To be honest, I just want to say I'm glad that a spellcasting Spec Ops is proving viable. LOL.

You can probably guess while I'll say. If you can't, I think the additional effects already balance it without any cuts in damage.

Regarding DM... I don't really find the spells difficult to use at all. Between Maelstrom and Ensnare, it's kind of hard to miss. The exception is the L3, which will miss if your opponent is only Ensnared because it puts a shit-ton of Queens in the way of your vision and they will get away. The only reason I would fail to hit spells with DM is if the person has sufficent firepower in terms of spells to act as a repellent. (ie, Light Mage is throwing up an L1, Mutant is casting L3, etc.)

Personally, I consider Summoner's L3 a necessity for extended period outside of the base.

Nerf? Have you seen the Companions in 1.2?

That's weird... never seen that happen. It's really only possible if the Corsair is somehow outside the Assault's location when it's created. Were any other air units displacing it when it was made? If/when I make a new version I will fix this.

TS is an odd map such that sped up replays tend not to break. (disclaimer: break due to speeding up, not from being made during different SC patches, etc.)

Hmmm.... I'm tempted to start tracking class usage statistics as I play. Though most players these days seem to be using the randomization rather than actually choosing heroes.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 9 2009, 4:40 am by Mini Moose 2707.

I believe that If you use no waits, the game will not suffer as a result of speed up/slow down. Death counters work.

As for the corsair, no, there was no displacement. It was my first cast of the game, as soon as I hit 25 mana.

As for the 1.2 Companion, nope, never played it.

Base cannons can attack air units.

Also, technically speaking, the maximum possible mana regeneration during a cast of Special Ops' L4 is 60. This also requires maximum mana. If he able to spam it, then he was saving mana up for a long time and it's roughly as gay as any other class that saves up a ton of mana to hit you with a bunch of spells.

Ho0ray for DC's... Okay, I won't cut the dmg ... ... we'll c how it goes.

As for Assassin.. i've just played a game with him, and I lost HORRIBLY. I got decapitated :C... it was sad and awesome at the same time, cause that was the first time I saw it being used, and I was eliminated. So... I can safely say.. No matter how much ppl whine about assassin being suck, it doesn't suck at all and it can rape you.. hard.

Speed up L3 =).. done. No changes, yay! .. L3 is actually quite useful if hit <_<... if u got a ranged ally, the cursed foe is toast. (it's suprising that there're only 5 units that are ranged... Plus Summoner's spawns = 6.. so it is perfectly balanced wh00t =D)

I will not make the scourge vulnerable. I will in fact make the mines even more powerful by placing more mines probably. Don't complain, since for those who haven't seen the changes yet, you won't understand. I will, however, probably make the mines Unvincible after the spell is done, and only the last 9 mines being invincible =O (they are a good capping strategy ^.^)

Also, from last game, ppl fighting for the warp gate cap is awesome. A mutant got owned twice trying to capture the gates lol.. XD. We eventually won big time =).

Can anyone think of something that can be implimented to a building that's relevant to the game other than Healing/Mana? not vision, cause DT'd then needa be changed, and I don't want to change him :C.

If you think the mine drone is overpowered, try it. >.> Especially compared to other l4s, which blow it out of the water in terms of game-changingness. Medic's l4 is so good people rush for it, volt and mutant's l4 give them an extra life pretty much, dm's l4 can spell death very quickly, assault's l4 needs no words. And given how hard it is to do a mana-based special ops, the l4 really shouldn't be made to suck more anyway. Like I said, try it.



Are buildings being looked at? The last several games I've been in the pubbies have discovered the unbalancedness that is rushing for reavers. It makes a pvp based team fail totally (DM, volt, summoner) and short-range classes (archer, LM) a headache to play unless we respond with reavers of our own. The thing that I really find irritating about reavers (and spawns in general) is that they're always an option in a game, no matter the hero selection, but certain heroes deal with them better than others. They're also available to players a lot earlier than we are typically able to respond.

