Why is that even a question, I don't know. But I'm sure most Protoss who have had the misfortune of encountering them have arrived at the same conclusion. These guys are ridiculously good. Not only is their damage output insane thanks to their broodlings, but their broodlings also fuck with units AI making attacking them that much harder. Furthermore, I feel that Protoss have no respectable answer to them.
Sure, Phoenix can work but in reality, Corruptors dominate them. Furthermore, the armored type of the Corruptor and Broodlord make phoenix extremely ineffective. Voidrays sound like a good answer, but in my games I never end up getting them because the threat of a hydra switch is too great and simply massing up on Voids when I need the gas for Colossi/Templar is just silly.
I just don't know anymore, my latest encounter with them is one where I am able to beat them but the amount of damage they dealt was insane. Especially considering how dead WaxAngel was. To beat them this game, I warped in Stalker with blink. They worked pretty well, but if Wax wasn't so dead then I'm sure Zergling reinforcements would have squelched them easily. It's REALLY depressing.
I've had issues with them as T, too. I've lost about 4-5 games in which I was dominating due to 3-5 of them enterting the battlefield. T has more adequate ways of dealing with them, but still, they are extremely annoying mainly due to the fact that they mess with AI worse than carriers. At least carrier interceptors don't block your movement.
I'm not really sure about the balance of them, but yeah, they seem damn good.
Its totally differen from guardians who you can just run in under the barragae of hits and focus fire with marines, thanks to their attacks being ACTUAL units and auto surround you basically are unable to move forward. Then again the only time I've faced brood lords is when the zerg is on its last leg and its usually not enough to be a threat.
Broodlords cost a lot of gas. Its basically zerg's ultimate unit. Also broodlords are mega slow like the other awesome air units. They are definately good but I really dont think they are OP. Pheonix is a pretty good AA unit if you get a good amount of them. Corruptors are better in a fight but I would rather have the gravity beam over the puke. You can use your phoenix to kill OLs or just gravity beam up ground units for control or harass.
The thing about corrupters is no zerg wants to waste gas on them, they want them for broodlords or to defend broodlords. So if you spent all your gas on phoenix and a zerg went for a mix you should have the larger AA force, and you can wreck some gravity havoc with a lot of phoenix.
On March 05 2010 18:03 Medzo wrote: Broodlords cost a lot of gas. Its basically zerg's ultimate unit. Also broodlords are mega slow like the other awesome air units. They are definately good but I really dont think they are OP. Pheonix is a pretty good AA unit if you get a good amount of them. Corruptors are better in a fight but I would rather have the gravity beam over the puke. You can use your phoenix to kill OLs or just gravity beam up ground units for control or harass.
The thing about corrupters is no zerg wants to waste gas on them, they want them for broodlords or to defend broodlords. So if you spent all your gas on phoenix and a zerg went for a mix you should have the larger AA force, and you can wreck some gravity havoc with a lot of phoenix.
I dont disagree with the fact that phoenix are a good AA unit but broodlords are never rushed too. The Zerg should still have hydra lying about and if I'm powering everything into Phoenix then I'm not going to have colossus (or storm) and my phoenix force is going to be raped by Hydralisks before they even get to broodlords. Furthermore, if they went spire then they are going to counter phoenix with corruptor - because corruptors are REALLY good AA. Any spare ones left over after Phoenix harass at the start, or a phoenix transition, are just going to be turned into broodlords.
You solution is good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice imo. Not against clever zergs at least.
I agree that Broodlords are like the ultimate unit for Zergs, but why can Zergs kill off my carriers but I can't kill off their broodlords D:
Sair vs Muta/Scourge is pretty much a battle of who is better at micro. Protoss can win it convincingly if he chooses to do so, but only by making so many sairs he has to sacrifice ground. Then Zerg faces the same choice if he wants to make devourers, as Devourer + Muta > Sair, but you give up making hydralisks and other ground units because devs are mineral heavy
uh yeah no phoenixes are about equal to corruptors in a head to head fight, except that phoenixes move like twice as fast (kind of like scourge vs slightly slower dropship) so they can always just run if corruptor numbers are too high, plus can EASILY pull away the near dead phoenixes basically never losing a phoenix to a corruptor. however if corruptors are too outnumbered they just all die when trying to flee. you have to realize plexa that corruptors also dont get any bonuses vs phoenixes, so phoenixes are actually fair vs them. i'm assuming you tried to start building up a phoenix army when he already had several corruptors..obviously you'll be outmatched..
however the corruptor is such an uninteresting air to air unit, they should redesign imo. phoenixes are similar except their ability is pretty sweet. but air to air theyre uninteresting. bring back scourge or corsairs imo
On March 05 2010 18:40 Zelniq wrote: uh yeah no phoenixes are about equal to corruptors in a head to head fight, except that phoenixes move like twice as fast (kind of like scourge vs slightly slower dropship) so they can always just run if corruptor numbers are too high, plus can EASILY pull away the near dead phoenixes basically never losing a phoenix to a corruptor. however if corruptors are too outnumbered they just all die when trying to flee. you have to realize plexa that corruptors also dont get any bonuses vs phoenixes, so phoenixes are actually fair vs them. i'm assuming you tried to start building up a phoenix army when he already had several corruptors..obviously you'll be outmatched..
however the corruptor is such an uninteresting air to air unit, they should redesign imo. phoenixes are similar except their ability is pretty sweet. but air to air theyre uninteresting. bring back scourge or corsairs imo
Last I checked Pheonix deal 6 damage to corruptors, they're not fantastic against them by anymeans. Yes I know they can fight head to head okay despite this, but that's not what this thread is about. Unless you're suggesting that every midgame PvZ I start to mass Phoenix, which I don't really think is optimal since to match a Zerg making Corruptor I'd need 2stargate.
i dont think broodlords are too good atm, although I dont really know against protoss. but messing with them would seriously harm zvt balance, as its about the only thing that saves you from a maxed m&m&m&tank ball
On March 05 2010 18:59 damenmofa wrote: i dont think broodlords are too good atm, although I dont really know against protoss. but messing with them would seriously harm zvt balance, as its about the only thing that saves you from a maxed m&m&m&tank ball
I don't know anything about ZvT but don't Ultralisks work?
On March 05 2010 18:59 damenmofa wrote: i dont think broodlords are too good atm, although I dont really know against protoss. but messing with them would seriously harm zvt balance, as its about the only thing that saves you from a maxed m&m&m&tank ball
I don't know anything about ZvT but don't Ultralisks work?
no think ultralisks without swarm against 7-8+ tanks in bw... Even with swarm its a standard late game strat against ultra/ling to go mass tanks and fortify expansions. Without swarm, any amount of ultras melts against lots of tanks and thats exactly what happens in SC2 (barring some ridiculous 360 sandwich flank with a gazillion crack-/banelings or smth).
Broodlords are one of my favorite units, so great!!! They break terrans with many tanks, and can really put the hurt on in isolated scenarios vs P (like Lost Temple close spots). Remember they are expensive (300/250) and tech heavy as fuck. Remember that 4 broodlords are more expensive than 4 colossus :O
Personally I feel broodlords aren't what needs a nerf it's corrupter's attack rate. Slow it down to devorer and up pheonixs. That'll help tremendously in anti air capabilities.
Also, hydra ling baneling ultra isn't that terrible against any mnm ball. Saying broodlords are the go to unit is only justifiable cause they have huge range huge damage and have those little PoSes that screw with AI.
Furthermore if you're getting into that late game vs a zerg and he has the cash to throw all that stuff at you, you probably did something wrong in the midgame. There are several incredible timing pushes that protoss has in their arsenal that can completely stop zerg in their tracks. Plus with the combo of storm/harass capabilities I don't think there's much else to say.
Don't know how you feel about this but consider a combination of archons/phoenix/zealot.
On March 05 2010 20:18 Mente wrote: Furthermore if you're getting into that late game vs a zerg and he has the cash to throw all that stuff at you, you probably did something wrong in the midgame. There are several incredible timing pushes that protoss has in their arsenal that can completely stop zerg in their tracks. Plus with the combo of storm/harass capabilities I don't think there's much else to say.
If you watch the rep you'll see that Wax went 2base muta -> broodlord and pretty much get steamrolled. But he manages to get 6-7 broodlords on my cliff and I think its pretty ridiculous the amount of damage they can do. Irrespective of the current metagame and whatnot, the very fact these guys can deal an obscene amount of damage is wrong. If SC2 becomes "protoss has to kill zerg in the mid game with a timing push else lategame zerg wins" then again, that's just not right.
On March 05 2010 20:14 FortuneSyn wrote: Broodlords are one of my favorite units, so great!!! They break terrans with many tanks, and can really put the hurt on in isolated scenarios vs P (like Lost Temple close spots). Remember they are expensive (300/250) and tech heavy as fuck. Remember that 4 broodlords are more expensive than 4 colossus :O
I think this is the point here, they are a very expensive unit . I think we need A LOT more games played before we can look at late game balance.
On March 05 2010 20:14 FortuneSyn wrote: Broodlords are one of my favorite units, so great!!! They break terrans with many tanks, and can really put the hurt on in isolated scenarios vs P (like Lost Temple close spots). Remember they are expensive (300/250) and tech heavy as fuck. Remember that 4 broodlords are more expensive than 4 colossus :O
I think this is the point here, they are a very expensive unit . I think we need A LOT more games played before we can look at late game balance.
It's less expensive than a Carrier, or a mothership. I don't see the point in including the price tag in this argument Again, I urge you to watch the rep.
i been saying it since like day 2, brood lords are gonna be nerfed. They might get either armor or HP reduction., but imo what they should do is make the attack some sort of acid ball and the broodlings come with it. Then you can shoot the broodlings down in the air and reduce the self splash done by tanks etc. So essentially broodlords would still rape anything unable to shoot back.
