Since burrow only costs 100 minerals and 100 gas and can be researched at any point of the game I don't understand why it is so little used.
The most useful use of this great ability is burrowing drones under from drops and vulture/zealot raids. In almost every ZvP or ZvT Zerg is going to lose a ton of drones in a situation where the Zerg could have just burrowed their drones to save them. Every game has worked harassment and this seems like a very good preventative measure.
There's also tons of other useful uses of this ability like hiding zerglings everywhere or hydras to surprise air units.
When progamers do get this ability it always seems like they get to use it enough to be worth the small cost, but there's just so few games I see Zerg use it. Why?
It's only useful for scouting, and most zergs would rather just use an overlord or have their army patrolling. You usually get it against a strat that revolves around harass, like Sair/Reaver.
Anyway, if you get it early enough to make a big difference the 100min/gas is a bit expensive, and by the time it doesn't matter you have enough ovies/units that it's not needed.
i just used it against a onebase protoss as soon i realized he went sair/dt into expo. burrow finished just in the right second, delaying his expo for SO long
On November 24 2009 00:14 BeefyEnchilada wrote: It's only useful for scouting, and most zergs would rather just use an overlord or have their army patrolling. You usually get it against a strat that revolves around harass, like Sair/Reaver.
Anyway, if you get it early enough to make a big difference the 100min/gas is a bit expensive, and by the time it doesn't matter you have enough ovies/units that it's not needed.
This is flat out wrong, it's not only useful for scouting.
You see progamers use it to save tons of Drones from harassment, and they use groups of burrowed Hydras to surprise airunits.
I'd say that the best burrow use is saving Drones from economic harassment which happens in every single game (unless Zerg is rolling their opponent). The minerals you save from remaking Drones is more than enough to cover the initial research. The only real expense is the 100 gas. The larvae you can spend on units instead of Drones should be worth that small investment.
It is also useful in zvp vs any harrass that doesn't include HTs, because quite often there is no observer. In zvt, burrow counters eraser beautifully. Doesn't help vs other lategame stuff though, because of terran maphack. In zvz it could be used for some cheesy stuff, but usually 100/100 is way too expensive for that mu.
Generally, in the later stages of midgame burrow seems like a good investment to me. If you get it earlier you better have some strategy that makes more use of it (or you are as lucky as flothefreak )
I always get burrow when I play Iccup vs. T and P mid game. It not only makes scouting and anti harrasement easier, it also makes surrounding a lot easier 2. I can take out the first push of medics and marines with like 2.5 to 3 control groups of lings.
I think that it could be more widely used... but only in zvp. I haven't seen an eraser in zvt in forever. Usually though... its not completely necessary. If you run your drones fast enough then you don't need burrow, and your scouting can be done with overlords instead of burrowing lings. But recently we have seen progamers use it a little more often.
It saves drones from vults/reavers, but from HT it doesn't. So say you're zerg, you see a shuttle fly in your base... are you gonna take the chance and just burrow? cause if you burrow you're losing 5~6 drones almost for sure if it's HT. But if you wait till the unit drops... well that reaver is gonna get it's shot off, and it'll still kill a couple drones. Basically you're taking a chance, the only time burrow is really useful against harassment i would say is against DTs. Since Terran has their scan... (Which is think is a little ridic. lol), burrowing won't do much at all, it's much better to run. And toss's harassment with HT, or Reaver just needs to see the drone for a moment, and you're F-ed either way if you burrow. But if you run your drones, you can run 'em before the shuttle/dropship gets too close to your drones, and you get to save a lot more drones. This is minimal, but there is that short mining time that the drone gets to mine in the "other base" it ran to. I know it makes almost no difference, but hey, who knows, that + the 3, 4, extra drones you didn't lose to that storm might.
I've seen it used for scouting purposes, but that's when you can pay attention to the minimap really well. At low/mid level, you don't see the minimap as often as you should. But if you have the zergling just haning out there, not burrowed, you still get the scouting (just as much scouting against shuttle/dropships), and against ground units, you get that thing that says "you're units are under attack" which at low/mid level we're much more likely to notice than just a couple red dots that you barely see. So at high level, sure it'll save you 5, 10 lings throughout the game, but at our level, we're more likely to miss the army that goes by.
One useful thing i suppose is for stopping expos. Not letting the nexus/CC be built. Well... against terran it doesn't really work... again, scan... against toss, pretty useful, damn annoying when they do it to me. (i'm a toss player so...) but when i see burrow i can usually safely assume that their tech is prob. pretty slow. so i end up using DTs more, and to be honest, i think it makes up for it. that 100 gas early means either slower ovie speed upgrade, or slower lurk/mutal tech. So just a little harass with DTs, and stand a DT on the ramp and build cannons around my nex first.... idk if it's worth it or not.
Catching air units with burrowed hydra is some hard junk. I've never seen anyone do it THAT well (obviously except for in the pros, especially jaedong). Sure if you get it once it's prob. totally worth that 100/100 you spent, but you still have to have at least 5, 6 hydras burrowed and not fighting with your army for every point you wanna "defend" against drops. Zerg having a lot of bases usually, would mean at least 12, 18 hydras just randoming chillin out, not fighting. And i think that COULD make a difference.
I use burrow only when protoss is going sair reaver so i could spy on map with lings and saving drones from reaver harras. Also 10 hydra burowed is perfect trap against shuttles full with reavers.
Other than this i think its not worth it research it.
Burrow works against DTs and reavers has harassment but not against storm. This is probably why zergs don't use it. Against zealot harass you either use the drones to fuck up the zealots attack by bugging them through or you maynard them away to safety. Normally you can do this before dying a single drone if you saw the shuttle or units a few seconds before they came to your drones.
Against reaver sair obv burrow is extremely good and almost a must (atleast for 3 base zerg imo which lets face it 99% of the games consist of). Reavers are easily scouted with burrowed lings all around your bases and the instantaneosness of burrow makes it great against the harass itself. Also burrowed hydras can be a game winner in those games.
I feel like when everyone started to realise that they should bind their f-keys to main nat and third all types of harassments were easier to deal with by just maynarding instantly. The downside to this is that if the shuttle comes in at an angle where the drones moves towards it they would be vulnerable still. But mostly to storm drops and burrow is useless against those.
Also lastly burrow doesn't counter harass in itself. You also need units there to clean it up. I think people rather spend some money on a few extra scourge that will be useful in more than just one situation.
I honestly think that burrow is underused. And I dont even mean for saving drones, just look how beautifully effort used it against light a few days ago. I tried a variation of his 3 hatch lurker build except I used it for defensive measures and I gotta say, unburrowing a group of zerglings right behind his first marine push while hes shooting at the zerglings attacking from the front = beautiful amounts of marine blood.
Having a group of burrowed units be detected and chopped up while they are still underground sucks. Mostly it sucks because if they are hotkeyed, you have to manually unburrow each little critter rather than pressing 1u.
On November 24 2009 02:14 Ideas wrote: you guys know that terran can scan right?
Yeah, I guess they may scan a mineral line if its empty to search for burrow... but what are the chances they are gonna use scans in the open field to look for burrowed lings?
EPT
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