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#Post#: 906--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: Speed
Date: November 25, 2020, 1:53 pm
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--- Quote from: ZergTriumph link ---
>
> How do you stop 3 aggressive terrans targeting down your big
spines with T1 marines and power fields before 15 minutes?
>
--- End Quote ---
Upgrade packed mass, upgrade some capacity as soon as terran
advances from their armory (this requires you to pay a fair
amount attention). Depending on income you can also afford Speed
1 maybe. All of these things help drain energy, and depending on
your armor 1 timing you might have your first transfuses ready.
Does that defend any amount of terran aggression? Of course not.
A really strong terran will probably kill you, but the amount of
mechanics terran requires make at least 80% of players kinda
weak and delay them a lot. Just look how long most people need
to clears nests... often longer than 15 minutes^^. The amount of
terrans that can assault a big spine along with good eco at
~13min is extremely low (Adam can kill a big spine at 13min, but
his mineral inc is 200 when he has 2 extra ref and low
pressure^^).
I usually skip power field for 12:30 minute kills. I've taken
big spines before researching shattering (though one time it was
an accident lmao). Stuff like that is rare though.
Should there be balancing around it? Yeah, a tiny amount of help
for zerg wouldn't be too horrible, when facing really good
terrans, but when they face mediocre player those will have
little chance then. With how 4.0 has hit, I get complains from
multiple sources complaining about this:
-Removal of chem
-Removal of firebat
-OP terran
-OP zerg
-T1 too strong
-T2 too strong
-Bunker too weak
-Patch is shit in general, why do you support this?
I can't even really extract the main issue of these people,
cause how can zerg be OP and terran, too? Opinions about patch
are split, some think it's good, some think it's bad, Team 1 is
OP, Team 2 is op...
You made a good deal when both sides are unhappy -From some
movie / book I cannot remember specifically.
#Post#: 910--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: ZergTriumph
Date: November 25, 2020, 9:23 pm
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Having seen some of the best players in action today, it seems
like zerg should be more aggressive and take a low eco build,
since they don't need a colossal economy to break terran turtle
at the end of the game anymore. Not upgrading spawners, but
making more slowlings early and upfront to slow down the best
terrans in the game. But this also requires a lot of micro that
I and a lot of other players don't have.
#Post#: 911--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: Speed
Date: November 26, 2020, 4:54 am
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You can definetely build some spawners up front, especially the
first ones (starting supply and 1st supply, MAYBE 2nd) will be
there for a long time and it will not be a massive hit to you
when cleared. I still play full eco zerg this patch early game,
however with easy max walls and firebats not being an option
anymore, I'm not against teching into roach / primal / ultra
before maxing tech and going into brutalisks + infestor units.
What unit is teched into depends on income and preference, I
think each unit might be somewhat viable (though some more than
others), even primals were good once you had a decent amount
(2-3 or more supplies) and dropped the upgrade... especially
when defending. That type of committment would have made it easy
for terrans in last patch to just camp / doom push with mass
firebat, this patch they need to kill you (which is possible).
With veterans being cheaper and having improved shatter dmg, I
feel like brutalisk is still the ultimate goal sadly. ( that
unit is horribly inefficient, but 7 armor is just so perfect vs.
veterans^^).
#Post#: 918--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: deorai037
Date: November 26, 2020, 2:37 pm
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--- Quote from: <heXnab>Speed link ---
>
> Serious question; have you ever played vs. 3 slowling + full
capacity? Was it enough to push you inside, or did you manage to
hold on to 1 or maybe even 2 gas?
>
--- End Quote ---
If you're asking me and if I'm understanding you correctly (+3
slowling spawners on my base, and all spawners are upgraded),
then no, I'll usually hold on to at least 2, if not all 3 gas
(although the third gas will usually end up delayed in that
case), unless the Zerg opens with two waves of F2 on me. +6
slowling spawners + upgrades on all or most spawners will push
me back in to base though, unless I anticipate this all-in level
of pressure and focus on securing just one gas from the get go
(a.k.a., I'm the only Terran in a lobby with a winrate above 40%
or something, although I'm less inclined to stick around for
those games now that I know about the "leave before 2:10 for rm
doesn't count" thing). For obvious reasons, literally any player
of above average or high skill usually has decent enough energy
management and micro skill to hold against high levels of
pressure, if only to create space for other teammates.
"Upgrade packed mass, upgrade some capacity as soon as terran
advances from their armory (this requires you to pay a fair
amount attention). Depending on income you can also afford Speed
1 maybe. All of these things help drain energy, and depending on
your armor 1 timing you might have your first transfuses ready."
