I must say I'm bothered by assault ("Engineer") having his stun taken away. How will he hit ranged enemies? If they're players they just run away and cast spells like mech's l4 and such without him being able to get a single hit or drain any of their mana.

Yet another stupid idea - what if the Mech's Bike Mode was the normal Vulture, and the Speed upgrade had to be researched?

I think it would be interesting if more unique upgrades were added, to give a better sense of customization to heroes. Some other things that could be implimented are the Summoner's energy (if it were a normal Defiler), the Dragoon's range, the Dark Orb's energy, the Nature Sprit''s energy and maybe Restoration? Not saying *all* upgrades like this should be implemented, but a couple of them could be.

Hey, just had an idea! For the Dropship spell, what if instead of a Dropship, it was a Shuttle? Two advantages to make it more useful - it's faster with the speed upgrade, and it has shields so it heals a bit. I hate the transport idea as a whole, but in terms of a transport the Shuttle is far superior to the Dropship, right?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 17 2009, 8:37 am by DrakeClawfang.

It would be superior in the fact that shuttles do have shields. If you were to switch Dropship to shuttle, It would be way easier to micro. It gives the hero too much freedom and It would unbalance the game, especially games where the opposing team only has ground melee units. The Idea is good but Shuttles wouldn't look too good with terran imo anyways...keep terrans with terran units.

It actually takes 3/4 damage from archer.

I don't understand why, even after two or three other people have brought it up also, everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that Zealots (the spawn waves) are for some reason MUCH less dangerous than Marines (or atleast trying to prove this false, except for UnholyUrine's claim that, somehow, the fact that they hit a bit faster than Marines makes them balanced).

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 17 2009, 4:54 pm by EzDay281.

Is this with or without stim?

He means the spawn Marines, so without.

They're honestly more trouble to deal with than the Zealot. The Zealot doesn't do 36 dmg, it does 18 dmg twice, so your armor when being attacked by the Zealot is basically doubled. Combine that with the fact by the time Zerglings come you've probably got 10 armor for them, and the Zealot isn't a problem.

The Marine on the other hand, does 18 dmg right at the start of the game, and is ranged. I can't tell you how many times I've been a melee unit and have been shot at by the Marine while attacking the Broodlings. Zealots are melee and thus a lot more manageable.

I really find Zealots far inferior to Marines, they're a lot easier to handle.

I don't seem to recall spawns ever using stimpacks, so without.
Ya, I read that too. I'm willing to give UnholyUrine the benefit of assuming that attack speed is taken to mean each animation cycle, rather than each hit, in which case that's an 86 attacks per minute in effect.
Either way, though, my argument doesn't much care what their attack speeds are, as it would take an astoundingly huge difference for Zealots to be on par anyways.

edit: Teehee. Ninjad by DrakeClawfang on stims.

Sarcasm, guys. Sarcasm.

onlything zealots are really good for is taking out cannons because they do more damage and take more hits than marines. in terms of threat to heros they aren't worth anything. plus being melee units means the zealots are splash fodder. i wouldn't mind seeing zealots as they are now being the level 2 spawn and making zerglings stronger and moving them to level 3, with marines also getting stronger and graduating to level 4. as it stands zealots are slow melee units, so their power doesn't match at all against marines speed and range.

this would make spawns more challenging with the zealots 18 x 2 attack on the second night, which is much harder to prepare for than the zerglings right now. it would also make zerglings as the third spawn harder also since they would need an appropriate boost, say they do 30 damage and have 200 life, not much more than the zealot overall but are faster. throw marines into the picture at the level 4 doing lets say 35 damage and heros will have good reason to focus on spawns. stronger spawns sub sequently mean cannons will fall faster, so they would need to be made stronger and more expensive to produce or be invincible for some duration of the game (invincible cannons also means summoner cannot get early cannon kills with swarm/consume).

strengthening zerglings to that level would make them unreasonable to be the base summon unit of summoner given his rape late game. so what if instead of summon familars being zerglings, what about changing that to summon mercenary which will produce zealots. this has several implications; zealots are physically stronger than zerglings at the start, so they will make short work of broodlings in the beginning, but since the summoner loses the adrenal upgrade, the zealots will only have the potential to upgrade ground speed and even then will not be as fast as zerglings, in compensation the zealots will be harder to kill and do more damage. they are still melee units so they can still benefit from swarm. the second thing this does is it creates split upgrades for the summoner, who might need to sacrifice his own defense for his zealots (not much of a trade anyway since most summoners stick around in base) or will allow his zealots to just get by for a while til he gets ultras. with time and sims, he can get dual upgrades for his ultras and zealots. without zerglings, the summoner also loses consume which takes away from his swarm spamability unless he is willing to sacrifice ultras, which he may be willing to do if his upgrades are all for zealots. then, since nobody really uses the summoners l3 (he doesn't leave base after the early stages of the game usually) his l3 could be changed to something that changes his zealots to something else, maybe turns them into dragoons? maybe only turns transforms those in his immediate vicinity.

since overall this involves making spawns stronger, the spawn rush system would need to be tweaked, lets say it requires 5-6 civs to level up, and the amount increases with successive level ups. lets say a +1 increment as spawns get stronger.

