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Disclaimer: I will talk lightly about balance but i dont care about marauder stim or HELLion or hidra off creep, etc. This will also be kind of long but i want to address all the issues surrounding drops.
In the beggining there was the ling, the swarm, and all that surround it was good...
When you come to analyze BW, or his mutant step child SC2, even the most clueless can recognize certain patterns that inspire the 3 races.
Protoss is strong, futuristic, big giant dicks with flashy lights. Zerg are the bugs, the aliens, the weaker units by far that relay solely on numbers and overrunning the opponents. This 2 points are strongly engraved in every cutscene in Vanilla SC and BW, even on the trailer for SC the first thing we see is protoss obliterating a planet. Terran then, was the "middle guy", not too strong not too weak but more than anything extremely adaptable.
Yarrr SC2.
Now after that not so needed introduction the point im raising is this. SC2 needs the SCOURGE.Most people already have said it but its worth saying it again:ZERG CANT STOP DROPS. But, what i believe is even more important. THERES NO RISK OR FEAR in dropping a Zerg player.
Most people theorycraft that in SC2 the way of zerg to stop drops is the infestor, (this are the same people that try to solve every zerg problem with the infestor actually :p), whats the problem with this?
-Its FUCKING EXPENSIVE (more than any drop)
-Its FUCKING SLOW
-Requires APM while scourges could work fine with patrol.
-The drop already happened, this is the key point for me, people were ALWAYS wary of dropping zerg because the scourge could destroy the dropship, not nullify it, DESTROY IT, losing a loaded dropship is BIG, specially for 25m 75g and even if they werent caught while dropping they still could be chased by trying to escape.
But back to SC, in starcraft scourges were mostly about stopping T drops than P drops, ¿WHY?, because for a T drop to wreak havoc all it needs is Tier 1 units, P on the other side needs either DTS, Templars or Reaver, which are an even bigger investment and trying to drop them actually MAKES YOUR MAIN FORCE WEAKER, this is also why upgraded shuttles were able to scape from scourges, because if they werent able to do that P drops would have been WAY too risky to be worth it.
Just for complementing the point: The drop for Zerg is also a big risk because of the strong defenses that the other races have and the fact that you are flying ON FUCKING SUPPLY DEPOTS. (which is good, because Zerg drops also consist of tier 1 units making the risk balanced)
Lets resume:
-Terran drops, mostly tier 1 units, wreak havoc on units and buildings, easy to prevent and easy to destroy if it tries to escape.
-Protoss drops, mostly tier 3 units, wreak havoc on units, can only destroy key buildings efficiently and only Dts, not so easy to prevent and HARD to chase if its escapes.
-Zerg drop, mostly tier 1 units, wreac havoc on every building an unprepared units, medium difficulty to prevent, easy to chase if it tries to escape.
See how things "even out"?
Oh brothers where art thou?
Now back to the bastard. In SC2 the only real way to prevent drops and chase them if they fail is the Mutalisk. THERES NO OTHER UNIT ABLE TO DO THIS. This is a mistake, why? Because the game has 3 tier of units, this obviously gives us a clue as to certain units conformations the developers had in mind in certain stages in the game. Or putting it simply, and going straight to the real deal: LATE GAME ZvX has NO MUTALISK.
So even if i stay toe to toe against my opponents, if we get to late game on even conditions, i will always lose against a player that can abuses drops because i would NEVER be able to stop them without sacrificing my unit conformation, so, if dont stop drops, i die, and if i stop them, once our armies collide, i die.
Now to the last point, why we wont get scourges? Because it looks FUCKING PATHETIC for Blizzard to add a unit after the game was released. But expect in future patches some kind of "soft fix" on this regarding medivacs. My take is that they wont make the loading/unloading instants or make them a lil slower because. Also dont expect to see drop researchable because of the first reason stated.
But have faith, we will get or scourges back, in one expansion or the other.
PS: Ill prolly add more to this if theres enough discussion but right now i want to ladder.
  
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
Kerrigan said she pulled her Zerg swarm back so that they can evolve.
But they actually devolved.
Taking out lurkers and scourges is reason why I don't even bother with sc2.
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Hong Kong20321 Posts
nice blog, really interesting. never thought so deeply about drops and T1 vs T3 drops and how scourge are so awesome.
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yeah, I hope they don't wait till the zerg game to bring in scourge.