Packed mass without speed 1? That's literally begging for a
terran player to just.... ignore your slowlings and run straight
for the spine. Sure, the Terran will maybe lose a few more
marines, but they can just re-build those, while you can't
rebuild your big spine.
As far as the vet buffs vs primals go, the thing was.... primals
weren't that big of an issue in the first place, and I think
that nerfing them with the upgrade to vets means that Zerg
becomes even wonkier as far as tiers go. Prior to Patch 4.0, the
only thing I'd really use primals for was their high base damage
vs bat-heavy terrans, and only as a last resort if upgraded
strykelings + infusions wouldn't do the trick. They were already
not that great against vets and not that great against t1 +
power field either, unless you built them in such massive
numbers that your eco was completely in ruins, leaving any
player who was teching up to elites ready to wipe the floor with
you. It was usually more worthwhile to go straight from roaches
into brutas while maintaining as high an eco as possible, and
this only solidifies this thought (since going for primals will
only slow down reaching brutas).
And again, primals assumes you survived t1 pushes, and if you
survived the t1 pushes as a Zerg, you were likely already in a
good position to wipe out at least one or two terrans on your
half of the map and leave the last one unable to push.
With regards to your statement about "how can both Terran and
Zerg be OP at the same time?" I think that Patch 4.0 will only
end up exacerbating the balance issue that already existed in
the previous patch: namely, that Terran remains OP at a high
level, but Zerg is strong against lower level players.
First, for high skill players who know how to push aggressively
with t1s, t1 has become stronger. Roaches are weaker, meaning
the one real counter to t1s is now nerfed. The existing
high-level balance issue - namely, that 3 high skill terrans on
the same side of the map will wipe the floor with literally any
Zerg player using aggressive t1 pushes - has only been made
worse; at a high level, Terran remains OP.
For above average, average, and lower skill Terran players (who
constitute the vast majority of the playerbase), Terran lategame
has essentially been deleted. Maybe you've never seen a truly
average-skill-vs-average-skill game before, especially since
every time I've seen you play, it was with a clanmate or two.
I'm not saying you're not skilled in your own right, Speed,
because you are, but if you throw in a high skill player and an
above average player onto the Terran team, it's no longer an
average-skill-vs-average-skill game, but a wholly different
experience. But for average Terrans, they usually only win
because Zerg does not know how to eco, and so they are able to
win in the late game by outpacing Zerg eco. Against most average
Terran players, pure eco zerg works amazingly well (if there are
no high skill players on my half of the map and I'm Zerg, eco
Zerg is a snoozefest that auto-wins), because pure eco zerg
doesn't need to face its single biggest threat of early t1 push
(by the time significant numbers of vets or elites come out,
pure eco zerg is like "lol I have brutas and can afford attack
upgrades").
The relative improvement to Zerg lategame that tilts the game
severely in the Zerg's favor in average and low skill games does
not help out Zerg in high skill games, because the Terran eco
needed for t1 pushes is not changed at all; Zerg never sees that
buff in the first place.
So what's left for the average player in this patch? If an
average player is now even more likely to die to a single,
high-skilled, high-aggression t1 Terran player, and is even less
likely to be useful when on Terran, then average players are
slowly going to end up bleeding out of the playerbase. Perhaps
some people might think "good riddance, no more noobs," but that
just means the community will shrink and die off more quickly
because you won't get new players anymore, and for any online
community, old players slowly bleed out over time due to, well,
life.
As a side note, a pithy statement like "You made a good deal
when both sides are unhappy -From some movie / book I cannot
remember specifically." is honestly pretty stupid. It's easy to
make a patch or piece of content that pisses everyone off. Just
ask Disney about the live-action Mulan remake. It's
substantially harder to balance a game that is both engaging,
rewarding, and tightly balanced at a high level, but still is
fun to play and "feels" fair enough at a lower level. This patch
hasn't done much for either cause, I think; it's mostly just
sped up the pace of the game by cutting out the lategame (either
for Z or for T, depending on skill level) altogether.
To be honest, if all that you wanted to see happen was to see
the pace of the game sped up, then the best option would be to
do what Blizzard did between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of
the Void: just give everyone on both sides more resources to
start with and tweak it from there so that everyone hits
mid/late game faster, rather than just deleting late game and
variable strategies altogether and calling it a day.
#Post#: 921--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: Speed
Date: November 26, 2020, 3:18 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I've already said this, without the threats of late game
(firebat + bunker), T1 is indirectly nerfed. Zerg can respond.
You make primals vs. T1, if you don't have the eco for that...
guess roach / transfuse and if terrans break that, well then
they had too much skill I guess.
Is T1 OP? Yes, in the right hands (what wouldn't be op? Mass
reaper vs. roach I guess).