On March 05 2010 20:18 Mente wrote: Furthermore if you're getting into that late game vs a zerg and he has the cash to throw all that stuff at you, you probably did something wrong in the midgame. There are several incredible timing pushes that protoss has in their arsenal that can completely stop zerg in their tracks. Plus with the combo of storm/harass capabilities I don't think there's much else to say.
If you watch the rep you'll see that Wax went 2base muta -> broodlord and pretty much get steamrolled. But he manages to get 6-7 broodlords on my cliff and I think its pretty ridiculous the amount of damage they can do. Irrespective of the current metagame and whatnot, the very fact these guys can deal an obscene amount of damage is wrong. If SC2 becomes "protoss has to kill zerg in the mid game with a timing push else lategame zerg wins" then again, that's just not right.
I'll watch the replay and let you know what I think further. But lets re-examine starcraft 1 for a second:
2 hatch muta. Remember when that build came out? For a month there was no answer for the terran when it came to that build. Then finally people started getting used to the transition and found a way to deal with that.
Try to imagine the influence 4 colossus have in a P army and compare it to the influence of 4 broodlords. Then consider that broodlord are wayyyyy up the tech tree, and are more expensive than colossus.
I know this is a very simplistic and flawed way of looking at things, but people often don't take into account the tradeoffs that zerg do when they decide to tech to that in late game...
On March 05 2010 17:12 Plexa wrote: Voidrays sound like a good answer, but in my games I never end up getting them because the threat of a hydra switch is too great and simply massing up on Voids when I need the gas for Colossi/Templar is just silly.
If this your problem with using void rays I think you'll have to consider the possibility that Protoss in the late game has to out expand Zerg so that way you can offset the switching costs problem.
On March 05 2010 18:40 Zelniq wrote: uh yeah no phoenixes are about equal to corruptors in a head to head fight, except that phoenixes move like twice as fast (kind of like scourge vs slightly slower dropship) so they can always just run if corruptor numbers are too high, plus can EASILY pull away the near dead phoenixes basically never losing a phoenix to a corruptor. however if corruptors are too outnumbered they just all die when trying to flee. you have to realize plexa that corruptors also dont get any bonuses vs phoenixes, so phoenixes are actually fair vs them. i'm assuming you tried to start building up a phoenix army when he already had several corruptors..obviously you'll be outmatched..
however the corruptor is such an uninteresting air to air unit, they should redesign imo. phoenixes are similar except their ability is pretty sweet. but air to air theyre uninteresting. bring back scourge or corsairs imo
Last I checked Pheonix deal 6 damage to corruptors, they're not fantastic against them by anymeans. Yes I know they can fight head to head okay despite this, but that's not what this thread is about. Unless you're suggesting that every midgame PvZ I start to mass Phoenix, which I don't really think is optimal since to match a Zerg making Corruptor I'd need 2stargate.
I don't know if that's what you meant but actually a phoenix has 2 attacks so it's 6*2 = 12 damage to any air unit other than light (+5 against light).
Can't watch the replay at work but if you see the 2 hatch muta and you counter with phoenix, if he switch to hydra what's stopping the protoss to switch to an adequate force too? Supposing you see it with an observer or anything.
On March 05 2010 18:40 Zelniq wrote: uh yeah no phoenixes are about equal to corruptors in a head to head fight, except that phoenixes move like twice as fast (kind of like scourge vs slightly slower dropship) so they can always just run if corruptor numbers are too high, plus can EASILY pull away the near dead phoenixes basically never losing a phoenix to a corruptor. however if corruptors are too outnumbered they just all die when trying to flee. you have to realize plexa that corruptors also dont get any bonuses vs phoenixes, so phoenixes are actually fair vs them. i'm assuming you tried to start building up a phoenix army when he already had several corruptors..obviously you'll be outmatched..
however the corruptor is such an uninteresting air to air unit, they should redesign imo. phoenixes are similar except their ability is pretty sweet. but air to air theyre uninteresting. bring back scourge or corsairs imo
Last I checked Pheonix deal 6 damage to corruptors, they're not fantastic against them by anymeans. Yes I know they can fight head to head okay despite this, but that's not what this thread is about. Unless you're suggesting that every midgame PvZ I start to mass Phoenix, which I don't really think is optimal since to match a Zerg making Corruptor I'd need 2stargate.
I don't know if that's what you meant but actually a phoenix has 2 attacks so it's 6*2 = 12 damage to any air unit other than light (+5 against light).
Can't watch the replay at work but if you see the 2 hatch muta and you counter with phoenix, if he switch to hydra what's stopping the protoss to switch to an adequate force too? Supposing you see it with an observer or anything.
On March 05 2010 18:40 Zelniq wrote: uh yeah no phoenixes are about equal to corruptors in a head to head fight, except that phoenixes move like twice as fast (kind of like scourge vs slightly slower dropship) so they can always just run if corruptor numbers are too high, plus can EASILY pull away the near dead phoenixes basically never losing a phoenix to a corruptor. however if corruptors are too outnumbered they just all die when trying to flee. you have to realize plexa that corruptors also dont get any bonuses vs phoenixes, so phoenixes are actually fair vs them. i'm assuming you tried to start building up a phoenix army when he already had several corruptors..obviously you'll be outmatched..
however the corruptor is such an uninteresting air to air unit, they should redesign imo. phoenixes are similar except their ability is pretty sweet. but air to air theyre uninteresting. bring back scourge or corsairs imo
Last I checked Pheonix deal 6 damage to corruptors, they're not fantastic against them by anymeans. Yes I know they can fight head to head okay despite this, but that's not what this thread is about. Unless you're suggesting that every midgame PvZ I start to mass Phoenix, which I don't really think is optimal since to match a Zerg making Corruptor I'd need 2stargate.
I don't know if that's what you meant but actually a phoenix has 2 attacks so it's 6*2 = 12 damage to any air unit other than light (+5 against light).
Can't watch the replay at work but if you see the 2 hatch muta and you counter with phoenix, if he switch to hydra what's stopping the protoss to switch to an adequate force too? Supposing you see it with an observer or anything.
On March 05 2010 18:40 Zelniq wrote: uh yeah no phoenixes are about equal to corruptors in a head to head fight, except that phoenixes move like twice as fast (kind of like scourge vs slightly slower dropship) so they can always just run if corruptor numbers are too high, plus can EASILY pull away the near dead phoenixes basically never losing a phoenix to a corruptor. however if corruptors are too outnumbered they just all die when trying to flee. you have to realize plexa that corruptors also dont get any bonuses vs phoenixes, so phoenixes are actually fair vs them. i'm assuming you tried to start building up a phoenix army when he already had several corruptors..obviously you'll be outmatched..
however the corruptor is such an uninteresting air to air unit, they should redesign imo. phoenixes are similar except their ability is pretty sweet. but air to air theyre uninteresting. bring back scourge or corsairs imo
Last I checked Pheonix deal 6 damage to corruptors, they're not fantastic against them by anymeans. Yes I know they can fight head to head okay despite this, but that's not what this thread is about. Unless you're suggesting that every midgame PvZ I start to mass Phoenix, which I don't really think is optimal since to match a Zerg making Corruptor I'd need 2stargate.
I don't know if that's what you meant but actually a phoenix has 2 attacks so it's 6*2 = 12 damage to any air unit other than light (+5 against light).
Can't watch the replay at work but if you see the 2 hatch muta and you counter with phoenix, if he switch to hydra what's stopping the protoss to switch to an adequate force too? Supposing you see it with an observer or anything.
The thing is, I was completely dominating Wax. He made some last ditch broodlords and they did a disproportionate amount of damage.
Ouch i see the armor really hurt. Well err a prayer maybe? :p
As Idra said in another thread, the ideal counter to them are stalkers who get the vs armor bonus. But stalkers just royally suck against everything else sooo...
i actually think the broodlord is too bad, i pretty much laff at it cause viking own most air in a second and the broodlords dont do anywhere near as much dmg as guardians did (compared to the cost) against a MMM army
the whole problem in general is that toss doesnt have any good answer to air vs z or p. 5 banshee rape 5 stalker.
me and runa tested a banshee (no grades) vs 1 stalker (+2 dmg grade + -2 dmg shield by the sentry) and the banshee still won
i think to solve most problems in this game atm would be to make stalkers,storm,archon better and colosus worse
I think some of it has to do with zerg players being consistant from starcraft will bring macro heavy mentality and with cheaper hatchery+ queen production cost efficiency will macro into more powerfull lategame forces. I win a lot of my games by leveraging for macro. I haven't seen more then a token few get more then 2 or 3 bases ever. I find myself routinely building at least 3 and if one gets sacked it can get to 5+ but no other race has scalable production like that. If a zerg is macroing properly 3 base with 1 hatch and 1 queen a piece is = to 7-8 hatch sc1 production-wise if a zerg gets to 5 base with queen you are looking at the relative production of 12-15 hatcheries in sc1 which is more then critical mass. The cost relatively for this infrastructure is like nothing. 500 minerals for hatchery + queen (including drone).
Each of the other races has to build a nexus or a command and then 2-3 additional production facilities a piece to even dream of keeping up and I just haven't ever seen non zerg bases with the production capabilities. I haven't done the numbers on cost but it is way more expensive for protoss and terran to build that production infrastructure. Now this can be viewed in another way as well because you can easily snipe queens or sack an expansion here or there if you know what your doing and that really can cripple zerg.
In my view Broodlords are not OP a good broodlord army wrecks but what would sc2 be if you couldn't build cool shit that demolishes. I am on the fence about macro balance in sc2 and as a final note I have seen mixed terran and protoss armies that are just as awesome to behold and use as the mixed zerg.
As terran ravens are great against broodlords so are vikings and properly microed stimmed marines can still get them sometimes. a battlecruiser or two never hurt anyone though they are more effective vs ground. Protoss have mothership+ pheonix voidray zealot stalker sentry.
Don't try to take a 3 base Zerg with 2 base and complain when you lose to unoptomized a-move zerging or crazy tech disadvantages.
Broodlings do benifit from ground unit upgrades as posted previously and they have 35 hits they are about = to a zergling. Each broodlord can have like 6-8 down at once (like on a building whree none die) I believe before they self pop but this i have not specificaly tested.
