EMP should be two abilities: one for ghosts that uncloaks and reduces energy, and one that damages shields, which should be on Ravens (if they're not going to add old units like science vessels).
EMP is fine as a single ability, it just needs to do a set amount of damage to shields and energy as separate columns. E.g. 100 damage to shields and energy, meaning if you have 95 Shields and 50 Energy, and get EMPed, you now have 0 Shields and 45 Energy. The entire *point* of energy shields as a concept is to prevent direct damage to your core stats as Protoss, which ought to include any energy you have.
@@HaploBartow I like this idea, my thought was to make it an over time drain. It would match storm similarly and have a scarier animation. That way its not and instant attack. I dont think people realize that if an emp erases 2000 in sheilds, they essentially just did 2000 damage to units for a free ability. And you cant counter with feedback because... well HT are literally energy
Thematically I'm unopposed. However, the raven is faster and cheaper than the ghost, so this wouldn't address the core issue that EMP is too powerful against Protoss.
@@NickCombs I dunno, having to keep a Raven or two around just to EMP would be supply that Terran can't use for direct damage dealing units, and means you have to choose between EMPing enemy units vs anti-armor vs interference matrix vs auto turrets with your limited Raven energy. You can make more Ravens to not have to worry about choosing, but then you have even less supply for army and have to micro your Ravens. I would be OK with trying out moving EMP to Ravens for sure, unfortunately this patch has already gone to production.
@@ledrash6079 That is a good idea, but I dunno how they would implement it. I think the setting is walk over all or none. They would ahve to get into the game and mess with the Ultra specifically. Which I doubt we could get Blizzard to do.
I always thought it would be cool if they had an ability that was basically melee range reaper grenade, knocking all units in their tusks' damage radius out of the way. Seems lore accurate to me. Active ability with cooldown that could be adjusted for balance.
the sensor tower range going down from 27 to 22 is a lot more than it seams yes its "just" 5 range, a decreaseof around 18% , when the someone is going in a straight line but its an area decrease of around 33%
At the same time the cost is reduced by 33% as well (if you value gas higher than minerals, the cost reduction is even higher) so the area/ressources stays the same. considering that, the change doesn't feel to bad to me, even though it is indeed harder to find a position for it where it isn't as vulnerable
True - and the original patch note described it exactly as 33%. It's worth pointing out - it's not obvious to everyone when the square of the number is the important metric.
Why would you count the part of it that's covering your base already? Unless you mean to say you smack your sensor tower in some no man's land, calculating the entirety of the circle doesn't make sense. The real decrease is probably 50% to 75% of 33% depending on where the sensor tower is built
I'll continue to throw this idea in the room on every patch video you'll do: how about shield upgrades reduce emp dmg? First upgrade reduces dmg 50%, second upgrade 60%, third upgrade 75%..noone ever does shield upgrades cause they suck. This way the wouldn't and shield+1 could be sufficient while +3 is absolute endgame like building armor
This would be neat, tho maybe the numbers could be adjusted. Something like 20/40/60% might be decent enough, and it does require the Terran to have twice as many Ghosts late game
@@rakkis1576 i'm all up for numbers tweaking, since - let's be honest here - i have no real answer to what is fair and what turns a whole unit useless. i was just thinking that 1 unit forcing toss go basicly get another +3 might be a bit much.
the """"concerns"""" about terran lategame with the ghost """"nerf"""" are fucking hillarious. its completely laughable that a unit with THAT MUCH utility, versatility and LACK of clear weaknesses has been 2 supply for over a decade.
You cant tell me that there are seriously pro terran players that complains about the Ghost nerf when that cursed unit literally removes half HP of protoss army with one skill and almost oneshot everything the Zerg has plus having good tanking and damage. Now that i think about it i shouldnt even be that suprised after all Terrans are the same one that think that orbital comand mule and uncounterable scout is fine.
It is called game faction nationalism. It happened in Red Alert 2-3, it happens in Generals, it will happen in SC2. The theory is which faction is the most Murrika the most then the brats will whine for their faction.
Professional players should never have input on balance - they have a monetary incentive to keep their race overpowered. They literally make money off imbalance.
I will agree with most of what you said except the mule part. Without mules, Terran eco, especially early game would be terrible. Zero produce drones much faster than other races and protons build probes faster than terran (chrono boost) as well as not losing mining time during building. Mule is designed to help offset that, but late game when you have so many orbitals it start to become a problem.
I actually think that the maps are 1 thing that I appreciate about this new patch. I was mid to high GM from about 2017-2021, and took a break for university. I recently saw that this patch seemed very nice, and was thinking about returning. When I saw King's Cove, Abyssal Reef, and Neon Violet Square in the map list, I actually felt so much nostalgia and also for the first time in a while, I felt quite excited about playing SC2 again. I acknowledge that it might be a little lazy or unfair to mapmakers on Blizzard's end, but I do think that sometimes bringing back old maps and potentially seeing new innovations on them could be a good way of mixing in familiarity as well as new ideas.
EMP would fit awesomely in the raven, both thematically andas a homage to the SC1 science vessel. All the while aiding protoss in a very simple and direct way
EMP+Turret would be brutal against protoss... mass ravens would be the main strategy on TvP matches... I think they should remove the turret hability from the raven... free units is always a problem on limited resources games...
@@brianfhunter Right!? I'd been saying this for years about the Infested Terrans and turrets. Protoss has no free (damage producing) units. If you lost detection in a late game slugfest, infested terrans would wear you down. If you only had ground units, turrets would wear you down. Not to mention supply boosts lol. Oh, you maxed out your army? Here's 20 more supply worth of attack units on top of your spellcasters! It's like they wanted to give the other races Hallucination ability, but like basically all things SC2, they made it OP for the other races and shafted Protoss.
It honestly doesn't even make sense that they nerfed it anyways. Was anyone actually complaining about the 100% uptime? If anything, it feels like that would have helped them deal with the Mothership changes if they left it as it was.
@@bobyy6557 Creep speed bonus reduced from 1.03 to 0.74. That's pretty significant. It's a big nerf to an already underwhelming unit. The new dash ability is a 100% speed increase for 0.71 seconds. It's not worth the permanent speed reduction (after the speed research).
I think it would've been more interesting if they combined the ability with the movement speed and put it on Lair tech But move the Grooved spines upgrade to Hive It provides a more interesting mid-game transition and has a better competition with the Lurker upgrades at Hive
One usability enhancement not mentioned is that when building a Nexus, CC, or hatch, it will automatically set a rally line to the mineral line. Nice addition in my opinion.
IMO, Mothership being abductable has always been dumb. Since you can only have one Mothership deployed at a time, it really should be immune to all CC, even if that means it needs to be nerfed in other ways until it's balanced. Alternative arguement: If you can't abduct a flying Terran building, you shouldn't be able to abduct the flying Protoss "building" that is the Mothership.
I wonder how it would feel if they took the Thor balance proposal and put it onto EMP. Basically giving EMP falloff damage. So while you could hit an entire protos army, only the very center of the EMP would take full damage
@@schippes24 Or make it a softcap rather than a hardcap. 1 target hit = 100 damage. 5 targets hit = 500 damage. 6 targets hit = 500 damage, split evenly. 20 targets hit = 500 damage, split evenly.
@@LukasLLM This seems reasonable, but I feel like what this means is you need more emp's and we're already going to see fewer ghosts with them being 3 supply. We'll have to see how this current patch shakes out first.
It can be made to "unable" to target itself or another Nexus. 60s global cooldown really makes the thing obsolete in the late game, where one or two spellcasters arent much. Should be individual cooldown, like the Command Center
@@colinlee2904 Against DT rushes - it would be too oppressive, and costly. Terran would basically have to have bunkers/turrets in about every base. It would be more sensible to put a global cool down on supply call down and mules - which would terminate the late game supply advantage Terran has.
"Obsolete"? What? Do people really think that having instant two storms, guardian shield or additional forcefields is not good enough? Even in its current state it's way more useful in lategame than shield overcharge lol.
Thanks for the update Lowko! I also believe SC2 is not a dead game, even if it feels figured out at some points and the audiences got smaller (RIP GSL). Which means on the other side that the level of play seems super high. I get still excited for tournament rounds and games you pick for this chanel. Just a random thought: wouldn´t be a mod be exciting with all the removed abilities for every race´s units back in the game? Like Vortex, infested terrans, charge on pylons, nexus AND shield battery etc.? All the supposed OP stuff back in the game to see how players deal with it? :D
Here's a wild idea for Ghosts - give EMP to the Raven instead (and actually force Terran to build it) and keep Ghost supply cost at 2. BUT as compensation, reduce their gas and mineral cost slightly and allow them to Stim. Imagine how wild stimmed ghosts would be (probably too strong vs Light units if I'm being honest but I'd like to see it). The other option is to just remove the Ghost and give us back the Warhound in all its overpowered glory :P Whomever approved the Immortal and especially disruptor changes needs to be banned from the Council forever btw.