If you balance T1 around players like me, how is terran ever
gonna win? Tons of people (check EU reviews /s ) already
complain it is unwinnable for T (granted there is people saying
Z is OP, too, I've already told you this). Give back firebat? I
swear to god, if T1 is nerfed and firebat is back, I will not T1
anymore and you'd wish I did lmao.
AFK bunker / firebat is definetely not something I want to see
coming back. I played enough of those boring games.
Najdorf suggested a nerf on penetrating laser cost (250 --> 300)
to slow down T1, but even in this patch there are builds that go
straight veteran (no penetrating laser needed), so while it
would slow down T1 it would kinda encourage skipping T1 entirely
in favour of T2 (and that probably isn't good design tbh).
I barely won a game as zerg vs. 3 aggressive terrans that kinda
knew what they were doing 2 terrans that didn't really know what
they were doing, but pushed anyways. 6th terran insta left at
start. Was a fun game, terran could have won, but ultimately
lacking communication made it possible to defend their last
really scary push and end game in my favour. Ultra and bruta
tech used.^^
#Post#: 923--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: ZergTriumph
Date: November 26, 2020, 10:19 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
There should really just be a separate mode where zerg is
balanced against 3 good terrans so dedicated players can choose
that mode when they have a stacked lobby. Right now the game is
either:
1. Terran has a bunch of noobs = zerg wins
2. Terran has at least 4 good players = terran wins
#Post#: 926--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: deorai037
Date: November 27, 2020, 1:37 am
---------------------------------------------------------
All of the solutions you've framed have been looking at things
from the Terran POV, but my big concern is giving Zerg more
tools and options to actually respond to or slow down the
progression of T1. As a side note, no, primals are not a counter
to t1, because they don't come out in time to actually wipe the
floor with t1s (unless you count "I am desperately trying to
hold high ground hive" as "coming out in time").
In the first 15 minutes, Zerg is stuck in a really, really
delicate tradeoff. You (Speed) dismiss early aggression from
Zerg, and I don't disagree; against two skilled enough Terran
players, aggression only delays roaches, which means
sufficiently high skill t1 players will wipe you out by the 20
minute mark (against above-average or average skill players,
early aggression can pay off amazingly as you can often deny
multiple gases, setting back the Terran tech/eco way further
than Zerg tech/eco is). The problem is, hard eco (until
roach).... doesn't really work either. Again, I'm talking about
high skill games; if the Terrans aren't poking away at or
ripping through your big spines by the 15/16 minute mark with
t1s (exceptions will always be made for whatever Najdorf is
deciding to do for timings, because you know, I know, Najdorf is
something else), then those Terrans are probably only above
average or average skill.
Again, I think the issue is that Zerg just doesn't really have
any useful tools to help slow down the progression of t1
upgrades aside from "hope the Terran micro isn't good enough to
handle a few extra spawners." There isn't really anything that
rewards Zerg micro early on, which means that a Terran and a
Zerg of roughly equal micro skill will have vastly different
payoffs for micro. You could rush infestors and proceed to lose
due to their high early cost, or you could mass creepers....only
for them to run into early walls or get wiped out by a shock
trooper.
Ideally, I think that just giving Zerg more options to delay
terran t1 upgrades through a mix of micro and team coordination
might make Zerg actually stand a chance against multiple high
skill Terrans. I think mixing these options, too, might make for
a better playstyle.
One idea would be to increase the cost of Zerg t0 upgrades, but
make them shared between both teammates. Right now, buying any
t0 upgrades (packed mass, ferocity, banklings) early on tends to
be straight up suicide for zerg because of how far it sets back
the Zerg eco. For eco-heavy zerg builds, I think it'd be better
if you could split the cost of a more expensive packed mass or
ferocity with your teammate, and coordinate between the two of
you.
Another idea, which would give Zerg more of a micro-heavy
option, would be to re-imagine the place of the beastling. Right
now, the beastling occupies an awkward timing in the game where
by the time you can afford armor 1 without breaking the bank,
beastlings are irrelevant, because the Terran players already
have enough firepower to just shoot a beastling to death without
very many issues. So, my thought is, what if you could build
beastlings earlier in the game? You'd have to tweak them a lot,
but an adjusted beastling that, with micro, could successfully
deny or delay one of the Terrans' gases would improve Zerg's
ability to delay t1 marines without needing to directly nerf the
marines themselves. Imagine if armor 1 was cheaper, and you
could actually build a beastling spawner by the 3 minute mark
without having absolute garbage Zerg eco. That beastling, if
microed correctly might deny a gas from a terran player for a
few minutes, buying you just enough time to squeeze out roaches
later and force the terran to transition to t2. Maybe the
beastling could be a unit that hits very fast but surprisingly
low (and its damage doesn't scale very well with upgrades),
making it good for taking out unupgraded walls; so, a Terran
player would have to choose between ramping up enough DPS to
keep beastlings away from walls altogether, or spend money on
fortification 1, which would significantly delay any further
tech/eco early on.
