Ya, it is.

It seems that instead of nerfing the other factions' hot keys to even them up with terran, they could have just fixed the terran hot keys.  What would have been wrong with that?

I'm actually pissed about this.  I mean, imagine if the Sins devs decided to screw up the hotkeys for Sins, and screw up the empire tree and make it a lot harder to use, in the name of "injecting more skill" in the game.  I mean, I'd rather put my skill to use playing the actual game, rather than fighting the UI.  What a crock of BS.

Two different things:

- Balance in a competitive RTS is tricky business.  The rule of thumb is to balance it for the top level players, and eventually the skill level of lower level players will increase to reduce balance issues in their ELO bracket.  You can't balance for the beginners and the experts.

- I agree, certain tactics are extremely hard to deal with.  With flying units and cliff walking units, the terrain seems to matter less and less.  I remember when a choke point was a choke point.  In general, the maps seem too big and too open.

It already was about a week ago. IMO, marauders are a peice of cake. They have no anti-air, so as long as their marine escorts are taken out it just takes 1 banshee/void ray. I'm just sad how difficult it is to play zerg well. It seems to take at least twice the APM of the other 2 races due to having to morph everything out of everything, in essence building most buildings and units twice before they are actually what you want.

Terran, to me at least, only seem to be overpowered on the "Novice" maps. Basicly those maps mean you can build battlecruisers before they manage to break all the destructible rocks to get to your base. Although that said, I usually have my starport tech lab and fusion reactor up by the 7 minute mark anyway.

On a bit of a tangent, I had an excellent terran v protoss game last night: it lasted 1h6m.

A nerf that still didn't do the job, then a rebuff a few days ago that wasn't needed.

They aren't a piece of cake.  They counter every tier 1 unit protoss can build, plus scale through the entire game, they have tons of hit points, are too fast (can kite), can stim, can be healed, and have that concussive grenade.  They take out buildings.  They can pretty much do everything except hit air.

They are the advent illums from last patch.  They're all a terran needs to build.

I guess I disagree with both statements.  You aren't going to take out their marine escorts (or if you do, you will lose more to do it than what it cost the terran), and you aren't going to build a void ray to counter a mass of marauders LOL.

Terrans used to go marauder, marine, and medivac.  Then they realized they didn't need the marines, so dropped them.  Now I hear they are even dropping medivacs these days.

Marauders are just too good - that's the problem.  Pretty much everyone knows it except blizzard.

Agent of Kharma:

what league are you playing in?

I'm in gold, and play terran almost exclusively.

Reaper weaknesses: cost (really high on gas), extremely long build time, and low hp.

Protoss: a single cannon beside your minerals and the reaper harassment against probes is toast.  Also there's a reason you train stalkers

Zerg: A zerg getting harrassed by a terran instead of the other way around.  If that happens... they have to be a noob.  Also, speedlings outrun reapers.

Terran: If they have reapers, you have a way larger and overall more powerful army.

A good zerg player can get enough roaches/zerglings/2 sunken colonies to easily hold off a marauader rush in 6-7 minutes, and have the spire be building as well.  By 8 minutes, you'll have 6 harassing mutalisks out, with more to come.  If you don't have any marines, you're totally annihilated.

For the matter, a speedling/baneling rush will rape pure marauaders.

As for protoss, all you need is 2 hardened shields immortals (which you can definitely have up the 6 minute mark).

Takes 10 damage for 10 shots while shields are up, and dishes out 50 damage to armored (which includes marauders) in response.

And of course, protoss have the only early-game caster unit: sentry.

Forcefield your entrance and you totally nullify an early rush, which also buys you more time to get the immortals out.  Once they are, gg.

For the matter, I have an (approximately) 4:30 3 banshees rush for terran.  Which will totally eat up your marauders and then your base.  Fact is, fast banshees is the standard in TvT.  If you're not doing it, you're countering fast banshees.  And if you're not doing either... you've probably lost. 

Blizzard, for good or for ill, is balancing the game for high level platinum/pro level play.  That means that a lot of the units that seem overpowered to us, are actually very balanced when you factor in proper micromanagement play.

