Balance Starcraft 2

[tagg1080]

So, we all know that Star2's units are just messed up.

They are just wrong, on many levels.

The patches are not helping...


So, similar to what was posted before, I would like to compile a list of changes that HIGH LEVEL people would like to see changed.

If you are bronze/silver and even the bottom half of gold, please don't speak too loudly.

Anyone that falls into the higher tier of play, please comment on your changes/differences you would like to see.

I myself play at mid gold, so I will keep my opinions to a minimum.


Serious discussion only please.

 

[Just_Spectating]

i have noticed that marines and zerglings do not go as far as they used to anymore

 

[Hawkwing]

I've seen players go straight zerglings and win, marines too.

 

[BlinkBoy]

So, we all know that Star2's units are just messed up.

no i don't know. I believe balance is pretty good.

btw, i'm platinum and would be diamond if it wouldn't be for b.net going gay lately and disconnecting everyone.

 

[tagg1080]

no i don't know. I believe balance is pretty good.

btw, i'm platinum and would be diamond if it wouldn't be for b.net going gay lately and disconnecting everyone.

You are one of the few that I have seen that are happy with it the way it is.

Maybe I am just blind, but I have seen a lot of people unhappy with the units and the balance.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Thats cause they blame their lack of skill on the units they use not being good enough or the units the enemy uses being too good. Its called shifting the blame.

If you ask purple poot or other good SC2 players, they will have a small list of changes for actual melee. Those changes will be mostly a couple of points and of values which most people never realise are useful.

Thus why blizzard completly ignores ballence feedback from anyone whos not in high platinum/dimond.

Lets pretend to be a "noob". I am trying to "rush" carriers and suddenly 40 zerglings attack my near undefended base (4 proton cannons) and I lose. I would be all "WTF I can not lose, I AM GOD!!!! stupid game is not ballenced" and then go on to make the out rageous statememnt that zerglings do far too much damage and need a cost increase and damage nerf. As you can see the logic backing that statement up is shallow and leaves to something that would further unballence the game in a destructive way.

More skilled people, like purplepoot say things like the one protoss air unit needs a slight range or speed nerf cause they can herase terrains and zerg with impunity due to being faster than their air units as well as longer ranged making it extreemly difficult to handle.

This sort of ballence sujestion is more rational cause he has experienced it multiple times. He also is a good player and knows units inside out so probably tried many methods and stratergies and noticed they in general had below expected effectiveness. Also the fact that it was becomming a widly used stratergy as protoss meant that it must be more effective than other stratergies.

The end result was that as he mentioned the slight range reduction, blizzard already released a patch to do so, meaning they do have some form of understanding of ballence.

Stuff can only be unballenced if it is yielding better or worse results than everything else.

An unballenced in a weak way unit would be used less often by people who know the game inside out compared to other choices designed to be used near equally. An example of this was the infested terrans who were very difficult to get so no one ever used them thus they were axed from the game, not cause they were not useful, but because their difficulty to obtain for any macro advantage was so little it was practically not worth even considering them (or atleast that is what it seemed like).
On the other hand something that was too strong like the orignal protoss mother ship and their build speed were causing protoss to generally win massivly against other races in all tiers and as a result they were nerfed to change that quite early on.

Ballence is not about listening to whiners, its about weather something actually is too good or too bad.

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

I only complain about some bnet features. As a terran and with the latest patches I sure don't complain about balance, looks fine to me. There are race-specific maps like Scrap station is typically good P map vs T. But it's like war3 had maps for orc etc, so having such more friendly maps for a specific race is nothing to complain about. I just exclude it, though it doesn't exclude it only makes 'less chance to match...' unlike war3... another thing they said 'hey much better' and is rather 'sux'

I always leave balances to the top players cause only they have the right to talk about what is balanced and what not.

 

[Tleno]

No, I find current balance good and people allways keeping screaming about the balance, now Bllizard should concentrate on more technical problems.

 

[Gyrosphinx]

I belive balance is quite good right now, it is Battle.net 2.0 that needs change.