In other words, it'd be nicer to have a slightly weaker
beastling early on, than the current beastling later on.
I'm just spitballing ideas, of course. There's huge chunks of
the Zerg and Terran tech trees in Zerg Hex that just don't see
much use because they're just not viable in most contexts, and I
don't think that "let's just chop things out until Zerg Hex has
been reverted to Patch 2.0" is the right way to go; I think
that, for the most part, the potential tools that would
meaningfully re-balance the game are already there.
And, as far as firebat goes, I think the old firebat did have a
place in the game, it just wasn't in the right place. It clearly
came out too early, and as a result was too powerful at those
early moments. Maybe they should've been more expensive (in
terms of mineral cost) but retained their raw power otherwise;
hard to mass 50 firebats if they cost 70~80 minerals apiece
(since functionally they were a bit above t2 in strength). Late
game firebats, paired with t3 marines, made for a really cool
looking endgame army. Firebats and t3 marines pushing into wave
after wave of brutas, every second hoping that the next infused
or torra doesn't turn that deathball of Terran into a deathball
of roaches, those were by far some of the most intense games I'd
ever had. Far more intense than steamrolling average or
above-average Zerg players with t1 marines for the 300th time,
or watching those same players wise up and focus me into
oblivion while having to watch teammates take their sweet time
to slowly choke out an overspent zerg.
#Post#: 927--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: baZzZ
Date: November 27, 2020, 1:42 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Can't just agree more. Awesome post, pointed out every detail.
Honor to you. And zerg was also able to win against fb ( no I
don't need them back ), but maybe some experienced players are
scared getting their a** spanked by mid/low tier players?! :D
#Post#: 929--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: Wricez
Date: November 27, 2020, 6:50 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: deorai037 link ---
>
>
> And, as far as firebat goes, I think the old firebat did have
a place in the game, it just wasn't in the right place. It
clearly came out too early, and as a result was too powerful at
those early moments. Maybe they should've been more expensive
(in terms of mineral cost) but retained their raw power
otherwise; hard to mass 50 firebats if they cost 70~80 minerals
apiece (since functionally they were a bit above t2 in
strength). Late game firebats, paired with t3 marines, made for
a really cool looking endgame army. Firebats and t3 marines
pushing into wave after wave of brutas, every second hoping that
the next infused or torra doesn't turn that deathball of Terran
into a deathball of roaches, those were by far some of the most
intense games I'd ever had. Far more intense than steamrolling
average or above-average Zerg players with t1 marines for the
300th time, or watching those same players wise up and focus me
into oblivion while having to watch teammates take their sweet
time to slowly choke out an overspent zerg.
>
--- End Quote ---
I agree, bats do have a place but they just came out way too
early, worst thing when playing zerg is focusing 2 of the
terrans and then the other terran wiping u out with 12min bats.
Due to this issue in previous patches I started only building at
big spine as otherwise me and my ally zerg would lose all our
eco to the bats after spawners were wiped. As of now the
firebats are a waste of money as if you're going t2 then why
would you make a 5 dmg firebat instead of veterans, this just
makes them a noob trap for new players. The games I enjoyed the
most has got to be the terran death ball push at 35 min with 60
elites and 30 bats to wipe out the zerg, nothing as satisfying
as this. In the current games its rare for a game to go over 25
mins (either zerg has rushed brutas vs new players or terrans
have cleared map of all zerg spawners and camping high ground
with transfuses for big spines as last ditch effort). I want
diversity back in to the game as after 4 days of playing the
same exact style i have gotten bored. Ive adjusted to the
changes and reverted to how i used to play (low eco ~ 500
mineral vet pushes = end game, if game doesn't end most likely
lose)
#Post#: 930--------------------------------------------------
Re: First Impressions of Patch 4.0
DIR By: Speed
Date: November 27, 2020, 7:08 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Yes, bring back firebats please, I cannot wait to whoop some
asses of low / mid / high tier zerg with 70 bats ~25-30min.
Definetely it was a great, diverse strategy opposed to the
boring T1 that got eaten up by roach. Please please bring it
back Wmaster...
Obligatory, since this is the internet and humans tend to be
fucking stpuid (I must know, I'm stupid myself), this post is
sarcastic, maybe even satirical, I've stated my serious opinion
time and time before.
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