Overall what I'm saying is;

zealots become lv2 spawn, zerglings become level 3, marines at level 4. weaken zealots sightly, make zerglings and marines stronger.
Zealot- 10 shield 120 hp 15 + 2 damage (becomes 30 + 4)
Zerglings- 200 hp 30 damage
Marines- 240 hp 35 damage
Stronger other spawns as appropriate. notably hydra might need to moved also because marine attacks are more effective than hydras so either hydra becomes part of this shuffling or it gets a significant attack bump and a lower upgrade to balance out archers.

Summoner balance;
Level 1 becomes zealot.
Level 3 converts zealots to some other protoss unit. question of which and the stipulation is up for debate

Spawn Rush;
5-6 civs to for the first round of spawns with +1 each round thereafter makes spawn rush a bigger commitment and harder to pull off while also making it a bigger (and more telegraphed) threat.

Defenses;
Cannons +500 shield +1000 life.
+20 damage
+20 armor?
+cost 20 minerals (new cost 65)

Bunkers
+500 life

Foreseen effects;
-First day/night will see broodling/zergling action, second night will see zealot/marine combo followed there after with zergling/hydra. I think overall the units mix better aesthetically.
-Spawns are more dangerous given higher damage and life making spawn rush more dangerous and heros will not be able to rip through the first couple days of spawns as easily as they can now. 10 armor is no big deal really after a few zerglings but getting 15 is a bit harder to pull off and 30-35 is even more so.
-Because spawns are more dangerous heros also need to focus more on dealing with both spawn and heros, the spawns stop being mear traps and road blocks but also their own threat.
- Spawn rush is made harder and more effective
- Base defenses harder to tear down, heros more easily taken down by spawns and defenses. Facilitates teamwork against spawns and bases as opposed to the lone ling/summoner/mech/assault marine tearing it up alone.
-Summoner will be stronger early game in terms of killing spawns and dealing damage. But potentially weaker late game because upped zergling/ultra combo is probably superior to zealot/ultra.
-Summoner loses the ability to spam swarm
-Summoner gains depth in units with zealot/infested/??/ultra and with it requires more consideration in terms of strategy as opposed to the current one which is simply: get mana, upgrade lings, rape while safe at home.
-Stronger spawns and defenses creates the potential for longer games, or shorter ones for reckless players.

These are just some ideas though, but spawns are definitely not much of a threat in ts with the exception of spawn rushing. and i haven't considered the larger implication surrounding other heroes.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 17 2009, 6:26 pm by ladyalanah.

That would be horrible, the moving aside all the spawn levels would be even stronger than they are now.
80 HP 10 dmg Zergling --> 10 shield 120 hp 34 dmg Zealot
170 HP, 2 armor 18 damage Marine --> 200 HP 30 dmg Zergling
220 HP 4 Armor 36 dmg Zealot --> 240 HP 35 dmg Marine

Level 2 and 3 spawn are incredibly buffed and the Level 4 spawn are the same but ranged. You'd have to rebalance the entire hero roster to handle these stronger spawns. No, no, no no.


No, the Summoner uses Zerg units and it should stay that way. To incorporate Protoss units into its spawn list would split its upgrades.


Spawn upgrade is expensive enough, and you want to increase it?


No. 70 damage cannons with 30 armor, 3000 hp and 1000 shields? They're be virtually indestructible. Unless you're one of a select few units like the Mech or Assassin, the cannons are hard enough to kill now.


No no no. You can't just give spawns and defenses such a huge power boost and leave the heroes be, it would make things too hard, and as I said, you'd have to rebalance all the heroes anyway for this sort of overhaul.


You shouldn't have to use teamwork to fight spawn, they're spawn! As for units going alone, that's an option a player can take, to tear into a base on their own. Nothing about Assassin's Level 3, Warrior's Level 4, etc?


if it was changed the way you suggest, the strategy would become "get mana, upgrade zealots, rape while safe at home". The Summoner can't fight and is easy to kill, that won't change by making the spawn stronger. If anything the stronger spawn pose more of a threat and would encourage him to stay in base.


