This Question About MAPS Broke Harstem (Ask me Anything)
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- Опубликовано: 1 сен 2023
- Today we have a beautiful Ask me Anything from the recently posted reddit thread. It is very focused on balance, but there also are some rl questions in there.
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#harstem #SC2 #StarCraft2 
Игры
First
Honestly you being a lot more transparent and trying to engage with the community is wholesome and really encouraging to many to continue this game.
Yeah, I would have quit SC2 if not for Hartstem, good call mate.
Let Protoss make Observers from their Nexii once they have a Robo. This is my suggestion, and I think it's a pretty good one. This way Protoss could get their MUCH needed scouting / detector unit out without taking up precious Robo build time.
When cloaked Banshees or Widow Mines show up in your base and you need that detection ASAP but you're trying to get Colossus or Immortals out to defend that first timing attack, it's annoying to either have to wait until the slow-building Robo unit finishes so you can start up an Observer, or if your Robo is free, you're worried that the time youre spending making 1 or 2 Obs is going to mean 1 less Colossus or Immortals which can often times be the deciding factor in whether or not you hold that first push.
It feels like sometimes you have to decide between losing 5-10+ workers or risk not being able to hold the Bioball / Bio + Tank(s) and/or Raven timing.
Interesting idea, but I dont think that would have enough impact.
@@TheSuperappelflap
It is old idea but it never came trough
The math on Colossus vs Marauders:
Marauder life: 125 hp
Armour: 1
Colossus attack damage: 10 (+5 vs light) (x2)
Amount of attacks to kill a marauders:
[10 *dmg) - 1 (armour)] x 2 (2 attacks) = 18
125 (hp) / 18 = 6,9444
(So it needs 7 attacks with no upgrades)
With +1 it still kills marauders with 7 attacks:
(11 - 1) x2 = 20
125/20 = 6,25
Only with + 2 atk upg advantage over infantry armour it kills a marauder with 6 attacks:
(12 - 1) x2 = 22
125/22 = 5,68
That could be fixed if you gave colossus 1 more base damage, so that 1 atk upg advantage over armour would kill marauders with 6 attacks instead of 7. Also, only with a +3 advantage you could kill marauders with only 5 attacks.
I think it would be more balanced. You don't want to fight colossus with bio only anyway. You still need Ravens or Vikings for that.
the +1 damage will count as 2 this +2 will devastate other units this is the issue Harstem was talking about you cant just balance one unit match up since it effects every unit match up
Meanwhile a marauder with +1 does 22 damage per hit, and colossus have 150 shields and 200 health with 1 armour. So it takes 7 hits to get through the shields and then 10 hits to get through the health. Marauder with stim attacks 50% faster than a colossus. So 1 marauder can do 10 attacks in the time it takes a colossus to do 7 attacks. Meaning, 2 marauders that are split, kill a colossus. Marauder costs 100/25 and colossus 300/200.
And then we havent even talked about emp removing the shields.
Colossus is joke unit vs terran. -300/200 and 6 supply. Just dont make them. Get disruptors and storm instead.
Even if they got 10 range and more armor and more damage theyd still suck against Terran. Against Zerg they might be a little bit viable if they outranged lurkers, but with viper abduct in the game I dont see that happening either.
@@viktorgabriel2554 the problem is that double attacks gets reduced twice per point of armor too, so if you change only the dmg vs all and keep the total damage vs light, it doesn't impacts battles against non-light units that much.
I really like Harstems point about most ideas being bad. It’s really about perseverance of focus and volume to find the good ones.
Thanks for answering so many of our questions! Really appreciate you taking the time to do so many of these! Lowko IODIS and him watching it are both amazing and completely worth rewatching!
45:28 when you predicted Lowko's excuse about Schwarzenegger's genetics, i lost it. It really was a great video both the original and lowko's reaction
Thumbs up for damage-over-time to storm and EMP!
Storm is already DOT.
Either damage over time or it should be a projectile that is slower, so a skilled player can dodge it.
storm is damage over time xD?
Harstem literally talks about storm having more ramping damage to reduce the burst of storm at the beginning of the video
@@jerubaal101
@@jerubaal101 I meant more what the video mentioned. Instead of flat damage per tick, first tick low damage, increase damage per tick later.
Finaly someone said something about the battlecruiser!
9:52 I like how on the question of favorite season, Harstem carefully worded his response to avoid saying he likes Winter.
I was wondering why he worded that in such a round about way
The winter hate is so dumb.
@@MrMasters1983yeah, but it is funny ;)
@@LDSG_A_Team The dude invested in himself and won. Now he is doing what he loves. Why is that funny?
@@MrMasters1983 it's the haters that are funny to watch dude. I have no strong opinions one way or another on the man himself, but watching a bunch of people hating on winter while he's kinda just chillin and doing well for himself is pretty funny as a more or less outside observer.
It's like watching someone getting mad at an apple tree for dropping apples all over the ground, and meanwhile eating an apple every day. It's really quite funny to watch.
Harstem you should lead and create an OFFICIAL balance council SC2 RUclips Channel to announce progress/changes and updates and keep the community informed and excited around SC2. Think it would be huge and greatly appreciated by all of us. You’re doing a great job! Crazy Blizzard has tasked us with doing the work THEY should be doing-almost like outsourcing it as free labor. It’s not easy and so far you’re doing a great job at a task that should be in the hands of their game designers. What an interesting and exciting experiment this is for SC2 as a whole to have this council! Wishing it the absolute best ❤️
I really appreciate the time you give, divulging information you don't have to (being on the council) and the eloquent way you try to communicate. I'm so bad at the game I probably wouldn't even place in bronze. I love this game because I'm amazed how other's can play this game and I'm so handicapped I'm unable to figure it out.