Something also feels off with the way assimilators work, in the sense that one person can supercharge his teammates with only 4-5 assimilators. Am I the only one who gets that vibe? I don't know...

Also, teleport receiver? Useless. Don't get me wrong, it's a good idea in theory (I would prefer the direction be reversed so that I could get to the temple quickly, but whatever). It has a build time of forever, though, and costs way, way too much money. The only times I've actually been able to build it are when our team's income becomes sillydiculous and destroying the temple is really just a formality.

Also useless are medics. (Not the hero, the EDIT: shield battery). The medics that spawn have ADD, and do not heal spawns in any meaningful fashion. Often when I use them (which is never in a serious manner), they're ignored entirely and end up as cannon fodder, although theoretically they could be a significant feed. In every case, though, they fail at what they were even intended to do.

Some building ideas:

-Antimagic Forcefield: Blocks enemy(maybe all?) spellcasting nearby.
-Time Dilator: Doubles the length of day and night. Would cause a time burner to explode if both were present on the map at the same time.
-Time Burner: Halves the length of day and night. Would cause a time dilator to explode if both were present on the map at the same time.
-Shield Generator: Makes nearby pylons invulnerable or makes the temple invulnerable if making pylons invul isn't possible.
-Aviary: Loads the hero into a shuttle which flys to either a destination building or lets them control where they head.
-Telescope: Grants night vision to heroes at the temple (ones who are invulnerable)
-Earthquake Machine: Halts ALL assimilator production.
-Doom Clock: After a warning and a countdown, destroys all pylons, assimilators, and the Doom Clock.
-Inn: Buildable healing place
-Temple Reviver: Makes the next hero who dies on your side not lose a life. The reviver is destroyed instead.
-Anti-Mana Tower: Alters mana counts of nearby heroes. May have huge range.
-Summoning Charm: After a warning and a countdown, summons ALL heroes to the charm and destroys it.
-Bomb: Kills anyone nearby. Maybe have a warning for this if its added, learning what the buildings did was trial and error, this would be a bad thing to figure out in that manner.
-Mana Fountain: Mmmmm... alters mana count for allies.
-Wall: A wall.

-Tech Building: Prereq for some upgrades?

Use these as inspiration for some real ideas.

True enough. I guess couple with the fact that Marine already dominates everything, it having a good spell is really imbalanced to most people. If the Spec Ops is fixed, I doubt that'll be an issue.

Very very true. I would prefer to see a complete change in "Summoning buildings" in that they create a burst of units and then are destroyed. IE: A CyCore produces 1 reaver (for way less money) then goes away. An Archer's Den produces 6 Archer's Companions then is destroyed, etc.

I never really liked it, particularly when the other team decides to cannon up assimilators which is perhaps the most bullshit strategy I've ever played against. There are VERY few classes who can do anything at all that can stop this, and most of those not until a high level. Unfortunately the game does very heavily revolve around assimilators. My only suggestion would be to make them easier to kill (more shield, less hp, so less effects of armor) or more expensive. Using assimilators is theoretically a way for a team with an advantage to press that home, but it's never been ideal to me.

I somewhat disagree here. Destroying the temple is never "just a formality" anymore because of how invulnerable heroes can camp the temple. This just lets a team spend more time pounding on the temple, allowing a class who hasn't died like a Summoner to NOT be able to experience whore over them all, so they win quickly.

I didn't even know this was a building, but medic feed is bad enough when a newb Medic is using them on your team. Spawning medics owned by P7/P8 is quite possibly the last thing I'd want to do in a game.

I kept the ones that I could see being used in a game.

And my own additions (Inspired by yours):
- Town Portal: Warps Heroes to Temple, the reverse of Nexus. Keep the Nexus too though. Cost: 100
- Time Bomb: Destroys nearby buildings after a duration. This would be very useful for countering assimilator whoring and should be very cheap. Cost: 10.
- Flying Machine: Gives the player a shuttle. Cost: 80
- I think Cannons are too cheap right now, too.