Spawns *shouldn't* be a threat, you're meant to kill them to get exp. If you make the spawn super-strong and difficult to kill, it would imbalance the game as only a handful of units would be able to kill the spawn easily. Strong spawn and defenses means they're harder to kill and they hurt you more, which means less kills and less exp, more damage and more running to base to heal, and harder base defenses to break meaning it'd be later in the game to do so. Stronger spawn + stronger defenses + same heroes = much slower game.

That is just a horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE idea. If this were done, I'd stop playing. The length of a game should not be determined by the strength of the spawn units, it should be based on the skill of the players. If I want to play a game where a bunch of spawn attack the enemy base with heroes supporting them, I'll play Helm's Deep. This is Temple Siege, the focus of the game should be on the heroes, not the spawn.

A lot of the TS games I play, unless a player or two is a total noob, already last half an hour at least, often times more than an hour. And you want to make them longer? That's not Temple Siege, that's Temple Marathon. No one is going to play a map where a single game takes three hours.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 17 2009, 7:42 pm by DrakeClawfang.

Aside from higher health, the zealot doesn't actually do that much more damage than zergling right now. the zealots only have 30 attack, which its 2 hits of 15. If a hero has the armor to tank a ling as it is now they would only take 10 damage from a zealot. the +2 is as applies to summoner's zealots which will be stronger but slower than his lings now.
I do admit that the zergling and marine attacks are set a bit high and wouldn't disagree to dropping it a bit, but i do think the spawns need to get stronger because they are too easy to tank now as long as you get a sim or two.

I suggest changing the summoner along with the spawn because under my suggestion, the summoner would be beyond op. i suggest a protoss unit because it DOES split his upgrades. meaning beefed up zealots won't transition directly into epic rape ultras, the split upgrades is closer to how other high damage output classes like lm, archer, ling, and now mech, operate.

spawn upgrades are not expensive enough. in a typical game each player will have gained at least 5 civs by midway through the first night unless the battle for the gates is intense and even then the first civs will come quickly. add this to the starting civ and a team of 3 can easily total 12 civs by time the first day comes, and definitely by the second night. 12 civs on the second night means hydras. 4 civs on the second night is marines which can be equally devastating if the team works quickly, and its only a deficit of 1-2 civs each. it does come down to how the upgrade is used and the timing but the civs to do so are not hard to get. in addition to that fact, stronger spawns would definitely warrant the need to make spawn rushing harder.

last i checked cannons do 60? so it'd be 80. but either way cannons aren't that hard to take out now. with some coordination cannons can fall quite easily right now even at the beginning of the game. anytime a summoner is involved a cannons can fall before the day is done. if melee hero, swarm the pylon. if range hero, swarm over him. the new assault marine has a dweb. mech has tanks off the back and tank mode, lm has his reavers. psion has l1B and l2, which also combo together and later on his l3 provides cover from spawn and heros alike. stronger cannons simply means volt's l2 and phantoms l3 are more dangerous, though they are escapable and the cannons are still pylon dependent and the same classes that can shred cannons now can still target them. i think it would simply make heros have to plan more carefully about assaulting the enemy lines single handedly, ts is afterall supposed to be a team game and i can't think of too many classes that can't contribute to sieging a base, dm provides support against heros, medic with fh already and can continue to act as a tank, and even though ghosts do little damage to buildings, the phantoms l4 can still supply good dmage while he remains safe. the only classes i can really think of that would have real issues getting through cannons is the firebat engineer and lurker, but lets face it they need changes anyway.

like i said, i didn't consider larger implications on the other heros, but i know that they still have spells that will remain useful for killing getting through cannons and that they wont be practically invulnerable to spawns.

the rambo option is there, and it will still be for anyone who feels confident in their abilities and character, but i don't think it fits into the teamwork aspect of the game when most characters have some way or another of demolishing a base on their own by the mid stages of the game.

the fact that summoner sends his minions out while he remains safe won't change unless theres a maximum range that he can deploy, but sending zealots out to rape is not nearly as effective as sending zerglings out, and zerglings are really fricken effective.

i'm not proposing making spawn super strong, i'm proposing they get stronger so they aren't negligible annoyances to heroes. you exp off the spawns, but right now its straight feed. the difference? takes no effort to get fed. you should need to work for that exp even if its from spawn. given the fact that its sc, the strategy of "get X armor, sit in front of spawn, go read a book and hope an enemy hero doesn't come by" will always be there, but we can at least make it harder for someone to do that. 5 -> 9 ->17 armor is not a challenge by any means.

