New Colossus Attack

Just letting you know, you've basically just contradicted yourself there. You spent a post talking about how people are off topic and aren't talking about the Colossus' attack, but that post was off topic and wasn't about the Colossus' attack. Anyway, I understand what you mean.
I'm pretty sure that the attack animation at least will get changed, seeing as it got such a bad response. The only other unit I can think of that got such a bad response was the original Siege Tank, and it got completely remodelled. I think it's pretty safe to say that we can all expect the same thing to happen with this attack animation.

 

So you are basically saying that we can expect that the area of effect in the attack will stay the same, but that we can expect a different animation? I do not think that remoddeling the attack will be enough this time, we need a whole new mechanic in my opinion, or even better: the old one with an area of effect. Like I said before, those thermal lances are pretty hot. I assume that they heat up the ground around the point of impact, or even melt the ground. That also does damage to the surrounding area. The area of effect is smaller, but the aiming is better and no attack power will be wasted. I cannot imagine that such an advanced race at the Protoss have trouble with aiming their weapons properly, especially since they are able to completely destroy whole continents from space.

 

The general opinion (especially Jon's, speaking from experience) seems to be that the new mechanic is more effective. Well, I'd have a weaker but meaner Colossus over that ugly spray any day.

And yeah, what Forsaken said. Protoss = perfection. They don't waste energy shooting where there's nothing to shoot.

Archon attack was solved with one beam and AOE... the lance could also be.

 

I said that at least the attack animation will be changed. I'm hoping the attack style will also be reverted, but they'd be hated if they didn't at least change the attack animation back.
I love the idea of having the old attack with an area of effect radius. It makes perfect sense and will retain the old image of power and destruction. Also, it'll retain some of the current area of effect damage, which apparently is its current role.
"They don't waste energy shooting where there's nothing to shoot." That sums it up perfectly. I think it's what most of us have been thinking when they say the new attack looks weaker, but no-ones been able to put it into words as of yet. Great thinking, both of you.

 

Thank you. Maybe the poll should be changed. I mean, about every three out of four people seems to prefer the old attack. Maybe the poll should be about having area of effect damage or not, since that also seems to be the current subject that is being discussed. I think that we all agree on that the new attack is ugly by now, or at least most of us do.

 

The poll's still about what the attack looks like. It's still relevant, do I don't think it should be changed. Wait until we see if there's a response from Blizzard first, then we'd be able to change it to something more relevant. I doubt we're the only ones with polls/statistics about how popular the new Colossus attack is, but we should still add our opinions to the general consensus.

 

I think its should have its old beam back, but with an AoE.

 

Well the results are still pretty clear. I've added the results to the original post.

New poll:

Original focused beam.
Return of the focused beam with a slight AoE radius.
Keep the current spread fire.
Two attack modes - Focused (left) & spread (right).

Tell me what it should be.

 

I don't think there's much point in having the option 'Two attack modes - Focused (left) & spread (right)'. No offence to anyone, but that would just look awful. Maybe there could be a 'Completely new attack' option instead.

 

I can't see how there could be an entirly new attack, the only choice for me is the focus fire beam.

 

I said that I would stop posting in this topic, but I can't. Some of these posts are just too ridiculous.

Saying that you want the attack that looks cooler and not the one that is more effective is just stupid. StarCraft is a GAME, and what do we do? WE PLAY TO WIN THE GAME! It doesn't matter how it gets done, just as long as it happens, and no one is going to think after losing, "gosh, my units looked so much cooler than his." And if they do then they won't be playing Starcraft for long so it really doesn't matter.

Like I have said numerous times, the colossus isn't meant to take on a single unit at a time. This is it's WEAKNESS to ground forces. If the enemy is able to isolate a single colossus they can be easily brought down, but if the protoss player is smart and waits till he/she has 4-5 colossi then brings them in there is little to stop them short of air. This is what Jon said, and frankly, since it will be late game when the colossus is brought out there won't be any unit vs unit battles going on, it will be army vs army. It probably takes around 10-15 min (maybe shorter starting with 6 workers) to get the colossus out, so your opponent will surely have an army by then, and this is what you will use the colossus to attack.

Saying that the colossus won't waste attack energy with the single beam is wrong. What if there are 4 units surrounding a colossus with the old attack? The colossus will kill one, then the beam will sweep to another, and a lot of people have been saying that they aren't sure if the beam can keep up with the faster units, so I presume it will take time to for the beam to reach the next unit. And what happens then? The beam continues to fire for a second, then stops because the 6 second firing time is up, and now your just waiting there to attack. This doesn't seem that efficient...

Everyone has calculated the old beam to do 24 damage a second, I think the new beam will do 25 damage a shot (to every unit in its line of fire), now I don't have any math to back this up, it is just what seems reasonable to me, and what I feel like it is after watching the videos. Presuming the new attack isn't slower than one shot a second, which no one thinks it is, which attack is doing more damage over time?