Also: let the player learn what the buildings do by bringing his probe to the Buy Probe beacon; give him a list of them.

man? my favourite class is apperently in the bottom tier, i most often play assassin, that or random i think i play it pretty well, i also like DM but what you gotta do with DM in my opinion is make the lv4 spell spawn some broodlings around the dm if there are no enemies in range because when it gets to the end game i was playing a 3v3 the only people left were me as DM, vs a mech and a summoner which wouldnt leave his temple so basically the only spell i could use was maelstrom on the summons, i couldnt use any curses on the mech because i couldnt catch him and i couldnt use anything on the summoner because summons arent effected by them...

I've been experimenting in lots of games with assimilators, and I've found that I don't even need to bother with defending assimilators as long as I have at least one. The building assimilator will pump out money whether or not it is finished, and it'll pay for itself (with a +5 mineral bonus) shortly after it is finished building. If I spread them out so that the enemy has to run across the map to take them down (and rebuild them of course), our team comes out way ahead. If they don't even rush to take it down (it's night, for example, and they're all slow classes and don't scout with the probe), then it's GG. I, the builder of the assimilators, come out with a huge profit, which means my teammates are skyrocketing in terms of the level balance.

On the same token, games where our opponents are assim-savvy are a nightmare. If we don't have the middle base, if we don't have any good (and dedicated) scouts, or if we just don't have the firepower to take down an assimilator, as they have a fair amount of armor and earlygame upgrades go into armor, it's very often GG. First of all, if we don't have assim-countering classes, our opponents probably do. Secondly, their upgrades will very quickly double and triple and quadruple. See how high your upgrades go when your teammate is maintaining 6 assims. More often than not, though, games where the opponent is assim-savvy are also games where the opponent is reaver-savvy, and then it's GG unless we happen to pick the exact classes and builds needed to counter reavers.


Just to emphasize the brokenness of spawns, I have a rep (broken last time I ran it) of a game where me (warrior) and volt managed to cap the entire map at around 200 XP for everyone and I thought "rine and bat can't counter reavers, that would show just how owned those guys are." So I saved up, built a couple of Cybercores, and sat around. The reavers made it to their base in no time. The rine started spamming mine drone, which at first I thought wouldn't do much since the reavers could survive a full volley of mines. Apparently, though, he had been saving up his mana and could spam enough of it to kill about 5 reavers. Thus began their skyrocketing EXP and my doom. Of course, since I had capped the entire map (at this point volt was eliminated trying to kill the firebat or something), I built more spawns. I had about 5 going in all three directions as well as goons and goliaths, and even though the bat had his dropship and the rine had his mine drone farming the hell out of the reavers, they were still hitting the temple, and they couldn't cover all three directions by themselves.

Eventually, the rine hit 8000 XP (And the bat 2000 XP). Their temple was at 20% HP, and the spawns had just reached hydra. I had thought I would win eventually since the temple was still being pounded, but I failed to realize just how much XP 8000 is. After a while, you run out of things to level, right? So all of the rines upgrades went into mins, and he got 40 weapon upgrades. That's not the messy part, though. He managed to build reavers behind his temple, which utterly stopped my reavers and actually overpowered my set. I tapped out after the reavers reached my base (his warp gates were gone long ago, I had been getting zero feed for the past 30 minutes, and i could charge like, 2 reavers).

I thought the game had highlighted some huge bug in TS. How spawns have to destroy the feed gates before they reach the temple. How absurd the levelling system is to go on like that and outpace assimilators. Maybe how worthless reavers are (goons wouldn't have been nearly as easy to victimize by the mine drone). Or maybe it's an unintended counter to taking down the temple by attrition. In any case, you can't really ever take downing the temple for granted.

I still stand by my point about the teleport receiver, though. It costs way too much and takes too long to build.

Makes me feel pro when Assassin is rated hardest and least played and i can 2v1 a DM and zealot by decapitating their temple. lol?