The focus of the game will still be on the heroes, specifically how the heros deal with said spawn on a defensive and offensive end. its still up to the player to make sure the bases fall and to eliminate the most dangerous players.

As i said the game could be longer or shorter, spawns and bases taking longer to kill doesn't translate to necessarily longer game if you get stunned or trapped or simply coordinate an attack on cannons.

Okay.. I'll give you guys a heads-up on what has been changed so far...

I have been reading all of these, and many of the ideas I can concur with, and in theory may work. But practically, it may not. The best example of me falling for something like this is the Earth Demon X( .. It might be hard to understand, but I'm sure you will sooner or later. So don't bitch at me if I seemingly "ignore" your comments.. I read them all, but I can't keep track of all of them and/or I don't think it's a good idea.

White = done changes
Red = Considerations...

• New Terrain by Mneox, then prettied by xYoshix, then fixed by Mneox... still with flaws that I needa fix myself X.x
  
• Summoner now has the Demon Chant and the Abyssal Hymn that I talked about. The Demon Chant currently renders the Summoner invincible during the duration of the spell (~5secs) and also spawn infested terrans.
  
• Summoner now has a zling cap at 8.
  
• Abyssal Hymn sets the Summoner at 100E for 10 secs. Each Dark Swarm he creates during this time will spawn an Infested Terran. All summoned units will also appear at where the last Dark Swarm was placed during this spell. The Spell duration may be increased and/or may give the Summoner rebate for summoning units during that spell.
  
• ** These spells are intended to give the summoner spells that he would actually use. Although with a cap of 8 zlings, I feel that the summoner may still tend to stay at the base, rendering the new 2nd and 3rd spell useless. What I may do is make the zling cap at 6, make Demon Chant heal zlings near summoner, and make abyssal hymn set the cap at 9 zlings for the duration of the spell.
  
  
• Assault (marine)'s Spell 1 and 2 are back to the original, where L1 is tear gas, and L2 is the grenade.
  
• Tear gas will still slow units down like before, but will drain mana slower (per 5 DC)
  
• Grenade will still have a sensor of 1.5 secs (i.e. if grenade's over an enemy unit for 1.5 secs, it will blow up).. It will not spawn anymore wraiths
  
• Assault's L3, Carpet bomber, has been changed so that each bomb will spawn 10 firebats for 1 atttack. It will not stun and will not kill any summoned/spawned units.
  
• Nuclear ghosts can now cloak... max 1... Cannons' cost will likely go down to 40
  
  
• Engineer's Mounted Gun has been improved dramatically... 15 armor, and ~700 HP. It's build time and gas cost is also higher...
  
• L2 is now SCV, and L3 is now the Sci-ves... with a cap of 4.
  
• I think I lowered the cost/hp/dmg of the defenses due the spell switch... stats pending
  
• I really like FlashBeers (? was it him?) idea of making the mounted gun a sieged tank. They can be given to heroes that are next to them, and will now not be cloaked, and will not be killed by paralyzing spells . Their Defense and all that will likely fall, leaving it with a dmg of 70+... 6 or 7.
  
  
• Light Mage has also been changed dramatically...
  
• It now does 32+4 dmg. Its Light Barrier will spawn 8 aldaris's, but only 6 of them will be controlled by you.
  
• Light of Binding is now L4, where it will spawn dragoons for TWELVE Seconds (subject to change) around the LM, around his Essence, and around any heroes that are close to him.
  
• What's "his Essence"? His New L3 will summon a Light Essence (reg HT) which shares your LM's attack. I.e., when you do L2, your LM spawns 4 reavers, and if you have Light Essence, he will also spawn 2 reavers.
  
• Added "Light Transmission", which Swaps your LM and your Light Essence when you cast your first spell twice.
  
• Reavers now do 90+8 dmg. (used to be 110+10).. (subject of change)
  
  
• Earth Demon now has "Sand Slash", which blinds (unvision everyone except the player himself), and slows down enemy heroes. The slash is done by casting L1 twice. And it affects the area that your lurker have been "burrow-driving".
  
• Add a Pit trap like the Pit lord in the Great Wizards map by ws-Tank for his spell 3. the enemy and the lurker will be teleported to another area, and the lurker would most likely be unseen.
  
