship units (medivac, warp prism, overlords/nydus) such that terrain and map navigation becomes more of a factor could help make the actual unit composition of your army more relevant. Past a certain point in the game, reapers are totally inferior to marines, and I think that's a shame. If dropships travelled more slowly the more units they had, or if there were limits on how quickly you could pick up units and retreat from unfavorable fights, then there might be a reason to mass produce something that is worse at combat but more self-sustainable (the reaper) compared to something that's better at combat but requires another unit to help it move around (marines/marauders).
It seems to me that building a unit composition is a core part of RTS games, and it's too easy for Terran to mash their face against the keyboard and get a unit composition that can stand up to everything their opponents have. Perhaps the reason why Terrans find it so easy to camp is because their opponents need to worry about a phantom dropship and 8 stimmed marines melting their mineral lines at every point in the game.
As a Shield battery buff. What if they can drop hardened Shields on an area of units, global cool down. When defending against hard counters like tanks, Protoss will be able to use a one minute buff on a squad of assassin's every minute, offering a defensive choice, a small squad that cyclones and marines can fight but the siege tank is more vulnerable to. And such an ability would at best block a bile shit against Zerg offering little defensive power there, although being able to tank banelings could be horrific, it will only protect a small squad and the rest of your army will hate you regardless.
Just a thought
Maybe they could fly and carry units and boost over cliffs and stuff
@chloesmith4065 you want the shield battery ability on the Void Prism? I mean. Why would you want to have more Archon drops being played Iike medivacs? Aren't Medivacs cancer enough? The fact they decided to merge the medic and the drop ship was too strong even on release.
Next patch: EMP now disables active abilities in addition to its other effects
I dunno if it'd be balanced but making a gateway upgrade that gives an alternative to warpgate would be neat, something like gateway-spawned units are a lil' stronger than their warpgate spawned counterparts could be cool, if only so warpgate isn't the only possibility?
If the problem to buffing protoss base units is that they get overwhelming when warped in, just give'em a buff when made normally? People better informed than me prolly read this and see a horrible idea but its an idea nonetheless
Sounds like a great idea to this low plat random player
the passive ability of the infestor is that it can move while burrowed.
Why not just keep overcharge and also give protoss the new ability? You could even nerf overcharge a bit if it's too strong, just let them have the tool to deal with the period the game where they need it. Also why not just give EMP a damage cap, so if it hits a ton of units it'll only wipe out a certain amount of shield/energy.
IF that ghost nerf doesnt work, i think making emp dmg overtime or the effect expand slowly, so Protoss can in both case micro against it is something to explore. Other possiblites shield upgrades gives emp dmg reduction, guardian shield helpes againt it...
Yeah damage over time zoning ability would make a lot more sense
What about a slower emp missile, so it can be dodged. I like the damage over time because it can force engagements.
We have already seen it work in at least 1 game so far, maybe more. Having to choose between 10 more Ghosts for the army or a Medivac full of Marines to shut down an expansion is a pretty big choice, especially since Zerg basically need to mine an extra base to be competitive.
My feedback on your feedback on Feedback is that as I recall the impetus for that change was Medivacs? The ability for a single Templar to blow up multiple loaded Medivacs was very scary.
Boo hoo maybe Terran can one of their infinite maphack scans to see if a Templar is there before flying their medivacs in.
It should be. Protoss has to be careful with their warp prism. Medivacs shouldn't be able to get in for free.
"MaxPax is Dark on another computer" XD XD XD
Between the balance decisions, the wording they choose to use, bug problems, and issues like the easily addressable map pool, it really does feel like “amateur hour” as you said…
EMP removing 50% of current shields and energy seems like a strong but reasonable nerf. Maybe even having affected units have some sort of immunity to another EMP for X amount of seconds. Still majorly disrupts any protoss situation without completely invalidating a protoss composition.
I always tough that the ghost EMP should be a projectile, like the infestors, that triggers at the first unit that impact and unit closed by, instead of a point and click without counterplay to it
Terran is like the favorite child , Zerg is the red headed step child an Protoss is the first born the parents are disapointed about the choices they made 😂
Zerg was un-nerfable for so long.