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this is what I was thinking every time i saw a zerg player in the gsl.. no zerg seems in complete control of the air and spore colonys are never used. scourge gave a lot of air control and made the game 10 times more strategic.
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Yeah drops are killer but they're definitely not as game-breaking as you make them sound...just spread your ovies out and you should see them coming anyway (especially late game when you already have 12+ ovies to work with). Mid- to late-game Zerg has no excuse not to know what's coming when you have that many overlords. If you see the drop coming it doesn't matter what you have because you'll be ready...then you use fungal growth or mutas or even queens to snipe. Or just chase the ship with sling/bling and don't let it unload. Scouting the drop is the key - you would lose to drops in BW as well if you didn't see the drops coming; scourge don't matter if you don't know where the ships are.
Oh, and by the way, drops also mean that Terran's main army will be weaker as well (by whatever amount they put in the dropships)...that means you can hit the main army right before/right after the drop because it'll be weaker than normal and you can punish for that.
Yes I know it's hard to keep checking your minimap for red dots when you're microing/macroing late game...but that's how you stop drops and own the Terran. It's not a cakewalk, but you can do it.
And if you haven't done it already, turn on the high-contrast option for the minimap (your units=green, enemy's units=red)...that made minimap-watching in BW easier, and it works for this game too.
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Man o man do i agree. I really hope they add in scourge with a patch. They couldnt get corruptors to work out in beta and they are still stale. They are basically just an anti colo unit. Scourge is just the way it needs to be.
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Sadly we have to wait for the expansion packs before scourges can actually be added in. I hate playing a game while feeling like its not even complete yet -__-. 2 more years.
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Poor little Colossi... They never had a chance.
In all seriousness, it is hard enough to get air superiority with Toss, so while scourge help In ZvT they hurt the balance of ZvP.
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On September 27 2010 15:33 Percutio wrote:
Poor little Colossi... They never had a chance.
In all seriousness, it is hard enough to get air superiority with Toss, so while scourge help In ZvT they hurt the balance of ZvP.
Void Rays will kill scourges easily, since they have little HP. It will just force Toss and Terran to be A BIT more defensive, while allowing zerg to be more agressive while not worrying about drops on Phoenix fleets early on
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I think, if implemented properly, scourge really would help quite a bit. A second glance should be given to them - maybe HotS?
However, there is not just ONE reason that zerg vs terran is "broken" right now - its a culmination of numerous factors and not just one is the cause of the "imbalance".
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Dunno about some of the stuff but I completely agree with you that the Zerg is missing scourge. Pretty sure every Zerg will agree with you 
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On September 27 2010 15:39 Mortician wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2010 15:33 Percutio wrote:
Poor little Colossi... They never had a chance.
In all seriousness, it is hard enough to get air superiority with Toss, so while scourge help In ZvT they hurt the balance of ZvP. Void Rays will kill scourges easily, since they have little HP. It will just force Toss and Terran to be A BIT more defensive, while allowing zerg to be more agressive while not worrying about drops on Phoenix fleets early on
Void Rays do damage too slowly before charge to stop scourge.
It would really come down to Pheonixes killing them with their moving shot, but that doesn't help Colossi, it still makes fighting mutas tougher, and using graviton beam becomes way too risky.
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As a T player, I'd like to see both Lurkers and Scourge back in the game (balanced appropriately, of course). It would make the TvZ matchup so much more interesting (rather than simply facing mass hydra/roach as mech, or infestor/ling/bling as bio, or hydra/corruptor as air every game).
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Scourges would make sense ZvT, but it would make Colossi way too vulnerable in ZvP. At the moment, I don't have any idea how to balance this all out...
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On September 27 2010 17:24 OpticalShot wrote:
Scourges would make sense ZvT, but it would make Colossi way too vulnerable in ZvP. At the moment, I don't have any idea how to balance this all out...
Do less damage against massive, maybe.
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On September 27 2010 17:24 OpticalShot wrote:
Scourges would make sense ZvT, but it would make Colossi way too vulnerable in ZvP. At the moment, I don't have any idea how to balance this all out...
Yes and no. You can always make something like explosive damage to do less to massive units or something like that. Also you can give scourge a higher priority and that way stalkers would kill them before they hit a collosi. There are several ways around it.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://online-custom-publishing.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/05/12/2333773654_0dff790615.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/4782/scourge.jpg)