I feel like zerg has a scaling problem. There are a few demi gods like Serral who can play the race and win, but us ladder heroes don’t have supercomputer skills to make it work, especially in late game. I feel like every race, ideally, should be able to win at any stage of the game. It just feels to me at least, that the game is done if my opponents get to late game tier units. I definitely feel that zerg has more useless units compares to the other races and a couple very good ones. The very good units have hard counters though. For instance roaches. The only way that zerg can compete is by having 1 OP unit like the queen, which I feel isn’t OP in late game situations. It’s just that it is zergs ONLY tool early game.
I feel like one of the things the balance councils could try is: Hydralisk Den is now buildable at Hatchery. (Upgrades still need Lair Tech) Hydralisks have +1 range against air Queen anti-air range reduced to 5.
I would feel better about the disruptor nova change if it also moved a little faster and detonated a little earlier (so the effective range remains constant). Then that extra radius would be more useful and warrant the damage nerf. Overall, I think they have the right idea in making it easier to hit with, but didn't go far enough.
Making it move faster sounds like a neat idea. But because it would make mikroing against it more difficult the effective range should be lowered slightly in my opinion
No abduct on mothership is crazy. The Pros have been saying they cannot win late game ZvP and refuse to get there, and the balance council still goes through with it wtf. Make abducting the MS half as effective/far instead.
I think rolling Banes in to make room (if necessary due to Toss ground units) for Hydras with their new Dash ability (which just means 'to move quickly' or 'to strike quickly' btw, it does not imply legs) to get under the Mamaship and take her out is a viable option as well. If there's too much air, instead, then throw a Microbial Shroud on the Hydras first to allow them to tank air damage long enough to take out the Mamaship. It's only 3 or 4 volleys if you have a sufficient number of Hydras. Alternatively, should we bring back Scourge to deal with Protoss flying units? 🙂
Uhhh, Reynor was the reason Queen's Transfuse got changed to only work on creep because he was just winning with midgame timing pushes with roach+queen for a while and then other top zergs started copying the builds/strat.
I think the solution is to give hydra some bonus vs air. this way Zerg don't get forced into a trap, and it gives hydras more flexibility. they keep their theme, and add utility to deal with tough situation.
I'm a fan of trying out Hydras with a +1 range anti-air - either baked into the base unit or part of one of their upgrades. It feels like it might be a good start without going overboard.
Why does zerg get to have an answer to everything while having the best early and mid game combination of units? As well as the single best unit in the game in the Queen. How many times do we need to watch Serral or Shin or whoever lose 20 drones in an attack, and then still be up in supply and worker count?
I think the problem of ZvP late game could be addressed by giving a broodlord change, so that if after zerg makes corruptors they would more easily be able to morph into broodlords so that the corruptor commitment is not as committing
@@Lightwolf_VR it's a difficult thing. Should all the ladder zergs playing the game suffer under an oppressive zvp late game to change the results of offline tournaments? I think there is still room to find a solution that makes the late game more even for the ladder while allowing protoss to win offline tournies.
@CheezitNinja Starcraft has always explicitly been balanced unapologetically around the best of the best. You don't go randomly throwing enormous buffs at the winning faction. Elegant ones, sure. Enormous late game buffs removing the downside of going corruptor, no
@@Lightwolf_VR You say that like the balance council didn't explicitly state they were trying to find balance changes that would effect the varying skill levels differently, which they absolutely found some changes which did exactly that. I'm not in agreement with making broods buffed or cheaper in this particular case like OP mentioned, just advocating that there are potential solutions here the council can explore and test which would preserve the buff the best toss players get this patch while negating that advantage on the ladder.
Thank you for this, I have been playing SC2 since the day it came out and never stopped (took a few breaks) Started as Terran and now play Protoss, I love the game so much and the community.
The Hydra ability is nothing like Stim : it's a micro dash. If it could allow Hydras to climb cliffs like blink does it would be awesome but in it's current state, it's not worth binding a hotkey to it.
We just need microbious shroud to reduce aoe damage on shrouded units. Then hydras are not as hard countered by storms and colossi and might work vs protoss air
Personally I think Toss just has too many units. They relay on too many other units to do their job where you have zerg and terran doing just fine on their "Gateway" units. Drop the Mothership, drop the other crazy silly units. Improve the gateway units. There are way to fix their early power such as increasing gate warps longer in the tech tree. Ghost are easy to fix as far as emp or snipe. As the video says, just reduce their range, area, or dmg. They dont need 3 supply drop, but if you dont do something, then I am sure 3 supply does make more sense in nerf. To me, its just they DONT NOT want to touch terrans much. Its crazy to watch over the years.... Toss had answer in the past... then they removed them. BW did just fine with them such as an upgrade to energy improvements. We dont need fancy abilities like nuxus recharge.
idk I feel like if you need to invest into about 20-30 Corruptors just for one Mothership, the Protoss already won. They can just transition to a heavy ground army and now you're stuck sitting there with your empty supply of Corruptors. You COULD make them Broodlords, but that's even MORE resources committed just to try to get your opponent to free up your supply...It's doomed.
Sounds like zerg need better anti air. I think that allowing the winged larva of a swarmhost to be able to attack air units would make that unit more playable and give zerg limited tactical ability to stave off an air force.
Disruptor: Should be able to detonate Nova early, but damage scales up with time that Nova is active. Maybe something like linear scaling at a % of current power level, and if you don't detonate early then you get that extra % back as a bonus at the end. ZvP Mothership is tricky. If Corruptors could morph into some new air unit with the ability to target ground (or even into a ground unit), then that would give a use to mass corruptor as a counter to Mothership. However, this is the definition of "extensive testing required." Unclear if the Microbial Shroud buff + Hydra frenzy ability is enough to get Hydras close enough/fast enough/safe enough to take on the Mothership. Maybe if the Hydras got a different upgrade that gave +1 range vs flying? I'm very unsure.
only think i'm worried about is that protos will again go into a flying meta, and Zerg are still weak against flying units. so we will see Turtle Protos vs Zerg that try to end games as fast as they can as they are to weak in the late game.
The problem with the Lunge ability is you won't have spare APM to use it when you need it. Only way I see me using it is maybe in nyduss harass to retreat.
For me, to make up for those changes made, I will suggest these: Hydralisk - They're expensive for being a light type of unit. Maybe increase hp from 90 to 110, if this unit is still only available through Lair. The cost is already high early game, so I don't really think they can mass fast enough, unless left alone. Infestor - Maybe add a healing capability for the Microbial Shroud. Aside from the damage reduction to air units and lingering effects while leaving its AoE, adding a 10-15 hp per sec for 3 secs. Void Ray - Prismatic Alignment is too powerful against armor types. Maybe reduce its damage from 28 to 22. Viking - Maybe their air range should be reduced from 9 to 8 and sight reduced from 10 to 9. Ghost EMP - The 3-supply cost is fine for me. EMP should be changed by reducing its radius from 1.5 to 1. This will be more APM intensive. I found unnecessary changes to some units and structures: - Immortal - Call down Bottomline: I don't know, I'm just crunching whatever plans they have on those changes, and since they are still experimental, maybe they can add what I suggested. Please do comment if you think I'm not seeing something with the changes I suggested. Do correct me for figures too, I might be wrong on it. I love SC2, I always comeback to this game for its story and its building concept for PvP. Watching my favorite streamers play or cast tournaments is also my daily habit, and I want this game to thrive more, despite it being an old game.
Blizzard should make Ghost a light unit to make it less OP. - In TvP, it would make Colossus specifically stronger against this unit and give Protoss players a counter to Ghosts through this unit, which is currently a bit weak and easily killable. - In TvZ, Ghosts is very strong against all Zerg lategame units: Lurkers, Vipers, Broodlords and Ultralisks. Banelings got nerfed very hard -5 attack/ - 5HP, so making Ghosts a light unit would make Banelings stronger against them, and give Zerg players a counter against Ghosts. This, in addition to the 3 supply added lately (but which only nerfs Ghosts during the lategame), would help the balance overall IMO. (Also, lorewise, makes it more correct to label Ghost as a light unit.) Despite this nerf, Ghosts would still have a higher survivability than most Zerg or Protoss units, thanks to Medivacs (heal + transport & dash to move them away from a fight) Another simpler idea would be to simply nerf Ghosts in auto attack / HP because, in addition to their insane capacities, they are both very strong and tanky as a unit, in comparison with High Templars or Infestors (but IMO, this nerf would be less elegant than the first one, as it's "just" playing with maths). Or, also, make EMP an upgrade. Lurkers are initially weak until they get their 2 upgrades, so Ghosts would need 2 upgrades as well (cloack + EMP) to get their full strength. Also, this upgrade would compensate for the recent decreased cost of Armory.
