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After playing a few games today I was wondering to myself why the hydralisk, a unit which was once the staple in both brood war and the first half of beta has become a situational unit at best.
Our little 80 (once 90) hp friend, does alot of damage, and can attack air and ground. Sounds great right? Sounds like it should be an awesome unit for dealing with the plethora of harassment T and P can bring down on a zerg playing a macro style game. So what happened to the highly effective all-around unit that once was?
Well for starters its the most immobile unit in the zerg arsenal at an extremely slow 2.25. This means that the only unit a hydralisk can outrun is the thor. Yup... even un-sieged tanks and zealots move as quickly. This obviously doesn't allow the hydralisk much flexibility, and severely limits its offensive utility.
Many argue that it is necessary to spread creep for the hydra to be effective, and this is very true, it is the only unit that gains a whopping 50% movement speed on creep. To them I say, why should zerg players have to clone overlords and produce creep tumors with energy they can often not spare, sinking another 20-30 apm into the already demanding race, just so the hydralisk can be used in a semi-offensive manner. This dynamic is ridiculous, and is why you see so many players opting for upgraded speedlings into muta/ultra vs protoss, and rarely see hydras vs T, even when they are no tanks in play (ling/bling does it better). Creep should be a bonus, not a requirement that makes a unit viable. (creep multiplier should be changed to 1.3 if movement speed buff is given).
If overlords could drop creep while moving it would certainly help, but currently it is nearly impossible to safely retreat from an opponents position without staying on the creep, meaning you need to either creep tumor right up to the point you wish to attack, or let your food supply sit in the middle of combat, just so you can get a little bit of slowly spreading creep.
In the best case scenario, your hydralisks are engaging a group of gateway units or a tank-less terran force on creep, or defending harass, on creep. Any other use of this unit is suicidal and cost-ineffective. For 100/50 these units can definitely be worth it if your opponent has no splash damage, but otherwise aren't nearly as cost effective as lings/roaches/banelings. That being said, you start to ask yourself why make hydras when I can mine 1/4 the gas, upgrade melee and carapace, and use lings in combination with extra queens or muta for AA to accomplish the same thing while having insane mobility? Spend that extra gas on banelings and you are in business against MMM or zealot heavy forces as well.
The hydras strength was its versatility, and it is no longer versatile. I honestly believe that a hydralisk buff would be a huge boon for zerg, and solve alot of the problems zerg are experiencing with all-in's and the plethora of early game harassment they have to deal with (especially vs T).
Imagine for a minute that hydralisks had a movement speed upgrade, and 90hp. Suddenly zerg has a unit that can be made fairly early in the game, is very strong defensively, and actually creates threat for the zerg player (since it can be used offensively now). All of the sudden it isn't so wise to 1:1:1 and do obnoxious hellion/drop/banshee/viking harass or all-in with 4gate since with the movement speed hydras will actually be able to counter attack & be microed. I would also suggest improving the unburrow time in order to allow shuttle/dropship sniping like in SC1.
Additionally with the recent tank change, another 10hp would result in hydralisks being hit with the secondary radii of tank splash to survive 4 hits instead of 3 (I haven't tested this so I'm not 100% sure). Improving the dismal performance of hydras slightly against a force that has a couple of tanks. (This wouldn't change the colossi/hydra relationship either).
I really think this would help zerg as a whole, and encourage more people to make use of this unit.
Note: its possible a change like this would have an undesirable effect on midgame ZvP, but I still think it is needed (at least the movement speed part).
  
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I do agree that its a lot of w3rk to spread creep everywhere to use hydras, but I don't think they're that essential a unit any more, mostly anti air//support so as a defensive role they're fine really.
Although lacking a good offensive option is definitely not fun.
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I think you posted a new blog instead of editing @_@
hydras are a different unit now, they do sick dps and are pretty darn massable
but I agree the movement speed thing is really lame
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On September 27 2010 02:56 mOnion wrote:
I think you posted a new blog instead of editing @_@
hydras are a different unit now, they do sick dps and are pretty darn massable
but I agree the movement speed thing is really lame
Yeah, oops, I had to re-log-in and I didn't want to lose my entire post so I resent the post data. Must've accidentally done it twice.
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as a protoss player i really would rather hydralisks be used more as opposed to roach/muta, although if you made hydralisks faster i think you would have to make roaches the slow units and get rid of their speed upgrade to make roaches less of a threat to protoss so he can get colossus or templar tech to deal with inevitable hydra play, but this might be a bad idea.
EDIT: might be a bad idea because it would still be hard to get hydra if a protoss is going 3 gate robo or 4 gate pressure
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I used to use hydras against terran bio, but now, I really don't use hydras at all anymore. I mean, the stim with medivacs healing just rip apart hydras just like thors and tanks. Multiples of them die at once to collossi. And the creep speed is ridiculous. It feels like im moving 30 reavers across the map
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I think people are overestimating how 'massable' hydras are. At 100/50 a pop they cost twice the gas as a marauder, while being waaaaaaay more fragile. Everytime I use hydras I'm scared to engage with them because they're not longer dispensible units, and since they're so slow once you're losing the fight, you're gonna lose most of your hydra force even if you try to retreat.
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Hydras would be much better if they were biological.
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I mean just biological, like the queen. Which apparantly means psionic or something in SC2's super cool new terminology.
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On September 27 2010 05:05 Piy wrote:I mean just biological, like the queen. Which apparantly means psionic or something in SC2's super cool new terminology.
So like a http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Baneling
sorry, i'm being dumb on purpose right now and I don't know why.