@@singularityphoenixx yes and no I have a horrible win rate against Zerg but usually is because they out play me so I cannot complain I just think the queen nerf is stupid they rely on it so much I suck at orical micro an I even sometimes destroy 5-8 drones before an adequate response or you can stop all the mining at one base
@@Astartesparty I think nerfing queens is a great idea... on the condition that they actually address the issue of zerg having no other early anti-air.
What about if warp gate warped in with no shields, to limit what you were talking about at 30:25 , to then allow Zealots and Stalkers to be adjusted a bit more. Building them from the gate way took same train time, but they came out with full shields. To prevent those massive warp in run bys.
I'm old enough to remember why the ghost became the way it is. The seige tank at the outset of lotv could be moved in seige mode by the medivav giving them mobile damage at a critical point to counter ravager corrosive bile.
Well it didn't take long before the ability was removed and the seige tank turned into its current form. The ghost became the go to counter.
Imo you got to up the damage of steady targeting back to 170.
If only Protoss had some kind of flying unit from really early on that you could only make 1 but it could help early game protoss survive into mid game. That'd be the "core" of protoss defense
Lmfao. The sad thing is I bet most people who see this don't remember the mothership core.
Babyship was taken out for a reason, it just wasn't a fun playstyle to play or play against
Feedback doing 1 dmg/energy would be interesting in PvP in this Energy Recharge era.
Have feedback drain energy over time, and 1 or maybe more damage per energy. Force counter play. Ability to force engagements.
Concerning the Ghost, i think one way to make it less of a jack of all trades, master of all (pun intended), would be to move EMP over to the Raven, a unit that dosent see much use in TvZ or TvP. Removes power from the ghost and gives a reason to build ravens in those matchups.
You had me in the feels with that first line! Your content has helped me so much Winter! We all appreciate your hard work!!
Chrono boost always felt like it should have been the first of multiple abilities for the nexus. I'm glad recall and overcharge were added but I wish it was as developed and as concrete as Orbital commands
I’m a Protoss main, but don’t like spectating Protoss games because it feels like they always lose. Plus SC2 pro games in general all feel so same-y now
Protoss has extremely limited viable openers at the top level. There's like 20 build orders for Terran, but for protoss the only choices are do you want to do two three or four gate blink. Robo and Stargate openers just aren't viable; phoenix Colossus is a joke, immortal nerfed again, etc...
Same. I've completely stopped watching PvT. It is not fun watching MaxPax 4gate blink Clem for the millionth time. If Clem survives the 4gate he wins. Boring.
I mean, there's a meta for a reason, lol. If you are doing a non-meta build, there's a reason you generally have to win early or lose late, and that's because it won't be as efficient.
Ghost is just so frustrating to balance, I recall you mentioning ages ago, and hammering it in every chance you get that EMP should have projectile speed reduced, so instead of your opponent actually having good strategy in not having their army out of place or being able to micro-back from one, now it's just your opponent only has to worry about killing the two to three ghosts since you can't mass them without it being effective- supply wise, BUT you still run into the problem of the ghost existing in the first place!!! since all that ghost needs to do is get on top of the clump of templar/infestor/protoss-death-ball and sacrifice itself for that one EMP without your opponent being able to do anything about it.
Ghost is just raven pre missile dmg nerf. Mass single unit is always stupidly boring to watch. I would suggest to remove the dmg Or change emp to single unit
I'm not sure I understand the statement about people not watching anymore if late game air-toss becomes more common. Carriers, tempests, and the mother ship are box art units. Some of the coolest to see in a real game, watching interceptors swarm an army or tempests siege down positions. I totally understand how that would be frustrating to actually play against, but I think Winter might have a poor read on the spectator viewpoint of skytoss. It's the same with every super late game big unit, I've never heard anyone watching starcraft for entertainment complain that they see too many battle cruisers, or thors, or ultralisks.
One could argue that Terran and to a lesser extent Zerg have never had to shake their build orders up and "re-learn" their race's early game.
Protoss gets a rework that shakes the foundations every couple years. Mothership core, pylon overcharge, shield battery overcharge and now energy whatever it's called.
There's no long term stability. I expect this will last one patch because who wants a single build viable at the top level?