It's always been weird how a spandex jumpsuit somehow protected someone better than a suit of power armor of mechanized metal plating weighing a literal ton against fire and lasers.
@@joshuakim5240 Huh. I see it as Ghost are the specialized agents who get the best high tech armor instead of the mass produced for the infantry. This is science fiction after all
@@gabapc Interestingly, the original SC1 Ghost portrayed this dynamic better as it wore an armor suit, but it was much leaner to show that it was more advanced to the point of providing as much protection as a Marine power armor suit while being maybe 1/3rd the size. No idea why SC2 made Ghosts portrayed as primarily wearing spandex jumpsuits, as ironically Spectres look much more like SC1 Ghosts with their armor plating (which is doubly weird as they're less durable than Ghosts without said armor plating...wut?). Seriously, the SC1 Ghost portrait and model looks like a high tech armored infiltration specialist while the SC2 Ghost portrait and "armor" looks like a Marvel superhero wearing a costume.
To be fair from what i've seen as soon as the mothership is destroyed i've seen zergs completely dismantle the protoss army its a strategic issue. Just like previously protoss were unsure of when to commit the zerg players have to deal with the same issue.
Hydras at hatchery tech could be interesting. I'd personally love if they went with a more experimental route and remove the "Light" tag from them, buffing their survivability. Then again, it doesn't look like there's too many people at Blizzard working in this game, so...
I probs don't have a good opinion on ladder changes as I pretty much only play coop/campains, and I'm no game developer so take specific numbers with a grain of salt, but I have a few ideas for the mothership and ghost. Mothership can still be hit with abduct, but it pulls the mothership and vipor together. This would still allow the zerg to yoink a mothership and get a much easier time killing it, but would put a vipor at risk. So this way it wouldn't be a completely free -400 -400 kill. Ghosts EMP should give a shield drain status effect instead of a flat 100 shield damage. It'd drain 20 shields per second for 5 seconds. So one EMP would still drain the same amount of shields (so long as they where used up via damage right after the emp) but would stop EMP spam from stacking, as it'd simply reset the shield drain effect back to 5 seconds instead of doing additional shield damage.
I think a great way for to fix the zvp lategame concerns is to give the corruptors the ability that i belive they have in capmign. Where they can make units take more damage. I think that also opens up discussion for whether it should be targeted or aoe like the ravens
The main issue of hydras is that they are Gucci marines (especially with ghetto stim) at best they are used to have *anything* that hits medivacs in the mid game or as a way to produce lurkers
One of the problems with the ghost is it's size. They are to SMALL. It is difficult to target them (click on them). It is so easy to snipe ultras, broods and infestors because of their size. It is so difficult to abduct or target ghosts. it also enable better concentration of the unit in critical situation ( more units on a small space - closer to the fights ).
Maybe the Corruptor needs a upgrade. To get an anti ground ability. Corrupt some mechanical units and slow their attack speed and cooldown rate. To make corruptors a credible threat when air units are out of the equation and brood lords aren't useful against a mobile opponent. Protoss death ball will dislike having Corruptors overhead, and terran mech will need to shoot up too.
I will agree with Lowko on the Mothership side, and I am a former (I don't play SC2 anymore) Protoss player. The main concern I see is PVZ, and that's because we have seen a number of games where just the existence of the Mothership forces an ungodly amount of Corruptors out from the Zerg player, even though the Protoss player is going almost pure ground. Leaving Zerg with a good amount of supply tied up in a group of units that become all but useless after the Mothership dies. IDK how they would balance it, maybe it doesn't need balance and the pro games are just suffering from "new thing confusion" but it is a concern there. As for terrans.... Ghosts should be four supply.
Oh, I know, they should have nerfed the ghost by making them bigger, and I mean, ultralisk size bigger. I think if we consider the powerlevel of an individual ghost is somewhere between a motheship and an ultralisk it would only be fair for their size to represent their might. Fair to me
I dont play, but I still can't believe they havent moved hydralisks to tier 1 or something. As a SC1 fan I love those guys, and I hate how every single SC2 game I watch Zerg players are nearly always forced into spamming a bunch of queens. Make hydralisks weaker at t1 and maybe +hp upgrades etc. at tier 2. And make roaches a super interesting T2 unit kind of like how they were in aeons past. Also plz give zerglings an individual upgrade that barely costs anything (except maybe time) to turn them into raptor ones that can go up/down cliffs like in the campaign for extra fun hit and runs. Watching them run around was always just so fun.
22:14 The answer to “why” is because this is what happens when you have a team whose sole purpose is making changes. They have to justify their existence by making changes, so changes will be made.
My hope is with Zerg that more pro players will start building macro hacheries to produce extra larva for spore forests. Making the enemy more likely to fight them on the ground which would be fun to watch. Especially with the new Ultra. But I think if they wanted to go that route they would have to reduce the collision size of the burrowed spore crawler. I'd love to see the Ultra remove the Armored tag so it worked better against late game armies. By the time the Ultra would come out with all of its upgrades the enemy army can easily deal with it. I wish the ultra worked better as a shield for the drones, able to deal with zealot or zergling run-bys more easily.
If we keep making zerg players more miserable the problem will solve itself either through zerg players switching races, stop playing, or complain loudly enough that they finally have to do something. As for the ghost: EMP should only impact energy, and 'snipe' could be usable against any non-massive unit.
Disruptor change isn't as big a deal as you make it out to be at pro level. As you said, it generally doesn't hit anyway. So it's ability to zone hasn't been changed. And what it lacks in ability to 1-hit a few units (which still aren't going to intentionally facetank so far as we've seen), it makes up for in splash. Damaging a few extra surrounding units for half their hp instead of 1-shot a smaller number can have same effect. You get all the roaches to half hp, it's not much different from killing a smaller number and the rest are still full hp. Zerg has to go home.
I always thought emp should have a travel time (like it did in sc1) so it could be dodged more effectively. I'm also partial to allowing shield armor to have increased effect against EMP
I don't think there's anything wrong with nerfing core units imo; would love to see the strategic compelxity increase with stimpack taking 15s longer to research, zealots being slightly slower, siege tanks having 0.5-1s more siege time before smart servos, adrenal glands giving less cooldown reduction, etc.
Guys I got the Ghost nerf that will balance them once and for all against Protoss. 1. Keep the Supply nerf as it doesn't negatively impacts Protoss enough and is a good nerf to Mass Ghost + Liberator compositions. 2. EMP doesn't deal 100 Damage against shields to each unit in its range anymore. It deals 250 Damage to the total amount of shields, of the units in Range. That would at least force the Terran player to get enough energy to spam out EMPs so that they can deal with a large amount of shield points and if they weren't able to delete the shield of every unit in range, every unit would still be left with some shields, making the Shield Upgrade more impactful, as your units would be MUCH more likely to actually have shields on first contact with the Terran Army, even with Ghosts sprinkled in there. For Example: 1 well placed EMP wouldn't kill all shields of 4 Stalkers and 2 Zealots like it would do now. Instead it calculates the total Shields of units in range, subtract 250 from that (In this case 420-250=170) and spread the rest back to the units, based on how much Maximum Shield is available per unit. Stalkers have 80 shields that equates to roughly 19% of the total Shield pool, Zealots have 50 shields which are roughly 12%. Stalkers get back 32 Shields, Zealots get 20 Shields. The remaining Shield points are given to the highest HP unit (Random if tied) in this case a random Stalker gets another 2 Shield points.
ill never understand why zerg does have such shit anti air or in particular - why hydras need to be so bad. not only do i need to get to lair to even build a hydra den for whatever reason, theyre also fkin paper. zerg is gonna get rolled on all levels of play once a mothership comes out because u just cant kill it with hydras and corruptors as u said are just ass if the toss has more ground army. not to mention their units also shoot up ofc. theyre always gonna have archons and stalkers. pls bring back 75/25 cost hydras without lair tech.
Is the new patch going to favor skytoss in PvZ, yes. is it because of the mothership... no. I'm still greatly confused we've gigabuffed the lurker leaving the only protoss units that can fight to be air..... the irony is palpable.
Regarding the protoss vs Zerg @Lowko I see the concern with the late game especially with a mixed sky toss army and Hydralisk not being perfect however with the changes to the hydralisk getting a Dash ability and now Microbial shroud sticking to targets I think that issue is largely fixed.
Dude last night I was playing a protoss game and I went to do the shield overcharge thing. I was so tripped out with the new icon it took me a few mins to even understand how to use it hahaha. Also it's so weird seeing old maps back.