Even so, my fascination with the game makes me very interested in what you have to say. Thanks man. I appreciate you
I love the idea of double queue for the robo. Maybe just obvservers and warp prisms can produce parallel to other robo units, but the immortal, colosus, and disruptor can still only be produced one at a time. That would be awesome.
This is how Immortal: Gates of Pyre does it. It's really good. All production structures can build multiple units at the same time, but stronger/larger units can only build 1 or 2 at a time
That might be out of the scope of possibility for sc2 without triggers
I'd be happy with just observers tbh, that would be huge.
@@MinDeRien2658 agreed
maybe im just simple. but im just glad there is change and for me there is zero reason to complain or flame someone. Sure, i have my own thoughts about some units and the balance. But im just happy there are ppl out there who are working on stuff. Now we just need new maps .
I think there is currently something off regarding the cost/buildtime/general value of robo units. I agree how frustrating it was to fight terran, have them pick off my robo units and then my the remaining toss army is absolute garbage. Something just is a off. Love the balance discussion btw. Would love to see much more on youtube where its people just talking balance
Whats off is that gateway units arent as cost efficient as low tier terran and zerg units. They have to be this way because thanks to warpgate and warp prisms existing, if the units were stronger, one warp prism making it into the enemy base and warping in a round of units would end the game in 4 seconds.
Let me start by saying the I'm not a SC2 player, I'm a league player. With that I find a lot of parallels between the two.
I think (and I might be totally off here) that the main problem with the widow mine in low levels, and the reason it's not a problem in high levels, is map awareness.
I think that in low levels, players don't react to it until they hear the warning, basically telling them that they lost all of their mineral line. While in the high levels, players spot the mine before it hits and let it explode on a single target.
map awareness is a skill you learn with time. In league, a big difference between the bronze-silver rank to gold-plat rank has a direct correlation to map awareness.
A possible solution to this problem (apart from, get good) might be an auditory warning when a mine is starting to borrow in range of a cc/nexus/hatchery. This solution will give you a tiny amount of time to react to the widow mine, making it still viable for use but less oppressive. With that, it will also make the widow mine a sort of a practice tool for map awareness as the auditory warning does not tell you in what base the mine is, and you'll need to use your minimap in order to know where it is.
Just my thoughts about it :)
Great idea. Would have zero impact on pro level since they actually watch the map but would make low level less punishing
This was already implemented with liberators. If a liberator starts sieging and one of your units is in its attack circle, you will get a "your units are under attack" alert immediately. Same could be done for mine. If a mine starts to burrow and one of your units is in its attack range, you get an alert. That would be a nice quality of life change for noobs without impacting pro play much.
That lowko IODIS reaction was what introduced me to your chanel and now I watch IODIS everytime i get the chance
"its been a month. time to check on harstem roasting diamond players in NA"
Knew you'd mention golden wall haha. I feel exactly the same. Was discussing it with someone the other day. It really allowed for different play without breaking the game.
I really liked to listen to this video. I hope there will be more epizodes of this.
Oh my god that’s actually Harstem in a sombrero! ¡Qué bonito!
What if emp removed Protoss shields but only for a small window time after which the shields immediately go back to half the value they were at before emp? Think of the immortal shield mechanic but in reverse. Alternatively it could just do less sheild damage. Maybe you could also make it temporarily disable mechanical units movement but the units could still shoot, disabling blink instead of doing insane damage to shields. This way it could also be used in tvt mech vs bio in an interesting way. An emp could be used to catch cyclones or hellions but wouldn’t counter already weighed tanks.
Maybe Protoss shouldnt be forced to deathball, then one EMP wouldnt do 12 quadrillion points of shield damage to your entire stack of colossi with archons and templars between their legs.
personally love the widowmines but i do see the problem of them being too strong early game. the issue with the widowmines being too powerful might be to have it rolled back to about 50 % dmg and then tiered upgrades for it, similar to the bio attack upgrades. having it end up at the same place it is now but only when it has full upgrades, that way you can buff it if you need to but it would still be useful as a harassment tool early game, just a little less punishing to fumble the cleanup. just nerfing the mines will severely shackle terran lategame.
just reduce splash radius and give an upgrade to get it back at normal level on the armory or factory tech lab. that way they dont clear entire mineral lines early game but can still counter ling bane later.
@harstem Shawshank Redemption was filmed in my home town. cool to hear you liked it
realy enjoyed this video!
Haven't finished watching this video but I think maps should be more colossus favored. More parts in the middle of the map should have ledges for protoss to utilize.
More ledges also helps Terran in multiple ways and nerfs Zerg. Was this an intended side effect?
Captain, I just rewatched the lowko IODIS. can u PLS add the “Midgame review” etc again! It’s such a fun episode.
My personal favourites are actually the newest one “Who Hurt you my friend” and the one with the „yellow brick award“ 🤣
About the map thing. Brood War every season has 1 non standard map that has some crazy feature like having creep in your main base at the start that you need to get rid of, or a (semi) island map, or a map with paths that can be permanently opened or blocked by destroying particular buildings. Now these maps do usually get figured out over the course of a season and they tend to not be perfectly balanced to put it mildly. But it is great fun to watch pro players in leagues figuring the maps out in real time. And obviously if someone feels like a map is unfavorable to them, they can just veto it, as long as the other maps in the pool are standard maps that are balanced.
Also, BW has 3 and 4 player maps and I feel like SC2 would have more variety with those in the game. If scouting is such an issue then just show on the minimap at the start where the enemy spawned. And disable diagonal cross spawn if it is imbalanced. It would add a lot of variety to have 4 player maps where you can either spawn horizontal or vertical instead of having the exact same mirrored maps every game.