The thing is, although I can pull of these things, I'm not even a platinum level player (I lack the necessary APM to challenge the top players, unfortunately.  I can get into platinum, but get knocked back down).

As long as Protos has blink, I don't think Protos players are in any shape to complain.

I was playing yesterday and an entire army of Stalkers on Kulas Ravine simply marched in the back.  Someone complaining about reapers can explain to me how someone defends against that many stalkers (it's not like you can put siege tanks that early on everywhere and stalkers are anti-everything.

I actually don't have trouble with reapers.  I can get a stalker out (late) to defend against a reaper rush.  The other guy above brought up reapers, not me.  I just responded.

I can see an imbalance in them though - you have to assume from the get-go that you are being reaper-rushed, whether you are or aren't.  But at the end of the day, I can live with reapers as they are, as protoss.

My problem, along with everyone else's, is marauders.  They're just too good.  Mark my words, they're gonna be nerfed, sooner or later.

I actually have my own beta key now, but haven't used it yet.  I'm sharing a friend's user-ID and beta setup.  What's your UserID so I can look for you?

I mentioned reapers because your original post complains about them, along with hellions, and marauders.

I'll also willingly admit that platinum seems to play very differently if people commonly pull attacks as soon as 1 or 2 units are out.  Gold strats rarely hit before 5 minutes.

With regards to that invitational film... honestly speaking, that was the kind of play you see in silver or gold.  He scouts, sees the tech lab rax, but doesn't do anything with his scouting info, and continues his full economy build... which gets him slaughtered (no surprise).

At this point, I have to say that I'd really like to see a film of this dreaded marauder rush, because I just cannot imagine any scenario where a rush build that a brand new player can do (sure he was pro in sc, but that doesn't translate to pro in sc2, as that invitational film showed), and would dominate all players at the platinum level.

- Agreed that protoss carriers seem to be severely underpowered

- Have seen a film of a mothership rush which worked against a terran (but it was a few patches back).  It was fun to watch, with him using all the mothership abilities to work the game to his victory.

I'm guessing that guy was screaming because he got half his army sucked away by the mothership, got his troops annihilated, had the remaining troops show up and get slaughtered as well

Until recently I didn't see it.  I've been in Copper, Silver, Bronze, Gold, Copper, and now Bronze.  Which is another thing that I am hoping they fix up is the placement stuff (those 5 placement matches are so much a matter of luck than anything else).

But on those maps where there's a back entrance into your base, an army of stalkers can just blink their way in and those units, unlike reapers, are nasty and you can get them pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, Zergs have Banelings which, when well used, can get a pile of zerglings into your base before you have a force of marauders or repears (they'll wipe out terran houses easily, in gold league you're expected to block off your entrance with a factory and a barracks to prevent this or race to get siege tanks - not easy that early).

Agent: I'm draginol.draginol

I get creamed by platinums. Lose 3 out of 4 times against gold. Win about half the time on silver. Win most of the time against bronze and well copper..

But I perk up when people say they're in platinum.  I'm only in bronze in this iteration of the game but I feel pretty confident I could beat most people in 1 on 1. But Platinum, that's different. That's mega elite. So I tend to be a bit skeptical at all the people who say they're in platinum, especially when they're talking about "cheese" that even silver players would have no problem batting away.

Each side has frustrating units to be sure. I can't really think of any that are really "cheese" at this point. In the right circumstances, almost any unit can be incredibly frustrating to deal with.

Heck, I find the Mutablob incredibly frustrating because on some maps, it's just ridiculously hard to deal with it. On other maps, the mutablob is not a serious problem.  It's impossible to balance correctly but each side has their obnoxious units.

I agree.

A different ball of wax, but force shields can be incredibly frustrating, I guess you'd say?  I feel bad using them sometimes, when I see that the other player basically has no chance after I've done it (blocking their ramp as their reinforcements run down, then keeping it blocked while I take out their expansion, etc).

As a few others on these forums already know, with my current situation I am staying with a friend, and don't have access to my gaming desktop (just my crappy laptop), nor my internet connection.  It's why I haven't been able to play Sins online for about a month.  At any rate, my friend and I share his gaming desktop for the moment, as well as his starcraft2 account and beta.

