Substrate imbalance, Feedback required

PHC vs SUB please give constructive feedback

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U7joOoFoN8
from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

First of all I thank you Unding for the following recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U7joOoFoN8

 

I assure you that what you see here is the abuse you get for playing with every top substrate player. Let's break this down:

 

1 - PHC: two node start, same build order, two workers one building radioactive extractors one building metal ones and tech. The worker that builds the radioactive goes to build factory/assembly SUB: same start as above

notes: nothing special about it

 

2- PHC: brute, archer, archer, medic proceede to cap after fast starting the first 3 units, one worker is commisioned to tech buiding SUB: dominator, martyr, martyr, cruiser, one worker goes to tech

notes: First major imbalance! sub is allowed to build air fighters and drone cruiser without any metal investment while phc has to invest in each tech branch. As you can see dominators arrive when the phc has two squads of brutes, two archers and 1 medic. dominators have no counters and it is very important to note, that if a sub player was at the receiving end he would just build some t1 sky cleanser and end this.

 

3- PHC: 1 worker continues to tech, but the radioactive income is crippled. SUB: proceedes to clear all the nearby nodes with two martyrs and one drone cruiser readily available from the same T1 building, while finishing up the gate tech

notes: assembly functionality basically hands over the game to substrate that can freely macro and from this point on, if the macro is corect, sustrate should autowin

 

4- PHC: caps two metal nodes while strugling to build an AA and an armory, but has too low radioactive income SUB: hapily macroing and capping while having total air superiority, gate finishes and two avatars are spawned at the phc node.

note: two avatars are deployed on the radioactive node and begin jump starting an anihilator turret. It is important to note that PHC has all the troops massed for defending operations, that means two brutes 4 archers and 1 medic, that is all what 1 factory has produced until that point. They all get murdered, avatars are fine anihilator turrets is done and no radioactive income means armory cannot be completed.

Conclusion: this was all made possible but design, not by skill, because sub player was able to alternate building air, with tier 1, with cruisers while phc didn't have the required income to build all the logistic necessary to have acces to t2 and air.

 

5- phc: allmost all the nodes have no extractors, radoactive is lost, I think I have completed another factory and most importantly I have the tech for incursion. Sub: two avatars sitting on my radioactive node, a 3th one deployed on the metal node, basically it's gg

note: incursion comes into play, they proceed and get almost pummeled by two avatars that had the option to run at any time and create even more havoc. they stayed and killed all my troops save a nemesis with the help of the turret and air dominators.

Conclusion: avatar still put a very good show, the only thing that lead to their demise was a nemesis that cannot one shot them, has a huge cost and dies 1 v 1 vs avatar and dies in 2 seconds if a mauler looks at it.

The imbalance is spread to the unit level and tier level, basically whatever phc has, sub can do better. T1:

ARCHER VS MARTYRS: martyrs are very efficient compared to archer, one martyr squad can clear a node, an archer dies horribly. martyrs are equivalent to both brutes and archers at the same time

BRUTES vs REAPER: No contest here, reaper with capacitators add to the offesive values of substrate making them even deadly in t1 spam

MEDIC vs CAPACITATORS: medics win no contest, it;s the only advantage PHC has The only edge of phc remains the medic, but because of the current meta, PHC cannot beat T1 vs T1, they get demolished and the single combo that works are mass medics with zeus, they can surpise a sub player but cannot kill him. Don't forget that sub regenerates shields and they will receive a medic unit that recharges shields. From that point they can outright kill PHC with T1 spam T2.

ZEUS VS MAULER. No contest here, mauler is tier 3 can kill anything in two seconds

ARTEMIS VS DESTRUCTORS. Artemis win and is the only unit in PHC arsenal, besides ZEUS that cand deal with mass T1 and can use radar as artilery. Very usefull unit. Destructors are not build because they are redundant and Maulers can do whatever they do, but better

APPOLO vs DRONE HIVE: Drone hive hands down. If you get cought without an apollo you just die, anything dies to drone swarm. Drone HIVE can also kill AIR!!!! very big advantage

NEMESIS vs MAULER: Mauler is king and as long as one can go in the cruiser backlines anything that PHC has dies. Nemesis has a very low firing rate and is very underwhelming for what it does. I really dont think two nemesis can one shot one mauler, The worst part about nemesis is that it cannot oneshot avatar and dies to avatar 1 v 1. Add on top of that that cruisers can be build by substrate from the same tier 1 building, so PHC is in a very bad position.