 

[Agarwa3n]

The balance of the game is very good so far. Ppl in forums whine about Terran being slightly OP, but imo they are overracting, since i've seen many counter-arguements to their rants.
Do I like the current balance system though? No, I dont. It's just doesnt.. feel fine (although it seems to be). I dont like the current armor and weapon system and their way they counter things. It seems to produce more problems than solving. Maybe it's also the way they treat their new units, overshadowing the old time classics (like archon, siege tanks). Every race can counter the other race, but the huge differences from race to race in sc1, that also produced the huge deapth in its gameplay, is not there anymore. Maybe their obsession to create perfect counters led to some units being very similar (ranged armored units, antiarmor - all races have one).

 

[doombringer]

The game seems really nicely balanced at the moment and remember that the game is still in beta and when SC1 was first released it had some units that where over or under powered but blizzard kept making tiny tweaks to improve the game to the apparently super balanced state it is now.

I expect SC2 to be similier as there are 1 or 2 things that might be slightly underused but as new stratagies are tested and practiced these underused units could become useful and powerful while the current stratagies become weaker due to increased popularity in their counters

 

[PurplePoot]

Platinum prepatch/Diamond postpatch (10-2 postpatch, both losses in the TvT mirror... haven't got that much time to play 1v1 postpatch since I'm more worried about having fun in 3v3 and in general screwing around in the last week of beta).

The balance is very nice. I've even seen Ultralisks used effectively against Terran mech in some tournament games. Terran was having some trouble with Protoss in patch 12 but they seem to be a bit better off now. Also, the TvT matchup is getting more interesting, which is nice.

Zerg are having a bit too much trouble against Metal at the moment, but it's up in the air whether Metal is overpowered (Zerg doesn't seem underpowered) or whether they just haven't found out the adequate responses and timings yet.

 

[Dr Super Good]

There we have it, the proof that the actual melee/skirmish ballence in SC2 is good as people who actually know the game (Dimond/high gold) do not have huge lists of ballence flaws.

Like I mentioned eariler, the people who are still complaining about poor ballence generally are whiners and will always complain until they win 100% of the time.
What a lot of people fail to realise is the game attempts to match you with opponents that you will have statistically a 50% chance of winning against. Many people obviously are not happy with this as they want a 100% win chance so they complain about the slightest thing like maruders are too powerful, the protoss suck etc.

This is why one must simply ignore them which is what blizzard is doing.

 

[PurplePoot]

Funny that you mention that, DSG, because people actually have been widely complaining about the Protoss nerfs every patch. In reality, Protoss was overpowered (their P-Z win ratio was 51% and their P-T win ratio was 54%, and this lasted several months so it was certainly not a problem of the Terran not finding responses).

Also, OP, the problem can be summed up like this: "My race is underpowered and everyone else's race is overpowered".

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

Well, the Void Ray is still ghey but since they got a range nerf it's fine. The void rays made early rape marines.

 

[mrzwach]

I play random, and none of the races are really unbalanced (at least in a noticable sense). Mech seems to be a bit OP against zerg, but that might be because zerg is my worst race by far, so I can't really give accurate feedback on that.

Also, marines rape early void rush.

 

[Just_Spectating]

void rays are easily countered

 

[Switch33]

I'm not a huge melee player, but i've played wc3 and sc1 extensively. I have also played sc2 beta with several melee games for quite some time. The first race I played was protoss and it was simply awesome. The other races were somewhat lacking in "originality." But that is unrelated. After playing a few matches I thought maybe Blizzard put too much emphasize on counters: marines are weak to these 3 units, zealots are weak to these 3 units. . . etc. Which removed some of the great uniqueness that sc1 had.(I sort of miss firebats, landmines, and even mind control from sc1.) Its no wonder protoss started overpowered since their concept behind how the race plays out has a lot of advantages built in.

