Protoss Shield Omnidiscussion.

Yes, it is even written in a report from Blizzcon, the link of which is http://www.battlereports.com/viewreports.php?reportnum=6332
Apparently, the guy talked to Dustin Browder and he himself said that the Immortal's shields are overpowered and too good against basicly anything and that they're going to play with them a bit in the future.
It's at the end of the report.

 

But how are they overpowered if they are vulnerable to the weakest units in the game? It doesn't really make sense that they should be effective against everything, because any unit with a fast attack would be able to rip through them, wouldn't they? Maybe the problem is that weaker units die faster, so they don't have enough time to tear through the Immortal. Maybe they should be given explosive-type damage. This way they wouldn't be as effective against killing weaker units, but weaker units would be just as effective at killing them. This way the weaker units would have more time to rip through the Immortal before they are killed (unless they have killed the Immortals first). Another way to do it would be to just make Immortals have less health. They would still be just as effective against Siege Tanks etc, but again weaker units would be take them out quicker. If the Hardened Shield has to change, it would be better to change it so that it reduces damage of all attacks that do over 20 damage, to 20. I don't think it should be a percentage or anything, because then they would still be able to be countered with powerful units.

 

Perhaps the threshold could be changed.

Al damage over 20 is reduced to 10. Then heavy damage units would still not have much of a hit but mid level units would still hit the immortal hard enough to take it out

 

That could work well, but it would suck to be a unit that does 21 damage. I This would be a great way of doing it, making more weaker units effective against it, but still having extremely powerful units doing almost no damage. Having the threshold of 20 might be a bit much, maybe more like 15. They'd just have to mess around with the numbers to see what's balanced.

 

Idealy it would be a level where a unit that does not trigger the shield unupgrded will still not trigger it when fully upgraded.

Also perhaps shield level could change the threshold. Each level would lower the threshold by 2 damage so at level 0 the threshold will be 20 but after 3 upgrades to Protoss shields the hardened shileds will activate at 12 damage

 

But if the Protoss can lower the threshold, then that would make it so that other units that could previously attack it and not trigger the Hardened Shields, would now trigger them. Isn't that what you said you wanted to avoid?
What would happen in an Immortal versus Immortal battle? Would they both keep on triggering the other ones Hardened Shields? Or would their attacks be weak enough to avoid activating them?

 

I meant that it would be cheesey for the attacker to do less damage to the immortal just by virtue of the unit doing more damage due to an upgrade. That would cause th damage upgrade to be counter productive. Thats what needs to be avoided but the Protoss being able to alter the threshold is positive by giving more defense.

 

The damage upgrade wouldn't necessarily be counter productive. It is true that it would make those units less effective against the Immortal, but that is all. They would still be much more effective against all other units in the game. The damage upgrade would also make the weaker units stronger yet again, in that they keep the same attack speed, but now has a higher damage. I think that if there is going to be an upgrade to effect the Hardened Shields, then it should be a one off thing, not 3 consecutive ones, like the other upgrades for melee damage, ranged damage and armor, like the other races. It should only have one stage to the upgrade, like how with the Carrier, there is a single upgrade that gives to a greater capacity for Interceptors, or the Marines upgraded, where there is a single upgrade than increases their range. It should be a one off thing, not three in a row.

 

Maybe the hardened shields could activate when the Immortal receives a certain type of damage, for example siege?

 

That would mean that certain powerful units would still be effective against them. Immortals are supposed to be good against all powerful units, and weak against all weaker units.

 

Additive vs. Subtractive - good change, much easier for beginning players to understand the basics off it, and pros can still get the most use out of it

Shield Recharge - good change for the most part, it makes the recharge a more dynamic element... previously, the slow recharge wasn't much of a factor - instead of being a racial bonus, it was a balanced element... Zerg and Protoss recharged really slowly, Terrans repaired faster but cost them minerals... now the feature becomes an actual Protoss advantage, and prompts tactical and strategic consideration - good move

Secondly, the Shield Battery might not be needed now if units recharge fairly quickly on their own.

Shield Levels - Units should vary in their base shield level. Saying it's the same technology doesn't mean anything... Terran armor is all made from the same basic materials. Some units have thicker armor plates, some Protoss units should also have "thicker" mental plates. Whether it be from a proportionally more powerful shield generator, greater mental strength or a combination of the two - units should vary in the effectiveness of their shields. The simple difference in shield points doesn't fully describe this. ie: Battlecruisers have BOTH more health and thicker armor than Marines. A Carrier should likewise have BOTH more shield points (larger shield reserves) and a higher base shield level (more solid shielding). Otherwise, it sometimes makes health points exponentially better than shield points, when comparing mineral expenditure between similar Terran and Protoss units shows that shield points are intended to be parallel in usefulness to health points.

Hardened Shield - A percentage value would be best in my eyes. Something around 10-20% after the first 10 points of damage. Making the Shield useless against 'special attacks' doesn't really figure - it should still do something. Ideally I think the shield should make it impractical to use heavy attacks against Immortals, but it should still be possible to overwhelm the shielding without getting absurd. If the Immortal can't survive a Yamato Cannon, then what's the point? If the Immortal can survive two nukes, then it's earned its name. If it can survive 30 Artillery Barrages or whatever... then it's just getting stupid.

 

I'm assuming by 10-20% you mean that the immortal receives 10-20% of the total damage that would be otherwise dealt. From all attacks though? Because I think that would make the unit much too powerful. It is supposed to be too powerful as it is, and lowering a poor lowly marine's damage from 6 to 1 really seems too much.