I don't under stand the whole medic business. Medics is fine in my eyes, he's one of those "Not ment to kill the temple" type of characters (DM also). Honestly making her lvl 3 give her the 120( or some, whatever that person said) seems pretty imbalanced. The only time medic sucks is when she is by herself. I VOTE TO LEAVE MEDIC ALONE!

In new vers can we please use the 'Anywhere' location for the effects when you cast a spell? There are still glitchs like getting valkryie's when at the edge of the map or flying mutas or other temporairly spawned air units off the playing field. You can even get an unlimited amount of ghosts by using the island at south base and walking them off the playing field. Also, how come sometimes when a player leaves a defiler is constantly spawned at the place they left? And when I stun people will assassin and the kakarus touch them it doesn't work? or when they are to far and it still stuns. Or a defiler is created. Both the assassins stun and the assaults need work. There's still the invincible ghost glitch, The probe at bottom base is still not invincible and can be killed with storm or other heros. Move the cannon at the top base next to where you spawn over 1 square, I've already stated i've gotten an afk alli and if I'm a large hero like volt or mech getting stuck inbetween the temple, cannon and the afker. There's also the glitch which spawns broodlings at the flag island and a DM get's mad experiance and money? You can get a hallucinated observer as assassin and fly it around the map as a scout until it dies. Sometimes elimintaed players get scrouges. It seems like all of these are easy fix's... So why haven't they been fixed?

You played against a noob DM if they let you do that >.>. Ensnare and maelstrom both would reveal you, and the DMs curses would very quickly kill you if you stuck around.

The problem I have with medic is the l4. People rush for that l4. Nobody else rushes for Power Overwhelming, or Mine Drone, or Summon Abyssal Beast. It grants 15 levels worth of hitpoints to your teammates. What if it granted everyone 175 minerals instead, or raised everyone's mana cap by 100? IMO, the medic would have to be completely useless to justify that much power.

1. what is the significance of archer using explosive damage?
2. how can you decapitate a temple? sure 1500 damage is a ton, but doesn't a temple have like 50k hp? or does he mean decapitating someone at their temple
3. how come there isn't a list of the classes' spells here? not a big deal, but just seems helpful

Half damage to small units, which means many of heroes and the first 4 spawns.
In the old version temples only had 8.5k hp or something like that, but you'd have to ask him to figure out how he did it.
Make one then!

I played a 137kb v. of Temple siege so the temple had 8.5k.

Ill probly 60% of the time will get ensnared + mael combo'd but you can quickly teleport 'cuz none of DM's spells are instant ('cept for the unoffensive Orb). Even then, while in decap mode the curses will not affect you. So when DM comes up to you and tries to cast his mana draining spell you can stun and then decap ( by then spell would be casted after you transform into decap if you timed it right). The DM i played against had a max of like 1.8k

Note: i had around 450 exp as the assassin , and my two opponents had around 1k exp. Only reason i really one was because they didn't siege my temple and grinded alot.

to pig_gy... I'm sure some of the bugs u talked about we've already fixed.. I went on to fix the rest

As for the crippling strike, it's actually the same with ALL AoE spells, since the burrowed defiler (which is the marker for whether you're under the spell location or not) always spawns below you. So you could be away from the location at the TOP, but ur defiler can still be in the location.. and you'd get paralyzed.

Similarly, if you were at the bottom and the kakarus did touch you, but since the defiler marker spawned below you, you won't get stunned.

Yes, i know i can fix it by creating defilers elsewhere and then moving it to your place.... buut i'm too lazy.. =D

It's A LOT easier to fix on a case-by-case basis rather than going through over 16,000 lines of triggers. Of someone else's map.

The cannons really should be changed back to 50 damage since the broods are 50 hp again. we all have a healthy respect for cannon fire now.

Also,
God Summoner. It will take ridiculous amounts of macro APM and practice, but summoner can theoretically be unbeatable.

Skip upgrades and tech to level 2, then only spend mana. Team splash all 3 lanes. I'm sure at around the 1k exp gap I can be bothered to start with upgrades.

The only one I saw useful and balanced was wall.

God Summoner is too hard