On March 05 2010 22:41 jabberwokie wrote: In my view Broodlords are not OP a good broodlord army wrecks but what would sc2 be if you couldn't build cool shit that demolishes. I am on the fence about macro balance in sc2 and as a final note I have seen mixed terran and protoss armies that are just as awesome to behold and use as the mixed zerg.
While I don't disagree with the notion that you should be "able to build cool shit which demolishes", against Protoss, Broodlords are way too strong. I can't comment against Terran. 4-6 Broodlords are nearly unstoppable and can easily raize a nat in seconds. It's not like 6 colossi are unstoppable - isolated they are quite fragile. There just isn't any good answer against Broodlords as protoss.
Protoss have mothership+ pheonix voidray zealot stalker sentry.
Does it seem right to you that to counter 6 broodlords i need mothership, phoenix, zealot, stalker and sentry? That's quite sad really. I'm not asking for an easy button (ala immortal vs roach), all I'm asking for is a viable counter which minimizes the damage they're able to do. Something like Dragoon vs Lurker for instance, or Archon vs Muta - something like that. At the moment everything just kinda gets raped - except blinking stalkers which get raped by everything else unfortunately.
Don't try to take a 3 base Zerg with 2 base and complain when you lose to unoptomized a-move zerging or crazy tech disadvantages.
I never said this anywhere. In fact, in the rep posted it was 2 base vs 2 base, I killed his natural making it 2v1 base and then the broodlords defended then they killed my nat. I was just lucky I was so far ahead else I mightve lost.
I find most zerg have a real problem with detection, overseers cost a lot for a detector and can get sniped really easily. A single mothership will do wonders just for the cloak, let alone the vortex. High templar for storms are also nice since broodlords are really slow, and corruptors have energy that could be feedbacked (although I'd just stick with storms, feeback costs a lot for the damage output).
Abuse mobility, hit an expansion with some left over zealots / collosi from the midgame which are completely useless against broodlords while you fight his air with your mothership + stalkers / templar / sentries. Go for a late DT drop to try and take out the greater spire or the hive, again, overseers are expensive.
Against Terran broodlords are weak, reactor viking spam dominates anything that flies.
On March 05 2010 20:14 FortuneSyn wrote: Broodlords are one of my favorite units, so great!!! They break terrans with many tanks, and can really put the hurt on in isolated scenarios vs P (like Lost Temple close spots). Remember they are expensive (300/250) and tech heavy as fuck. Remember that 4 broodlords are more expensive than 4 colossus :O
I think this is the point here, they are a very expensive unit . I think we need A LOT more games played before we can look at late game balance.
It's less expensive than a Carrier, or a mothership. I don't see the point in including the price tag in this argument Again, I urge you to watch the rep.
I watched the rep but I didn't see anything that makes me jump to the conclusion they are imbalanced. The price tag has everything to do with the argument, it's not like they're immune to damage. The only reason a unit should be nerfed is if it becomes an overwhelming strategy, where everything else is not worth using. At the moment I don't see that being the case with Broodlords.
On March 05 2010 22:41 jabberwokie wrote: In my view Broodlords are not OP a good broodlord army wrecks but what would sc2 be if you couldn't build cool shit that demolishes. I am on the fence about macro balance in sc2 and as a final note I have seen mixed terran and protoss armies that are just as awesome to behold and use as the mixed zerg.
While I don't disagree with the notion that you should be "able to build cool shit which demolishes", against Protoss, Broodlords are way too strong. I can't comment against Terran. 4-6 Broodlords are nearly unstoppable and can easily raize a nat in seconds. It's not like 6 colossi are unstoppable - isolated they are quite fragile. There just isn't any good answer against Broodlords as protoss.
Protoss have mothership+ pheonix voidray zealot stalker sentry.
Does it seem right to you that to counter 6 broodlords i need mothership, phoenix, zealot, stalker and sentry? That's quite sad really. I'm not asking for an easy button (ala immortal vs roach), all I'm asking for is a viable counter which minimizes the damage they're able to do. Something like Dragoon vs Lurker for instance, or Archon vs Muta - something like that. At the moment everything just kinda gets raped - except blinking stalkers which get raped by everything else unfortunately.
Don't try to take a 3 base Zerg with 2 base and complain when you lose to unoptomized a-move zerging or crazy tech disadvantages.
I never said this anywhere. In fact, in the rep posted it was 2 base vs 2 base, I killed his natural making it 2v1 base and then the broodlords defended then they killed my nat. I was just lucky I was so far ahead else I mightve lost.
come on who are you kiddin? 6 collossus ARE pretty much unstoppable by ground forces, except mass ultralisks or smth. Yeah of course they are fragile isolated, but its a bad argument to make. Its the nature of protoss to walk around with strong units that are weak isolated. Hence the ball of death. No half-decent P player will ever get their expensive core units get isolated and picked off easily.
I remember a game I played recently in which I was up a base on the zerg the entire game long and was unable to stop his force of broodlords/corrupters. The broodlings like spawn surrounding your units preventing them from moving so you can't move into range of the broodlord to kill it and then your unit just attacks the broodlings endlessly (I can't help but feel like spawn broodlings should be a spell rather than something that happens on EVERY attack due to this).
It seems like unless you already have mass carriers you just can't stop them once they appear.
a heavy tech unit that costs a fortue, and you want it to be nerfed? its supposed to be outstanding. if zerg can make it that far on their tech tree, it better be worth it.
On March 05 2010 23:41 Plexa wrote: It's not like 6 colossi are unstoppable - isolated they are quite fragile. There just isn't any good answer against Broodlords as protoss.
you could say the same of brood lords. Void rays will kill isolated brood lords in seconds.
Brood lord is the zerg 'capital ship'. You need protoss' anti-capital ship unit to deal with them. That unit is the void ray.
Equal supply of void rays should kill brood lords. If he has them supported with other units, the rest of your army should counter those other units. scout scout scout. In BW, it was important to scout for expansions and to keep tabs on where his army is/is moving to. But in SC2, it's important to scout army composition so you can counter it effectively. Also, the only thing the greater spire does is allow creation of brood lords. So if you scout a greater spire -> you know 100% there will be brood lords coming soon, and you can plan for it.
Brood lords only cost 50 minerals less than a carrier. And they can't even attack air. If you let the zerg get 5 brood lords, you're screwed. It would be no different if you let protoss get ~4.5 carriers or ~4.5 battlecruisers. And before you say that carriers have to pay for interceptors, well brood lords have to pay for anti air, or else they'll be annihilated.
Many of you are missing the point. I want to address some arguments, but first I want to point something out.
Just because a unit is counterable, does not make it balanced. Psi-Storm could be coded to do 300 damage a storm, and it would still be counterable, but it would not be balanced. Roaches could be programmed to hit air, and they would be counterable, but not balanced.
Now the arguments:
Cost argument: The cost justifies them being this strong.
This is completely irrelevant and in fact strengthens the OP point. Carriers die easily to just a few Hydralisks, and Carriers are the 'ultimate' unit for Protoss and they are countered extremely easily.
Tech argument: It's place in the tech tree justifies them being this strong.
This has some validity, but the point is, if there is no viable counter, with the game being equal in terms of control and economy, then it isn't balanced. You cannot have one race with a trump card that automatically puts them at an advantage that the other race cannot get back. Protoss has no such unit. They did with the original version of the Mothership - they no longer have this.
A Broodlord army with zergling and hydra support on the ground and muta and corruptor support in the air is literally unbeatable by a similar size army by Protoss.
The solution that you'd have to counter it with would be at least 1 Phoenix for every Corruptor + Mutalisk + Broodlord. In addition you'd also have to have Zealots and High Templar on the ground.
What happens in battle is that when the Broodlords attack Zealots, the Zealots AI automatically attack the Broodlings and if you try to micro past them, you get surrounded. Thus the Zealots cannot get to the Hydralisks. The hydralisks focus their attention on your Phoenixs, and Hydras destroy all Protoss air.
I recall the first game I encountered Broodlords, I had a 180 food army, mixed Phoenixs, Void Rays, Collosus, High Templar and Zealots (probably about 80 food of just Zealots).
I was able to storm most of the zerglings and hydras, but the broodlings took out literally all my ground just as fast as I could storm his, and his hydras and mutalisks and corruptors killed all my phoenixs. I checked the replay and he had 140ish food.
The fact is, that with Broodlords, he can focus Hydras on your air, and the broodlings will clean up literally all ground units.
The Solution: You really don't necessarily need to nerf Broodlords to the point of making them obsolete, but their armor and HP is too high to effectively counter. Buffing Phoenix (slightly) would be a huge step in the right direction as well.
There's a similar lag time building brood lords as there is building carriers or battlecruisers in brood war. If you see a greater spire going up (takes a full 100 seconds) or corrupters coming out, you need to attack NOW. Chances are he has spent a ton of cash just getting this tech halfway up, and you will have a strong advantage on the ground. If you wait until the investment has run its course, you'll be in big trouble.
The total transition takes at minimum 100 secs for greater spire, and 34 seconds for the brood lords to morph, assuming he has all the resources he needs at morph time which I never do.
It seems like players are not reacting to mass brood lord the same way they'd react if a player were massing up carriers or battlecruisers, and it would be a real shame to downgrade legitimate late game tech like that simply because of inexperience in the matchup.
It seems like players are not reacting to mass brood lord the same way they'd react if a player were massing up carriers or battlecruisers, and it would be a real shame to downgrade legitimate late game tech like that simply because of inexperience in the matchup.
The issue isn't whether or not the Broodlords are scouted. The issue is not having an army composition to beat them with all things being equal.
If you don't scout Brood lords coming it's instant GG for you. Even if you do scout them you need to do everything possible to keep them in low numbers or they will decimate your ground army. Protoss currently has piss poor anti-air. Phoenixes are extremely fragile and do not do spash, Void ray is LOL against air, and anything on the ground that can attack air will get pwnd by Brood lords before they can do any adequate damage or get run over by lings and hydras. Storm is also not a good option against Brood lords, not only because of the low damage output of storm, Brood lords do not clump together well. You might be able to get target 2 or 3 max with one storm.