 

Boy, what a mess this thread turned out to be.
Sorry but I'm not going to read 8 pages of argument, so I'm just gonna throw you guys some ideas that popped up while I was reading the first page.
Many people complain about this new attack, mainly because It SEEMS to be so much weaker than its predecessor and just doesn't look right.
Ok, how about being able to switch from old attack to new attack and viceversa? That would make it pretty versatile. Reminds me of the BC with its plasma torpedoes.
On the other hand, even though surely this new beam will make reduced damage compared to the 1st one, I'm positive that It will at least kill a zergling on 1 load. This is just a guess of course, but, if before it did 144 dmg per wave to a single target, now that It has an interesting aoe then maybe damage drops to what.. half.. a third? It would still fry most low tier units, and now It would do it faster because by the time old laser killed 3-4 tier1 units, new laser could virtually fry anything that steps in front of it for more than 1 second, could be 1 unit, could be 20.
In fact, you could have 2 or 3 colossuses and position them in a way so that they can cover a large area, and therefore make it impossible for the enemy to escape the gigantic aoe, or you could concentrate 2 o 3 attacking at the same spot for a supercloud of beamy annihilation. What's more, he could have an ''attack ground'' command (similar to the good old orcish catapults in Wc3) so that you can order them EXACTLY where to shoot so that there's no way for the enemy troops to escape their fate. And by fate I mean chocolate. And by chocolate I mean losing their heads and limbs because some hyperbeam tore them apart.

Anyway, I agree with you people that it should fire from both sides at a time. It should do the same damage, but the animation should include the other shoulder laser as well, that way It would look tooootaly imba. It would lag a little bit though If you have many of them firing.
Offtopic:
That would give the colossus a new attack called: Lagstorm. Lag your enemies to death with a massive spray of beams.
Reminds me of the time I forced a friend of mine to exit the game we were playing of DotA because I started launching meteors and icewalls with the invoker in WTF mode lol.

 

You have to realize that the animation had JUST changed. It was a pretty rough interpretation of it.

All I can really tell you is that it's built from the Robotics Facility, still requires the Support Bay (so it's in exactly the same position as the Reaver previously was) and it's incredibly deadly in groups.

Zerg beware!

 

Even though i do prefer the foucs fire animation, the new attack is somewhat cool, but ill take whatever blizzard gives me.

 

It doesn't matter how nerfed any specific unit is, the game as a whole will be balanced. Blizzard isn't going to release StarCraft2 if one team has a definite advantage over another team. You're saying that people who want the old, supposedly less effective, attack back are stupid, but ranting about how Blizzard will release an unbalanced StarCraft2 because of this is just as stupid.
The game is supposed to look good as well, it's not 100% about gameplay. Balancing these two issues are just as important.

I don't get what you're trying to prove here. You're saying that the Colossus is now weaker against single targets, but that's what it's like in all situations, no matter how many units there are. If it's weaker against single units, and let's just say that Unit A had time to get into combat and attack twice before it was killed. Now, if there were five Unit A's, all conveniently running in a line, every one of them would have time to get into combat and attack twice. It doesn't have a weakness against single targets, specifically, because that's what it does to every target.

The same goes for the old Colossus. In fact the same goes for any unit. If the enemy is able to isolate a unit, it will easily be brought down. If the player waits until they can bring out a lot of these units, then not much, other than it's weakness, will be able to bring it down.

The beam is very fast. Only the fastest units would be able to outrun it, and if they try to, they wouldn't have a 100% chance of escaping alive. The point is that the beam moves onto its next target extremely quickly, not to mention that it they're all attacking the Colossus, it would barely have any distance to travel.

The old attack is doing more damage. It did 144 damage per second, not 24. Watch this Youtube video, and you'll see that as soon as the beam passes over a Zergling or Baneling, it's killed instantly. If it did do 24 damage per second, then it'd take about three seconds to kill one of the Banelings, which it doesn't.
Of course the new Colossus will deal more damage per second if you give it the stats to. It doesn't really prove anything.

 

The aim of each match is to win, yes, but the overall purpose of the game is to entertain. And the visuals definitely shape the level of entertainment, which is why I'd prefer the old attack even if it meant weakening the Colossus, one of my favourite units.

If the visuals mean nothing to you then perhaps you'd be better off without SC and choosing roleplay games with them silly cards and dice. There you can imagine as pathetic looking a Colossus as you want.

 

The new spread fire is fucking overpowered. Look at this:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/188205.html

I forgot when the Colossus shows exactly but its somewhere on the second match.

 

yeah it only need 2 shoot to kill a bunch of zerglings,MY FURTURE ZERGLINGS (

 

Man it killed those lings fast, real fast.

 

you guys advocating the old beam keep saying that the spread would be weaker against individual units, which would be true, but then thats like saying a lurker sucks because it attacks in a line, because its wasting damage if there is only 1 unit to attack. but really, it gets a bonus when it attacks multiple units, not a penalty when it only hits one.

If a Colossus was being attacked by one [unit a], doing X ammount of damage, it would be less than if it were using its old beam, but then if [unit a] was then reinforced by 3 more [unit a] the colossus would be doing X damage to all 4 [unit a], resulting in a higher damage output than its former beam, doing double or triple the old beams damage.