StarCraft® II

I think it's great that effort is being put into improving the TvZ matchup :) good job!!

Creep trumor radius is small step in balance, but Raven change is not that good. Movement speed does not affect TvZ late game problem which is tech switches, but if you want to make raven more popular you should try to decrase raven build time, because now before raven can use HSM he have to wait 60 sec (build time) + 50 second for energy (if upgraded). Teching to ravens is really expensive, and they die pretty fast.
You should one of these options:
* HSM range incrased
* HSM energy cost reduced to 100
* Cost changed
* Build time changed
That's my opinion

EDIT:

Also to use ravens you have to make techlab on starport, techlab is not needed in any matchup so to make ravens terran have to spend a lot of minerals for starports and techlabs, reactored ravens sounds pretty op though but that are only mine suggestions because i think raven movement speed wont fix anything in TvZ.

I agree with Mojzii. Raven needs further buffs. Cost of the unit and upgrades is just outrageous.

I have to say, i dont understand these changes because they are not seeming to address the problems which are present in the game.

The issue with creep tumors is not that it covers too much area, but instead that a terran pushing out onto the map has to wait for a long time between killing tumors, and being able to move onto the area to prevent zerg from forcing efficient trades due to the speed bonus. This means the zerg is able to get a much larger army in time for the terran being able to engage at their base. Therefore I personally would think that it would be better to increase the rate at which creep recedes.

However, I think that the raven buffs are good, and address some real problems with raven manouverablity, the issue is that the raven is difficult to transition into due to the upgrades which need to be bought for them to become useful. A different issue with the raven is that its spells have such a long duration. Whilst the auto turret is not very strong, the hunter seeker allows the player to force the unit to either become inactive (through running away which can be half the map if upgraded) or receive very heavy damage, in which case both will allow very heavy benefit the way that protoss players use vortex to isolate portions of armies.

The terran army works most commonly by having a strong gas based support unit (tanks or medivacs) which is backed up by a mineral heavy unit. However the terran is relatively weak until they can get that support unit, which coincides with most timing pushes which can be thrown at them. The issue therefore is that the terran cannot afford to get ravens (an alternative support unit) because they take longer and are weaker without backup from a different support unit. You can think of this the way that zerg can go infestor zergling, however their zerglings are able to hold off the timing pushes on their own. Were a zerg to go for both mutalisks and infestors, they would be unable to have enough of either to stay alive into the later game.

The issue is therefore not the strength of the unit but the ability to get that unit without suffering or gambling in the mid game. To this end, i would propose:
- reduce raven cost
- make hunter seeker availiable without upgrade
- reduce hunter seeker damage or duration
- increase creep recede rate

These changes are really good but I think something needs to be done about either Raven's ridiculous upgrade count/time/cost or it's stupidly small range.

I just thought of something that can help the raven even more! make the energy upgrade give an extra 50 energy instead of 25, this way 1-1-1 is not affected while lategame ravens recieve serious buff! This will make it so the raven can cast good spells right away and not have to wait to much for HSM, which is its main ability.

I'm a little worried the build radius change on creep tumours might make getting creep down ramps even more challenging than it already is. Maybe allow them to be built on ramps?

As a Zerg player I really like these changes, I dont mind creep spread being a little slower now that queens are good enough to keep around for other reasons, meaning most players have more active tumours out now than they had 2 months ago. It would be interesting tho to see it on other maps, for example cloud kingdom that have many avenues to spread creep and where things like tank pushes at the natural 4th might be harder to stop with the slower creep spread. there might be some rare map specific stuff that could be noticable but probbably not many, if any...

That being said my only consern is spreading down/up ramps it can be a pain as it is and with the change it has less margin for error, meaning your last tumour need to be at the top/bottom to reach the other side of the ramp. this can make you need to spend an extra tumorjust to go 1 yard to be able to reach with the next. This could affect things like connecting your natural and third, delaying spine possitioning and hindering movement resulting som timings might be hard to defend. (probbably more so vs P than T).

I doubt that things like this will have any impact in the higher levels of play but it probably will in the lower levels, and if I understood the intentions with the change, this is not the goal of the change.

maybe settle at range 9
maybe keep range 10 but slow the speed creap spreads (might !@#$ up other things. like early game sim city.)
maybe keep the range 8 and let ppl practice =P

just some food for thought

* Raven change
I don’t feel it addresses what is wrong with the raven.

- You still need to research an absolute “ton” of upgrades to make it useful.
- They take a full minute to build which is longer than an ultralisk or any zerg unit (except corruptor + broodlord morph) and longer to build than any cloaked unit.
- Even if you build it you need to wait 150 seconds for the energy to max out.

Bottom line is they are always late to the party and are a huge investment (you sort of ‘need’ to be on 2 bases or more to have enough gas to get them into your unit composition without hurting your economy too bad).

suggestion:

- raven build time reduced to 40 seconds

But still the speed is a welcome change. You get across the map faster and you get in a little faster to launch a seeker missile.