I've always thought a solution could be a special gateway unit that is only able to be built or warped in at a nexus sharing a pylon with a gateway. Effectively it would be the Protoss equivalent of a Queen, maybe give it +damage in range of a nexus/pylon. Just something to be stable between a stalker and immortal in power level.
Dude, Clem is not the only Terran player who has effective usage with Ghosts.
I don't even know how this narrative started.
Yeah, but when the world champion, who likely won with Ghosts, can admit that they might be too strong, how can you not listen to him? If you are trying to balance around pro play, at least partially, because you are also trying to balance the ladder, how can you not take the opinion of the world champion into account?
@LucianDevine There's a point in this video where Winter basically says that Ghosts don't need the balance nerf they got because of the way Clem controls them sounding like he's ignoring the fact that several other top level Terrans aren't able to micro Ghosts effectively.
@@randomfriendlygamerRFG But if you are going to talk about Ghost micro, why wouldn't you reference the world champion, especially when he is of the opinion that they need to be nerfed? Yeah, he could name drop the rest, but it's just easier to say Clem.
@LucianDevine He doesn't need to name drop other players because it sounds like he's saying other players can't be effective with Ghosts.
That is not the case, we know other players can be plenty effective with Ghosts, not just Clem so his reasoning for thinking the Ghost nerf is too much doesn't hold much weight.
@@randomfriendlygamerRFG He never said the Ghost nerf was too much. He just said that it was the most blunt way to do it instead of changing how EMP worked, switching EMP to Ravens, etc. The Ghost does a LOT of things and is vital to the TvZ matchup, but there should be a price for building 25 of them. There wasn't before.
Is there no way to hold the council accountable? your casting is literally the only reason this game is worth watching. Thank you for bringing up that any match with a protoss in the title is spoiled before you even hit play.
The balance councils Terran members are so low in intellectual capacity, and can only flap their lips to try and make sounds louder than everyone else to get their way. There is ZERO accountability, so being a bully and a nuisance in the meetings is 100% the best tactic, there is no conversing there is no fair discussion, it is ran by the few members who are the loudest and most ignorant and this wont end until the "council" (its honestly a joke to even call it that anymore) have to deal with repercussions. You have a few people playing god with the health of the game, and they are all completely corrupt and biased. /endrant. I am VERY salty.
love your content, I cant believe i still watch this corrupt game but your casting talent is fun to watch. Sorry for the massive QQ on my end.
The supply calldown basically for unscouted 2 gate or ling flood because this maps have long distance on ramps its basically maybe prevent game ending scenario in early game still thou rare occasion that timing you almost mule all the time so yeah. Its basically hard to do on reflex yet hope it helps regular joe like me.
Hasn't tournaments in Korea been balancing SCBW for decades now through map design? Why not give SC2 to those organizations to balance since they have a proven track record. Surely, they could also redesign not only the maps but also the races themselves.
Idea:Nano repair for protoss. Passive. Works only on ground mechanical out of combat and needs a tech structure, either support bay or Fleet beacon. Bio gate units can be replaced
I'd personally like to know how many participants in the "balance council" win money from tournaments. I bet the answer isn't zero😅😅😅
It's funny because even pro players admit that they would just try to make the game better for them if they were on the balance council. And then you find out that some of them are on the balance council. Big conflict of interest.
Exactly! There is potentially a lot of money on the line. Clem won £400k at the world championships, you damn right I would try manipulate balance (in my favour) if I was on the council. There is a good video with Showtime talking about the council and he said there is a very vocal pro Terran player who basically dominates the council. Showtime didn't name who it was but said they are a top level pro player and use their influence to push through all the changes they want and stop the changes they don't want. This is why we saw a lot of random changes no one asked for, hellion blue flame buff, supply depo drop thing, salvage missile turrets/sensor towers, liberator 56% area increase, no nerf to the ghost etc. etc.
My money is on Gumiho.
Woulda been cool if they made the mothership abduct-able but only with 3 units. First unit can grab onto it and it can still move/attk but very slow, second unit grabs and holds it into place but it can still attack, then 3rd unit pulls it back giving Zerg the same effect as the old abduct ability pre patch.
I'm just going to say it... EMP shouldn't impact shields (may shield regen). EMP should only impact energy bar. If the argument is that shields use energy well so do robo units but they can still move/shoot after EMP (at least until the next "balance" patch).