As for 3 player maps, Im sure it is possible to make a balanced 3 player map where zerg cant take the 3rd spot for free and have 2/3 of the bases every game. But nobody is attempting this.
Colossus needs to be able to crouch to avoid air attacks but it ends up with very little range.
Would be tons of fun to see pop up and down to avoid Vikings or corruptors.
LOL, Crouching colossus Hidden DT
@@TiredOwl464 perfect combo
Really just so you can teabag
Teabagging Colossus sounds awesome
Thinking a bit more, how cool would it be to see a phoenix lift a colossi
EMP could have been adjusted to need to go through shields before hitting energy. That is the point of a shield and there's really no reason that EMP should be getting double value on top of being applicable against everything Protoss has. The purpose of the shield is to block that sort of stuff. This doesn't affect the PvZ matchup at all. I know others have suggested this basically no downside seemingly. Is there a reason that something like this didn't make its way in there?
I agree that fixing some stuff like the ghost are necessary to getting Protoss to work. However, I think that things aren't going to get better without also looking at serious base level changes to how Protoss works (major changes for the umpteenth time). If you don't want brick wall stale gameplay on the back of "get out disruptor or colossus to stop the aggression" and you don't want Protoss to just cheese either, then don't design things in such a way where you basically expect them to lean heavily on the units that people are annoyed with. Yes, they're good vs ground but it seems like unless Protoss is just winning already, they require these units just to not get blown out of the water in otherwise equal situations. I don't think anyone expects equal skill, equal economy gateway armies to beat a stim push or even cracklings. Yes, they can sometimes but only when putting in a lot more commitment than the Terran or Zerg. In these cases, stim and speed make the base T and Z units just out of reach for gateway armies to fight normally whereas charge, blink, or glaives just don't do similar in reverse. If Protoss is to be expected to not just tech up into a particular answer, their gateway stuff needs to be able to hold its ground at all levels of play at least somewhat without doing an all in. Yes, this causes a warp in problem. Well, I have a suggestion.
Instead of a normal warp in, warp prism instead enters warp in mode and drops a temporary pylon with less hp which actually does the warp in, not the prism. This is kind of like how stasis ward can be considered a "temporary structure". This means that if an opponent is paying attention, even zerglings can just deny the warp in. If used to support on the front, this is either easy to snipe or needs to be done from a safer position which isn't nearly as strong as a front line warp in and not so different from a regular forward pylon. Making this ability cost some minerals to use would keep it from being spammed. This keeps the warp prism as a strong unit but hurts the most problematic parts, enabling the buffing of the gateway units, perhaps by buffing one or more of the main upgrades. Or maybe a second tier upgrade. Marines get stim and combat shields. Marauders get stim and concussive. Zerglings get metabolic boost and adrenal. Why can't some gateway units get a second upgrade? I think it is obvious that basic bio or lings just wouldn't be the same missing either of their upgrades. If you don't want them coming out early, maybe put the new one(s) in templar archives or something.
story episode sounds good!
Harstem what a man great music tastes. Recently saw the strokes in London. no buses is definitely one of the best am songs, another of my all time favourites.
For the widowmine i think that making them more visible in the minimap and making the shot animation more bright whould help lower level players to notice them and try to micro against them without affecting the high level players (because they already notice without problem)
i think emp should be moved to the raven and given a duration like storm. I also think that the emp storm should despell spells that have been cast on you such as despelling interreference matrix.
ghosts can then be given emp grenades that work more like a reaper grenade
Thank you for answering questions.
what do you think about removing the invisibility of mines or having an invisible mode where they cant shot and a visible mode where they can. such that mines require micro to be useful.
I think youre on the right track
I died from laughing hearing that "guy peeing for 30 seconds in pop song" analogy
I just hope eventually something will be done so that we can see more varied Zerg armies. The Infestor is the lamest of the three ground-casters. You almost never see the Ultralisk, Swarm Host, or Brood Lord in play. Lurker is always a pleasant surprise when it shows up, and Viper usually means the Zerg is losing to air, I almost never see them made for Blinding Cloud.
It seems like Zerg is reliant on being super mobile but a bunch of their units just aren't. All the clunky units get cut. Hey maybe more Hydra pushes...
Viper is mainly made to abduct big costly enemy units like thors, colossi, big air units. Blinding cloud is only used if terran does a massive siege tank push.
Thanks again Harstem!
37:00 Great for you! Many people break up after moving in together.
For the widow mine, which i am lower lever and stuggle to fight against. My biggest issue isnt the speed inwhich it burrows or attacks. Its when they are placed all over the map and are very hard to spot. I think just making the burrowed spot area larger and easier to see would be nice.
Agree with that, I didn't even know that you could spot them some time ago. But I also don't quite understand why do you struggle to move out with detection.