I am a Protoss player, and I really do think that EMP is too overpowered against Protoss. I have a few suggestions for the EMP change, it's either: 1. They change emp to only remove 50% of the shields of the Protoss it hits. So that it will not be too strong to play against. 2. They change EMP so that it will only make shields be vulnerable to damage, like around 1.5x the damage will be dealt against shields. Sort of like a vulnerability state. 3. They change EMP so that it will only malfunction for a few seconds, meaning all damage dealt to the Protoss army once the EMP hits will be dealt directly to the HP and not to the shields. And once the emp effect is removed, the damage dealt will be to the shields once again. 4. Or they just remove it so that I won't deal with EMP anymore. HAHAHAHA
I wonder if the balance council will be cooking up a mid season patch. Maybe they will be testing experimental changes over the course of the season, then drop some on the PTR to see what sticks.
Move hydra to hatchery tech and figure out the balance from there. I don't give a shit, zerg anti-air has sucked for too long and the queen needs a break.
on paper, the mothership to me behaves like a super heavy tank from company of heroes 2 (say king tiger, is2, etc). a very expensive late game unit both in resources and supply that theoretically is incapable of losing a straight up engagement against smaller tanks that dont outnumber it. however, unless micro'd well by the player that thing is gonna die just as fast at it came
With hatch being cheaper in exchange for queen cost increase, I want to see more zerg (looking at you Dark) try some crazy shit. Just accept you'll eat insane losses here and there. But instead of dropping all your bases in a traditional expand out, do some sneaky bases all over the map. Mine the enemy's 4th base. Then drop a couple on other side of map in opposite direction and mine 6th. If they don't scout and stop these, you can do some sneaky all-ins or massive couterattack run-by's. And that will reduce some of the early game threat zerg face.
I still favor the idea of sentry shield being able to tank 50% of emp shield damage or tanking one or two shots and breaking or even a combination of the two, maybe play around with energy drain in the same manner. It would isolate the nerf to TvP, give a purpose to the sentry and has a lot of room for fine tuning. Increased amount of emps would require Terran to sacrifice more supply in favor of ghosts or risk being drained in a kiting dance vs toss.
On Maps. We could run two map pools. offical maps, and Community maps. Take the top 3-6 maps from every interesting event, mix them with other mapping contest winners, toss a shuffle on the list and push out 9 maps as an official Community Map Pool every 3 months slowly grinding through the ever growing list. should you ever hit the end of the list, add any new maps, shuffle the deck again, and start over as we slowly keep adding more contest winners over time. This way there is always going to be a published list of what maps will be added to the community pool a year in advance, a published list you can practice your skills on prior to offical adoption, and yet also there is always new, fresh maps you haven't played competitively on showing up in your client every 3 months, celebrating the creativity and accomplishments of contest winners of both and old. I imagine it goes to the balance council to declare certain maps to be removed from that shuffled deck of maps should extreme balance bias problems be revealed on some community maps, otherwise each map offers it's creator fame and immortality in a way.
I like a more gas expensive 4-supply ghost better. Then you can even buff it. Either just keep the 3-supply and make it more expensive in gas, or go to 2-supply again and make it spend more energy on some abilities. There's a lot of room to maneuver.
Truly, those with extensive knowledge of many many pro games could identify trends and make the broadest analysis of strong and weak points and subtle tweaks to adjust them.
Rather than another nerf to the ghost unit, a Protoss-focused buff against the ghost unit will be better. Let the guardian shields reduce or cancel out the EMP effects. This will improve the Protoss-teran balance without affecting the teran-zerg balance
I'm just a casual observer of SC2, haven't played since the year it came out but it seems to me the Zerg problem is that Zerg doesn't have good counters to things. It doesn't really fit into the rock-paper-scissors dynamic that is easier to balance. Over the last few years anything Zerg had that was an obvious counter to something got nerfed until it was just decent against what it used to counter. This is most obvious in late game when Terran brings out ghosts or protoss brings out carriers. What does Zerg have that counters those units? On the other hand, Zerg builds Lurkers, well those are hard countered by both ghosts and carriers. What about Ultras, ghosts and immortals. Broods? Ghosts and tempests. If you name a zerg unit it has an obvious counter in both of the other races but that doesn't work the other way around. Both Terran and Protoss can hard counter zerg units with similar supply and resource investment. Zerg can't hard counter Terran and Protoss units it can only throw enough stuff at the problem it eventually works, sort of.
Rather than have EMP insta-delete shields and energy, why not either add a delay or have it drain instead? Gives protoss a chance to pull back without taking hp damage and lets spellcasters get one last cast off. Edit: Zerg anti-air. I think there's an opportunity for the Ravager there. Have the ravager ability to deal extra damage to flying units? If you're spending time avoiding deadly ravager balls then your big scary air fleet isn't killing all the corruptors.
I would have liked to have seen Defensive matrix replace auto turret and also EMP moved to Raven with Interference Matrix moved to ghost. Pretty sure thats how it was in Brood War, though IM was called Lockdown.
I think the instant heal supply depot is so Terrans can have the option to do cheese and defend the zergling rush. For example, battlecruiser or Thor rush.
Im actually surprised that Psionic Storm was not nerfed yet. From what i see, the zerg AA will not be that bad if you can actually stay and fight the protos army because every time you get close you get infinitely spammed by Psionic Storm and literally get zoned out of fight. It make me rage even when i just watch the ZvP and see all that storm spam on everything that get close. But maybe im just crazy, what can i know, im not a pro.
I wouldnt mind a ghost rework and im a terran. Give them something against mechanical and remove emp. Make their cloak disable steady targeting, but increase attack speed or movement speed. Make steady targeting do half damage but shoot instantly if takes damage. (Insead of cancelling. Cancel only for cases like fungal or abduct)
![The Complete Story of Destiny! From origins to Shadowkeep [Timeline and Lore explained]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9mbDXvDNqTU/mqdefault.jpg)
EMP should be two abilities: one for ghosts that uncloaks and reduces energy, and one that damages shields, which should be on Ravens (if they're not going to add old units like science vessels).
EMP is fine as a single ability, it just needs to do a set amount of damage to shields and energy as separate columns. E.g. 100 damage to shields and energy, meaning if you have 95 Shields and 50 Energy, and get EMPed, you now have 0 Shields and 45 Energy. The entire *point* of energy shields as a concept is to prevent direct damage to your core stats as Protoss, which ought to include any energy you have.
Actually putting emp in ravens is genius, so tempest can prevent EMPs if microed well
@@HaploBartow I like this idea, my thought was to make it an over time drain. It would match storm similarly and have a scarier animation. That way its not and instant attack.
I dont think people realize that if an emp erases 2000 in sheilds, they essentially just did 2000 damage to units for a free ability. And you cant counter with feedback because... well HT are literally energy
Sure, move the ghost cost back to 2 supply. But, at the same time move EMP to the raven, the actual unit that should be allowed to EMP
Thematically I'm unopposed. However, the raven is faster and cheaper than the ghost, so this wouldn't address the core issue that EMP is too powerful against Protoss.
@@NickCombs I dunno, having to keep a Raven or two around just to EMP would be supply that Terran can't use for direct damage dealing units, and means you have to choose between EMPing enemy units vs anti-armor vs interference matrix vs auto turrets with your limited Raven energy. You can make more Ravens to not have to worry about choosing, but then you have even less supply for army and have to micro your Ravens.
I would be OK with trying out moving EMP to Ravens for sure, unfortunately this patch has already gone to production.
@@HaploBartow I think your assumption is that TvP would still need ghosts, but I'm pretty sure you'd just go with more ravens instead if they had EMP.
Oh smart, and give the Ghost Seeker Missile instead!
@@NickCombswould bring out a few Phoenix, win win
I think ultralisk should be able to push any unit aside, including enemy units. Except for massive units, namely Thor or other Ultralisk.
I think ultralisk should be able to stand over units, at least zerglings.
@ledrash6079 that true, push through roach and hydra. Then walk over zerglings.
@@ledrash6079 That is a good idea, but I dunno how they would implement it. I think the setting is walk over all or none. They would ahve to get into the game and mess with the Ultra specifically. Which I doubt we could get Blizzard to do.
Shouldn't be able to push aside a Colossus or a Siege Tank either, at least if the tank is in siege mode.
I always thought it would be cool if they had an ability that was basically melee range reaper grenade, knocking all units in their tusks' damage radius out of the way. Seems lore accurate to me. Active ability with cooldown that could be adjusted for balance.
the sensor tower range going down from 27 to 22 is a lot more than it seams yes its "just" 5 range, a decreaseof around 18% , when the someone is going in a straight line but its an area decrease of around 33%
it was too much in the first place
At the same time the cost is reduced by 33% as well (if you value gas higher than minerals, the cost reduction is even higher) so the area/ressources stays the same. considering that, the change doesn't feel to bad to me, even though it is indeed harder to find a position for it where it isn't as vulnerable
True - and the original patch note described it exactly as 33%. It's worth pointing out - it's not obvious to everyone when the square of the number is the important metric.
