Scrims and Relic's Test Map

Hey everyone, gerpums here (finally). The best way to improve vs good players is to play vs them, and better yet in a game without a pub feed team. We should organize scrims more often, there is no need to be shy about it, invite some other clans etc. if you have never made a scrim, its fairly simple. i like to get a partner then fill a party with 4 solid teams. the 4th team is always the hardest to find, it seems. Next, give the party to your partner and leave. Hit create lobby on MA, and right click on your partners profile on friend tab and invite them to the lobby. if you dont have everyone added, either ask to rejoin the party or have people use the suggest player button to invite everyone. remember to do it in order, and use ai players in lobby to fill empty spots (or place your self next to feed   ). you can remove ais, so that is safe to unlike adding players.

Ok, now everyone whos never made a scrim is caught up on it. Now find players. Ofc, prioritize your ezmode clannies, ask to scrim in the chat etc. Pm your friends who have the green dot, not those in game/busy etc. You still wont have 8 players most likely, so pm some people from other clans, like puipui, or if you want that previously mentioned feed corner, some ikewls  

Alright. General rules guys, always vote tourney. shared control double elites/heroes imba. Resource pooling imba. Please dont bm, esp your fellow ezmode. Aside from that, remember some strats are less powerful when there are no pubs to feed you, ie no one went beetles all tourney. Learning to scrim is something anyone can do, even those who have played hundreds will play more to improve.

Now, recently our awesome new dev, Relic, has been working on a new testmap to fix some broken mechanics. As much as you say rines are under powered, their dps is insane any time in the game, the melee counter circle is broken, elites used to not be viable past 12mins or so, heroes were more linear, there was no support units accept sentry and os, and so on. These all have been accounted for across 4 years of different devs nerfing and buffing units to fix and change things up. Here is the thread copied in if you have not seen it.
(im suggesting you scrim on it if you didnt catch my drift )


For those helping me with testmap

If you want to try the map out, search for "Relic Testmap" or "Relic Marine"

TEST MAP STUFF

Note: This stuff isn't even remotely guaranteed or even likely to go into MA main map (though several aspects have gone over). However, even if it doesn't, this is still useful testing for some many facets of balancing under consideration for HOTS.

Obviously its gonna not be balanced now.. hence, us testing stuff!

Results/Goals:
- LET you tech both rine and merc etc at same time (not be locked into one or other for first half game).
- Melee + tech rine dps behind is not so ridiculously snowbally.
- Marine also not nearly as shut down by aoe heroes or elites early
- Rines not so stomped by air
- Elites not so dominate early from low hp rine feed
- Melee viable to buff further since rine dps scaling isn't insane anymore.
- Can actually tech rines with range armies from get go if you want
- Rines relevant viable at all points in game, but *IMPORTANTLY* their scaling is now in check
- Reduce armor capping mechanics


For next update WIP list. NOT LIVE YET.
See 2nd Post.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

DIFFERENCES FROM LIVE* (MAIN) MAP:
*This map is branched off the 3/18 published map
** Some aspects of this map have also been added to the main map.

General


Elites

Upgrading Elites (Attack/Armor/HP)
- Elites benefit from merc/rine/hero ups equally (This includes CC turrets/changlings/AU Tower abilities etc)
- The scaling per up has been reduced per upgrade to 80% (except HP) of what it was before
[This is net nerf on how fast elites scale, BUT will allow rine or hero players to keep up with their elites vs merc players]

Purchasing Elites
- Elites can also be purchased from your CC (like heroes)
[This is to get rid of elite shop rushing and camping to deny other teams any way to counter you]

HP Scaling
- Increased per up hp scaling by 25%
[UWS/DWF bonus greatly reduced. This is to make elite strength not so dependent on the elite ups]

UWS/DWF
- Cost reduced by 100 on each
- Removed dmg bonus on each
- Only give 10% hp (from 35%)
[They are now just extra range/hp for your elites. DMG boost likely unnecessary now that elites share upgrades.]

Science Vessel
It's back! (Only at CC, not at Elite shop)
- Reduced entrance portal cast range (you have to be really close to SV to be at risk now)
- Portal duration increased (so can be used by melee players to get flanks or move your army)
- Increased effect of attack speed boost and damage redux to 10% from 7.5% on each.
- Greatly increased energy consumption of attack rate boost ability.
- Reduced move speed to 4.75 (from ~6.5)... Now its as fast as landed viking instead of cor.