@@nick1752 its not the lack of detection. Its that when your trying to coordinate 3 different attacks you could lose huge portions of the army to a few mines. I simply dont have the MMR to being fully watching everywhere like the pros do. I cant count how many times i lost 30 lings to 2 mines trying to micro my army
@@Twogenders685 Answer: use some APM to send out single zerglings first to draw mines before you send 30 lings to do a runby on an enemy expansion. You should be running around / patrolling with lings everywhere on the map for scouting and map vision anyway. The mines just force you to practice this fundamental aspect of the game that you should be doing anyway. As a Terran player there are few things less annoying than having the 2 mines you burrow to protect your 3rd or 4th base blow up on a single zergling and then losing a whole mineral line to the runby and having to lift your cc
Get units that outrange mines and a-move. As zerg if you play ling/bane you have creep so you know the mines before they burrow and only have to pay attention when attacking offcreep or you play a roach based style that isn't vulnerable to mines anyway.@@Twogenders685
thanks for answering my question harstem! really appreciate it
my 2 cents about the Widow Mines being "op" at lower level. Widow mines on their owns are fine, I feel like it's easy to play around them for other races, the issue is ignite afterburner. Newbs looks away for 5 second (or don't pay attention during the fight) and BAM their entire mineral lines is gone. Ignite afterburner induce dopamine because it's so fast, things are happening quick, drops get in and out, terran can be aggressive without having to commit, I agree it has it's (massive) advantages, but I think in the end it did more harm than good to SC2. The reason hellbats are so bad right now is they were nerfed a long time ago when TvT was about dropping them everywhere.
I'm not saying the balance team should change it, I'm saying that's why we are in a situation today where the game feels unfair to lower level player, it's the one units that puts such a high skill floor for sc2.
Hellbats are actually very underrated vs zerg. In the midgame you can make a 2nd and maybe 3rd factory and spam hellions with blue flame, then turn them into hellbats in front of bases and waddle in. They will kill 8000 zerglings, then you can turn them back into hellions and chase the evacuating drones. They even do damage to spine crawlers and queens which hellions barely tickle.
As for the afterburners, problem is that the game is so fast now that drops would be completely unviable at higher level without that option. Maybe it should be turned into a cheap upgrade that takes a while to research. But where would you put that upgrade? If you put it on tech lab for starport you need to waste time only making 1 medivac at a time while researching. Maybe put it on the armory? Idk.
@@TheSuperappelflap if it was to be changed, i wouldn't get an upgrade, i would maybe copy stormgate: the boost instantly go toward your main cc/spawn location, and you can cancel it but you can't boost toward anything else than your main CC. But it would be such a massive nerf, and the entire game would have to be rebalanced, long story short, won't happen. I think the Chinese community want the boost to cost energy, I think it's fair, but won't solve much.
@@menohomo7716 without the boost a few stalkers can just blink around and kill any medivac that is trying to drop into the main base even if they were out of position, or kill the units as they come out one by one. terran really need the speed. maybe change it to a passive speed increase instead of active ability?
Fwiw, I think some of the reason people want colossus buffs is that they'd prefer to play with/against colossi rather than disruptors. So it's maybe less about buffing protoss as a faction and more about shifting power into the units (certain) people find more fun.
Re: the robo comment, I do also see a general sense in the community that gateway units are just kinda weak, hence toss's reliance on robo units. This is arguably true, but of course gateway units need to be balanced around being able to warp them in. Stronger zealots and stalkers would take some pressure off the robo bay to be sure, but the reinforcements and prism harassment potential would need to be addressed separately.
People have been suggesting the solution to the warp gate problem for 13 years: make it so units produce faster from gateways and slower from warpgates. Initially this was the case, but it was swapped early in Wings because of people dying to 3 gate zealot proxy. As this is now a completely non-viable build in the modern meta where people actually know how to micro and defend and pull workers against cheesy proxy builds, they can be swapped back. Then Protoss would have a penalty for using warpgates and a bonus for using gateways to produce at home, thus reducing the potency of yoloing warp prisms into the enemy base and warping in 12 zealots.
Also, prism warpin times should be longer so people have a chance to respond if 12 zealots are warped in their main mineral line.
Then gateway units can be buffed so they are actually viable against T and Z tier 1 units.
Honestly if you want more granular control over Ghosts, why not try (and I emphasize TRY) to split them into Ghosts and Spectres. Spectres get Cloak, EMP and maybe another ability. Ghosts get Cloak, Snipe, and Nuke. Would give you more granular control over unit health and such to balance per matchup without being limited JUST to dealing with tiny tweaks directly to abilities.
Widow Mines:
Still deal the same damage against the primary target but only deal 35 damage splash (no bonus vs shield on the splash).
Makes it good against Protoss still and punishing for the main unit that walks into it but less devastating to probes. It will still one shot key units like Oracles, Zealots, Stalkers, and softens up the units around it. Even with this, as long as a widow mine goes off against any Protoss combat unit, it's still cost effective while not being immediately game ending in the mineral line.
Colossus:
Colossus have the unique ability to ledge walk. Make ledges be "walkable" near key contested points like the 4th base and for certain maps, even the 3rd base. This makes Colossus much better since they can escape more easily while not being too overpowered in the early/mid game. I was wondering why all these maps have perfect ledges for tanks to siege behind but Colossus can never utilize.
Mothership:
Revert the cloaking field change, increase cost and hp a bit (300/300), keep build time reduction, keep time warp and mass recall changes. As it is in the balance test, it's overall a nerf since cloaking was its main use and now it's terrible for that purpose.
Cyclone:
Seriously just change it back to the way it was. The new cyclone will either be really bad or completely broken.
Nexus:
Make mass recall a cooldown only based ability. No need for it to cost 50 energy and be "countered" by EMP or "oops I used chrono with this nexus so now it's dead". Also, shorten the time where after being recalled to the nexus, the units are vulnerable but can't attack. It doesn't make sense to see 3 Colossus be warped to the defending nexus only for them to be immediately destroyed by a Bio drop before they can even attack. The attacker still has plenty of time to react to the recall and retreat.
You are a protoss player, aren't you? How about every game you walk in you get instawin if it's PvT, does this sound more easier this way?
However widow mines/colossus ideas is interesting, at least something to think of. Totally not the recall one, especially not in combination with the mothersip one. But I'd really glad to see Mothership Core back, its removal was a mistake.