AVENGER: he just ads to the injury, he can be massproduced and can outnumber PHC cruisers 3 to 1. very good cost, very good efficiency, build 5 of them in the beginning of the game along with a drone cruiser and watch phc die. just dont enter in fights where sentinel cannons are deployed

AIR: sub air can be buld from the same T1 bulding and we have

PUNISHER vs HADES contest:

Hades: good for a driveby he has some efficiency as long as it is alligned to the target. Has a very slow animation visual, that makes him pretty much useless in small numbers, they could shine in large numbers in carpet bombing missions. if you want to laugh send Hades to kill dreads, it was a brainfart design that they should even atempt to do this with those plasmas and if the dread is on the move, things can get hillarious.

Punisher: the king of bombers, you just shift click a path and he destroys all. The even better part is that he can snipe workers and a squad if theese babies can kill all phc economy if properly used. Also watch 5 of them wreck a dread, they stay on target and pummel him down. As you can see, substrate has anything that phc but better.

I would have expected more specialization from PHC, in terms of ok, you build an armory specialized on T2 cruisers, that should have an edge of what they do. As it is now, the bigest superweapon that PHC has is the sentinel cannon. it;s the only thying that can stop substrate T2. PHC is forced to turtle, if it has no stationary defense it dies to the better units of substrate in mid game and in late game may have the upper hand with dreads and EMP, but still can get zerged if the SUB is smart. A half decent substrate player should not lose any game played vs PHC on equal skill level.

I think further analysys about balance is required and I really hope a dev will give us feedback. I will post this on both forums.

110,977 views 36 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I am pretty sure the Drone Hive and Dominator used to have Quantum Generator as a prerequisite. This must have been a mistake that this prerequisite was taken away as it just doesn't make sense why this would have intentionally been changed.

Some of your unit comparisons don't make sense (Zeus vs Mauler, Artemis vs Destructor). You may as well include other comparisons like Medic vs Drone Hive, and Apollo vs Mauler.

 

Engineers/Constructors can heal unit HP last I checked, this included Avatars, which particularly makes a group of them very dangerous, they don't boost shield regeneration, but once shields are gone, they heal lost HP. A while back, medics were nerfed so they would not heal each other, Avatars need something at least this.

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Artemis is an artilery unit that targets both buildings and units, Destructor can target only buildings; they have same usability vs buildings

Zeus was matched with Mauler because of its range, being short range and because it has to deal with T1, will always be in a situation where it is focused down by mauler. Basically Mauler insures that PHC does not have direct counter to T1 substrate and without zeus in front the paper cruisers in the back will melt 

Nemesis was matched with Mauler because of their role, but again if a mauler kills two zeus at the begining of the fight, you will have a PHC with maybe two nemesis and nothing on to fight T1. 

Basically substrate it's more easy to use in all scenarios, because of their dps. A phc player need combined arms and a sentinel cannon to keep his artemis alive, so it will always be on defensive if the armies are equal. 

 

If you actually watch the link you will see, that adding Quantum Generator as a prerequisite it has zero impact, because quantum will be up in the first 4 minutes, so it's not really an issue, it delays dominators but not the avatars and full production of cruisers. 

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top


I assure you that what you see here is the abuse you get for playing with every top substrate player.

How do you explain that most of Das Undig's other videos on his channel are him playing PHC and beating every Substrate player he meets?

I do agree though that Avatars are hugely underpriced. They should be 90 quanta imo. I also don't understand why Drone Hives were suddenly made available prior to building QG.

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I am having trouble understanding one thing - if You and few others that very actively are trying to sell the claim that substrate is much more powerful than PHC why don't you just switch to playing Substrate? 
That video only shows that it is possible to lose very badly as PHC doing "the strategy" and being metagamed by Substrate player. As substrate opening dominator & avatars delays typical expansion rate significantly and has a payoff value by punishing the factory opener by PHC. 
I totally disagree with the unit comparisons. It would be very poor game design to have similar units with different skins and  I am happy this is not the case. 

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Ekko_Tek: In beating every substrate player, you mean every low rank substrate player? there is a difference, I hope you know this!? Those sub players are not top 10 ten material, they are ok and they don't have the same macro ability as him.