Why would you count the part of it that's covering your base already? Unless you mean to say you smack your sensor tower in some no man's land, calculating the entirety of the circle doesn't make sense. The real decrease is probably 50% to 75% of 33% depending on where the sensor tower is built
I'll continue to throw this idea in the room on every patch video you'll do: how about shield upgrades reduce emp dmg? First upgrade reduces dmg 50%, second upgrade 60%, third upgrade 75%..noone ever does shield upgrades cause they suck. This way the wouldn't and shield+1 could be sufficient while +3 is absolute endgame like building armor
Its an awful idea. Imagine if zerg armor upgrades reduced storm.damage by 50%, 60% and 75% per upgrade? Its an awful idea.
This would be neat, tho maybe the numbers could be adjusted. Something like 20/40/60% might be decent enough, and it does require the Terran to have twice as many Ghosts late game
@@rakkis1576 i'm all up for numbers tweaking, since - let's be honest here - i have no real answer to what is fair and what turns a whole unit useless. i was just thinking that 1 unit forcing toss go basicly get another +3 might be a bit much.
the """"concerns"""" about terran lategame with the ghost """"nerf"""" are fucking hillarious. its completely laughable that a unit with THAT MUCH utility, versatility and LACK of clear weaknesses has been 2 supply for over a decade.
For a moment I thought you meant the Queen
terran can win without ghosts, zerg cant win without queens :)
@@theanti-hypemonitor9079 also off creep queens are much worse.
@@sawtoothgrind1981 naturally
The balance council are a fucking joke lol
You cant tell me that there are seriously pro terran players that complains about the Ghost nerf when that cursed unit literally removes half HP of protoss army with one skill and almost oneshot everything the Zerg has plus having good tanking and damage. Now that i think about it i shouldnt even be that suprised after all Terrans are the same one that think that orbital comand mule and uncounterable scout is fine.
It is called game faction nationalism.
It happened in Red Alert 2-3, it happens in Generals, it will happen in SC2.
The theory is which faction is the most Murrika the most then the brats will whine for their faction.
Professional players should never have input on balance - they have a monetary incentive to keep their race overpowered. They literally make money off imbalance.
I will agree with most of what you said except the mule part.
Without mules, Terran eco, especially early game would be terrible. Zero produce drones much faster than other races and protons build probes faster than terran (chrono boost) as well as not losing mining time during building. Mule is designed to help offset that, but late game when you have so many orbitals it start to become a problem.
Another year of zerg A-moving to victory
As a Zerg fan, Terran shouldn't have ranged units, that's cowardly.
I definitely agree that EMP needs a more impressive visual effect.
I actually think that the maps are 1 thing that I appreciate about this new patch. I was mid to high GM from about 2017-2021, and took a break for university. I recently saw that this patch seemed very nice, and was thinking about returning. When I saw King's Cove, Abyssal Reef, and Neon Violet Square in the map list, I actually felt so much nostalgia and also for the first time in a while, I felt quite excited about playing SC2 again. I acknowledge that it might be a little lazy or unfair to mapmakers on Blizzard's end, but I do think that sometimes bringing back old maps and potentially seeing new innovations on them could be a good way of mixing in familiarity as well as new ideas.
EMP would fit awesomely in the raven, both thematically andas a homage to the SC1 science vessel. All the while aiding protoss in a very simple and direct way
I support this idea
And it would make raven appear more often
EMP+Turret would be brutal against protoss... mass ravens would be the main strategy on TvP matches...
I think they should remove the turret hability from the raven... free units is always a problem on limited resources games...
@@brianfhunter Right!? I'd been saying this for years about the Infested Terrans and turrets. Protoss has no free (damage producing) units. If you lost detection in a late game slugfest, infested terrans would wear you down. If you only had ground units, turrets would wear you down. Not to mention supply boosts lol. Oh, you maxed out your army? Here's 20 more supply worth of attack units on top of your spellcasters!
It's like they wanted to give the other races Hallucination ability, but like basically all things SC2, they made it OP for the other races and shafted Protoss.
I like the idea of it using a nuke and having a similar mechanic.
The hydra change was a straight up nerf. They nerfed a lair tech that is up 100% of the time after research to add a semi useless hive research.
That's typical with every hydra change, they nerf them.
It honestly doesn't even make sense that they nerfed it anyways. Was anyone actually complaining about the 100% uptime? If anything, it feels like that would have helped them deal with the Mothership changes if they left it as it was.
cry about a 0.00000000001% nerf jajajajajaja
@@bobyy6557 Creep speed bonus reduced from 1.03 to 0.74.
That's pretty significant. It's a big nerf to an already underwhelming unit. The new dash ability is a 100% speed increase for 0.71 seconds. It's not worth the permanent speed reduction (after the speed research).
I think it would've been more interesting if they combined the ability with the movement speed and put it on Lair tech
But move the Grooved spines upgrade to Hive
It provides a more interesting mid-game transition and has a better competition with the Lurker upgrades at Hive
The ghost nerf is too great
In the late game, instead of 30 OP units, we can only have 20 OP units😢
jajjajajaja, zerg community complaining and winning and complaining and whining.
@bobyy6557 Chad Zerg players still win after 1000 nerfs
Virgin Terran players can't win even with the most OP unit in the game 😭
@@shinzoux5912 not even hiding ur bias. fanboying on a player playing a ded game 🤣🤣🤣
@@shinzoux5912 try to play Zerg in SC1 and we will talking about real Chad Zergs... Zergs in SC2 are really easy to use.
@@bobyy6557 Why would I. Better than coming here, watching the video then calling it a "ded game" - what a fucking clown 🤡
just swap emp with interference matrix so raven would get picked more often to counter shield and energy
I Think you should remove the turret spell then.... i think raven with both spells would be insanely powerful on tvp
But i like the idea
I am not a huge fan of this idea because it also nerfs to the ground all invisible unit builds like DT or burrowed roaches
Emp + turrets would make ravens a little busted.
Might need to undo that energy boost they got a while ago as well
This is the second comment saying swap EMP to raven. But the raven is cheaper and faster than the ghost.
Already liked!
I'm just happy they kept the much needed ghost nerf. I look forward to seeing how this patch plays out.
I want flying banelings.
you mean Scourge?
So... scourge?
@@reeddragon5250 - its a joke...
A lot of people didnt play SC1 and people who did, explain to SC2 players that the scourge is as a flying baneling.
If only there was a unit like that 🤔
Scourge
One usability enhancement not mentioned is that when building a Nexus, CC, or hatch, it will automatically set a rally line to the mineral line. Nice addition in my opinion.
IMO, Mothership being abductable has always been dumb. Since you can only have one Mothership deployed at a time, it really should be immune to all CC, even if that means it needs to be nerfed in other ways until it's balanced.
Alternative arguement: If you can't abduct a flying Terran building, you shouldn't be able to abduct the flying Protoss "building" that is the Mothership.
As a casual player, I hate the Hydralisk lunge ability. It adds too many things to do. I still wish Queens will auto inject ;(
I wonder how it would feel if they took the Thor balance proposal and put it onto EMP.
Basically giving EMP falloff damage. So while you could hit an entire protos army, only the very center of the EMP would take full damage
give it a target cap. every target beyond 5 targets doesnt get affected, easy.
@@schippes24 Or make it a softcap rather than a hardcap.
1 target hit = 100 damage.
5 targets hit = 500 damage.
6 targets hit = 500 damage, split evenly.
20 targets hit = 500 damage, split evenly.
@@LukasLLM This seems reasonable, but I feel like what this means is you need more emp's and we're already going to see fewer ghosts with them being 3 supply. We'll have to see how this current patch shakes out first.
@LukasLLM, yes, but what about multiple ghosts? Could they not just spam emp?
Falloff is a good idea. I think I still like the damage over time option a little better since it depends on micro.
It can be made to "unable" to target itself or another Nexus.
60s global cooldown really makes the thing obsolete in the late game, where one or two spellcasters arent much.
Should be individual cooldown, like the Command Center
id rather orbital commands get global cooldowns on scan
It should have extra charges for every 2 Nexus, for example 3 charges max with 6 Nexus and it gets one charge every 60s
@@colinlee2904 Against DT rushes - it would be too oppressive, and costly. Terran would basically have to have bunkers/turrets in about every base.
It would be more sensible to put a global cool down on supply call down and mules - which would terminate the late game supply advantage Terran has.
"Obsolete"? What? Do people really think that having instant two storms, guardian shield or additional forcefields is not good enough? Even in its current state it's way more useful in lategame than shield overcharge lol.
The animation for Hydralisk new ability should be that they initially burrow and then pop out from underground like the Kerrigan Cinematic.
Thanks for the update Lowko! I also believe SC2 is not a dead game, even if it feels figured out at some points and the audiences got smaller (RIP GSL). Which means on the other side that the level of play seems super high. I get still excited for tournament rounds and games you pick for this chanel.