 

Additive and Subtractive really don't change anything. It just depends on how you look at it. Personally I find subtractive much easier to figure out, but additive gives a sort of a 'the glass is half full' approach which I prefer a lot more.
In effect, some Protoss units do have more powerful shields than other Protoss units, although it is expressed through the amount of shields they have, not through the strength of the shield itself.
Hardened shields shouldn't be a percentage. The idea is that it reduces all powerful attacks to nothing. It shouldn't allow really strong attacks to still be relatively strong attacks. Also, special abilities, like the Nuclear Launch, Yamato Cannon and Bombardment Cannons do not activate the shields, because they are an ability, not an attack.

 

Yes, it is an ability, but it still does damage. Just like attacks do damage. Yamato gun, for example, is just another version of a BC's attack, only that it is called an ability because it uses up energy and can't be used more frequently because of that. I think that it would be nice and logical if some abilities would also activate the hardened shields. It would encourage dealing with the immortals in a different way. My suggestion is that there is a maximum damage count that activates the shields, so that for example you couldn't yamato gun the immortals into oblivion, but you could still nuke the crap out of them. There is a flaw here though, since it would be silly if yamato gun would only do 10 or 20 damage.

 

actually yamato is a concentrated nuke explosion

 

Yes, but it is still damage. Every protoss shields activates when an unit is about to receive damage and the same is with the immortals, even if they have a special type of shield. When a nuke falls it creates an explosion which still triggers, for example, a zealot's shield, only that it is so powerful that the zealot dies nonetheless. The same would be with the immortals, only that they have a special type of shields that reduces damage, no matter what that damage is.

 

@ Patuljak - edited to be more clear... I meant 10-20% after the first 10 points of damage

@ ItzaHexGor - are you sure that abilities don't activate it? Is that canon or just your opinion? And either way, in my opinion it doesn't make sense to say that a Siege Tanks shell is drastically reduced in damage, but an Artillery Barrage (which is really the same basic thing, exploding shells, just rapid saturation) does full damage. Secondly, as mentioned by Patuljak, regular Protoss shields are effective against everything. A Yamato Cannon for instance does not bypass a Carriers shield - so why should it bypass the Immortals Hardened Shield? It shouldn't. However the Yamato Cannon should still obviously do more damage than a Cobra.

 

Sorry, that was a typo. I'm not sure that abilities don't activate it. It is my opinion. However the Hardened Shield doesn't activate against Nukes. This is a 100% factual fact (that's right, a factual fact! ). Not sure about Yamato, Snipe and Bombardment, but Nukes will definitely kill Immortals. If you watch this video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yFjR2649tDU
Then you will see that when the Nukes fall, there is still an Immortal that hasn't been attack yet. It is just to the right of the first Nuclear Launch. The Immortal is instantly killed when the Nuclear Missile lands.
The Hardened Shield would have a point where it fails. For example, take a huge steel girder. This girder is able to support huge amounts of weight without failing, but there will be a stage where it buckles under the pressure. The Hardened Shield would so the same. The Hardened Shield should be able to stave off attack up to about 150 damage (this being the damage of the Snipe ability) but any more than that, and it would start to buckle and in enough damage is applied, it would fail. The Yamato did 260 damage in StarCraft1, so this would be enough to make the Hardened Shields fail, and as a result, the Immortal would receive the full amount of damage. It would be the same with Nukes and Bombardment.
Also, even if the Hardened Shield did activate against Yamato, etc, and it did reduce the damage to 10, then the forces involved to stop an attack of that magnitude will heat up the Immortal drastically. Imagine how much heat would be produced from resisting an attack as powerful as a Nuke. It would easily be enough to still do significant damage to the Immortal.
Also, with reducing attacks over 10 by 10% to 20%, that would mean that if a unit did 11 damage, then it would do 1 to 2 damage against the Immortal. I don't think that it should be a percentage. Hardened Shields should be able to resist all but 10 damage from powerful attacks, but they would fail against extremely powerful attacks, like Nuke, Yamato and Bombardment.

 

I meant, if the attack is over 10, it reduces the damage over 10 by 10-20% or something. So at 20% an attack of 11 would do 10.2 damage, rounded down to 10. But an attack of 13 would do 10.6 damage rounded up to 11. So the unit with an attack of 13 does slightly more damage than a unit with attack of 10, but not significantly. Further, a unit with an attack of 35 would do 15 damage [10+(25*.2)]. As you can see, the Tank for instance would have its normal attack greatly reduced, but the larger attack would still do slightly more damage. An attack of 75 would become 23. etc, etc

Still very effective against heavy hitters, but realistic at the same time.

And we know that building shields work against nukes... once again, no reason the shields should auto-fail when a Nuke or other heavy ability hits.

 

I think that is one of the best solutions I have seen so far since it eliminates the inherent weaknesses in both methods and still allows for a nuke to kill the unit.

At 20% a nuke will do 100 points of damage thus burning out the shields and doing major damage to the unit itself.  It won't kill the immortal but it will take a major chunk out of it.


We could possibly make it where higher levels of damage do hogher percentages of damage. 10-50 does 10% amage 70-100 does 15% 100-200 does 20% and 200+ does 25%

That leaves the nuke at 125 damage.


Also with addative damage any bonus damage against immortals will not count against shields and thus won't activate the hardened.