[Was a really fun unit to use before, though was too OP vs heroes/air/elites before With new vikings capable of zoning it and reduced range on entrance portal I think we can solve a lot of what made it OP]

DW
- Reduced dmg scaling to 75%
- Base damage to 25 (from 30)
- Base splash to 12.5
- Fixed delay on attack (so should be able to kite better)

Corruptor
- DMG per up to 4.8 (6 from 8 pre 80% scaling)

Siege Tank
- Reduction vs Structure to -0.35 (from -0.4)

Ghost
- Increased Energy cost of EMP to: 25 energy (from 0)

Reaper
- Cost to 200 (from 150)

Viking
- Fixed delay on attack (so should be able to kite better)

Reduced armor per up on following elites
- Medibabe (now same scaling as BC instead of stronger)
- Minimoma (now same scaling as BC instead of stronger)



Marines
Marine
- Base hp to 120 (from 45)
- HP per up to 15 (from 10)
- Base dmg to 9 (from 6)
- Dmg per up to 0.9 (from 1)
- Attack period to 0.55 (from 0.354)
- Stim base to 15% from 25%
- Bounty to 4 (from 2)
- Base supply to 4 (from 3)
- Radius increased to 0.4375 (from 0.375)
- Increased spawn time to 1.75 (from 1.25)
- Increased base stim cost to 15 (from 10)

Merc Marine
- Increased base hp to 250 (from 150)
- HP per up to 15 (from 10)

Epic upgrades
In addition to normal benefits now give:
- +15% to stim bonus (from 0)
- +2 bounty (from 1)
- Cost increased to 1100 (from 900)
- Require 2 minors

Untouchable Epic
- Evasion chance reduced to 33% (from 40%)

Unstoppable Epic
- Attack speed increase to 25% (from 33%)

Minors
- Give +10% to stim
- Reduce Supply of Marines by 0.25
- Increase kill bounty by 1
- Cost Increased to 400 (from 350)

Other changes for each minor below

DMG Minor
- +1 DMG (from 0.5)
- +10% DMG

HP Minor
- +10 hp (from 5)
- +20% HP (from +10%)
- +5% DMG (from 0)

Armor Minor
- +1 armor (from 0)
- +20% Armor (same as current)
- +5% DMG (from 0)


Heroes
Commando:
- Base attack to 0.45
- Base dmg to 55 (from 40)
- Per hero level to: -0.027
- Bonus vs heroic to 50% on auto
- Increased life regen by 1
- Base snipe splash fraction to 50% (from ~22%)
- Per level splash fraction increase reduced (ends at same ~70%)
- Removed 20 dmg bonus vs heroic per level.

DT:
- Each level increases damage by 5 *Going to remove*
- Each level increases shield regen by 50% (from flat +3.6)
[Result is max dt regen ~60 (from 30), but lvl 1-3 are a little weaker]


Festor:
- Base fungal dmg to 51 (from 48)

Tassadar:
- Base storm dmg to 55 (from 50)
- Dmg leech fraction multiplier per level reduced to 0.925 (from 0.95)


Mercs
Melee Tags:
TEMPORARILY TRYING THIS:
See 3rd post for melee post
[See bottom of that post for what new tags and bonus are]
New Melee counter system:
Warplot>Reaver>Tankling>Devildog>Templot>Crackling>Beetle>Warplot
Where each melee unit counters the 2 to the right, and is countered by the 2 to the left.

Zerglings:
- Re balancing for 3 bounty
- Base damage to 9.5 (from 6)
- HP to 115
- Spawnrate to 1.2
[They weren't doing enough dmg previously, but were giving far to much hp/spawn and hp scaling for 2 bounty]

Zealots:
- +0.5 base dmg
- -1 Nerf vs psionic removed

Tanklings:
- 3x training give +1.00 DMG (from 0.5)
- 3x trainings give +15 hp (from +20)
- 3x trainings give +.25 armor (from 0.5)
- Base dmg to 7.5 (from 6)
- DMG per up to 1.2 (from 1)
- Base hp tp 200 (from 190)
- Armor per up to 1.15
- Spawn rate slowed to 1.15 (from 1)
- Bounty increased to 5