The whole air-ground balance compared to bw is skewed right now, a2g is so much stronger and g2a (and even a2a) is much weaker. Based on the size of the holes this seems to leave I feel like it's something that will addressed in an expansion.
Yeah, I think lack of protoss anti air is one of the main reasons broodlords are so good. Phenioxes are really protoss' only decent anti air option - archons are just bad now.
One possible strategy counter (dosen't fix the fact that Broodlords are really good) would be the mothership. It depends what kind of midgame strategy you went (i'm thinking about phoenix scouting, so you already have a stargate), but on certain maps Dark Void + psistorm might be the way to go.
I agree that brood lords are still really good with no easy real lategame counter. mothership + recall means you have mobility without map control though, which can be nice.
I'm a Z player mainly so maybe I'm biased... I've always thought broodlord is the best unit addition to zerg. They are very strong and corruptors like you said beat pheonix for equal costs.
I think the broodlord is expensive though so it's understandable that they do a good deal of damage.
To me the broodlings are similar to the protoss' interceptors which before the mothership nerf was actually very annoying and difficult to fight against... No scourge and whenever I would bring corruptors I had to spread them out really good to avoid the stasis shit.
On March 06 2010 01:55 Mirhi wrote: Many of you are missing the point. I want to address some arguments, but first I want to point something out.
Just because a unit is counterable, does not make it balanced. Psi-Storm could be coded to do 300 damage a storm, and it would still be counterable, but it would not be balanced. Roaches could be programmed to hit air, and they would be counterable, but not balanced.
Now the arguments:
Cost argument: The cost justifies them being this strong.
This is completely irrelevant and in fact strengthens the OP point. Carriers die easily to just a few Hydralisks, and Carriers are the 'ultimate' unit for Protoss and they are countered extremely easily.
Tech argument: It's place in the tech tree justifies them being this strong.
This has some validity, but the point is, if there is no viable counter, with the game being equal in terms of control and economy, then it isn't balanced. You cannot have one race with a trump card that automatically puts them at an advantage that the other race cannot get back. Protoss has no such unit. They did with the original version of the Mothership - they no longer have this.
A Broodlord army with zergling and hydra support on the ground and muta and corruptor support in the air is literally unbeatable by a similar size army by Protoss.
The solution that you'd have to counter it with would be at least 1 Phoenix for every Corruptor + Mutalisk + Broodlord. In addition you'd also have to have Zealots and High Templar on the ground.
What happens in battle is that when the Broodlords attack Zealots, the Zealots AI automatically attack the Broodlings and if you try to micro past them, you get surrounded. Thus the Zealots cannot get to the Hydralisks. The hydralisks focus their attention on your Phoenixs, and Hydras destroy all Protoss air.
I recall the first game I encountered Broodlords, I had a 180 food army, mixed Phoenixs, Void Rays, Collosus, High Templar and Zealots (probably about 80 food of just Zealots).
I was able to storm most of the zerglings and hydras, but the broodlings took out literally all my ground just as fast as I could storm his, and his hydras and mutalisks and corruptors killed all my phoenixs. I checked the replay and he had 140ish food.
The fact is, that with Broodlords, he can focus Hydras on your air, and the broodlings will clean up literally all ground units.
The Solution: You really don't necessarily need to nerf Broodlords to the point of making them obsolete, but their armor and HP is too high to effectively counter. Buffing Phoenix (slightly) would be a huge step in the right direction as well.
Honestly I stopped reading the moment you said that "cost justifying them being this strong is irrelevant because of random example plucked out of my ass carriers". Pretty much the worst argument-logic path I've ever seen.
On March 06 2010 03:56 Kasperknop wrote: The Brood Lord might be VERY GOOD, but let's not forget the fact that this unit is without comparison the hardest unit to get to in the game.
Are you saying that because of this, they should be overpowered?
This still isn't answering the quandary of what unit mix you can get that broodlord doesn't decimate with its air /hydra support
Haven't tried it myself, but are archons any good at killing broodlings? Z doesn't have EMP, so the archons' worst enemy isn't an issue. Just thinking aloud here, but it would seem that splash damage would be the best counter to broodlings, which appear to be the balance-breaking part of broodloards, and archons are supposed to have a pretty strong splash attack. That would still leave lings/hydras of course, but maybe colossus/zlots could help with those, while you use stalkers to blink and kill broodlords? Complete theorycrafting as I haven't played many PvZ games and am unable to try it now, but maybe even discussions explaining why this isn't a viable solution could result in some good arguments for buffing up the archon.
On March 06 2010 03:56 Kasperknop wrote: The Brood Lord might be VERY GOOD, but let's not forget the fact that this unit is without comparison the hardest unit to get to in the game.
Are you saying that because of this, they should be overpowered?
No I never said that? And ofc they shouldnt be :p But I do think that the equation t1<t2 should be somehow fulfilled, and given the fact that they are almost in a tier of their own I think you should be able to feel it somehow
On March 05 2010 18:03 Medzo wrote: Broodlords cost a lot of gas. Its basically zerg's ultimate unit. Also broodlords are mega slow like the other awesome air units. They are definately good but I really dont think they are OP. Pheonix is a pretty good AA unit if you get a good amount of them. Corruptors are better in a fight but I would rather have the gravity beam over the puke. You can use your phoenix to kill OLs or just gravity beam up ground units for control or harass.
The thing about corrupters is no zerg wants to waste gas on them, they want them for broodlords or to defend broodlords. So if you spent all your gas on phoenix and a zerg went for a mix you should have the larger AA force, and you can wreck some gravity havoc with a lot of phoenix.
I dont disagree with the fact that phoenix are a good AA unit but broodlords are never rushed too. The Zerg should still have hydra lying about and if I'm powering everything into Phoenix then I'm not going to have colossus (or storm) and my phoenix force is going to be raped by Hydralisks before they even get to broodlords. Furthermore, if they went spire then they are going to counter phoenix with corruptor - because corruptors are REALLY good AA. Any spare ones left over after Phoenix harass at the start, or a phoenix transition, are just going to be turned into broodlords.
You solution is good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice imo. Not against clever zergs at least.
I agree that Broodlords are like the ultimate unit for Zergs, but why can Zergs kill off my carriers but I can't kill off their broodlords D:
I feel like what you said was good in theory but not practice, lol. Look a zerg cant just mass corrupter and win. Corrupter doesn't do anything but fight air units so basically they are there ONLY to protect the broodlords or fight phoenix. You talk about powering into phoenix wont let you get a good unit mix. Well its the same with zerg. If he gets 14 mutalisks then he just spent 1400 gas. If he gets 10 corruptors that is 1000 gas and then another 1500 to turn them into broodlords, or 750 for 5 broodlords and then he will have 5 corruptors left. Gas for gas you should win the air battle.
Now im not saying that a zerg cant trick you and tech swap around your army. Its very doable but that is part of the game.
EDIT: Will also note that hydralisks are 50 gas each and seem to be good in large numbers mostly. You can actually do a number to hydras in a fight with gravity unless its a large mass of hydras in which case you failed to scout.
No I never said that? And ofc they shouldnt be :p But I do think that the equation t1<t2 should be somehow fulfilled, and given the fact that they are almost in a tier of their own I think you should be able to feel it somehow
I do agree with that idea, my question in response is, how do you balance that food / resource wise if nothing Protoss has can compare?
On March 05 2010 20:14 FortuneSyn wrote: Broodlords are one of my favorite units, so great!!! They break terrans with many tanks, and can really put the hurt on in isolated scenarios vs P (like Lost Temple close spots). Remember they are expensive (300/250) and tech heavy as fuck. Remember that 4 broodlords are more expensive than 4 colossus :O
I think this is the point here, they are a very expensive unit . I think we need A LOT more games played before we can look at late game balance.
It's less expensive than a Carrier, or a mothership. I don't see the point in including the price tag in this argument Again, I urge you to watch the rep.
except you can only get 1 mother ship and carriers attack air too also the price diff between carrier is carrier cost only 50 mins more, but gas is the same cost. minerals are easy to get in the game gas is hard. i talk about cost of a unit i talk about how gas heavy it is if we are talking late game.
Broodlords are pretty strong and hard to counter as Toss, they rape buildings as well. PvZ it is pretty wise to make your best attempt kill the zerg before he gets too much tech or an expo if you don't it is pretty much over.
No I never said that? And ofc they shouldnt be :p But I do think that the equation t1<t2 should be somehow fulfilled, and given the fact that they are almost in a tier of their own I think you should be able to feel it somehow
I do agree with that idea, my question in response is, how do you balance that food / resource wise if nothing Protoss has can compare?
That is a very good question indeed I don't think I'll be able to answer that... I really havn't had that many games that lasted long enough to be familiar enough with the Brood Lord or late game strategies and counters in general XD As far as my experince go I havn't found them broken in any way though, and I am sure that there are some viable counters if you just look close enough- expecially proactive-ones
I don't have a beta but from what it sounds like, Broodlords don't sound the overpowered because of how hard it is to get them. They are high tech and when mixed in with a good army they should be hard to get rid of. Though being able to make a hydra/broodlord/corrupter deathball isn't a zerg thing at all, especially not against toss.
Brood Lords leave the zerg insanely vulnerable until the moment they come out. Zerg has to sink countless resources into Hive, Greater Spire, and Corruptors that do nothing to help with map control or base defense. If he's doing all that and still can hold enough bases to be able to afford the Brood Lords, he's probably ahead.
Each Broodlord is a Carrier-class capital ship that has no air to air attack and little more than half the health of a Battlecruiser or Carrier. As expensive and fragile as they are, it should be cost effective to suicide your units to bring them down. Blink some stalkers right underneath them, drop some storms on them, or just suicide Phoenixes and Void Rays at em.