* Creep spread

I am too bad at creep spreading to fill the map fast so I can’t really judge that well if this change has much of an impact.
At pro level it probably will.
Because players are so used to spreading creep at a higher rate.

stopping creep spread by race

- As protoss creep spread is not that hard to stop because of the observer.
So zerg will need to bring detection of its own to stop protoss from denying creep.

- As zerg it would be very easy to stop. an overseer and a few zerglings so the trick.
But you don't need to stop it at all because enemy creep benefits you aswell.

- As terran it will hurt your economy to stop creep spread. You need to spend scans instead of mules. Or risk a raven and a small force to clear it. The zerg will see you and just about any zerg force is faster than a terran force so getting out in time after you are spotted will be impossible. You could bring your entire army to clear creep but then you will not be in be able to defend your bases in time.
So it is the race that has to risk the most to stop creep spread.

concept

What I would do with creep spread is make spreading creep easier to produce but also easier to stop. the real annoyance about stopping creep spread is that you need detection to see burrowed creep tumors.

suggestion:

So i would:

- keep the spread radius at 10
- make each tumor be able to produce 2 additional tumors
- tumors do not burrow anymore after spreading
- increase tumor hp slightly

hopefully this would trigger some mini creep spread wars where a small number of forces fights to allow or disallow creep spread.

* other changes

I don’t see why you guys are so careful with the changes.
Heart of the swarm beta is supposedly nearly here. So when the expansion itself hits that should bring a balance storm anyway.

I would like to see some of the changes from Hots right now. Not only for the sake of balance but to change the metagame up a little.

terran needs those reaper/ghost/BC buffs right now to bring some more variety
(side note: warhound looks ugly i would rather see a downsized slightly more mobile thor model)

zerg needs that midgame siege option to mix it up. They don't seem to have enough units to surprise me as a player/viewer.

protoss could use some air luv
(side note: tempest is ugly i would rather see a range upgrade on the carrier or a plasma cannon shooting shots coming out of its front for ground assault)

When I watch sc2 games I don’t see enough variety.

- The Korean Terrans still love their MMM + tank balls + drop.
TvT usually devolves into tank line vs tank line sieges.

- Zerg nearly never build hydralisks or do drop play or do anything other than infestor-broodlord play.

- Protoss nearly never goes air in competitive play.

There are a lot of cool units that never get built or only in certain matchups.
Like the Carrier, reaper, hydralisk, ghost, raven (doubt that they will be built more after this change), thor, battlecruiser (redline reactor is a good idea but will probably not be used over yamatos I am thinking redline should be on a long blink type cooldown instead of use energy so you can use both but not often).

Have you really succeeded in balancing the game if a large number of units don’t ever get built?
(oh yeah sure we balanced it but you can't build x and y and z or ... but the matchup win/rate numbers are good ... right ?!)

Right now I don’t feel like bio is as viable as mech and is as viable as skyterran.

or robo is as viable as gateway + caster and is as viable as skytoss

zerg should have more options than festor/corruptor/broodlord + mass ling/bling or roach

What I would like to see and do is a lot of different things that work.

* summary

So I think these changes will be good but could be better.
Please keep them coming and keep trying more things to improve and change up the game to keep it fresh.

I can imagine terran thirst for some ultimate buffs as i could read up, but guys be a bit decent...buffin raven to the heavens would mean that you´ll just spam that unit, its quite strong as it is, i can see that the buff right now will make it more viable against zerg, cause hydras offcreep wont down it.....if you dont use it, it doesnt mean its underpowered, simply you dont have that mindset to bring up some new strategies....its same like i cant micro ling, bling, mutas, infestors, so i mostly sac one of muta or infestors to properly play it, and i think thats the real issue, u cant rly control the unit properly to use it for its main purpose and therefore it sucks in your eyes, personaly i met few terrans lately with ravens (turreting mineral lanes rather then droping and HSM my main army and i can tell you its pain in ..... u just need to bring up some skills)

regarding the creep, even though im not happy with this change cause im zerg and if im good at something its creep spread, if my oppo is pasive in denying it, i´ll have 80% of the map covered in less then 15 min ingame....but its been a long time ago when i said that creep is the mapcontrol key for zergs and its incredibly easy/cheap/efective - awaiting nerfs....but obviously someone took like a year to notice it too....so over all i think its kinda resonable nerf

overall - good changes, as from my point of view game is getting rly close to being balance in all matchups and its hard to find and adress the little things to slightly tweek em to rly fix the equation

Creep Tumor nerf seems reasonable, but for the raven i think it might be a better idea to increase Seeker Missiles range to 7 or something like that.

I also think though that the biggest problem with the Raven is how much effort it takes to go for them, as soon as you get them they are actually alright.