• Change its current L3 to L2, and make it spawn 1 hydra per second for 7-8 seconds (the hydras stay for the duration of the spell, so more and more appears)
  

Discuss

EDIT:
And I got to read the thing about zealots now...
Yeah I guess they aren't that good eh? ... I'm probably going to be lowering marines' dmg to 15...

Lady's idea will not work as Zealots give more Killscore than marines and zlings.. each Spawn progression gives more killscore..

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 17 2009, 11:05 pm by UnholyUrine.

It now does 32+4 dmg. Its Light Barrier will spawn 8 aldaris's, but only 6 of them will be controlled by you.

Which ones?

I'm proud of you, UU, for making such drastic changes. May you survive all the yelling people will send.
I personally like the new LM, but Summoner seems odd.

Sounds good, although summoner might totally pwn bases even more now. It will interesting to play.

For zealots, they definitely need to be beefed up.

If it does not keep a correct spacing from the enemy- which micro'ers could, and should be doing.

Mech is a micro-intensive unit— players who cannot micro the mech die very fast, but then again, they die fast with any other unit as well. When talking about skill-to-skill players, mech has the speed advantage, (usually) firepower advantage, and escape advantage.

Yes it would, he would run to heal slower. He couldn't run across the whole map and instantly kill someone as fast. Having him fast, makes him much quicker to accomplish more objectives at once, and get higher exp.

Scenario: Warrior runs up to Mech(mech mode), who is attacking some cannons with l1, Warrior runs in front of Mech and catches a nice l2 that traps the Mech. As mech saw the Warrior coming, he casts L2. The warm-up starts. In that extra 1.5 seconds, the DT's landed 7 more hits and kill the mech. Now, if the mech didn't have a warm-up, he would have untrapped himself from the DT's and flew away as he always did. The warm-up would have Mech players decide if they want to fight or run ahead of time— not decide to run when they are trapped, and should be killed.


Yea, it was him.

So you can't modify killscore to fit the order of units? huh i see. well there goes that idea.

i like the revised assault and lm, i assume that the assault's l2 will now have a decent stun again? also, the light transmission is a permenant swap right? so the lm can have the essence hide in base and when the lm needs a quick escape he can teleport and use the ht has a scape goat. he can also hide in the base himself and still use all his spells to attack enemies via the ht. he can use it to buff his own spells VERY significantly because of his boosted damage now. he'll start the game able to 2 hit spawns, which is huge. he can also use the ht to grind 2 lines at once, or engage multiple enemies or from multiple directions at once. very cool. very deadly and it really makes up for the fact that hes so slow. i forsee a good lm being insanely hard to kill now.

i would recommend your considering on the summoner, he needs to have good reason to leave the safety of the base. i think being able to spawn bombs on top of heros is cool.

so whats up with the ED's l1 observer? can people still 1-2 shot it for a stun?

not true... an experienced mech player, knowing the delay, would easily see the warrior coming and transform as soon as the warrior comes running at him, making it so the warrior doesnt even get close enough to l2 the mech. This was the same concept tried with the assassins cooldown in v1.4, but all it did was made experienced sin players tele at an earlier time... Didn't make him easier to kill at all.

also, might changing mech to non hero vult effect killscore? or do you set your own killscore? so would it effect the amount of exp gained from a hero kill on him?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 18 2009, 2:39 am by ShredderIV.

With regards to the Assassin's non-delayed Teleport, in one game my partner figured out a clever way to kill him. He was a Warrior and thus did 200 dmg a shot, so he kept an eye on the Assassin's HP whenever he was around and ran in to kill him when he was weak from fighting spawn. But the Assassin guy was kinda noob, since this worked and he got killed twice this way.

Okay then,

New scenario: Mech is chasing down the injured Warrior, microing as he goes (either form), but then the warrior steps toward the mech as the mech comes in to shoot the warrior again. Warrior's timing is perfect and manages to catch mech with l2. Would make for a nice kill, except for that Mech instantly transforms to his other form— refilling his health, dodges around the DTs, then shoots the crap out of Warrior- The end.

Mech didn't see this one coming, but who deserves the kill? The guy who WAS trapped or the guy planning the trap? Mech didn't have to see anything coming, all he did was change forms, and he was no longer trapped. As for the first scenario, place it in night time- then the mech may not see it coming. Is it really fair that Mech is almost completely untrappable?

Another scenario: Mech is injured so he transforms into Bike mode to run away. Catching a stroke of bad luck, or maybe not the best player- Mech happens to get stuck by spawn, with the enemy closing in on him to kill him. Once again, he transforms back to mech and runs away, as any other character would get stuck and die.