The broodlord is fine.. its just toss complaining that they can't just spam colossi
edit: Protoss just need to man up, they should be able to scout the hive or the greater spire and start phoenixes. Hive = get phoenixes! They rape all Zerg hive units.
On March 06 2010 05:49 Piousflea wrote: As expensive and fragile as they are, it should be cost effective to suicide your units to bring them down. Blink some stalkers right underneath them, drop some storms on them, or just suicide Phoenixes and Void Rays at em.
The problem is, you can't even do this. With 250 HP and 2 armor, even 8-10 stalkers can't kill one brood lord before at least half of the stalkers are dead from hydra fire and the broodlords themselves. Phoenix does even less.
I haven't actually done much expirementing with Broodlords ZvP - they really seem just too much tech and money to be viable in that agressive matchup - but I really have to say Plexa that if they are imbalanced in that matchup then whatever is done has to be extremely careful not to mess up ZvT, because Broodlords are absolutely vital in that matchup in many many late game situations.
On March 06 2010 06:16 ShaperofDreams wrote: The broodlord is fine.. its just toss complaining that they can't just spam colossi
edit: Protoss just need to man up, they should be able to scout the hive or the greater spire and start phoenixes. Hive = get phoenixes! They rape all Zerg hive units.
This post is ridiculous and has been answered before.
Protoss can not keep up with the production rate, and a tech switch by zerg means certain death, or even just a unit mix by zerg means protoss can do nothing agaisnt it.
Sounds like people just aren't used to zerg having a proper capital ship... Then again, that was one of the distinctions of their race.
People whining about "unscouted broodlords"... what do you think happens in SC1 when you fail to scan carriers? The issue here isn't the raw power of the broodlords at all. The issue is the nature of their special ability. I can't claim to have experienced it, but it sounds straight-up unfun to play against - not necessary overpowered, but just ugly design- and fun-wise. Moreover, it's not an issue that hydra+broodlord is a good combination that's tough to counter - dragoon/carrier was much the same. However, I would imagine that one cannot simply tell a protoss "use a good unit mix yourself, obv", because the spawned broodlings would give the hydras a much larger chance to defeat what protoss brings to get them out of the way, by making micro significantly more difficult for one player than the other.
I think people are being very hasty here. Were people using corsairs like they are used now when they first started playing starcraft? They are the reason nobody builds guardians ZvP.
Id really also like to say that void rays beat corruptors and psi storm works great on broodlords. Honestly im at a total loss ZvP because templar tech counters everything zerg besides ultralisk (which is hard countered by phoenix).
Is it just me or do hydralisks not move fast enough against psi storm unless they are on creep? Its so easy to cast now that its likely anywhere you move is getting stormed.
On March 06 2010 06:16 ShaperofDreams wrote: The broodlord is fine.. its just toss complaining that they can't just spam colossi
edit: Protoss just need to man up, they should be able to scout the hive or the greater spire and start phoenixes. Hive = get phoenixes! They rape all Zerg hive units.
This post is ridiculous and has been answered before.
Protoss can not keep up with the production rate, and a tech switch by zerg means certain death, or even just a unit mix by zerg means protoss can do nothing agaisnt it.
Again hive tech is very scout-able and phoenixes are good against every hive unit Zerg makes, when you see zerg start getting hive, start making phoenixes.
I'd love to see corruptors becoming melee, so that in small numbers it would fall to micro for them to defend the moustaches. Maybe give them more HP and a cooldown ability that would stretch its tentacles over 6 range and pull back the victim, immobilizing it and the corruptor (kinda like a reverse phoenix gravity beam)
This way phoenixes would be able to use their superior speed to kill the corruptors, while void rays can pick up the moustaches. Conversely, a dense corruptor ball could make short work of any non-massive air unit, and focus on disabling/killing the void rays.
But this is the minor issue... the real problem is the broodlords+broodlings+hydras interaction, where the lords make broodlings, that defend the hydras and lords from ground units, while the hydras mop up anything that manages to go through the broodlings and any anti-air attempt.
but I believe the mothership's vortex should be good at countering this, if not then suiciding phoenixes and void rays into the lords should be at least a draw in cost-effectiveness
As a platinum level zerg player I'm pretty on the fence about this topic. I agree that it is a very powerful unit, in fact if I can get 3-5 in play with maybe 5-7 corruptors supporting them I can't think of the last time I've lost.
The problem is, in maybe 75 platinum zvp's I've had the opportunity to make broodlords exactly ONE time. I was clearly playing an inferior player who didn't harrass my expansions, didn't control the map early, and basically just let me do whatever I wanted and I wanted to try out broodlords
As far as the OP goes, his post even proves how hard it is to get them. You locked up a win before his broodlords could come into play. I think that is where things really need to be looked at if we're gonna talk balance. I don't think broodlords are overpowered, but what makes them unbeatable is having expansions, having the time to get them, having enough corruptors so they don't just die to a few air units because let's not forget they only attack ground.
I guess I feel like while broodlords are incredibly strong that protoss has all the tools needed to ever keep me from realistically getting them and I have to ask if you're consistently losing to broodlords, what are you doing for the first 15 minutes of the game?
If there is any thing op about broodlords it's certainly in the spawn broodling portion of it's attack. Maybe knock their hp down to like 20-25 so they aren't actually tanking a ground force as much.
There is a poll on this site asking "Most overpowered?" and broodlord isn't even an option....
What about mass stalkers? They deal additional damage to armoured. They are build fast from the basic gateways, so that you can adapt your army fast, and with blink they will teleport past the broodling wall and avoid some damage.
Or are they just too weak? (I don't know, I haven't faced brood lords yet)
The simple fact is this. Huge/Expensive units are usually countered (cost effectively) by mass smaller/cheaper units. The thing with the brood lord is that it brings the small units with it, which fux everything up. To call "imba" you should put it in forms of money. (If brood lords are cost effective in many situations then It is probably imbalanced.)
You know what is too good? 8 tanks together with SC2 AI, you know why? Anything getting near is devastated within secs. Only when you got like 80 units coming at the same time (and now lets be honest, I dont expect you to have 80 ultras, rather theyre mostly lings/banes perhaps roaches and probably hydras).
Obviously those tanks are with a M3 ball, and well viola what you gonna do as zerg? Pretty much anything is melee (roach included in the case of T imo) and hydras get stomped just as quick. You cant even get near! Wheres a defiler when you need them!
Unless I Nydus behind you, of course, where there's no M3 ball between my Zerglings and your Tanks. Or Nydus into your main. Or Muta-harass your main/expos. Or use burrowed Roaches to dig under your M3 ball and eat your Tanks, followed quickly by +1 Speed-Banelings for your M3.
There are plenty of things a clever player can do.
After watching the replay a few additional things to say.
1. Just before you attack and kill his expansion and a bunch of overlords to seal the game you have 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 minute mark. This just goes to show how expensive and how much time it actually takes to get broodlords up. You were able to survive Muta harassment quite easily despite not spending. Your opponent would have actually stood a far greater chance if he just kept massing mutas and upgraded attack (can't do air upgrades when you need to morph the greater spire for broodlords) but due to how expensive the tech / corruptors / morphing is his muta count is to low to break cannons.
First broodlord isn't completed until 16:37 in which it's to late and the expansion is lost to 3 archons, 3 zealots, and 6 sentries, not exactly a massive army. Meaning the zerg is quite vulnerable while going for broodlords. You didn't even lose a single unit before the expansion died, nor did you have any more units coming to reinforce the attack.
2. when you kill his expansion his broodlord production pretty much dissipated.
3. The broodlords are so damn slow that it's not possible to just fly over to your 9 O`clock base to stop you from massing air.
4. When not able to hide over cliffs or other terrain the broodlords fall quite easily.
All in all I have a hard time saying something is over powered when you were able to win so easily with 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 mark. Had you spent effectively and defended your pylons better you probably could have won before broodlords were even a choice for the zerg.
I agree that protoss lack anti air, but i feel like the zerg broodlords are not too strong. They are a T3 unit.. theyre like Battlecruiseres specialized against land.
I will admit it's a bit frustrating that brood lords essentially "unresearch" my siege mode. I have to leave them unsieged or brood lords can one hit kill them by drawing friendly fire with the broodlings.
i just beat a broodlord/corruptor/hydra army in a higher level platinum game. all i had was raven/marine/viking, their not that imba just need a proper counter. although if he had infestors in the mix i woulda def lost rofl, infestor is actually imba.
If the problem for Protoss is that Broodlings screw up their unit AI and allow Hydras to decimate Pheonixes, why not go Colossi/Zealot/Pheonix?
Colossi will melt the Broodlings with 1 hit, and melt Hydras with 2 hits, assuming equal upgrades. Without his Hydras to back up the Broodlords, won't Pheonixes kill them? Zealots are there for meatshielding.
Broodlings shoot out way too fast for any mix of ground army to combat them. This sort of goes for terran as well if it weren't for the Viking which is the only real counter to broodlords as far as I can see.
When they shoot out the broodlings, half my army is stopped in its tracks even when I try to stim my marines to try to catch up to the broodlords. Not only that, the heavy armor means thor and marines do pretty minimal damage. So yeah, only counter I see is Viking; not that I'm complaining, I think Viking is quite an awesome unit with fuck yeah 9 range. I can keep them behind my main force and they can still attack any air. But i can see how as Protoss it would be a complete bitch especially with failnix and crappy prism range.
Note that they're indeed rare (somewhere between battlecruiser rare and carrier rare) so I only fought a couple fights (one with only ground, another with vikings). Also watched a couple replays of just broodlords raping.
On March 06 2010 11:41 mondry wrote: After watching the replay a few additional things to say.
1. Just before you attack and kill his expansion and a bunch of overlords to seal the game you have 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 minute mark. This just goes to show how expensive and how much time it actually takes to get broodlords up. You were able to survive Muta harassment quite easily despite not spending. Your opponent would have actually stood a far greater chance if he just kept massing mutas and upgraded attack (can't do air upgrades when you need to morph the greater spire for broodlords) but due to how expensive the tech / corruptors / morphing is his muta count is to low to break cannons.