Just a random thought: wouldn´t be a mod be exciting with all the removed abilities for every race´s units back in the game? Like Vortex, infested terrans, charge on pylons, nexus AND shield battery etc.? All the supposed OP stuff back in the game to see how players deal with it? :D
Thank you Lowko for always keeping us updated with everything Starcraft. And yes, I thank your past, current, and future version of you. ❤
Here's a wild idea for Ghosts - give EMP to the Raven instead (and actually force Terran to build it) and keep Ghost supply cost at 2.
BUT as compensation, reduce their gas and mineral cost slightly and allow them to Stim. Imagine how wild stimmed ghosts would be (probably too strong vs Light units if I'm being honest but I'd like to see it).
The other option is to just remove the Ghost and give us back the Warhound in all its overpowered glory :P
Whomever approved the Immortal and especially disruptor changes needs to be banned from the Council forever btw.
I feel like zerg has a scaling problem. There are a few demi gods like Serral who can play the race and win, but us ladder heroes don’t have supercomputer skills to make it work, especially in late game. I feel like every race, ideally, should be able to win at any stage of the game. It just feels to me at least, that the game is done if my opponents get to late game tier units. I definitely feel that zerg has more useless units compares to the other races and a couple very good ones. The very good units have hard counters though. For instance roaches. The only way that zerg can compete is by having 1 OP unit like the queen, which I feel isn’t OP in late game situations. It’s just that it is zergs ONLY tool early game.
I feel like one of the things the balance councils could try is:
Hydralisk Den is now buildable at Hatchery. (Upgrades still need Lair Tech)
Hydralisks have +1 range against air
Queen anti-air range reduced to 5.
Agree. But I would remove the anti-air for queens. That would give Zerg an early anti air like Marines and Stalkers.
@@vonk5463 It would force zerg to open hydra each time as the amount of damage possible with banshee or oracle would be too much.
@@ixioxp119 yes but the Hydra can be added to the army later.
But mainly because Protoss have to open with oracle.
Against Terran it depends....
I would feel better about the disruptor nova change if it also moved a little faster and detonated a little earlier (so the effective range remains constant). Then that extra radius would be more useful and warrant the damage nerf. Overall, I think they have the right idea in making it easier to hit with, but didn't go far enough.
Making it move faster sounds like a neat idea.
But because it would make mikroing against it more difficult the effective range should be lowered slightly in my opinion
No abduct on mothership is crazy. The Pros have been saying they cannot win late game ZvP and refuse to get there, and the balance council still goes through with it wtf. Make abducting the MS half as effective/far instead.
I think rolling Banes in to make room (if necessary due to Toss ground units) for Hydras with their new Dash ability (which just means 'to move quickly' or 'to strike quickly' btw, it does not imply legs) to get under the Mamaship and take her out is a viable option as well. If there's too much air, instead, then throw a Microbial Shroud on the Hydras first to allow them to tank air damage long enough to take out the Mamaship. It's only 3 or 4 volleys if you have a sufficient number of Hydras.
Alternatively, should we bring back Scourge to deal with Protoss flying units? 🙂
Uhhh, Reynor was the reason Queen's Transfuse got changed to only work on creep because he was just winning with midgame timing pushes with roach+queen for a while and then other top zergs started copying the builds/strat.
I think the solution is to give hydra some bonus vs air. this way Zerg don't get forced into a trap, and it gives hydras more flexibility. they keep their theme, and add utility to deal with tough situation.
I have the solution for the lack of Zerg anti-air...
Simply bring back everyone's favourite unit. The infested Terran. Purple rockets for everyone!
Favorite unit is the Scorge and devourer
I'm a fan of trying out Hydras with a +1 range anti-air - either baked into the base unit or part of one of their upgrades. It feels like it might be a good start without going overboard.
Why does zerg get to have an answer to everything while having the best early and mid game combination of units? As well as the single best unit in the game in the Queen.
How many times do we need to watch Serral or Shin or whoever lose 20 drones in an attack, and then still be up in supply and worker count?
Or allow roaches to shoot up...
@@ryanhefner2011 best unit comp? You talking marine marauder medivac? 😂
I think the problem of ZvP late game could be addressed by giving a broodlord change, so that if after zerg makes corruptors they would more easily be able to morph into broodlords so that the corruptor commitment is not as committing
This is a thought I had too - it would also give Zerg a more viable endgame unit.
Point to the tournament win rate that justifies a massive zvp buff
@@Lightwolf_VR it's a difficult thing. Should all the ladder zergs playing the game suffer under an oppressive zvp late game to change the results of offline tournaments? I think there is still room to find a solution that makes the late game more even for the ladder while allowing protoss to win offline tournies.
@CheezitNinja Starcraft has always explicitly been balanced unapologetically around the best of the best.
You don't go randomly throwing enormous buffs at the winning faction.
Elegant ones, sure.
Enormous late game buffs removing the downside of going corruptor, no
@@Lightwolf_VR You say that like the balance council didn't explicitly state they were trying to find balance changes that would effect the varying skill levels differently, which they absolutely found some changes which did exactly that.
I'm not in agreement with making broods buffed or cheaper in this particular case like OP mentioned, just advocating that there are potential solutions here the council can explore and test which would preserve the buff the best toss players get this patch while negating that advantage on the ladder.
Thank you for this, I have been playing SC2 since the day it came out and never stopped (took a few breaks) Started as Terran and now play Protoss, I love the game so much and the community.
The Hydra ability is nothing like Stim : it's a micro dash.
If it could allow Hydras to climb cliffs like blink does it would be awesome but in it's current state, it's not worth binding a hotkey to it.
We just need microbious shroud to reduce aoe damage on shrouded units. Then hydras are not as hard countered by storms and colossi and might work vs protoss air
Personally I think Toss just has too many units. They relay on too many other units to do their job where you have zerg and terran doing just fine on their "Gateway" units. Drop the Mothership, drop the other crazy silly units. Improve the gateway units. There are way to fix their early power such as increasing gate warps longer in the tech tree. Ghost are easy to fix as far as emp or snipe. As the video says, just reduce their range, area, or dmg. They dont need 3 supply drop, but if you dont do something, then I am sure 3 supply does make more sense in nerf. To me, its just they DONT NOT want to touch terrans much. Its crazy to watch over the years.... Toss had answer in the past... then they removed them. BW did just fine with them such as an upgrade to energy improvements. We dont need fancy abilities like nuxus recharge.
idk I feel like if you need to invest into about 20-30 Corruptors just for one Mothership, the Protoss already won. They can just transition to a heavy ground army and now you're stuck sitting there with your empty supply of Corruptors.
You COULD make them Broodlords, but that's even MORE resources committed just to try to get your opponent to free up your supply...It's doomed.
Zerg need better AA and Air in general.
Zerg is about to have the worst win rate across all brackets, just so Serral can be beaten.
Sounds like zerg need better anti air. I think that allowing the winged larva of a swarmhost to be able to attack air units would make that unit more playable and give zerg limited tactical ability to stave off an air force.
Disruptor: Should be able to detonate Nova early, but damage scales up with time that Nova is active. Maybe something like linear scaling at a % of current power level, and if you don't detonate early then you get that extra % back as a bonus at the end.
ZvP Mothership is tricky. If Corruptors could morph into some new air unit with the ability to target ground (or even into a ground unit), then that would give a use to mass corruptor as a counter to Mothership. However, this is the definition of "extensive testing required." Unclear if the Microbial Shroud buff + Hydra frenzy ability is enough to get Hydras close enough/fast enough/safe enough to take on the Mothership. Maybe if the Hydras got a different upgrade that gave +1 range vs flying? I'm very unsure.
Having the ability to manually detonate early is brilliant
only think i'm worried about is that protos will again go into a flying meta, and Zerg are still weak against flying units.
so we will see Turtle Protos vs Zerg that try to end games as fast as they can as they are to weak in the late game.
Skytoss is boring unless you just want to win. I'll never play it maybe some others won't either.
The problem with the Lunge ability is you won't have spare APM to use it when you need it. Only way I see me using it is maybe in nyduss harass to retreat.
For me, to make up for those changes made, I will suggest these:
Hydralisk
- They're expensive for being a light type of unit. Maybe increase hp from 90 to 110, if this unit is still only available through Lair. The cost is already high early game, so I don't really think they can mass fast enough, unless left alone.
Infestor
- Maybe add a healing capability for the Microbial Shroud. Aside from the damage reduction to air units and lingering effects while leaving its AoE, adding a 10-15 hp per sec for 3 secs.
Void Ray
- Prismatic Alignment is too powerful against armor types. Maybe reduce its damage from 28 to 22.
Viking
- Maybe their air range should be reduced from 9 to 8 and sight reduced from 10 to 9.
Ghost EMP
- The 3-supply cost is fine for me. EMP should be changed by reducing its radius from 1.5 to 1. This will be more APM intensive.
