SC2 BattleReport 2 Released!

IRT: UnholyUrine

1. Protoss can use warp gates to both reduce build times and bypass travel time, while zerg can spawn 4 larvae that only cost some queen energy to instantly build any 4 units. Also keep in mind that ONLY marines, hellions, medivacs, and vickings can benefit from a nuclear reactor since everything else you can build at a barracks/factory/starport requires a tech lab.

2. That is pretty powerful, but I don't think any competitive maps are going to have bases that can't be accessed by ground by destroying some rocks.

3. We have yet to really see how it compares to the other races spells like psionic storm, fungal infestation, or neural parasite, all of which were not used in either battle report.

4. They may need balance changes, but keep in mind being infantry has it's weak points as well. For example, roaches, who do +8 damage to biological targets, and lurkers, who do +15 damage against armored targets, would both do double damage against marauders. If the zerg in the battle report had been playing better, I think he would have easily been able to tech to lurkers and really punish the terran for relying on infantry. Like others have said, the zerg probably would have won if it was a more serious match.

P.S. I'm a Starship Troopers fanboy so maybe I'm just enamored with marauders.

 

A lot of the balance issues will get tidied up when it gets to beta, with damage and timings and speeds and things.

But the reactors have had me a bit concerned for the reasons you describe, but that's the only major balance issue I can see in the game that doesn't look like it has a quick fix should it be problematic.

I expect it will ultimately be resolved with reactors becoming an essential part of your build, insofar as not building them is as noobish as not building enough supply depots.

 

@ Unholy ... yeah

You are comparing Terrand and Zerg units almost one on one. That makes no sense, since the Zerg should be able to easily get about 2 times the amount of units as any opponent. You also make Terran units group together in your examples, while only calling out a single Zerg unit at a time. Complaining about hard counters, but not taking the race as a whole into account seems strange to me. :s

 

As necromas stated, the Reactor can only be used for Marines, Hellions, Vikings, and Medivac??? (Not sure if the reactor works for both the Vikings and Medivac. Can anyone clarify? JON???)

And you have to factor in mobility. Terran, even though has improved mobility, is still like a sitting duck when compared to the new Protoss and Zerg. Warp-in and Nydus Worm can basically let both the Protoss/Zerg player travel anywhere instantly. Zerg could also lay creeps with their overlord to make their ground units travel 30% faster. (Very surprised the Zerg player didn't take full advantage of that in the Battle Report.) A good Protoss/Zerg player going up against a Terran player will take full advantage of their mobility strengths. It is why like what you stated UnholyUrine, Terran needs the improved defense.

Hunter-Seeking Missile does seem very powerful. But from the looks of it, it travels very slow. And I disagree that you can go right beside the unit that you want to use the Hunter-Seeking Missile. If you do that, anti-air units will chew it apart once you get close. You can only do that if there isn't many anti-air units. So you have to use the missile at long range and from that, the opponent can easily dodge it since the missile travels very slow. However, if Hunter-Seeking Missile does prove to be imbalanced, I'm sure it will get nerfed during beta.

However, the mechanics behind it is very interesting and as mentioned, we will need to see how it compares to Psi Storm and Fungal Infestation which I'm also surprised, the Zerg player didn't take fully advantage of it since he got Infestors.

I think the Marauders needs a HP nerf (125 HP according to Sc2armory). With the nerf to Zealot and Stalkers HP (when compared to Stalker and Dragoons HP),t he Terran in general, looks like they have similar HP when compared to the Protoss. Marauders needs to hit hard so I wouldn't nerf their attack. But I really think that it has way too much HP for a early game Terran unit. It should have something like around 90-100 HP.

 

The Hunter-Seeking Missiles also do splash damage to enemies and allies alike. So you have to make sure that your own guys are not near those missiles.

 

I really want to see the late game units go into play. I've only seen one replay of the late game units being used. Or at least tier 2.5 with tanks, vikings, dark templars, and of course air on the zerg/protoss side. These replays seem lacking otherwise. But maybe this is just sweatening the pot for something better. I dunno.

 

well as Ych said, I also think strange that Marauders have far too many HP (150???? Like a Zealot, and more than stalker???). This makes no sense. 95-100 HP shouold be more balanced. I have no problem with their firepower however, even if it is high (but I still cant make sense as for why their attack should slow units down...)

 

Does anybody else think that the hunter-seeker missile is a bit OP? I always thought it traveled slower than that, but it seemed to go pretty quickly. With just a few nighthawks it seems like you could pretty much decimate any zerg army. Damage/splash should be nerfed, or movespeed of the missile.

 

I'm pretty sure the roaches that burrowed would have been perfectly safe if they had just ran away.

The zerg barely even tries to run away from the hunter-seeker missiles in the battle report, probably to show off the potential of the missiles.