@@nick1752 LOL it's clear you're a Terran player. Immediate ad hominem with salt all over.
What's wrong with the recall change and mothership buff?
Colossus ledges are good for reapers too and that can be a problem. It's not an accident, that on current maps this ledges are quite narrow.
@@atalkingcat73 fyi you're wrong, I'm a 3k+ EU protoss. I've changed the race though about a month ago. The game already feels imbalanced in protoss favour in lower leagues.
colossus having ledge walk isnt a good thing. it just makes them path different from other units so they walk into enemy armies without support.
they should instead actually do damage that isnt outhealed by 1 medivac like they did in WoL. and they should outrange lurkers. and probably be immune to abduct from viper on account of being too massive, like ultralisks.
widow mine change would mean terran has to add some marines with widow mine drop to kill probes, and that in turn would make shield battery viable defense against terran drop. i like that idea. but it would impact tvz a lot. that would need to be tweaked.
cyclone is fine as a niche base defense unit against oracle and phoenix, i dont think it should be in the game at all but its previous iteration was acceptable because it wasnt viable as a main army unit.
mass recall i dont think should be viable as a panic button. "oops i let the entire terran bio army walk across the map without seeing it and now its killing my natural while im afk in a corner of the map, let me fix this by pressing one button."
you should have to recall before the enemy army is on top of your base. make some observers or use units to get map vision.
maybe protoss should have a cheap unit that costs like 50 minerals and only costs 1 supply that cant attack and that you can make from a nexus in a few seconds, that you can use to get map vision in addition to utilizing your army, observers, watchtowers and zealot runbys to get vision. oh wait. its called a probe.
The thing about emp vs protoss, bio already shreds the army even without an emp. Maybe protoss units should get some kind of emp shield, where you can take your own shields away, and restore them. Or maybe shields kick in for each unit at 50% life, so it doesn't get every shield at once? EMP makes sense as an energy unit counter, but it's not supposed to counter an entire army. But it's terran so we leave it in.
hard agree that BCs on lower level are broken. too easy to work with
Definitely know what my IIMBAODIS submission is gonna be
I like the idea of psistorm increasing in damage over time. so plus one for that. but what if also disruptors had less damage but a concussive slow effect so that they don't insta gib things but potentially allow other units to move in and deal more damage. and if templars had a bit more speed but the increasing damage over time landing both would be difficult but devestating. lower level players wouldn't be able to pull it off most likely but are also likely to just sit in storms sometimes so I think it'd be more interesting at both high and low levels
i am one who plays this game for a couple of days each year. i appreciate standard maps
Same. I play a few games a month and sometimes take years off. The way things have been, I can pretty much plan my map strategy just by looking at the loading screen, Don't need to watch a RUclips primer just to play the game
Wardi is my fav caster too. I need more Wardi + Harstem casts in my life!!
Thank you!!!
So I've added In Bruges to my watchlist (ty), but have you ever seen Seven Psychopaths? I think you'd enjoy - great cast, great story imo
The fact that the first image literally is harstem wearing a sombrero
Yeah I don't have any suggestions, but I will say protoss felt a lot more stable to play in HOTS. Now it feels a bit more gimmicky and technical to play as a low level (diamond) player. I just wish there was some kind of stable and reliable splash damage. Colossus used to fill this role in HOTS, but is quite a bit weaker now and the void has been filled with disrupters, which are not fun to play with or against imo
Disruptor is the worst unit design Ive ever seen in an RTS. Closely followed by the cyclone. Blizz dropped the ball on unit design in the last expansion.
What if disruptors had two abilities instead of one but using one caused both to be on cool down? Keep the damage ball and the other would also be a ball that provided a small aoe buff to friendly units. Something like + X amount of; damage, attack speed, defense, movement speed, or decreased cool down time on abilities, etc. radius would likely need to be smaller than the damage ball. Damage ball may get nerfed. But seems like that would give toss some some play diversity. Prob dumb idea.. thanks for the content
Anyone remember the 2 base push strategy vs Terran where you build a small ground army supplemented with blink Dark Templar, when pushing you blink the DTs behind the opponents army, no time to react, gg.
A Colossus, 300/200 and 6 supply, just costs too much for a transitional unit. I would rather see it buffed to be an endgame unit, but if it's going to keep its current niche, it should be 5 supply, and possibly cheaper. Its cliffwalking just doesn't seem to be worth the tradeoff of being hit by air attacks; Vikings kill them regardless, and bio can stutter-step and snipe them before they reach a cliff. Alternatives could be Wrathwalker mode, take away their Armored attribute, give more base Armor or more per upgrade, or a separate upgrade like the Ultra. Maybe just make them move and turn faster, or not collide as much with each other, or a faster, lower-damage attack so they can stutter-step better. And a better laser animation that makes it clearer where the AoE is. An upgrade to give it an extra 2 lasers, or to hit everything in range.
Closossus modes sound great
I am just happy to see anyone actually considering the lower leagues and the players of the game.
If I did not like playing SC2 I would certainly not spend time watching it either.
I think Pros will adapt to basically anything since they are the top players on Earth, but the wellspring of all vitality in eSports and Gaming is the players and viewership.
The problem with the colossus besides robo time and gas cost is that its a 6 supply paperweight. It dies to 2 split marauders without medivac healing which cost 4 supply or an abduct from a 3 supply viper. For comparison carriers and BCs are 6 supply, broodlords are 4 supply and ultralisk are 5. Changing its supply to 5 or even 4 would be a big help for protoss to field larger armies incorporating colossi without impacting the main concerns of the cost and production time of the unit.