First broodlord isn't completed until 16:37 in which it's to late and the expansion is lost to 3 archons, 3 zealots, and 6 sentries, not exactly a massive army. Meaning the zerg is quite vulnerable while going for broodlords. You didn't even lose a single unit before the expansion died, nor did you have any more units coming to reinforce the attack.
2. when you kill his expansion his broodlord production pretty much dissipated.
3. The broodlords are so damn slow that it's not possible to just fly over to your 9 O`clock base to stop you from massing air.
4. When not able to hide over cliffs or other terrain the broodlords fall quite easily.
All in all I have a hard time saying something is over powered when you were able to win so easily with 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 mark. Had you spent effectively and defended your pylons better you probably could have won before broodlords were even a choice for the zerg.
I don't disagree with anything you said here, I didn't play that game particularly well. But consider the point at which broodlords actually came out and what the game looked like at that point - can you really deny the power they have? Indeed Pachi, a heavy broodlord user, has said that the only games he ever loses once he gets to broodlord are the ones where the protoss just run around and counter everywhere (turning the game into an elim race).
I agree with the posters who said that the only really viable change would be to weaken corruptors against phoenix. Void ray won't ever be a solution due to the cost of void rays with the cost of robo units to maintain colossus/immortal and avoid being overwhelmed by ground forces.
Maybe a bonus against biological units or something even more creative like any target a void ray is targetting receives X bonus damage from phoenix lasers. Would help create a little chess match in the sky between keeping the void rays alive vs keeping your immortals/colossi alive on the ground.
Blizzard can do a lot with balance simply because instead of unit "size" they've gone to a bunch of categories of unit types.
Played a game vs someone who got brood lords today, and I learned the hard way that colossi seem to be what is needed against them. Even so, it is a tough fight. The broodlings keep any sort of ground units away from brood lords, and any air is gonna get crushed by corrupters...the good thing is that ievery zerg I play admits they are imbalanced, so they will likely end up nerfed. I agree that the main problem is simply that the broodlings are too...infinite. it would make a lot more sense for them to weaken as the fight goes on, as would be the case if it used mana or something.
So the argument against void rays is that they cost 50 more gas than phoenix? Ok.
They take 60 seconds to build compared to 45 for phoenix, they do 6 damage per channeling second to both broodlords and corruptors, they have 7 range (twice the phoenix), move at the same speed as broodlords as well as the ability to attack while moving. They're not even massive units so corruptors don't get their bonus damage against them.
If Z is making broodlords, hes not investing in a ground force either so if your ground ball couldn't take ground ball than he would of been ahead already with or without the broodlord. I noticed whenever i'm teching towards broodlords, which is a very costly investment, its generally because I need to catchup and it actually opens up a small timing window in which im saving resources in order to churn them out.
On March 06 2010 11:41 mondry wrote: After watching the replay a few additional things to say.
1. Just before you attack and kill his expansion and a bunch of overlords to seal the game you have 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 minute mark. This just goes to show how expensive and how much time it actually takes to get broodlords up. You were able to survive Muta harassment quite easily despite not spending. Your opponent would have actually stood a far greater chance if he just kept massing mutas and upgraded attack (can't do air upgrades when you need to morph the greater spire for broodlords) but due to how expensive the tech / corruptors / morphing is his muta count is to low to break cannons.
First broodlord isn't completed until 16:37 in which it's to late and the expansion is lost to 3 archons, 3 zealots, and 6 sentries, not exactly a massive army. Meaning the zerg is quite vulnerable while going for broodlords. You didn't even lose a single unit before the expansion died, nor did you have any more units coming to reinforce the attack.
2. when you kill his expansion his broodlord production pretty much dissipated.
3. The broodlords are so damn slow that it's not possible to just fly over to your 9 O`clock base to stop you from massing air.
4. When not able to hide over cliffs or other terrain the broodlords fall quite easily.
All in all I have a hard time saying something is over powered when you were able to win so easily with 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 mark. Had you spent effectively and defended your pylons better you probably could have won before broodlords were even a choice for the zerg.
I don't disagree with anything you said here, I didn't play that game particularly well. But consider the point at which broodlords actually came out and what the game looked like at that point - can you really deny the power they have? Indeed Pachi, a heavy broodlord user, has said that the only games he ever loses once he gets to broodlord are the ones where the protoss just run around and counter everywhere (turning the game into an elim race).
I have considered the point at which broodlords actually came out and no you can't deny the power they have. At the same time you can't deny that even though he made broodlords you won the game incredibly easy because despite what everyone is claiming, there is a downside for the zerg to make brood lords that can be exploited. A good timing attack with the counter to a low number of mutas (archon / sentry) just before greater spire and morph broodlord finish is an easy win.
zerg goes air and didn't get crushed/but behind like mad: protoss gets raped.
thats at least how i feel after ~40-50 games...
i really think a big part of the problem is the Colossus.. Once protoss gets 3-4 in his normal ground army.... he will just waste the zerg ground army...
Btw: I hate it when protoss complains about mutas... while they are going robo tech and have about 2 units that actually fire on mutas and then claim imbalance.
FUCK your robotech... You got this nice shiny templar tech, use it.
On March 06 2010 11:41 mondry wrote: After watching the replay a few additional things to say.
1. Just before you attack and kill his expansion and a bunch of overlords to seal the game you have 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 minute mark. This just goes to show how expensive and how much time it actually takes to get broodlords up. You were able to survive Muta harassment quite easily despite not spending. Your opponent would have actually stood a far greater chance if he just kept massing mutas and upgraded attack (can't do air upgrades when you need to morph the greater spire for broodlords) but due to how expensive the tech / corruptors / morphing is his muta count is to low to break cannons.
First broodlord isn't completed until 16:37 in which it's to late and the expansion is lost to 3 archons, 3 zealots, and 6 sentries, not exactly a massive army. Meaning the zerg is quite vulnerable while going for broodlords. You didn't even lose a single unit before the expansion died, nor did you have any more units coming to reinforce the attack.
2. when you kill his expansion his broodlord production pretty much dissipated.
3. The broodlords are so damn slow that it's not possible to just fly over to your 9 O`clock base to stop you from massing air.
4. When not able to hide over cliffs or other terrain the broodlords fall quite easily.
All in all I have a hard time saying something is over powered when you were able to win so easily with 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 mark. Had you spent effectively and defended your pylons better you probably could have won before broodlords were even a choice for the zerg.
I don't disagree with anything you said here, I didn't play that game particularly well. But consider the point at which broodlords actually came out and what the game looked like at that point - can you really deny the power they have? Indeed Pachi, a heavy broodlord user, has said that the only games he ever loses once he gets to broodlord are the ones where the protoss just run around and counter everywhere (turning the game into an elim race).
I have considered the point at which broodlords actually came out and no you can't deny the power they have. At the same time you can't deny that even though he made broodlords you won the game incredibly easy because despite what everyone is claiming, there is a downside for the zerg to make brood lords that can be exploited. A good timing attack with the counter to a low number of mutas (archon / sentry) just before greater spire and morph broodlord finish is an easy win.
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
The problem might not be broodlords them self but stalker inablitity to counter them properly ... or protos lack of good anti air ...
Out of 6 matches i played vs broodlords i lost 5 i think. Last game we were on stepes of war and we were on 2 bases each and i managed to denie zerg third expo for quite a long time ... i even took third before him. Thing is phoenix or void ray cant counter them because corputers and hydras own them very hard i did learn that hard way in previous matches ... so in last game i did go with mass stalker with blink ... blink in and snipe ... i added some storms and archons to keep zerlings and hydras off ... he had like 5 or 6 of them all the time even when i blink and snipe them one by one , they seam quite more durable and more effective them colosus to be honest.
Again i think stalker damage should be tweaked a bit to be more like dragoon damage ... it should deal more damage per shot but shoot less offten... so we can dance around or something. Still broodlords rape them and hydras rape air ... i really dont see much POTENTIAL HERE
First i am only in gold league and i am quite noob ... i know i made many mistakes but zerg was not great player as well , i am just posting here to see how other people deal with it ... this is when i was going mass stalker this guy made zerlings instead of hydras ... but every time i gone mass air to counter they would go hydra to counter my air generally ... and i know that zealot attack on natural expo was fail but they were not of much use at base
What is most effective way to counter zerg broodlord end game army ?
I reckon broodlord idea itself is neat. It's just too imbalanced right now. I know ppl argue AA is good against broodlord and thus balanced, it's like saying if zerglings did 100 damage per attack, it's okay because marines rape them before they get close to you (exaggeration but you get the point). They do a lot of damage and they are tank. I can live with that, just that there are too many broodlings.
A way to fix this is to have a cooldown on each broodlord and ability to store broodlings (maximum 10 or something). With each cooldown amount of broodling stored goes up. It seems fair and 10 broodlings means 10 attacks and it will still be very effective and strong for a tier 3 unit.
On March 06 2010 02:28 zeppelin wrote: The whole air-ground balance compared to bw is skewed right now, a2g is so much stronger and g2a (and even a2a) is much weaker. Based on the size of the holes this seems to leave I feel like it's something that will addressed in an expansion.
Yeah, I've been wondering about this. Air unit balance seems a lot closer to what it's like in WC3 than it is to BW.
In BW, the closest thing to an air force that can't be dealt with is Carriers in TvP (mostly because koreans established the metagame and they don't like ghosts, IMHO).
In WC3, air units are much mightier. Gryphons in OvH, Gargoyles in NvU, and Wyverns in literally every matchup are cases in which there just isn't an obvious counter to an enemy massing air units.
In SC2, air units are once again quite strong: Warp Rays can demolish an opponent who is unable to counter them immediately, Banshees are so strong they give Stalkers a run for their money, and Broodlords can be a pain in the neck to deal with. While the Carrier was just as hard to counter in TvP in BW, that unit is at the very end of the Protoss tech tree- unlike, say, the Banshee.