Crackling:
- Base armor to 2.5 (from 3)
- Armor per up to 1.15

WarpZealots:
- Life/shield armor to 2.5 (from 2)
- 3x Trainings give +0.5 life (not shield) armor (from 0)*
- Armor per up to 1.15

Marauders
- Re balancing for 6 bounty (from 5)
- HP to 170 (from 140)
- HP per up to 19 (from 16)
- DMG to 14.5 (from 14)
- Spawn time to 2.5 (from 2.08)
- Stim on rauds reduced to 25% (from 50%, until raider purchase)
[This is to address rauders very bad stats relative to size which is making them very weak]



That was a lot of stuff to take in. As someone who spends too much time on the MA forums, i like to think i have a pretty good grasp on the mechanics Relic is fixing and putting in. I bolded the most important parts, in my opinion. Mechanics lesson: the dps of a unit in relation to unit size can get very complicated, but this is why rauders are less popular than sharps, they simply cant stack as good of dps despite their higher scaling and stats because of their bulkiness. brutas have this problem twofold, because they are also very slow, low dps glaive units. in a strait amove, a bruta army is actually quite strong, but we all know what happens when the entire map isnt made of dess/raider. this brings me to rines. Relic crunched numbers, and what was left would surprise you. Rines actually stack some 400% more dps in the space of rauders, and scale 66% faster (if i remember correctly, he logged off right after i pmd him asking lol ). Rine ling is a strong build, infact possibly the strongest in theory. Current rines and current lings synergize so well as many of you all know, using the lings as simple tanks because of their spawn rate/hp ratio, 2 base armor and relatively low damage, and then a morph which counters raiders and dess, possibly rines worst nonflying enemies merc wise. Not only does this lead into the HUGE rine changes, but also the lings balanced around higher dps, lower spawn rate. They will not be replaced entirely because of zlots morph to temps, they did get an extra 10 hp, bringing their hp/spawn closer to what it was. So far, fixed rauders, fixed lings, now rines. Many complain it is hero arena, or elite arena. THEYRE WRONG    marines as stated, scale like a mofo. The only things stopping them from becoming out of check are aoe heroes/elites, air, and splash mercs. Lets take a second look at this game changing info:
- Base hp to 120 (from 45)-Aoe should not be the only thing keeping rines in check. buff hp to compensate vs all those elites which rely on 1 hitting rines, and then ofc the heroes such as fest/tass
- HP per up to 15 (from 10)more tankiness for rines
- Base dmg to 9 (from 6)lowered dps, so a base damage buff is put in place to prevent armor capping, esp early. this is the same as 3 attack rines now.
- Dmg per up to 0.9 (from 1)damage scaling put slightly in check
- Attack period to 0.55 (from 0.354) large nerf in dps there, to counteract their extremely high dps/area with their new merc-level hp.
- Stim base to 15% from 25%more stimp nerfs. remember, except for the speed, +1 is much better use of money at the start now.
- Bounty to 4 (from 2) if youre turning rines into low ranged sharps with stimp, you gotta buff their reward. understand that spawnrate/reward is a very important part of the game
- Base supply to 4 (from 3)less mass. self explanatory.
- Radius increased to 0.4375 (from 0.375)packing less dps per area
- Increased spawn time to 1.75 (from 1.25)packing less dps per spawn rate
- Increased base stim cost to 15 (from 10) 10 hp stimp on 120 hp rines would be dumb :L

remember, these are all numbers that were caculated. that fire rate nerf was not pulled from thin air, it was created. Refer back to the goals here, this makes rines viable at any moment of the game, and as stated, far easier to switch between rather than a set path that you must take. Its always been annoying that elites share not scaling with rines, so elite/rine has always been support roles such as medi/os. Elites now get 80% of their old scaling, and in turn this means that they can be used with rine players. The goal of the fairly new update on elites was to make them more viable late game other than just ravens, os, medi and rupter, all of which were used as a support role except ravens. These changes mean that the elites will last longer, and can be used after you dump into rines. This, combined with the elite up nerfs, and the HUGE indirect feeding nerf from 120 hp rines makes elites a whole game deal that is never too op. After those changes, ultis are nerfed for rines, increased in price and now give back some stimp attack rate.

In general, elites are nerfed, ie mommaship/medi armor scaling, dusk splash (in turn for a bit more base dps to compensate for uber rines), reapers price hike, rupter scaling nerf, ghost energy nerf and so on.