I don't remember last time you beat me to this game and I have always been a phc player. DasUnding was too but if he reads this he can confirm that the substrate beatdown was too much and he decided to change. Shutdown changed, muffin changed, ailes to changed only that they did earlier before the substrate advantage was so obvious.

It's really not rocket science to chose a race that can produce all units from the same T1 tech. If you haven't played matches vs nr.1 ranked you basically know nothing, you don't really know how to abuse substrate properly and in that respect I did you a great service by breaking down to you what it needs to be done.

The avatar is the kind of unit that even average players can abuse, because at 35 quanta cost in retard proof, so the imbalance grows exponentially according to the skill lvl of the one using it. It will still come to the execution in the end, not all ppl can abuse the same :) 

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Gianttbg, reply 4

I am having trouble understanding one thing - if You and few others that very actively are trying to sell the claim that substrate is much more powerful than PHC why don't you just switch to playing Substrate? 
That video only shows that it is possible to lose very badly as PHC doing "the strategy" and being metagamed by Substrate player. As substrate opening dominator & avatars delays typical expansion rate significantly and has a payoff value by punishing the factory opener by PHC. 
I totally disagree with the unit comparisons. It would be very poor game design to have similar units with different skins and  I am happy this is not the case. 

 

I expected a much better reply from you. "Substrate op? Why not play it?" is insanely disappointing to hear. 2 base Blink allin too strong this patch. Better switch to Protoss. Or in WoL, winfestors gglords op, better play Zerg. Fuck the game balance, right?

Sure. Pay off, except that the Dominator will arrive at a time where no anti air can be put up in time. Engineers then have to hide near the Nexus trying to either get an Armory or a Falcon Anti-Air. Armory is probably better, since Apollo can move around and obviously Falcon turret cannot, but it takes longer. Meanwhile the build time of both options is slower than normal since your extractors are gone. There's no risk here. It always pays off. Even Sub players might die to this if they don't get a Sky Cleanser within their first few Frigates and don't open the same.

I haven't read all the comparisons (and disagree with some even). But I don't think the comparisons were to say that units from both factions have to mirror each other. It's to point out Sub units seems to get the better end of the stick. The comparison also points out Destructor being a dead unit. That isn't good design either.

This probably isn't an issue on big map. Since the distance is further so that PHC has more time to respond (and have captured more nodes, have an Armory on the way, so losing extractors are slightly less damaging). So, removing maps with short air distance might work better than balancing numbers. But then if maps are always big, frigates will probably never be used (except Medic, Capacitor and Sky Cleanser).

Don't get the picture wrong. If early game is like this, this will never be an "Epic Size Battle" game. It will never get there. People lose to coinflip in build order like ZvZ in SC2 is retarded for this kind of genre. Other than that, PHC is more than fine. Apollo rocks super hard as an anti air and anti drone. PHC dreadnoughts are fucking boss. Medics are awesome. Artemis with enough meat shield and radar support are awesome. A big ball of Maulers might still be scary however ;< (probably don't let Sub get to that point).

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I won't bite into SC2 comparisons.

Back on the topic:
I am able to get Dominator out of my Assembly ~2:50 about earliest on the same map.
Tried PHC - able to get Fury out of my Air Factory 3:30 - that's first try. 


Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Danail if you open with fury first you delay capturing the first node with more than 1 min. With dominators you slightly delay the first cap while having the full tech.

 

Reply #9 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

@neinhalt: there are several videos of him vs top 10 substrate players, like the one vs shutdown. The map is a factor on how effective or viable the strategy is. Not sure how us playing each other is relevant but it's been only twice and we're 1-1. The meta has seemed a little stale to me lately and I haven't been playing as much. I do agree the avatar needs changing so let's see if the upcoming changes make a difference. Generally it gets boring to have 1 super strong cheese start like avatar, early bomber, Incursion, etc that ends the game in less than 10 minutes and takes so much more effort to counter than execute.

Reply #10 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Air units:

PHC Hades: 55 second construction time, costs 330 rads to build.

Substrate Punisher: Requires a Quantum archive, 60 seconds to build, 350 rads.

PHC Fury: 60 seconds construction time, costs 200 rads to build

Substrate Dominator: 55 second construction time, 220 rads to build

 

In short: It takes roughly the same time to get a Dominator out as it does a Fury.