It also should have more damage, maybe change it to having bonus vs biological instead of vs light so it can actually do more than tickle marauders while being outhealed by a single medivac. Then terran can still counter them with vikings and tanks (or Thors!) and zerg with abduct.
Or maybe make them immune vs abduct like ultralisks on account of being too heavy. At least give them something. Anything.
as for the widow mine...would it be possible to make it a cooldown ability? maybe boost it a bit but player would have to manually fire the mine when cooldown runs out(just a shortcut on selectet group would be enough)...high lvl players would have 0 issues manually doing it they do have the apm, maybe they would even be able to use it as bane mines thus making it more a strategy option than simply a low apm low impact (sice you can all split or even use it to dmg terans own units) and low levels could forget to fire the burrowed mine thus making it less of an issue in low elo
I never had a problem with widow mines, but it's a burrowed unit, following lorr and tech design, the ranger llus. 25 could have s mirage sweep in a circle where it'd located, kind of like seeing a dark Templar move... no targeting laser needed. So giving this distortion as a seismic, tremor tracker thus why it blows... however, I would increase its firing speed. Much much faster since now its fully visible if you pay attention to the sweep lines, or seismic wave thst peturbs from it. I think people complain about invisible units.. in general... so easy balance add 4.6 to 5.6 seconds to build... make a disturbance when deployed and active, that is always visible. Subtle like a dt disturbance.
Give tank its ancient exploit of attack ground lol. Used just force attack any space on the map to manually kill a cloaked jnit.. but that was long ago.
I think the game is mostly balance whe if you make a counter chart between those groups ie what too build etc... but peotoss has no build around a ghost... zerg has burrow for snipe, so justle a burrow and it has to be cast again. I always thought ghosts were expensive and weak, but that was when ravens had the seeker missile garbage, lol. Ghosts jn t VS t never safe. Emp from a raven is a good idea. The raven can't be clocked so countering an emp is easier. The question is what cast rangers used. I don't think changing storm is a good idea. I like players being punished going in deep without awareness. Zerg has lots of ways to get and gain vision. Lurkers are fairly nice against protoss jnless disruptors.. so air is always an interesting choice.
Stasis isn't like it was where it would make a honey comb wall... interesting things would be feed back acts like emp, has a radius not a target. Lol. Which means it can miss. Psiojic dominance is supposed to on the protoss side as they are with the khala and all that.
Rmp could be a double edge sword. Zeros shields, for 3.4 seconds 5 seconds or some time. Then when the power is back online it surges and the shield recharge aggressively to 125 percent of what they were technically a emp simply causes a short circuit so turning it back on and reboot all the energy for the shield would still be their and recharging frkm it's crystal things. Re surging shields of the enemy would cause s more tug and pull of the conflict of t v p. And, while units are surging for 1.5 seconds recovering.. immune to another emp as the system created an positive energy inversion, so a large eltromagnetic palukse would be jneffective like its a rugged laptop. There's an jnfjjite amount of ideas... a surging of shields coming back online, would be jntetsting... at 125 percent recovery of last shield position or max. Rather then seeing Terran out number emp once and walk through peotoss army dar too often. If you recorded the value of shield loss by an emp, lol. But emp could have a secondary radius.. so you can emp jnits in an area, but then that area sannot be embed again for sometime and emp o ly does. 15 shield damage plus 33 percent. Of its target. Meh...
Theres also a movie about one of Saddam Husseins sons with Dominic Cooper. I quite liked it. Its called "The devils double"
9:08 Harstem shifts in chair, and it squeaks quietly
Ah my bad, it's the Mike stand that squeaks. 28:30 ish happens again.
I wouldn't mind videos that are AMA, patch talks etc more often. Maybe once every week/other week?
The questions at 9:05 looks like something you put on a security option when making a new account.
The only thing left is the name of your mother and the school you went to
When the rest of the world makes decisions about products and design, they almost exclusively use aggregated data analysis on product telemetry to inform those decisions.
To that end, I think the biggest thing missing from the council is data transparency.
Stating goals for a patch is really cool. But if I were a product manager, the goal would need to map to a KPI. After a period of time the feature would be evaluated against that KPI.
the only metric that is useful here is the winrates per league on the ladder and winrates in pro tournaments. and they do use that to evaluate.
The Psistorm dealing more damage the longer it lasts is literally how Tassadar's Psistorm in Heroes of the Storm works
I think it would be nice to get Zerg off queen reliance. Build one of their macro abilities into the hatch. Nerf their offense in trade for earlier hydra. Color me crazy, but I would like to shoot up sub 7 mins…
In Bruges was a really good movie.
I would like to play with the new changes before providing feedback
Make a video with a story(or two) of a progamer from every country in Europe, or atleast the ones you remember. I'm from Bulgaria and I've heard that our pros have attended some of the higher level events so I'm curious what you think about them and some funny stereotypes for some countries :D
what movie ?? " Imbrusiss? " - it is dutch movie?
Thanks for upload harstem, i like to hear your voice on side while playing starcraft same time
I hate that I missed the ama because I work nights but I really wanna ask if protoss could get a new upgrade that's on the cybercore but locked behind robo Bay that increases stalker range by 1?
What will happen if you make ghost will be countered by colosus, i.e. change it to light unit i guess, but this will be an issue with Baneling, so some extra work would be needed. Colosuss is stil countered by vikings, marauders, but if Terran army is to ghost heavy toss have a good counter.
colossus bonus damage vs biological like archon, ezpz
I've been saying the Ghost (and EMP) was way too strong for years and only now people are starting to understand what I meant LOL.