My point - in about another week I will be in a better situation, will have my desktop again, a good internet connection, and will be able to activate my own beta key under my own account.  I'll look you up then and let you know what account I'm playing under.

I lose a lot in platinum, particularly against terran.  Actually, I find mirror matches a little hard to deal with too, just because they seem... strange.

Well, I lived in a house with 2 other guys for about a year, where all we did for that year was play starcraft 12 hours a day or more (one guy was a pro zerg, the other guy a pro terran).  I can't say I'm particularly proud of that former life, especially since I now have incredibly hot girlfriends to pass all that time with (one of which will be coming over in a few hours)... but it is what it is.

Having said that, my current roomie probably had more to do with placing platinum than I did, but we share his account.  I lose plenty.  We aren't top-ranked platinums by any means - somewhere near the bottom.  Keep getting reset too, so, with placement trials, I'm not sure how much it really means.

Well I urge you to re-read some of my more recent posts.  Like I said, I don't have any problems fending off reaper rushes.  I think well-executed hellions are difficult for zergs to deal with because they can't wall off and those things are brutal against zerglings and drones, but that doesn't really affect me as protoss.  My main issue is that I think marauders are just too good.  Not a marauder rush.  A marauder mass.  It's like the illum from last patch on Sins.  Just too good at most everything.

I agree.  By the way, I'm not "religious" about any claims I'm making, and at the end of the day I simply don't care.  I'm just throwing my thoughts on current balance out there for whoever wants to discuss.

To be sure.

Protoss has frustrations here too.  The phoenix - a dedicated air-to-air unit - seems weak to mutalisks which are generalist air-to-air, air-to-ground units, and also do splash damage (which phoenixes don't do).  I don't "get it," but I'm not getting paid to balance the game, so....

We agree.

Here's something interesting.  Some guy on the starcraft2 beta forums claims protoss are responsible for most unit balance complaints, and they chiefly complain about terran:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24401797207&sid=5000

His post:

EDIT: I didn't post that to bolster any claims I have made.  In fact, my interpretation of his post is that he is sort of "putting down" protoss players for complaining so much.  I just thought it was interesting.

Your concept is sound.  However, when applied to reapers, hellions, and marauders, it doesn't work out.

- The reaper rush comes down to being a high risk, high reward build.  And it's far better (and smarter) to do M&M&Ms.

Essentially, when the reapers are not expected, you can win the game right there.  But that generally occurs only when your enemy has little/no experience with sc2.

- Hellions are only good against a zerg who hasn't teched up early game.  Dunno, I don't think they're really much of an issue.  If you have hellions, he should have drones, or perhaps put some money into a sunken colony.

With regards to marauders:

I think marauders are, essentially a bread-and-butter unit in every army, and definitely useful.  But they can't hit air which is quite a big weakness.  Also, even though HTs got downgraded, I've seen them be used VERY effectively against M&M&M masses.

Marauders are definitely really good, but I don't know about the too good part.  Maybe true against protoss since almost your entire army is armored at this time.  I haven't had much trouble against protoss opponents thus far, except those that use HTs and DTs properly.  Try giving those a shot and see how it works out?

Also, void ray harassment early on can be a real pain to deal with if the guy went M&M&M

With regards to AA units:

I completely agree with you.  I think all AA in the game at this time seem to be severely underpowered.

The terran viking is just as useless against mutas.  Even though it has longer range, it's slower, and so hit and run is not really possible.  The only effective counter against mutas is lots of stimmed marines with a few medivacs (which, incidentally, makes recruiting marauders very hard).

I haven't seen Vikings be particularly effectual against high tech air units either...

And for protoss, it seems more effectual to counter mutas with stalkers and HTs than it does with AA.

To be honest, I have the most trouble fighting zerg as terran.  The reason being zerg has a lot of different builds early game, all of which require a different balance in your early-game army (of the same units ).  The 3 most common are

- Mutalisk rush (lots of marines)

- Drone rush (lots of marauders)

- zergling/baneling (bunker, marines, marauders ideally on ramp in front of supply depot).