It takes far less time to get a Hades out than it takes to get a Punisher out.

 

 

Reply #11 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I agree that there appears to be an imbalance in the Substrate. I love the Substrates, they're so cool but I'm a hardcore PHC player. I have experienced several recent defeats against these guys. However, I simply refuse to give into the current meta of Substrate dominance. I will find an answer to defeating them, even if the devs don't do anything to them. One day... One day...

Reply #12 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I am claiming injustice that Punisher requires more tech than Hades.

Now seriously, building factory and than air factory as PHC allows you to get a Fury, about 40 seconds after the Substrate player gets a dominator, while building early expansion force from the factory and capturing the 3rd node before the substrate player. (depends somewhat on the number of metal extractors at headquarters and first node.
As substrate I get 2nd assembly right after the constructor finishes the first. First starts building dominator.
As PHC I build factory and right after that Air Factory and then get the Fury. 
Maybe You can make a video of this two openers battling it out?

Reply #13 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Imo Sky Factory should go back to requiring Factory so that Hades has the same tech as Punisher. Or both Fury and Hades should require Quantum Relay (and Sky Factory not requiring Factory), early Sky Factory only gives you a scouting Pan.

Sub cruisers, including Drone Hive, and Dominator should also require Quantum Archive.

With these I'm pretty sure things are equal (maybe Avatar cost should go up). And if the PHC lose to a Dominator Avatar opening at this point. I claim that his opponent is just a better player or that he doesn't know how to respond to a Dominator Avatar opening. With Quantum Archive being a delay, PHC should have time to scout with a Pan (which sounds like PHC is forced to get a Sky Factory for early scouting, still, better than right now). Although looking at an Assembly you wouldn't know what is being produced (or can you, by zooming in)?

Now please also don't forget that Subs can go for Matyrs / Drone Hive (possible currently, not under the suggestion above) and 2 early Sky Cleansers (for each starting node) instead of Dominator Avatar. It would counter Fury opening definitely. Is that ok or not ok? I have no idea. Maybe that's just metagame, that certain build order counters certain others.

Can change neutral anti-air to be non-aggressive against air units unless being engaged? That would help Pan and Searcher on big maps.

 

Reply #14 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

As long as the same T1 building can produce both air and land, the quanta req for Punisher is almost a non factor.  You produce whatever you want and after you are finished with your Dominator/Punisher.

the more I play the more I think that somehow the unit cost of substrate is not scaled properly to their power. My games vs substrate is a never ending stream of substrate cruisers assaulting phc. It's almost like tower defense but worse and every time a mauler appears it's like a mini boss.

I found myself struggling to keep allive with 3 factory, 3 armories full production vs a full assault of substrate cruisers and I have observed that usually substrate can outproduce me and tech at the same time.

I have seen this at too many substrate players, so I really think it's a cost issue and the patch posted by frogboy seems a step into the right direction. The only thing that I would add is that Mauler should have the radioactive cost more inline with his power or maybe increase his metal cost.

From the patch notes: 

 

  • Mauler rad cost increased from 30 to 40
  • Mauler logistics increased from 3 to 4

https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/477322/page/1/

 

I have not played on the new patch, but hopefully the new unit cost would at least make substrate macro more of a challenge.

Reply #15 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

A Drone Hive costs 60 rads to build. 

Assuming the Substrate player goes straight for the Radioactive natural which has, say, 2 rads on it it would take them quite awhile to build up to get a single drone hive.  And if they're doing that, they're not doing anything else.

A Zeus, by contrast, requires less than have the amount of radioactives to build. Thus, the PHC player can tech up and build a Zeus.

Anyway, we're going to see how this week's balance update works out in the Meta.

There will always be arguments over which side is OP.  

Which is ironic right? Because we have other people who say the two sides are the same. :)

Reply #16 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

well the rad cost increase solved nothing IMO. sub cruisers outnumber phc 2 to 1 always. the mechanic behind it it's just to simple. build assemblies, tech up while capping with martyrs and as soon as the the tech is done, queue cruisers and profit. 

avatar cost has not been addressed yet and sub  cruisers are still cheap for what they can do. assemblies build with metal and produce high tech units as opposed to armories that drain rads. the meta it's to simple for subs

 

Reply #17 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I was going to start my own thread but I figured it would simply be better to add to the discussion here.