What's the answer to Archons if EMP doesn't hit shields?
@@LucianDevine Maybe allow Snipes to work on archons (maybe even ignoring shields)
Simplest change would just be to reduce the shield damage that emp does, having it counter both other caster units AND deal massive instant aoe damage against all Protoss is too much. If you need to preserve it against archons maybe make it do 50%-60% of current shields rounded up. It still wipes massive chunks of health off archons but can't completely expose them, and while the damage is still significant against other units you don'y have a ghost drive-by removing all the blue from the entire Protoss army. With this they could even revert the AOE size reduction nerf on EMP as it would go back to being an anti-caster tool.
Disruptor having a splash damage/death animation would be an interesting trade off. also an even larger nova attack radius would make up for the damage nerf
I really must thank the Terran council. Because of this patch I dont feel the urge to play and can do something else with my life. And only watch sc2 from Winter casts.
Some ideas that will get lost in the sea of comments
1 - first thing to do is nerf the attack point of marines so that everything isn't just built around stutter step micro.
2 - Do something with Contaminate - its the most expensive spell in the game and does barely anything
3 - guardian shield giving a 3-4 second buff outside the shield
4 - slow EMP projectile
5 - Make protoss shield upgrades reduce EMP damage by 10-20 per upgrade
6 - siege mode needs researching on libs
7 - reduce calldown of nukes
8 - Make gateway units slower with warps, faster when built from gateway
9 - Scan/mules costs 75 energy and/or much less duration
10 - hellbats not biological
11- increase speed of disruptor or allow reduced movement when using attack (they get one shot off at most usually then die)
12 - Mines cost minerals to replenish
13 - caustic spray range increase
14 - Mothership repair drones to fix damaged protoss mech
I´m a medium to low Masters Protoss player... And even though I can accept that I suck at this game more than the next guy, I can see a big step backwards on this patch, and it´s coming from the early and middle part of the game. The reason why they created Pylon Overcharge, Nexus Overcharge, Battery Overcharge, and everything overcharge on the first place, was simple because Protoss can´t produce enough units on the early game to match the cost efficiency of the other two races, so in order to balance it up, they added a 14 sec life saving, that helped to stay alive at least until the next wave of cheap and fast units comes in. Now Protoss has to focus on surviving the first 5 min, promoting camping and slower games (that was the general thing they were supposed to reduce). Then, going into mid game with also nerfed units (less damage from Disruptors and less dps Inmortals)... And to compensate all that, they buffed the Mothership?. So, if for any reason we manage to survive to late game, the way of going "stronger" is doing the only sinlge giant unit in the entire game? I guess al least T&Z players must be happy to erase all the Protoss from existence the first 5 min of every game.
That was such a good start to the video LMFAO.
Well played, Winter, you son of a biscuit
Winter ranting is so charming 😅
His feedback seems to make a lot of sense, though
I predict that there will be an increase in the usage of Nukes across all match ups where ghosts would be used.
If the ghost is 1 more supply, then the relative cost of the same amount of supply in ghosts is actuallly less than it used to be - which means you have more money to spend on Nukes.
Thanks for the vids Winter always enjoy the casts
I like your logic but disagree lol. Nukes are still useless except for zoning.
Here’s a wild idea, how about the balance patch takes a page out of the terran buff book and gives the shield battery overcharge option, the energy recharge option, or a health regeneration option. Only one can be used at a time though with maybe a cooldown.
I’ve always thought it was dumb that Protoss can’t heal, when their shields can just be EMP’d away before a fight even starts.
I’d take it a step further and say that Nexus recall should be removed, and only the mothership recall skill should be an option, but instead of using it to recall units TO the mothership, it teleports the mothership itself and all units to a nexus of choice. This is a retreat/defensive ability to counter base trades in my opinion.
But in return, the health/energy/shield overcharge abilities become available but only one at a time with an active cooldown.
Protoss aggressions should be left to actively pushing out on the map or using a warp prism.
It’s been my experience watching these professional replays that most nexus recalls end up with 3/5 stalkers dying in a recall animation when they would have been more cost efficient to just trade out.
Feels like I’ve won 2 games out of my last 10 on the new patch. Rough out there!