I think everything in this game needs a little big of balancing but the most annoying unit in my opinion that is OP is the freaking VOID RAY! I have no problem with the damage it does or the fact that its a tremendously hard unit to balance since it has two settings of damage.... And a unit that is a pretty much a game winner if you get enough with charged rays. Good bye base no matter what you do for mid game... The thing that annoys me is its freaking speed... With no upgrades its faster then an overlord with a speed upgrade... Wtf mate.. The unit already has wicked high DPS why the hell is it so fast with no upgrade??? The speed upgrade which no one gets btw because its already freaking fast. My suggestion for a nerf for the void ray is to make it slightly slower then an upgraded overlord until you get the upgrade. That would actually give a reason for people to get the upgrade and make it a little bit more balanced.
It doesn't seem fast to me without the upgrade, tbh. The upgrade is cool, but without it it seems kinda meh... At least for the cost it has and the fact that it's extremely fragile(and if you micro it out of harm's way chances are you'll lose your chargeup and so lag behind in damage).
Without the upgrade you can catch up to them incredibly easily with stim packed marines, blink stalkers or hydras on creep. Those are all direct counters to the void rays, so i don't really see the problem here. With higher tier units you can kill them loads faster, and so on. :/ Other then that, most units are dangerous in large enough numbers. I don't hear anybody complain about massed carriers, thors or ultralisks either. If you give your opponent the chance to mass a lot of such expensive and powerful units, then you're to blame, not the game's balance.
Ya but if you get cheezed with rays its a ton harder. Then just having a direct counter to the unit. All tier 1 counters for the unit are on the ground of course. I just think void rays are stupidly good for harassing and are easy to get critical mass on the unit especially when protoss wall in with canons. Have played protoss many time with all race and void rays are most definitely a good investment every time for them no matter what i get. Its not like im just letting them build these to.. Lot of times im harassing rushing or teching I have tried it all. Also notice that every example you picked was a tier 3 unit. I think that is my main complaint. That void rays are really a tier 3 unit that you get on tier 2.
No, they are only any good during tier 3 with the speed upgrade. I was merely giving an example of massed powerful units. Massed mutalisks, banshees, vikings, etc can also do tons of damage. You just need to learn your counters. Scout properly, and adjust your build accordingly if you think he's massing rays. ^^ Also: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Void_ray http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Marine_(StarCraft_II) http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Hydralisk http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Stalker Note how you can get 5 marines, 2,5 hydraslisks and 2 stalkers for the price of a single void ray. Also, the time to produce a void ray is 60 seconds. Marines are produced in 25, hydralisks in 33 and stalkers in 42 seconds. Since you're likely to have more barracks/hatcheries/stargates then your opponent has stargates, (especially since those cost gas to build) it shouldn't be that hard to out produce him. ESPECIALLY if they spend a ****load of minerals in walling in with a ton of cannons. You'll want to expand, get upgrades and simply out macro the protoss. Really, early void rays can indeed be a pain, but it really isn't as difficult to deal with anymore. You should have seen void ray rushes in beta before the nerf. Now THAT was a pain in the *** to deal with.
re I havent played yet but from the video's Ive seen Void Rays are awesome. If you dont want your base smashed by them then build adequate base defenses. Turrets, photon cannons, spore's. Thats one thing I have noticed in the video's is nobody builds anti-air for their bases. They just leave a few marines or whatever and it proves to not be enough. Just 2 or 3 turrets or cannons or spores is enough to deter an air attack on your main usually. Void Rays are not hard to counter. Even a small group of marines/stalkers/Hydra's can take one down.
I'm not sure what you play as, but if you sick Vikings, Infestors, Marines, Corruptors, Mutalisks, or Phoenixes against those things, they are not that strong. Personally I think they are a great unit, but far from overpowered.
But how long does it take with chrono boost? Because chances are if an opponent is trying to mass them, theyre going to chrono boost them.
I personally think that void rays are balanced as long as they aren't micro'd good (attack eatchother to get beams charged) or not upgraded. If they get any of those, then they are no match for vikings, which are supposed to counter them. If they are charged, I can't win the battle even if my viking:ray ratio is 2 to 1. The upgrade is what annoys me the most. EDIT: btw I upgrade my vikings as much as I can too when I see my opponent is going mass rays. It just doesn't seem to work for me when they buy that annoying upgrade, they get better speed... ok, but, they get faster charge too =/ that's sick
A little mistake here. A VR takes 60sec to build. With crono boost constantly up it'll take 40 seconds to build, but 40 seconds is 2 times the duration of a chrono boost, so for every boost when building void rays you save up to 10 seconds per boost(up to depending on whether your remaining time is <10sec and in that case if there's another ray in queue to get that speed benefit )