I first off agree with Danail. You can't do a 1 to 1 comparison of the units here since each race has units that fit different roles.

That being said, here's my 2 cents on where the balance is right now.

After the changes made during the release, the PHC really got hit hard. Their T1 frigates got the nerf along with the Zeus. Although I agree the Zeus was OP and needed a nerf, nerfing the brutes and archers went a bit too far. The PHC had an advantage in their T1 frigates while the Sub always seemed to excel more with their T2 cruisers. With the nerfing of the brutes and archers (and then subsequent nerfs to T1 frigates of both sides in subsequent patches), the PHC got hit hard. They lost both their frigate advantage as well as having their other tank unit, the Zeus, getting the nerf gun.

Furthermore, the more I play, the more I'm convinced that the Mauler really needs a nerf. It has great lasting power and it's cannon (sorry, can't recall the name) is insanely powerful. I've now seen multiple instances where only a few of them will tear through a dreadnought, even one at near full health, almost instantly. As it has lasting power, swarming it with frigates doesn't work well (also due to their nerfing). As it's cannon is so powerful, nothing large, even a dreadnought, can handle it. The only successful way of handling it head on is with other Maulers or by having much better odds against it. Of course, you can bomb it or shoot it with Artemis, but if it's a large group of Maulers, you probably won't have much success.

I don't think the balance is too far off between the two races. A relatively good nerf to the Mauler's cannon damage along with a small boost to the PHC frigates health, would do the trick. Another idea would be balancing the units through their cost. Regardless of the other changes made, I really think that Mauler cannon is just too insanely powerful and needs balance.

There may need to be some changes with the Avatar / Sentry mix as well.

Reply #18 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Neinhalt_Sieger, reply 16

well the rad cost increase solved nothing IMO. sub cruisers outnumber phc 2 to 1 always. the mechanic behind it it's just to simple. build assemblies, tech up while capping with martyrs and as soon as the the tech is done, queue cruisers and profit. 

avatar cost has not been addressed yet and sub  cruisers are still cheap for what they can do. assemblies build with metal and produce high tech units as opposed to armories that drain rads. the meta it's to simple for subs

 

Drone Hives can barely scratch the paint on any of the PHC cruisers units.  In fact, a single Apollo backed by archers will wipe out a host of them.

The Substrate have no equivalent to incursion and unlike the PHC, the Gateway requires a Quantum Archive.

I agree that the Mauler's primary weapon is probably OP versus the cost of the Mauler.  

Reply #19 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

well  the new incursions units is a glas cannon and does good vs t1 but thats about it for 60 quanta. and in order to call the proper incursions you need 120 quanta thus also a quanta relay. the avatar is way cheaper then the sentinals. can build stuf it shootr both land AND air and just melts t1 units like its a hard counter to t1. so yea not realy valid.

 

also drone hives wile its try that an apollo is its real counter. if it doesnt die to a mauler barging in. it wil kill the other cruizers with ease accept for the zeus. it wil melt an artemis and a nemsis same way.

Reply #20 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

wellcome to the phc beatdown club. I have just had a game where I have mined almost 2 times more metal than substrate and substrate had the biger army. what a joke.

phc is choking for metal while sub is mass producing T2 while also having a good economy.

Draginol: the main problem with the low metal cost for substrate cruisers is that the extra metal goes into workers and economy making the allready broken cruisers even more powerful 

Reply #21 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Neinhalt_Sieger, reply 20

wellcome to the phc beatdown club. I have just had a game where I have mined almost 2 times more metal than substrate and substrate had the biger army. what a joke.

phc is choking for metal while sub is mass producing T2 while also having a good economy.

Draginol: the main problem with the low metal cost for substrate cruisers is that the extra metal goes into workers and economy making the allready broken cruisers even more powerful 

I don't agree with this rationale.  I think the main issue I've seen is PHC players got used to mass producing Brutes and winning. 

The Substrate do need that Drone Hive unit to be out slightly earlier.  Moving it back beyond a Quantum Archive isn't going to happen.  The challenge is making sure that the Drone Hive can't be easily mass produced or, as you say, produced while the Substrate player builds up behind it.  Its metal cost may have to be increased.