I found unnecessary changes to some units and structures:
- Immortal
- Call down
Bottomline: I don't know, I'm just crunching whatever plans they have on those changes, and since they are still experimental, maybe they can add what I suggested. Please do comment if you think I'm not seeing something with the changes I suggested. Do correct me for figures too, I might be wrong on it. I love SC2, I always comeback to this game for its story and its building concept for PvP. Watching my favorite streamers play or cast tournaments is also my daily habit, and I want this game to thrive more, despite it being an old game.
Oh no, the Terran players will have to do something other than mass bio! How tragic!
Seriously man all they know about micro is stim and a move
Like fuckkkk
@17:51 we finally get the explanation for why Lowko is such a MaxPax fanboy
Blizzard should make Ghost a light unit to make it less OP.
- In TvP, it would make Colossus specifically stronger against this unit and give Protoss players a counter to Ghosts through this unit, which is currently a bit weak and easily killable.
- In TvZ, Ghosts is very strong against all Zerg lategame units: Lurkers, Vipers, Broodlords and Ultralisks. Banelings got nerfed very hard -5 attack/ - 5HP, so making Ghosts a light unit would make Banelings stronger against them, and give Zerg players a counter against Ghosts.
This, in addition to the 3 supply added lately (but which only nerfs Ghosts during the lategame), would help the balance overall IMO. (Also, lorewise, makes it more correct to label Ghost as a light unit.)
Despite this nerf, Ghosts would still have a higher survivability than most Zerg or Protoss units, thanks to Medivacs (heal + transport & dash to move them away from a fight)
Another simpler idea would be to simply nerf Ghosts in auto attack / HP because, in addition to their insane capacities, they are both very strong and tanky as a unit, in comparison with High Templars or Infestors (but IMO, this nerf would be less elegant than the first one, as it's "just" playing with maths).
Or, also, make EMP an upgrade. Lurkers are initially weak until they get their 2 upgrades, so Ghosts would need 2 upgrades as well (cloack + EMP) to get their full strength. Also, this upgrade would compensate for the recent decreased cost of Armory.
It's always been weird how a spandex jumpsuit somehow protected someone better than a suit of power armor of mechanized metal plating weighing a literal ton against fire and lasers.
@@joshuakim5240this game light units tank better than mechanical units 😆
@@joshuakim5240 Huh. I see it as Ghost are the specialized agents who get the best high tech armor instead of the mass produced for the infantry. This is science fiction after all
yeah colossus used to soft counter ghosts once upon a time.
@@gabapc
Interestingly, the original SC1 Ghost portrayed this dynamic better as it wore an armor suit, but it was much leaner to show that it was more advanced to the point of providing as much protection as a Marine power armor suit while being maybe 1/3rd the size. No idea why SC2 made Ghosts portrayed as primarily wearing spandex jumpsuits, as ironically Spectres look much more like SC1 Ghosts with their armor plating (which is doubly weird as they're less durable than Ghosts without said armor plating...wut?).
Seriously, the SC1 Ghost portrait and model looks like a high tech armored infiltration specialist while the SC2 Ghost portrait and "armor" looks like a Marvel superhero wearing a costume.
Would be cool if they made microbial shroud protect against colossus attacks, since its cannons are up at the level of flying units.
To be fair from what i've seen as soon as the mothership is destroyed i've seen zergs completely dismantle the protoss army its a strategic issue. Just like previously protoss were unsure of when to commit the zerg players have to deal with the same issue.
Hydras at hatchery tech could be interesting. I'd personally love if they went with a more experimental route and remove the "Light" tag from them, buffing their survivability. Then again, it doesn't look like there's too many people at Blizzard working in this game, so...
Bring back infested marines for late game Zerg anti air.
Making the hydra den at hatch tech is my dream patch
I probs don't have a good opinion on ladder changes as I pretty much only play coop/campains, and I'm no game developer so take specific numbers with a grain of salt, but I have a few ideas for the mothership and ghost.
Mothership can still be hit with abduct, but it pulls the mothership and vipor together. This would still allow the zerg to yoink a mothership and get a much easier time killing it, but would put a vipor at risk. So this way it wouldn't be a completely free -400 -400 kill.
Ghosts EMP should give a shield drain status effect instead of a flat 100 shield damage. It'd drain 20 shields per second for 5 seconds. So one EMP would still drain the same amount of shields (so long as they where used up via damage right after the emp) but would stop EMP spam from stacking, as it'd simply reset the shield drain effect back to 5 seconds instead of doing additional shield damage.
I think a great way for to fix the zvp lategame concerns is to give the corruptors the ability that i belive they have in capmign. Where they can make units take more damage. I think that also opens up discussion for whether it should be targeted or aoe like the ravens
Lambo had a very good breakdown on why Protoss loose at a high level (mostly top Zerg and Terrans are just better players)
The main issue of hydras is that they are Gucci marines (especially with ghetto stim) at best they are used to have *anything* that hits medivacs in the mid game or as a way to produce lurkers
One of the problems with the ghost is it's size. They are to SMALL. It is difficult to target them (click on them). It is so easy to snipe ultras, broods and infestors because of their size. It is so difficult to abduct or target ghosts. it also enable better concentration of the unit in critical situation ( more units on a small space - closer to the fights ).
BIG thumbs up, mainly for not having names scrolling at the speed of light to end of video.
Maybe the Corruptor needs a upgrade. To get an anti ground ability. Corrupt some mechanical units and slow their attack speed and cooldown rate. To make corruptors a credible threat when air units are out of the equation and brood lords aren't useful against a mobile opponent. Protoss death ball will dislike having Corruptors overhead, and terran mech will need to shoot up too.
Loko's point at 17:00 is spot on. I typically just contain zerg until late game then it's easy peasy.
I will agree with Lowko on the Mothership side, and I am a former (I don't play SC2 anymore) Protoss player. The main concern I see is PVZ, and that's because we have seen a number of games where just the existence of the Mothership forces an ungodly amount of Corruptors out from the Zerg player, even though the Protoss player is going almost pure ground. Leaving Zerg with a good amount of supply tied up in a group of units that become all but useless after the Mothership dies.
IDK how they would balance it, maybe it doesn't need balance and the pro games are just suffering from "new thing confusion" but it is a concern there.
As for terrans.... Ghosts should be four supply.
Oh, I know, they should have nerfed the ghost by making them bigger, and I mean, ultralisk size bigger. I think if we consider the powerlevel of an individual ghost is somewhere between a motheship and an ultralisk it would only be fair for their size to represent their might. Fair to me
I dont play, but I still can't believe they havent moved hydralisks to tier 1 or something. As a SC1 fan I love those guys, and I hate how every single SC2 game I watch Zerg players are nearly always forced into spamming a bunch of queens. Make hydralisks weaker at t1 and maybe +hp upgrades etc. at tier 2. And make roaches a super interesting T2 unit kind of like how they were in aeons past.
Also plz give zerglings an individual upgrade that barely costs anything (except maybe time) to turn them into raptor ones that can go up/down cliffs like in the campaign for extra fun hit and runs. Watching them run around was always just so fun.
22:14 The answer to “why” is because this is what happens when you have a team whose sole purpose is making changes. They have to justify their existence by making changes, so changes will be made.
100% agree with Lowko on Ghost nerf - should be EMP v Protos..... being able to reduce a whole 100 supply of army to half health is crazy
My hope is with Zerg that more pro players will start building macro hacheries to produce extra larva for spore forests. Making the enemy more likely to fight them on the ground which would be fun to watch. Especially with the new Ultra. But I think if they wanted to go that route they would have to reduce the collision size of the burrowed spore crawler.
I'd love to see the Ultra remove the Armored tag so it worked better against late game armies. By the time the Ultra would come out with all of its upgrades the enemy army can easily deal with it. I wish the ultra worked better as a shield for the drones, able to deal with zealot or zergling run-bys more easily.
If we keep making zerg players more miserable the problem will solve itself either through zerg players switching races, stop playing, or complain loudly enough that they finally have to do something.
As for the ghost: EMP should only impact energy, and 'snipe' could be usable against any non-massive unit.
Disruptor change isn't as big a deal as you make it out to be at pro level. As you said, it generally doesn't hit anyway. So it's ability to zone hasn't been changed. And what it lacks in ability to 1-hit a few units (which still aren't going to intentionally facetank so far as we've seen), it makes up for in splash. Damaging a few extra surrounding units for half their hp instead of 1-shot a smaller number can have same effect. You get all the roaches to half hp, it's not much different from killing a smaller number and the rest are still full hp. Zerg has to go home.
I always thought emp should have a travel time (like it did in sc1) so it could be dodged more effectively.
I'm also partial to allowing shield armor to have increased effect against EMP
I don't think there's anything wrong with nerfing core units imo; would love to see the strategic compelxity increase with stimpack taking 15s longer to research, zealots being slightly slower, siege tanks having 0.5-1s more siege time before smart servos, adrenal glands giving less cooldown reduction, etc.