Dealing with mass mutas is also a lot harder. With Irradiate and Corsairs gone, there's just no way to stomp down on them- you pretty much need a big army with lots of anti air and shoot them out of the sky.
I can't say I like this state of affairs. Are air units weak in BW? I say, no. When looking at airborne fighter units (not thinking of science vessels or arbiters here), they usually have a place in an army; wraiths have a use in all matchups (who needs 6 turrets to intimidate an enemy shuttle when a wraith will bring it down much more effectively); mutas are a core part of the zerg race; corsairs had their niche in PvZ; and scouts... okay, no, scouts sucked. All in all, I like this balance; air units are weak / can be countered quite effectively with the correct units (TvP Carriers aside), but they're very mobile.
In SC2, it just doesn't seem like air units pay for their mobility in power to anywhere near the extent they do in BW.
On March 06 2010 11:41 mondry wrote: After watching the replay a few additional things to say.
1. Just before you attack and kill his expansion and a bunch of overlords to seal the game you have 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 minute mark. This just goes to show how expensive and how much time it actually takes to get broodlords up. You were able to survive Muta harassment quite easily despite not spending. Your opponent would have actually stood a far greater chance if he just kept massing mutas and upgraded attack (can't do air upgrades when you need to morph the greater spire for broodlords) but due to how expensive the tech / corruptors / morphing is his muta count is to low to break cannons.
First broodlord isn't completed until 16:37 in which it's to late and the expansion is lost to 3 archons, 3 zealots, and 6 sentries, not exactly a massive army. Meaning the zerg is quite vulnerable while going for broodlords. You didn't even lose a single unit before the expansion died, nor did you have any more units coming to reinforce the attack.
2. when you kill his expansion his broodlord production pretty much dissipated.
3. The broodlords are so damn slow that it's not possible to just fly over to your 9 O`clock base to stop you from massing air.
4. When not able to hide over cliffs or other terrain the broodlords fall quite easily.
All in all I have a hard time saying something is over powered when you were able to win so easily with 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 mark. Had you spent effectively and defended your pylons better you probably could have won before broodlords were even a choice for the zerg.
I don't disagree with anything you said here, I didn't play that game particularly well. But consider the point at which broodlords actually came out and what the game looked like at that point - can you really deny the power they have? Indeed Pachi, a heavy broodlord user, has said that the only games he ever loses once he gets to broodlord are the ones where the protoss just run around and counter everywhere (turning the game into an elim race).
I have considered the point at which broodlords actually came out and no you can't deny the power they have. At the same time you can't deny that even though he made broodlords you won the game incredibly easy because despite what everyone is claiming, there is a downside for the zerg to make brood lords that can be exploited. A good timing attack with the counter to a low number of mutas (archon / sentry) just before greater spire and morph broodlord finish is an easy win.
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
Perhaps it's not a problem with broodlords then, but your race? I don't see many terran or zerg players complaining about broodlords.
How can a unit that can't attack air be over powered and unstoppable to your whole race btw? You build one phoenix or one void ray and it'll kill 1000s of broodlords.
But that's just it isn't it, it's not just the broodlord protoss has problems with. Every post I've read talks about broodlords with corruptors and hydras. That trio of units in mass is what makes them unbeatable, not the broodlord specifically which is EASILY countered by any air unit that shoots air.
It is in my opinion that a protoss played correctly can keep zerg from making that ultimate trio relatively easily so in that sense my point is exactly that, don't let him make an army your race can't beat. It's no different then saying "don't let a terran mass battle cruisers with ghosts and vikings."
On March 06 2010 11:41 mondry wrote: After watching the replay a few additional things to say.
1. Just before you attack and kill his expansion and a bunch of overlords to seal the game you have 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 minute mark. This just goes to show how expensive and how much time it actually takes to get broodlords up. You were able to survive Muta harassment quite easily despite not spending. Your opponent would have actually stood a far greater chance if he just kept massing mutas and upgraded attack (can't do air upgrades when you need to morph the greater spire for broodlords) but due to how expensive the tech / corruptors / morphing is his muta count is to low to break cannons.
First broodlord isn't completed until 16:37 in which it's to late and the expansion is lost to 3 archons, 3 zealots, and 6 sentries, not exactly a massive army. Meaning the zerg is quite vulnerable while going for broodlords. You didn't even lose a single unit before the expansion died, nor did you have any more units coming to reinforce the attack.
2. when you kill his expansion his broodlord production pretty much dissipated.
3. The broodlords are so damn slow that it's not possible to just fly over to your 9 O`clock base to stop you from massing air.
4. When not able to hide over cliffs or other terrain the broodlords fall quite easily.
All in all I have a hard time saying something is over powered when you were able to win so easily with 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 mark. Had you spent effectively and defended your pylons better you probably could have won before broodlords were even a choice for the zerg.
I don't disagree with anything you said here, I didn't play that game particularly well. But consider the point at which broodlords actually came out and what the game looked like at that point - can you really deny the power they have? Indeed Pachi, a heavy broodlord user, has said that the only games he ever loses once he gets to broodlord are the ones where the protoss just run around and counter everywhere (turning the game into an elim race).
I have considered the point at which broodlords actually came out and no you can't deny the power they have. At the same time you can't deny that even though he made broodlords you won the game incredibly easy because despite what everyone is claiming, there is a downside for the zerg to make brood lords that can be exploited. A good timing attack with the counter to a low number of mutas (archon / sentry) just before greater spire and morph broodlord finish is an easy win.
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
Perhaps it's not a problem with broodlords then, but your race? I don't see many terran or zerg players complaining about broodlords.
How can a unit that can't attack air be over powered and unstoppable to your whole race btw? You build one phoenix or one void ray and it'll kill 1000s of broodlords.
But that's just it isn't it, it's not just the broodlord protoss has problems with. Every post I've read talks about broodlords with corruptors and hydras. That trio of units in mass is what makes them unbeatable, not the broodlord specifically which is EASILY countered by any air unit that shoots air.
It is in my opinion that a protoss played correctly can keep zerg from making that ultimate trio relatively easily so in that sense my point is exactly that, don't let him make an army your race can't beat. It's no different then saying "don't let a terran mass battle cruisers with ghosts and vikings."
No it's quite different. Every trio should have a set of units the other side can use to fight with if they have the appropriate number of units.
e.g. Carriers in SC1 - if i get 12 vs a terran who hasn't scouted them its instant gg. However, it's not like he doesn't have a response to that. He can build goliaths and goliath vs carrier is somewhat of an even fight (given the right map and appropriate micro).
If stalkers didn't suck balls so much then there would be an easy answer to broodlord - make lots of stalkers! But they're really really shit. Buffing stalkers and pushing warp gates back (as idra suggested in another thread) would be ideal imo.
On March 06 2010 11:41 mondry wrote: After watching the replay a few additional things to say.
1. Just before you attack and kill his expansion and a bunch of overlords to seal the game you have 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 minute mark. This just goes to show how expensive and how much time it actually takes to get broodlords up. You were able to survive Muta harassment quite easily despite not spending. Your opponent would have actually stood a far greater chance if he just kept massing mutas and upgraded attack (can't do air upgrades when you need to morph the greater spire for broodlords) but due to how expensive the tech / corruptors / morphing is his muta count is to low to break cannons.
First broodlord isn't completed until 16:37 in which it's to late and the expansion is lost to 3 archons, 3 zealots, and 6 sentries, not exactly a massive army. Meaning the zerg is quite vulnerable while going for broodlords. You didn't even lose a single unit before the expansion died, nor did you have any more units coming to reinforce the attack.
2. when you kill his expansion his broodlord production pretty much dissipated.
3. The broodlords are so damn slow that it's not possible to just fly over to your 9 O`clock base to stop you from massing air.
4. When not able to hide over cliffs or other terrain the broodlords fall quite easily.
All in all I have a hard time saying something is over powered when you were able to win so easily with 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 mark. Had you spent effectively and defended your pylons better you probably could have won before broodlords were even a choice for the zerg.
I don't disagree with anything you said here, I didn't play that game particularly well. But consider the point at which broodlords actually came out and what the game looked like at that point - can you really deny the power they have? Indeed Pachi, a heavy broodlord user, has said that the only games he ever loses once he gets to broodlord are the ones where the protoss just run around and counter everywhere (turning the game into an elim race).
I have considered the point at which broodlords actually came out and no you can't deny the power they have. At the same time you can't deny that even though he made broodlords you won the game incredibly easy because despite what everyone is claiming, there is a downside for the zerg to make brood lords that can be exploited. A good timing attack with the counter to a low number of mutas (archon / sentry) just before greater spire and morph broodlord finish is an easy win.
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
This makes me think you haven't played as Zerg against at least mid-level platinum players. You'd feel the same way about their colossus.
Point is, once you figure out the right combination of units to counter, they're not even a problem anymore, and the same goes for broodlords. Getting to that mixture may be, but that's why this game's macro is unique.
On March 06 2010 11:41 mondry wrote: After watching the replay a few additional things to say.
1. Just before you attack and kill his expansion and a bunch of overlords to seal the game you have 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 minute mark. This just goes to show how expensive and how much time it actually takes to get broodlords up. You were able to survive Muta harassment quite easily despite not spending. Your opponent would have actually stood a far greater chance if he just kept massing mutas and upgraded attack (can't do air upgrades when you need to morph the greater spire for broodlords) but due to how expensive the tech / corruptors / morphing is his muta count is to low to break cannons.
First broodlord isn't completed until 16:37 in which it's to late and the expansion is lost to 3 archons, 3 zealots, and 6 sentries, not exactly a massive army. Meaning the zerg is quite vulnerable while going for broodlords. You didn't even lose a single unit before the expansion died, nor did you have any more units coming to reinforce the attack.
2. when you kill his expansion his broodlord production pretty much dissipated.
3. The broodlords are so damn slow that it's not possible to just fly over to your 9 O`clock base to stop you from massing air.