EMP was really strong in SC1 too but it was at least offset by being on a pure spellcaster (and very expensive) science vessel. Protoss units were also a lot more durable in SC1 too. I think the AOE was smaller in SC1 too? Ghost needs a major nerf (and appropriate buffs elsewhere to make up). Ghost should be an anti-light (in terms of autoattack) but role as an anti-spellcaster unit. it's currently anti-everything. EMP -> all protoss units, snipe -> anti armored and big units, auto-attack -> light units (and out DPS marines in general), movement speed -> actually mobile, cloaking and nuke -> utility and zoning potential (basically a more usable, albeit slightly more expensive, disruptor). It's too strong because it fills every role perfectly.
Would you rather find / help create a new great RTS to experiment with (like for example the already showned ZeroSpace)? Or are you still genuinly enjoying all the work put on Starcraft 2?
Couldn't agree more on the BC! It's way too powerful when massed... people hate the carrier for the exact same reason. The only difference is that the BC is stronger, yet is seen less because Terran needs it a lot less than Toss needs carrier.
BCs are countered by mid tier units like hydras and stalkers. They arent cost effective vs those and cost too much supply each. Problem is people try to counter them with air units, which is the only thing theyre cost effective against.
Carriers are almost never made in high level games, because they suck. Since the interceptor launch speed upgrade was removed they have sucked. That upgrade should be put back in the game.
@@TheSuperappelflap I don't know who told you BCs aren't cost effective vs stalkers but you need to re-evaluate your sources, because that is absolutely false unless the BCs are in very low numbers.
@@ldragodestroy4 Do you know how much a BC costs? And how much supply? And how long they take to build?
If you blink a bunch of stalkers underneath and focus fire you can trade very efficient, they have to use yamato and teleport away and still will lose a few BCs. Then you have about one minute of full map control because if they come out again without teleport available theyre dead meat. So you can replace stalkers and kill a planetary expansion in the meantime.
@@ldragodestroy4 Its the same way to counter carriers as terran in team games if some noob decides to go mass carier, you just make 15 barracks and spam marines and stim underneath them and focus fire. It doesnt matter how much you lose because you can make units faster and trade better. If you cant kill BCs with 16-20 gate blinkstalkers in a big macro game, there is something wrong with your balls.
I think it's right to not buff directly as powercreep tends to happen. If games are going too long then it makes sense to powercreep as more damage means things die faster and resources run out faster as well.
What about some island map? I liked those back in BW. Added variety.
Perhaps chrono a warp prism and it auto coolsdown a warp gate. Atleast get an extra unit per chrono
Okay, so if you were going to just bin the cyclone rather than trying to balance it: what would you be replacing it with? something cool from the WoL campaign? as far as I can tell it's sole purpose for existing is to counter a BC opening in TvT(along side the raven), which is why it is so strong in the first place. it doesn't really feel like it serves another purpose that a thor wouldn't do better. BCs are also the reason that queens used to be so strong. So, it seems to me, that the BC is the problem here. What do we do? nerf it? no, not nerf perse. I'd propose an extra requirement to just kill the BC opening entirely. For example: the armory. it's an end game unit, it shouldn't be available at 4:50-5. We take away that option, we take away the need for the cyclone, so if you want to just toss it and not bother replacing it, you probably can. 🤷
Wait I didn’t know lowko was in an iodis. I found that episode, but where’s his response that Harstem mentioned? I can’t find it
Widow mine solution: Remove invis tech (after being triggered) and instead give faster unburrow
-> You can still easy drop and harass and have it defensely, but once they shoot their load they can be taken out.
The biggest problem are units that do stuff without you having to pay attention to and are highly effective, especially splash.
Invis units in general is the number one thing people struggle with on lower levels, detection is expensive and can be sniped easily, especially for zerg.
Terran has imba scans, its usually not an issue (unless unscouted DT cheese) and observer just give free vision. Very strong on lower levels. Overlord spread is also ok, but any player can just build 1 viking or 1 void ray and fly around the map and kill it, because zergs anti air is way too late and sucks as a standalone unit.
What about the collosus can morph into the taldarim version temporarily, kind of like a viking. Or maybe they arent capable of making new animations at this point.
I really really really think. That the warp prism should have some sort of energy cost to warp in units. I think one of the reason protoss sucks is that the gateway units are incredibly weak and do not scale at all. I assume this is because you can warp in a whole force into your opponents base. If it was an energy cost per unit or time based on the warp prism we could buff all the gateway units.
In Bruges is pretty good if you liked that a lot then give The Guard a try, it's a similar feeling a dark comedy, I really liked it
bencheevers6693, I grew up watching 90's action movies. Maybe if I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, movies like In Bruges and The Guard would impress me. But I didn't, so they don't.
@@Nate-dy9ie In Bruges was good the first time I watched it but it's not amazing, The Guard is though and neither are action movies, they aren't like some European attempt to copy Hollywood action movies, they're dramas and dark comedies. Also, action movies aren't really my genre, so many are bad, even those classics that you think are great are largely incoherant though some certainly stand out, but besides that it's like you're arguing you can only like one genre of movie, that you like action movies therefore The Guard is no good, that doesn't make sense.
Japanese Jujustu is the best. The Brazilian watered down sport version doesn't have the weapons, eye gouging, lethal striking etc.
I just want my infested terran back man. Nothing more soothing than burrow crawling under an entire carrier army then spawning a hoard of super aa soldiers. Def shouldnt have been able to do it from burrow though haha. But wish they would have just made it where you can only cast it above ground and just get rid of the swarm host. I cant play with them anywhere now, not even in campaign I think.
Yes, widow mine is super cheap, can be made in mass, takes almost no supply and two of them can wipe out a whole void army etc.