Guys I got the Ghost nerf that will balance them once and for all against Protoss.
1. Keep the Supply nerf as it doesn't negatively impacts Protoss enough and is a good nerf to Mass Ghost + Liberator compositions.
2. EMP doesn't deal 100 Damage against shields to each unit in its range anymore. It deals 250 Damage to the total amount of shields, of the units in Range.
That would at least force the Terran player to get enough energy to spam out EMPs so that they can deal with a large amount of shield points and if they weren't able to delete the shield of every unit in range, every unit would still be left with some shields, making the Shield Upgrade more impactful, as your units would be MUCH more likely to actually have shields on first contact with the Terran Army, even with Ghosts sprinkled in there.
For Example: 1 well placed EMP wouldn't kill all shields of 4 Stalkers and 2 Zealots like it would do now.
Instead it calculates the total Shields of units in range, subtract 250 from that (In this case 420-250=170) and spread the rest back to the units, based on how much Maximum Shield is available per unit.
Stalkers have 80 shields that equates to roughly 19% of the total Shield pool, Zealots have 50 shields which are roughly 12%. Stalkers get back 32 Shields, Zealots get 20 Shields.
The remaining Shield points are given to the highest HP unit (Random if tied) in this case a random Stalker gets another 2 Shield points.
The only thing i would change for thors is faster targeting on the javelyn missiles, so they're actually usefull against interceptors
ill never understand why zerg does have such shit anti air or in particular - why hydras need to be so bad. not only do i need to get to lair to even build a hydra den for whatever reason, theyre also fkin paper. zerg is gonna get rolled on all levels of play once a mothership comes out because u just cant kill it with hydras and corruptors as u said are just ass if the toss has more ground army. not to mention their units also shoot up ofc. theyre always gonna have archons and stalkers. pls bring back 75/25 cost hydras without lair tech.
Is the new patch going to favor skytoss in PvZ, yes. is it because of the mothership... no.
I'm still greatly confused we've gigabuffed the lurker leaving the only protoss units that can fight to be air..... the irony is palpable.
Regarding the protoss vs Zerg @Lowko I see the concern with the late game especially with a mixed sky toss army and Hydralisk not being perfect however with the changes to the hydralisk getting a Dash ability and now Microbial shroud sticking to targets I think that issue is largely fixed.
Dude last night I was playing a protoss game and I went to do the shield overcharge thing. I was so tripped out with the new icon it took me a few mins to even understand how to use it hahaha. Also it's so weird seeing old maps back.
Lowko I could listen to you talk about balance and change logs all day ❤
I am a Protoss player, and I really do think that EMP is too overpowered against Protoss. I have a few suggestions for the EMP change, it's either:
1. They change emp to only remove 50% of the shields of the Protoss it hits. So that it will not be too strong to play against.
2. They change EMP so that it will only make shields be vulnerable to damage, like around 1.5x the damage will be dealt against shields. Sort of like a vulnerability state.
3. They change EMP so that it will only malfunction for a few seconds, meaning all damage dealt to the Protoss army once the EMP hits will be dealt directly to the HP and not to the shields. And once the emp effect is removed, the damage dealt will be to the shields once again.
4. Or they just remove it so that I won't deal with EMP anymore. HAHAHAHA
I wonder if the balance council will be cooking up a mid season patch. Maybe they will be testing experimental changes over the course of the season, then drop some on the PTR to see what sticks.
Hydra needed an armor upgrade, not a lunge
Move hydra to hatchery tech and figure out the balance from there. I don't give a shit, zerg anti-air has sucked for too long and the queen needs a break.
on paper, the mothership to me behaves like a super heavy tank from company of heroes 2 (say king tiger, is2, etc). a very expensive late game unit both in resources and supply that theoretically is incapable of losing a straight up engagement against smaller tanks that dont outnumber it. however, unless micro'd well by the player that thing is gonna die just as fast at it came
With hatch being cheaper in exchange for queen cost increase, I want to see more zerg (looking at you Dark) try some crazy shit. Just accept you'll eat insane losses here and there. But instead of dropping all your bases in a traditional expand out, do some sneaky bases all over the map. Mine the enemy's 4th base. Then drop a couple on other side of map in opposite direction and mine 6th. If they don't scout and stop these, you can do some sneaky all-ins or massive couterattack run-by's. And that will reduce some of the early game threat zerg face.
EMP should only effect energy, Raven’s anti-armor missile should have the current EMP effect on shields with slower travelling speed
I still favor the idea of sentry shield being able to tank 50% of emp shield damage or tanking one or two shots and breaking or even a combination of the two, maybe play around with energy drain in the same manner. It would isolate the nerf to TvP, give a purpose to the sentry and has a lot of room for fine tuning. Increased amount of emps would require Terran to sacrifice more supply in favor of ghosts or risk being drained in a kiting dance vs toss.
On Maps. We could run two map pools. offical maps, and Community maps.
Take the top 3-6 maps from every interesting event, mix them with other mapping contest winners, toss a shuffle on the list and push out 9 maps as an official Community Map Pool every 3 months slowly grinding through the ever growing list. should you ever hit the end of the list, add any new maps, shuffle the deck again, and start over as we slowly keep adding more contest winners over time. This way there is always going to be a published list of what maps will be added to the community pool a year in advance, a published list you can practice your skills on prior to offical adoption, and yet also there is always new, fresh maps you haven't played competitively on showing up in your client every 3 months, celebrating the creativity and accomplishments of contest winners of both and old. I imagine it goes to the balance council to declare certain maps to be removed from that shuffled deck of maps should extreme balance bias problems be revealed on some community maps, otherwise each map offers it's creator fame and immortality in a way.
I like a more gas expensive 4-supply ghost better. Then you can even buff it. Either just keep the 3-supply and make it more expensive in gas, or go to 2-supply again and make it spend more energy on some abilities.
There's a lot of room to maneuver.
Truly, those with extensive knowledge of many many pro games could identify trends and make the broadest analysis of strong and weak points and subtle tweaks to adjust them.
Rather than another nerf to the ghost unit, a Protoss-focused buff against the ghost unit will be better. Let the guardian shields reduce or cancel out the EMP effects. This will improve the Protoss-teran balance without affecting the teran-zerg balance
I'm just a casual observer of SC2, haven't played since the year it came out but it seems to me the Zerg problem is that Zerg doesn't have good counters to things. It doesn't really fit into the rock-paper-scissors dynamic that is easier to balance. Over the last few years anything Zerg had that was an obvious counter to something got nerfed until it was just decent against what it used to counter. This is most obvious in late game when Terran brings out ghosts or protoss brings out carriers. What does Zerg have that counters those units?
On the other hand, Zerg builds Lurkers, well those are hard countered by both ghosts and carriers. What about Ultras, ghosts and immortals. Broods? Ghosts and tempests. If you name a zerg unit it has an obvious counter in both of the other races but that doesn't work the other way around. Both Terran and Protoss can hard counter zerg units with similar supply and resource investment. Zerg can't hard counter Terran and Protoss units it can only throw enough stuff at the problem it eventually works, sort of.
More frequent map pool changes *and* more varied designs in the pool as well would do wonders for the game.
Bring back the Scourge!
Rather than have EMP insta-delete shields and energy, why not either add a delay or have it drain instead? Gives protoss a chance to pull back without taking hp damage and lets spellcasters get one last cast off.
Edit: Zerg anti-air. I think there's an opportunity for the Ravager there. Have the ravager ability to deal extra damage to flying units? If you're spending time avoiding deadly ravager balls then your big scary air fleet isn't killing all the corruptors.
Thank you! Great video, great analysis!
I would have liked to have seen Defensive matrix replace auto turret and also EMP moved to Raven with Interference Matrix moved to ghost. Pretty sure thats how it was in Brood War, though IM was called Lockdown.
The council seems to be very focused on slowing down Zerg.
I think the instant heal supply depot is so Terrans can have the option
to do cheese and defend the zergling rush. For example,
battlecruiser or Thor rush.
Im actually surprised that Psionic Storm was not nerfed yet. From what i see, the zerg AA will not be that bad if you can actually stay and fight the protos army because every time you get close you get infinitely spammed by Psionic Storm and literally get zoned out of fight. It make me rage even when i just watch the ZvP and see all that storm spam on everything that get close. But maybe im just crazy, what can i know, im not a pro.
I wouldnt mind a ghost rework and im a terran.
Give them something against mechanical and remove emp.
Make their cloak disable steady targeting, but increase attack speed or movement speed.
Make steady targeting do half damage but shoot instantly if takes damage. (Insead of cancelling. Cancel only for cases like fungal or abduct)
Hydralisk change is a nerf. You're losing move speed on creep in order to gain less than a second boost at hive when Hydras become irrelevant.