I imagine anyone that could pay enough attention to run their units out of psionic storms in starcraft 1 would be able to dodge the missiles easily enough. They'd have to run the units a lot farther but they'd take 0 damage as opposed to a psi storm which would still do quite a bit before you got out of it.

Damage is up for grabs depending on other balancing factors like psi storm, or if they can be shot down like spider mines could, but I don't think they move too fast.

If they moved slow enough, you could retreat-shoot-retreat-shoot while still avoiding it.

 

Or if you are really clever kamakazie your unit into the enemy army so they take the splash damage from the HSM. I think the HSM is something that is going to appear very overpowered until people have the opportunity to play with it and discover how strong it really is.

 

I think it would be awesome seeing a high templar kamikaze into a bunch of marines using the missile, especially if he got one last storm off before he died which is another way you can take advantage of the missiles move speed.

 

Well I truly didn't know that before commenting.

I'm still standing on my thoughts about the marauder however. It seems that it can out-compete too many of the early, tier 2(?) units such as roaches and stalkers, while also being able to compete rather well, with proper micro, against the low tier units as it slows them down...

You can say that roaches and lurkers can win against marines and marauders, but isn't that really a rock paper scissor thing? Since lurkers do so much to armored units and does splash damage to the infantry, it's again like the ultimate counter (but it's later tiered so one should also consider vikings, tanks and hellions in play)...
I still feel that the marauders are too overpowered. They just seem to dominate the game once you see them in higher numbers.. sort of like hydras in SC original XD. Looking at only low tier'd units, mass marauders are probably stronger than anything else other than zealots with charge... Obviously it's not fair for me to depict groups of just one type of unit, but it just seem so ridiculously ez to micro and do high damage with the marauder.
I think making them slower would take away their current ability to completely dessimate low tier ranged units such as the roach and stalkers, because with their current ability to slow down units and just run away and "kite" these things, PLUS it's instincitive advantage of supporting marines against units like roaches just makes them too OP... Slowing them down would narrow the possibility of massing marauders for tha winz, and rather use them as a support unit and less microable....

I'd rather slow them down then change their current perks, as they're cool... But thinking about it, it does kinda make sense that the marauders move slower.. I mean LOOK at it!! it's HUGE... the Armor around this thing is crazy.. and a PERSON is inside it trying to lug all this weight and grenades with it!! Compared to marines, which should already have crazy strength, these guys have SUPERHUMAN strengths!!

I don't agree with the terran's base mobility compared with rocks being broken about... those destructible objects are hard to destroy .. taking minutes of precious time and units.... but the terran can just float up there and bring some scvs with the CC, without needing to get medivacs to drop scvs to the otherwise unreachable area... maybe it's because i'm not too sure how nydus worm and phase prism work yet, as we never saw that in play, but this right now seems to me a huge advantage that would be very hard to balance.

 

@ Ych,

Reactors only allow production of the base unit that building can produce. So a Barracks can only dual produce Marines, a Factory can only dual produce Jackals, Starport only Vikings, etc.

And each building has its own reactor, you don't have to float anything.

 

@ Unholy
The Terran might have easy acces right from the start, but you are forgetting something important there.
You still need a point to drop of recources at your old base, and taking away the cc there severely decreases your income for quite a while. This can cost you the match. Especially in early game, where you are generally short on minerals and gas. You will be outproduced easily. Balanced enough for me.

Also, Protoss have units that are a lot stronger, so they will break through the obstacles a lot faster then other races.
And last, but not least: the Zerg have Nydus Worms, which is easily the best transport in the game.

 

this game looks so damn DONE!

look at the workers at 2:48, otherwise, I didnt see anything that looked not done

 

This game is currently finished. There is no more things to be redone. Almost ....
Wasn't the infestor supposed to be remodelized into an horrific monster ?

 

I think they haven't done that yet...but the Infestor looks a lot bigger.

 

Don't forget about the Mutalisk, they still have to fix that. And the Infested Marine crap of course. Spawing a Zerg out of an egg is cool, but a Marine with a fully operational powersuit and rifle? Nah.

 

I don't think that they "have done everything"..

Except the first bug I mentioned in an earlier post and that there is no egg animation, the banshee leaves no trash after exploding (17:24),
at the bunker explosion what explodes is the old version of the bunker (05:01)
and the command center passes through the overlord!!(19:36)

they have a lot of work to do and it's not only the graphics.. the gameplay and balance between races are important either..

 

yeah, the infested marines borning from eggs are ... non-sense. I mean, this idea. Why weren't they built from buildings ?

@ronin2011 : yes, there are a lot of incoherences and bugs that have to be fixed yet, but normally this is not a question of months, but weeks. I mean normally, because with Blizzard 1 day = 1 week, and 1 week = 1 month.
But I relativize. They did an excellent work with this battle report 2. They went very far ahead ! Congrats Blizzard !! (but finish this game quick and well okay ? thx ! )