But the most problematic thing that arose from the forced counters is that some units have clear severe advantages due to the unlimited amount that can be produced. Its to the point that 30 stalker protoss units will suck against their air counter with only 5 units and dealing little to no damage at all versus the enemies. And i bet it's intended but it seems that the range on carriers is a bit nutz and makes Terran anti-air turrets pointless versus protoss basically.

 

[tagg1080]

It is TOO rock-paper-scissory in my opinion.

 

[PurplePoot]

SC1 was very rock-paper-scissory if you had any idea what you were doing as well. Just because it didn't state the damage reductions doesn't mean they weren't there.

 

[mrzwach]

Any competitive multiplayer game needs to have rock-paper-scissor mechanics, or it isn't fun.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Carriers are a late game unit, they are meant to be used shortly before a game ends.

SC2 is not made for 30-60 minute matches. By the time you have a few carriers, the game end should be insight. I do not think it is blizzard's intention to let some cheap anti air guns stop expensive carriers.

Battlecruisers yamato is realtivly good against carriers as it is long range and will kill a lot of their shield / HP, same goes for broodlords. Basically their weakness (as far as I can tell) is that their main unit is not too durable if focused on. The strength is they can provide nearly endless damage absorption via infinit spawns (brood lord) and cheap aircraft (carrier). In custom maps currently I notice a lot of people falling for the trap of macro attacking them when it is more effective to focus micro attack them.

 

[tagg1080]

SC1 was very rock-paper-scissory if you had any idea what you were doing as well. Just because it didn't state the damage reductions doesn't mean they weren't there.

I know that...

It feels TOO rock-paper-scissory.

I am mid gold right now, so take my opinion for that, but I think that Star2 is less open to different builds than Star1 was.

And yes, I have been playing starcraft since release date, I still have my version 1.0 CD, actually.

 

[Just_Spectating]

it's about rock sissors paper rock sissors rock paper paper rock sissors

 

[Dreadnought[dA]]

I played over 500 melee games and was in Platinum with Terrans (even after every reset). Currently, mech feels really strong against Zerg or at least easy to execute (as others have mentioned). I've seen several replays with Zerg effectively countering mech though.

I haven't played with the new patch yet (lots of college stuff and galaxy editor), but it seems like most of the changes are in the right direction.

I think Blizzard should make some change to ultralisk upgrades though and Adrenal Glands.

I don't have any complaints about TvP atm other than I've always hated the Ghost vs High Templar thing. First ones to get off EMP's or Feedbacks win! Of course ghosts almost always win, but it just feels silly! Dark tech doesn't feel that glamorous, but I've seen a few games do 180's because of them. Not sure if I like it or not.

 

[PurplePoot]

I know that...

It feels TOO rock-paper-scissory.

I am mid gold right now, so take my opinion for that, but I think that Star2 is less open to different builds than Star1 was.

And yes, I have been playing starcraft since release date, I still have my version 1.0 CD, actually.

Yeah, SC1 was totally so much more diverse!

TvT now is only Marine/Tank/Viking or Marine/Thor/Viking/Banshee, whereas TvT in SC1 had so many different options, such as... wait no, it was always mech+wraith+dropship.

TvP now is only MMMX (X being ghost/tank/thor/raven etc) or Marine/Tank/Viking or Marine/Hellion/Banshee vs stalker/immortal/[zealot/sentry] or stalker/colossus or void ray/stalker, whereas in SC1 it was pretty much... no, it was always mech vs zealot/dragoon/HT/arbiter/[carrier].

TvZ now is only MMMX (X being thor/ghost/raven etc) or Hellion/Tank/Thor/Raven vs Hydra/Roach/Infestor or Muta/Ling/Infestor or Speedling/Baneling/Infestor or Hydra/Muta, whereas in SC1 it was pretty much... no, it was SK Terran or mech vs Ling/Hydra/Muta/Defiler/Ultra.

Can't speak for PvP/PvZ/ZvZ since I don't play those matchups, but SC1 ZvZ was always ling/muta/scourge and PvZ was zealot/dragoon/high templar or corsair/reaver/carrier vs hydra/ling/defiler.

Nostalgia's a bitch, don't let it mislead you.