Maybe you should reduce it's build time a little or reduce the reseach time or cost of the Seeker Missiles upgrade a little. Anything that would make going raven a bit easier would be nice :-)

Yes, I know my post won't include anything about the currently considered balance patch, but I've made some suggestions which feels really reasonable in my opinion, they are also linked to raven / creep spread and few other things.

Here we go:

1. Raven's Durable Materials upgrade is removed and granted to Raven's automatically.

2. Raven's Corvid Reactor upgrade cost has been reduced from 150/150 to 100/100.

3. It takes for creep 40 seconds to recede. Down from 60 seconds.
EDIT: After further testing I've noticed that it takes 60 seconds for a creep to decrease if it's made by Overlord and 120 seconds if it's made by tumor. (Correct me if I'm wrong but this is what I figured out) So here are my new suggested changes:
3. It takes 50 seconds for creep to recede if it's made by overlord. It takes 80 seconds for creep to recede if it's made by tumor.

4. Reapers build time decreased from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.

5. The maximum amount of Larvae on a single Hatchery has been reduced from 19 to 17.

Next suggestion do not affect races but instead on very important aspect of the game: maps! Let's see what I had in mind.

Maps:

1. A neutral supply depot has been added to ladder maps like in tournaments.

2. Antiga Shipyard now uses enforced cross-spawns.

3. Entombed Valley no longer has close-spawn positions (Both bottom or both top ).

Ok, I must say I'm glad blizzard is doing something / admitting the problem, but speed increase really does nothing special.

Why?

1. Infestor on creep is still faster than the raven
2. Fungal has 9 range vs. 6 on the SM
3. Fungal hits instantly and stops micro, SM can be avoided.
4. Fungal roots but also stops raven from using its spells.

So how is that for a risk/reward factor? It seems to me that infestor will just hard counter raven usage.

So if you try to use raven offensively, as long as zerg manages to get a fungal, and he should since you have a faster unit which also has +3 range over the raven, raven can't do anything. It will just get killed by fungals/inf. terrans.


Something of the following should be implemented

1. SM outranges fungal
2. Fungal doesn't root air units
3. Fungal doesn't stop abilities like SM from being used.

Even then, 125 energy is too high, but since we are making small steps at least do a small step that actually makes sense first.

The speed buff isn't necessary, actually i.m.o it's completely pointless. It won't help enough, it will help to a certain extent, but speed is not what we need. I like your idea with trying to help TvZ lategame out, that's great idea, and it's certainly needed. But the hardest part with a raven switch is not the speed, the speed is actually passably, it's the amount of time required to do a raven-switch that's the problem.

Accordingly, you should change the amount of time needed to raven-switch. Think about it, 50s for a starport, 25s for the techlab, 60s for the raven, then you have to wait a lifetime for it to charge its energy up.

Don't change the cost for god sake, that's not the problem and it has never been the problem, and since terran's late-game is lacking heavy gas units, the heavy gas cost is not the essential.

The problem isn't solely the time required, i see a big problem firing hunter seeker missiles, it always seems like your raven dies in the process. That is the second problem with the raven.

With consideration to what's mentioned above.
Please consider changing the start energy or/and the effective range of the seeker-missile, rather than unnecessarily changing the already tolerably speed.

The creap-spread change is by the way exquisitely thought-out.

I found most of these changes quite good, except the creed radius one.

As already pointed out by other posters here, the reduction feels insignificant and does not a address the fact the creep takes longer to retreat than it takes to spread.

Although it takes a little longer for the zerg to cover the map in creep, it really do not help the terran at all with their problems, and that is the engagements on the creep, and not the speed at which the zerg covers the map with it. In fact, terrans couldn't care less about the areas that are not covered in creep. All this change does is delay the inevitable by a few minutes.

So I suggest changing the creep nerf to an increase in retreat speed.

Is blizzard even reading this feedback or are they just trolling us?

I agree. The speed is not the problem with raven. (Well, maybe with more speed it will become better at harassment with auto-turrets). The problem is - it takes forever for it to charge for the HMS. How about increasing the amount of energy it can store? This way it will be able to do more stuff.

I don't think the raven has any issues.
What terran needs is a CHEAP detector, that can be made relatively early. This would help terran block the creep spread a lot easier, without sacrificing mules.
As suggestion I'd day say, make this observer unit available at starport, without add-on; remove the observing ability from raven, and decrease the gas cost to 150

I don't think the raven has any issues.
What terran needs is a CHEAP detector, that can be made relatively early. This would help terran block the creep spread a lot easier, without sacrificing mules.
As suggestion I'd day say, make this observer unit available at starport, without add-on; remove the observing ability from raven, and decrease the gas cost to 150

Honestly, if Raven wouldn't have issues we would actually see them as a standard unit in games, but we don't. Right now Raven serves no purpose expect as a potential late-game unit.

Now if Raven would actually become standrad, like Infestor or it's predecessor Science Vessel it would also make clearing creep much easier, but then again it would swing the win rates to different direction once again most likely.