Heroes got some changes as well. Mando now feeds decent, but does not get hero kills. It now is for zoning out and preventing feed etc. DT is getting some regen buffs, because lets be honest, every level that is not max or lv0 is a waste. DT just didnt scale. Fest and Tassy get some base damage buffs. Expect fest to turn into a beast of a support hero in the next giant update.

Melee gets retagged to make the counter system not screwed. You may have noticed that cracks counter mechanical on the current map and DDS are mechanical. You may also have seen Temps counter their counters, raiders and brutas. Basically the tags got messed up long ago and Relic is fixing it, along with making cracks and warps slightly more armor-centric, Hooray! Warps and cracks are some of the most fun units.

Some of you are still sad that fest and tass will become instantly shitty from those rine changes. Fear not! Planned changes:
Big Update
This is a pretty big deviation from live map. And a few days of work in the editor. Lots of behind the scene stuff, but cliff notes of change:

Heading towards balancing around a version of "high income + KOTA" with income rates from those tweaked as well. This greatly reduced the impact of a pub feeding a team early on, which leads to a less snowbally early game. As game progresses, however, towers/mid become more and more important. *Most* costs and cost scalings have been significantly adjusted as result of added income.

Jist is, it will *should* be much harder to snowball from a single team feeding in an engagement or two early on, but also not making it harder late game.

Income
- Gain income from your CC, Towers, Mid
- Initially CC income is high, and Towers/Mid are very low
- As game goes on CC income drops, and Towers/Mid increase
- Almost all cost scalings have been adjusted to accommodate extra income on map.
[What this does is make it much harder to gain big advantage early game, but then as time goes on it shifts to punish turtlers instead]

Upgrades


General
- Most of them have been redone so less of a mess in the editor
- Scaling and costs changed (ex attack/dmg/hp, hero levels etc)
- In general attack/dmg/hp give ~1/2 of the previous amount (can have twice as many)
- Base cost reduced, and cost scaling reduced (but net cost will be higher in long run - this is to take into account the extra income on map now).


Hero

General
- Storm/snipe etc benefit from merc/rine/hero damage (merc/rine at 50%).
- Heroes are more expensive to level (this is to offset added income..)

Some heroes reworked (tass/HTA/Fest/Queen etc)

Notable changes to heroes:

Tass
- Greatly increased base damage of storm
- Reduced base energy regen a bit.
- Removed storm energy leeching
- Hero levels increase energy regen, and storm 'damage ticks'
- attack ups are more effective the more leveled tass is (ex more ticks to do damage on a higher level tass).

HTA
- Retains storm energy leech
- Benefits 50% more from damage ups as the tass.

Infestor
- Greatly reduced damage from fungal, and removed attack speed debuff
- Greatly increased duration of fungal
- Leveling infestor increases duration of fungal
- Add new ability "infestor's swarmlings"
- Swarmlings are slow moving high dps melee timed life units. Spawn them and use a fungal to force an enemy to have to take damage from them.
- Leveling infestor also increases the attack rate, move speed, and life duration of the swarmlings.
- Hero attack ups increase damage of swarmlings (higher level festors benefit more due to swarm lings increased attack rate)

Queen
Fungal damage greatly reduced and does not ROOT, duration greatly increased
- Queen fungal reduces enemy attack speed by 50%, move speed by 60%
- Energy pool increased to 300
- Damage scaling on fungal is 100% more than fest
- Swarmlings are ~50% stronger from queen than fest


Festor sounds so badass! Basically the swarmlings are not targetable, do not give money when they time out, and should give around the same dps as an old fungal. They be far too slow to catch fast fleeing armies, but fortunately fungal was changed to be a far longer time with less dps. Little known fact: fungal decreases firerate drastically. Basically what this means is that fungal is a support ability almost, and swarmlings will be badass little buggers who help you out.

On the other hand, i have no idea how that income and deceased upgrades thing will play out. That seems hard to balance to me.


I think thats all i have for you today, i hope you enjoy and learned something from my first post! see you in the ezmode clan chat, and do me a favor. dl the test map and run a couple test battles just to get a feel for it.  


millions of capitoliZation and grammatical errors. soz, its late.

Holy balls this is a huge post! lol thank you Pummy! Let's work hard and get a nice scrim session going = )

Haha wow i think i just aged 3 years!!! But it was interesting! Thanks for sharing gerpums xD