But yeah i agree, they just die too easily to + to light for their cost. They feel more like a 75/30 unit with their weaknesses
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I sincerely feel like the Hydralisk is now the most useless unit in SC2. I just don't see a single reason to get it over any other unit in the Zerg arsenal due to its absolutely terrible mobility.
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I think the main reason hydralisks were moved to lair tech is because of the fact that you now can group all same production buildings in one number. With the use of queens and all your expansion bases, you can now easily fill your screen with hydralisks easier than before. You'll never feel cheated by making 3 or more expansions but five or more gateways or barracks?
Hydralisks can be quite deadly in numbers. Besides, you'll have roaches and zerglings before hydralisks, Also, they look a lot more menacing on screen than the BW version.
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Hydras arent as terrible as you make them sound. They shred gateway units are really underused in zvz and but fail hard against terran. Zerg already has the options for an extremely mobile force with roaches lings mutas and banelings. So its not like not having them slows down the race as a whole.
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They need a new attack animation. Maybe make them shoot green stuff like Roaches or how they shot in BW.
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hydras are awesome, you just need roaches or ling in front for armor.
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On October 19 2010 16:59 T0fuuu wrote:
Hydras arent as terrible as you make them sound. They shred gateway units are really underused in zvz and but fail hard against terran. Zerg already has the options for an extremely mobile force with roaches lings mutas and banelings. So its not like not having them slows down the race as a whole.
-"Shred gateway units" (regurgitated response that everyone posts in every hydra thread)
1: Only in the sense that if you have enough to kill most of the zealots before they hit melee range, yes. Going 1 base hydra vs cannon contain into 4 warpgate doesn't mean you can't lose all your hydra.
2: List of units that "shred gateway units"
-Roaches (speed/burrow)
-Marines (better than hydras)
-Marauders
-Hydras
So basically nothing special.
-"Under used in ZvZ"
How the hell are they underused in zvz? List of units that kill hydras cost effectively in zvz:
-Roaches
-Zerglings
-Banelings
So basically everything except pure muta with no mineral units.
Hydra can kill muta except that muta give you far more options than going hydra. If you go hydra vs muta you are basically passive anyway. You might as well get queens and or infestors to stop muta because they are better units to have and have no weakness to banelings, Queens are slow but you can still walk across most of the map until creep runs out and it doesn't take that much longer.
The only situation hydras are really any use in ZvZ is behind a thick wall of roaches, since that way you have a solid DPS unit but it's not ridiculously weak against everything.
Having hydras doesn't slow down the race as a whole. Absolutely. That's because they're almost never used. It's not like you can rush ahead with muta ling baneling roach or whatever and leave your hydras to get owned or not doing anything.
They can be used against all races, but its pretty much always behind a wall of roaches. Against terran you can use them with infestors vs bio heavy since marines have only range 5 and marauders aren't great against hydra. Apparantly dimaga has a queen/hydra build and that's suppoesd to be good against tanks as well.
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I'm still in favor of having a speed upgrade for the hydra so that its off creep speed equates, or at least resembles its on creep speed (and thus on creep speed stays the same).
Also, i've thought about the idea of twiddling with the unit supply being lowered to 1 with a small change in the strength of the unit, but i still think speed is a huge factor in its usage.
Edit: also, alternatively, i like the idea of changing the type of the unit from light, to normal biological.
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Roach and Hydralisks costs more in minerals but less in gas than a single mutalisk. Hydralisks have greater range. Besides, it makes sense to have that much ranged firepower instead of waiting for brood lords.
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On October 19 2010 17:20 Slayer91 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 16:59 T0fuuu wrote:
Hydras arent as terrible as you make them sound. They shred gateway units are really underused in zvz and but fail hard against terran. Zerg already has the options for an extremely mobile force with roaches lings mutas and banelings. So its not like not having them slows down the race as a whole. -"Shred gateway units" (regurgitated response that everyone posts in every hydra thread) 1: Only in the sense that if you have enough to kill most of the zealots before they hit melee range, yes. Going 1 base hydra vs cannon contain into 4 warpgate doesn't mean you can't lose all your hydra. 2: List of units that "shred gateway units" -Roaches (speed/burrow) -Marines (better than hydras) -Marauders -Hydras So basically nothing special. -"Under used in ZvZ" How the hell are they underused in zvz? List of units that kill hydras cost effectively in zvz: -Roaches -Zerglings -Banelings So basically everything except pure muta with no mineral units. Hydra can kill muta except that muta give you far more options than going hydra. If you go hydra vs muta you are basically passive anyway. You might as well get queens and or infestors to stop muta because they are better units to have and have no weakness to banelings, Queens are slow but you can still walk across most of the map until creep runs out and it doesn't take that much longer. The only situation hydras are really any use in ZvZ is behind a thick wall of roaches, since that way you have a solid DPS unit but it's not ridiculously weak against everything. Having hydras doesn't slow down the race as a whole. Absolutely. That's because they're almost never used. It's not like you can rush ahead with muta ling baneling roach or whatever and leave your hydras to get owned or not doing anything. They can be used against all races, but its pretty much always behind a wall of roaches. Against terran you can use them with infestors vs bio heavy since marines have only range 5 and marauders aren't great against hydra. Apparantly dimaga has a queen/hydra build and that's suppoesd to be good against tanks as well.
Hey yeah ! I totally agree man we should give hydra a speed upgrade so they can totally just 1a to victory in every game since i like to mass 1 unit and win. /sarcasm
No. Really. What are you trying to get across? You just argued that you can go hydra. And that zerg atm can play without hydra if they want.
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EPT