Infested Terrans were nerfed so they no longer got attack upgrades and that was fine imo. They didnt need to be removed. They were only used anymore as a panic dump of infestor energy when the zerg was about to lose the game.
@@TheSuperappelflap they were my favorite harass. crawling a handful mineral line to mineral line and chucking them into the worker line. Also pretty good against mass carrier/cruiser. Especially because you could neural parasite cruisers with some of the infesters so they couldn't flee.
i love that you brought up the AOE spells in the game, they do feel oppressive sometimes, but you didn't mention the disruptor ?
He did though.
@@LDSG_A_Team well then i missed it, thanks
For the widow mines, what if you removed the AOE and gave them around 2-4 shots (maybe with a very small delay of ~0.2 and can't hit the same target twice), that way they would only be able to kill 2-4 probs max at both low and high ranks which is about normal for high ranks and probably wouldn't affect much other gameplay negatively.
Would also add a bit more to the whole un-burrow mechanics because you could shoot once, then un-burrow, shoot again.
problem is that that would mean they are useless in a fight against a ling bane army
@@TheSuperappelflap Yeah, was thinking this too, but wouldn't you just want to use marines to target them down anyway?
Tank+marine still seems better vs zerg, but I could be wrong, not sure.
@@Warlock8ZERO mines are the meta choice except on Gresvan
I would give up all flying units if I could get rid of EMP. (I know that's not a balance suggestion I just mean they're equally valuable to me). "removing shields" is the most insane way to describe dealing damage.
separate comment but here's my wacky suggestion: address mine dmg to shields. It could open up air units again if u change the number of mines it takes to kill an air unit.
Up next on IODIS: Battlecruisers at low level, Are they IMBA, or do we suck?
Harstem: Actually, for once, yeah nah, it's IMBA dude, sorry you had to deal with that.
I also agree that the +2 baneling has almost zero impact in any of my diamond games as PvZ. I don't care about banes at all, they are rarely used as a harassment unit in my ranks
I think it could be interesting to do this as a youtube post or something, so I don't have to touch the cesspool that is Reddit.
Never understood that. I get people memifying TicTac or Twatter. Had almost exclusively positive interactions on Reddit.
@@DamianSzajnowski Reddit is full with degenerate communist
@@DamianSzajnowskiit seems you haven't seen the starcraft subreddit in the past week or so
@@DamianSzajnowski reddit in general is a website dominated by smoothbrained americans that are awful to interact with, and you may have heard about their recent policy changes considering third party clients that people use to avoid the awful reddit ui and massive amounts of ads it serves.
About the first part: How about we do the same to EMP and Fungal growth?
Hey Harstem&everyone else who's reading, I have a question,
Why do phoenix have energy instead a cooldown on the lift ability?
Because when I see pro plays where phoenix are amazing (if used correctly),
but the same as with the oracle, without energy they are just pretty on the eyes.
Or would having a cooldown make it to spammable and thus to strong?
I would guess not because of protoss early game, and it's weird compositing, I think it's healthy to have a reliable lift up, and not being forced to spend your gas on phoenix because the others ran out of energy, or the high energy ones die first, stuff like that.
I'm just a low elo player, so please feel free to tell me how I'm wrong :P
having a cooldown would make it less spammable. you can make phoenix and if you dont use any lifts for a while, you can lift 3-4 units with 1 phoenix in short succession. so making it an ability with a cooldown would be a big nerf. and phoenix arent too powerful currently.
How about take away EMP damage to shields completely, but give the Ghost's normal attack a bonus vs shields instead of vs light? Still a good Protoss counter, but EMP is purely to drain energy and can have the larger radius back for that purpose.
Fantastic idea.
Just give more terran units bonus vs mechanical instead of bonus vs shields or armored. That makes it easy to tweak tvp without impacting tvz. tvt will need to be monitored, but considering its mostly marine tank raven 90% of the time and mech is rarely played, it shouldnt have too much impact.
First of all. thank you for this for trying to be more transparent.
I think my biggest gripe with this balancing council is that, while they are probably some of the most knowledgeable people in the game, also the ones with the most conflict of interest in the game when it comes to balancing. Compared to a ladder player where mechanic difference would be a more dominant role, every little bit of balancing is going to be more impactful at pro level than casual, so it sometimes feel like people are reluctant to make big changes to freshen up the game and introduce new metas.
Second, it also seems like there's a lot of "give and take" the way politics work. I don't necessarily think the game is unbalanced at the moment, but it just seems like there's always a need to take something away from a race if you give them something. Why does that have to be the case?
You dont introduce new meta by changing the balance of the game. Meta has to evolve organically. Brood War meta is still changing after almost 25 years. Meanwhile in SC2 Blizzard spent so much time patching the game and introducing new units that meta never had a chance to develop organically.
26:26 I AGREE WITH YOU MAN! IT ISS
Of course thinking about professional level here compared to Carriers and Tempests, Yamato Gun BCs are so overpowered..
They just shoot Yamatos, kill half of your SkyToss then TP away :(
Woah, hey, all kinds of players complain about balance not just Terran. Just look at the thread on the new balance proposal filled with plenty of Protoss and Zerg complaints.
That said, I do realize that starcraft is just a hard game to play for the casual gamer and the majority of the bronze league is Terran, so there may be more low league complaints from Terran as a result, but balance complaints are definitely universal.
Either way I appreciate the work you guys put into balance. Been a long time starcraft fan, and it is a joy to see things being worked on in the game.
I may be a little biased, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the first IODIS episode, where you let the world know I do, in fact, suck.
27:00 for the map freak out. LOL