 

Reply #22 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Think the substrate Avenger also needs to be looked at. I have played 2 games on tough, and 1 painful PHC. I built nothing but Avengers except for the first couple minutes, some anti air, a few novelty dreadnoughts, and capacitors for the energy. It killed pretty much everything tier 1, tier 2, buildings, and even dreadnoughts if they can get to them all with ease, and able to take damage while doing so. Currently it is way too versatile with its current health pool, and DPS. DPS alone sits around 400+ without upgrades. I do think it needs to be cut down to around 100 or so dps and maybe some other changes to make it more balanced. 

Reply #23 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Hello,

 

after playing a few games with sub I have the following to say:

 

SUB>>PHC in almost every situation!

 

-the start of sub is much more save versus air harassment while sub does not have to waste one engineer by building the arsenal (->sub can expand faster to the third patch getting more minerals and is save against cheese)

-if phc is not able to get a radioactive deposite with the first engineers it will nearly impossible for them to get out of the disadvantage

-phc air is totally useless and weak in comparison too sub why is sub able to kill the nexus so much faster with air than phc, I dont see the balance what is the advantage to have a bomber vs t1 versus a race which dont build t1 and can easily rape them nearly instantly (lol)

-the new phc unit for 60 quanta maybe a mistake? 25-30?

-nemesis is too expensive in comparison and the buildtime is too long maybe 50s? and 400metal? (8 metal/s)? Maybe Athena will help us?

 

->After playing sub I get angry about the blance

 

Maybe take a look at my youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn5vKaoNZjaGeRNBoQHkXhw

and you can see how easy it is to win vs phc even with a huge disadvantage at the start and how difficult it is to hold a sub back with phc even if you completely emp the opponent multiple times without using the counter abbility by the opponent.

Therefor a video:

 

[Update]


Something different for the end:

 

Sound:

The sound transition with a stereo system from the left to the right side by scrolling form the left to the right side over a sound source for example is really heaviside which is really aggravating. I would really like to have a soft transition, which is in fact more nature like.

Hotkeys and control:

I would really like to have customizeable hotkeys maybe saved in a cloud or exportable in a file like in Sc2 (cloud). Also involving scrolling (for example with wasd).

Right click scrolling does not work (it moves so impressively fast maybe I make a video) and is not very well-thought-out: for example if you want to place a move order you take the right click but if your mouse isn`t well-thought-out as well you will maybe have a little shake and the order does not work which is really problematic sometimes.

Unit control:

Sometimes some orders do not want to work often by capping generators.

Aircrafts do strange things :(

 

 

Reply #24 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Draginol: for starter, ignoring the fact the sub has better units both air and land, it will be a good start to actually make the sub cruisers cost more minerals than their phc counterparts and the most important thing is to deny the ability of avatars to build while making sure the sub can drop workers with quanta. This will make substate players be very careful with their economy and will acomplish two things:

1 no more mass producing cruiser while also having 3-4 workers on the field (its too easy for them to have 4 or 5 assemblies producing all cruisers while having the extra minerals invested in escalating the nodes income and quanta production)

 

2 they will actually need to plan their strategy and they will face the same dillema that phc has, meaning they will have to learn how to macro with only two workers in the first 5-10 min of the game

 

Its time that the power of the sub cruisers, be proportional withtheir cost. I dont mind that a few mauler can kill my solo dread with ease, as long as the mauler cost at least the same amount as nemesis. In this curent meta, if sub gets 3 rad extractors phc is dead in open fight

Please do consider the feedback of UNDING, he was the top phc player IMO

Reply #25 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I do agree with topic starter.

PHC cant do anything against substrate. While playing agains a PHC AI as a substrate on normal difficulty i can faceroll AI any way i want. Tried a few games for PHC vs Substrate AI on normal, got rekt every single time with no chance on survival. 

Substrate t1 are FAR more supperior to PHC. In even fights phc losses every unit while substrate loses not more than 30% of his army.

T2 vise the situation is similar, artemises cant handle all of substrate presure and other t2 units loose to substrate units. 

Besides economy vise substrate has far more options to temporary boost production via boost and overcharge. 

I dont actually know why this hate for PHC is there atm. 

Frogboy plz consider revising this balance issue to find a solution to PHC problem. I cant actually give you some proposals, cause im not that good with numbers, but for me as a casual player it is clear that PHC falls behind a lot atm.

 

Just to be clear i am a main substrate player and i do want to see some challenge while playing against PHC.