4. When not able to hide over cliffs or other terrain the broodlords fall quite easily.
All in all I have a hard time saying something is over powered when you were able to win so easily with 3k crystals and 1k gas banked up at the 16:00 mark. Had you spent effectively and defended your pylons better you probably could have won before broodlords were even a choice for the zerg.
I don't disagree with anything you said here, I didn't play that game particularly well. But consider the point at which broodlords actually came out and what the game looked like at that point - can you really deny the power they have? Indeed Pachi, a heavy broodlord user, has said that the only games he ever loses once he gets to broodlord are the ones where the protoss just run around and counter everywhere (turning the game into an elim race).
I have considered the point at which broodlords actually came out and no you can't deny the power they have. At the same time you can't deny that even though he made broodlords you won the game incredibly easy because despite what everyone is claiming, there is a downside for the zerg to make brood lords that can be exploited. A good timing attack with the counter to a low number of mutas (archon / sentry) just before greater spire and morph broodlord finish is an easy win.
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
This makes me think you haven't played as Zerg against at least mid-level platinum players. You'd feel the same way about their colossus.
Point is, once you figure out the right combination of units to counter, they're not even a problem anymore, and the same goes for broodlords. Getting to that mixture may be, but that's why this game's macro is unique.
Then give me a combination that fares well against Broodlords and ill give it a go.
While I have not been able to try this out for myself yet, it seems that a decent combination against hydras+broodlords could be a mothership hiding colossi.
5 colossi under a mothership should make quick work of the hydras, and then you can add in a sentry for the shield, and a few phoenixes and stuff to support them. 5 colossi and a mothership, against 6 broodlords, should come about even on cost. Then support units matching the cost of the hydras, and it should be all good.
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
Wow, that sounds a lot like what everyone has always said about carriers or battlecruisers. Is your problem just that zerg finally has an end game capital ship that is very hard to counter if you let them spend a gazillion minerals on them?
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
Wow, that sounds a lot like what everyone has always said about carriers or battlecruisers. Is your problem just that zerg finally has an end game capital ship that is very hard to counter if you let them spend a gazillion minerals on them?
Carriers and battlecruisers can be killed by ground Anti-air by running underneath them since they're slow. Broodlords are also slow but they stop ground anti-air instantly with massive amounts of broodlings and they can stay 9 range away. Broodlings tank almost as much as zerglings. It's like if carrier interceptors were actually little stalkers with half the hp and could block enemy movement. Even worse, broodlings are just spontaneously generated, they don't cost money to make. Maybe if they were made to cost money/build time or took time to regenerate, it would be okay.
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
Wow, that sounds a lot like what everyone has always said about carriers or battlecruisers. Is your problem just that zerg finally has an end game capital ship that is very hard to counter if you let them spend a gazillion minerals on them?
Carriers and battlecruisers can be killed by ground Anti-air by running underneath them since they're slow. Broodlords are also slow but they stop ground anti-air instantly with massive amounts of broodlings and they can stay 9 range away. Broodlings tank almost as much as zerglings. It's like if carrier interceptors were actually little stalkers with half the hp and could block enemy movement. Even worse, broodlings are just spontaneously generated, they don't cost money to make. Maybe if they were made to cost money/build time or took time to regenerate, it would be okay.
this, and broodlords are also cheaper than capitol ships, build in half the time and don't require several starport/gates to build in mass
Carriers and battlecruisers can be killed by ground Anti-air by running underneath them since they're slow. Broodlords are also slow but they stop ground anti-air instantly with massive amounts of broodlings and they can stay 9 range away. Broodlings tank almost as much as zerglings. It's like if carrier interceptors were actually little stalkers with half the hp and could block enemy movement. Even worse, broodlings are just spontaneously generated, they don't cost money to make. Maybe if they were made to cost money/build time or took time to regenerate, it would be okay.
Battlecruisers and carriers also don't have the weakness of being unable to hit air. So a unit that is tier 3.5, can only attack ground, and costs a freeking fortune is very difficult to counter with ground forces. What about that doesn't make sense?
Oh, is it because he ALSO has a buncha corruptors. So now he's only spent like 2000+ gas on this airforce. Marines should definitely be able to stimpack and own them, yer right.
what would happen if you had 2000 gas worth of voidrays in the sky? They would probably not only win that fight, but then be able to go on and vaporize an expansion. If you scout a spire, lay off the colossus. Your ground army works just fine without them, especially if he's investing heavily in air.
I think the biggest problem with many of these issues is that currently the air supperiority units (Phoenix / Corruptor / Viking) plain suck. Especially the first 2. I personally didn't find Vikings too bad as they do quite a lot of damage. Corruptors are pretty bad except vs BCs and carriers, but zerg have mutas to fall back on. IMO Corruptors need some better mobility. Protoss feel in a bit of a hole at the moment. Phoenixes are really weak vs most units, and their light bonus doesn't prevent them from being totally annihilated by mutas or vikings. They have their speed going and their graviton beam. But that makes them nothing more than glorified overlord hunters.
My point is that regardless of how the game panned out, if there exists a unit with as much power as the broodlord then surely it must be broken? If the only legitimate answer to broodlord on the protoss side is to not let zerg get them, then surely that unit must be over powered?
Wow, that sounds a lot like what everyone has always said about carriers or battlecruisers. Is your problem just that zerg finally has an end game capital ship that is very hard to counter if you let them spend a gazillion minerals on them?
no one has ever said 'dont let protoss get carriers or terran get bcs or you will lose' they're not that hard to counter at all by either race. Really only terran had a problem with carriers on certain maps that's about it.
After reading *most* of the posts, its seems to be a battle of Protoss vs Zerg players. Terran throw in their 2 cents "OH no big deal Vikings rape everything." But its just a battle of Zerg players wanting to keep their imbalanced unit in the game. Protoss has already lost many of their "imbalances," and now Zerg is scared to lose theirs.
Simple solution is to just do some slow patching such as energy cost for the broodlings and see where it goes from there.
As mentioned somewhere above you also don't want to mess up the TvZ match up by overly nerffing the Brood Lord.
Another solution perhaps could be bringing the Phoenix's over charge ability back into the game, but make it a tier 3 upgrade (to match the tier 3 Brood Lord, but now I'm just throwing out random ideas)
Does anyone agree or disagree with what I said? (And for the most part look at what race the person plays when they either agree or disagree with me.)
On March 08 2010 10:07 NET wrote: After reading *most* of the posts, its seems to be a battle of Protoss vs Zerg players. Terran throw in their 2 cents "OH no big deal Vikings rape everything." But its just a battle of Zerg players wanting to keep their imbalanced unit in the game. Protoss has already lost many of their "imbalances," and now Zerg is scared to lose theirs.
Simple solution is to just do some slow patching such as energy cost for the broodlings and see where it goes from there.
As mentioned somewhere above you also don't want to mess up the TvZ match up by overly nerffing the Brood Lord.
Another solution perhaps could be bringing the Phoenix's over charge ability back into the game, but make it a tier 3 upgrade (to match the tier 3 Brood Lord, but now I'm just throwing out random ideas)
Does anyone agree or disagree with what I said? (And for the most part look at what race the person plays when they either agree or disagree with me.)
You're part of the system of behavior you just outlined. An obvious one, too. >_>
On March 08 2010 12:04 ethos wrote: So in ZvP, Zerg wins... *If* the game goes on long enough.
The much bigger problem is that the game doesn't go on long enough.
And when Blizzard finally balances the game to where it can go on long enough, God only knows what the Tier 3 landscape will be like.
If pvz games were never going to late game the thread wouldnt exist o.o and if it wasnt common the thread wouldnt be 7 pages xD
I don't know... I see a thread beginning with people stating how little experience they've had with Broodlords, how the game never advances to that stage, and ending with what seems like theory-crafting in biased defense of racial preferences.
The only times I remember seeing Broodlords is from streams or replays from players who were experimenting (Artosis vs Moon, KHB vs Day9).
As P vs a lategame hydra/broodlord army you either have to run into your short range phoenixes above their hydralisks (phoenixes are quite fragile to hydras) or attempt to get stalkers in range where you can't walk in stalkers because of the broodlings, meaning you have to blink into the middle of a bunch of light armor hydralisks which shred your stalkers. The only thing I've had any success with is storming the hydralisks while pulling back until their army is soft enough to engage.
it's really hard to say in a vacuum whether any unit is overpowered, especially a late game unit. i don't think there's any way to come down on one side or the other of this debate.
it might turn out that once the dust settles, arguing about broodlords is a lot like arguing about whether plague was too strong in zvz or whether recalled reavers was totally unfair
i think the solution was similar back to when we had big air. When the zerg went guardians, you would make corsairs. but when the zerg made devourers you made carriers or you just went with a heavy tech push with a lot of storm. Similarly, i think that if they make no corruptors, then pheonix/void ray is the answer BUT if there are corruptors and brood lords i guess storm is your only answer. The problem i see right now is that storm is no where near as strong but i guess its something that we have to work around. maybe stalker/templar/sentry with guardian shield.and a few zealots to rid the broodlings while your sentrys and stalkers are attacking the brood lords
On March 08 2010 10:16 Avidkeystamper wrote: You're part of the system of behavior you just outlined. An obvious one, too. >_>
Lol Exactly my point... I'm a Protoss Elitist. Most of the arguments are gonna be biased. WE are just going to have to rely on Blizzard's unbiased stats and information to play itself out and hopefully get a fair and balanced outcome.
But for the record what I suggested wasn't too far-fetched. Unlimited broodlings is pretty broke.
haha and as for bringing back the overload ability... A Protoss can dream can't he? :D
On March 08 2010 10:07 NET wrote: After reading *most* of the posts, its seems to be a battle of Protoss vs Zerg players. Terran throw in their 2 cents "OH no big deal Vikings rape everything." But its just a battle of Zerg players wanting to keep their imbalanced unit in the game. Protoss has already lost many of their "imbalances," and now Zerg is scared to lose theirs.
Simple solution is to just do some slow patching such as energy cost for the broodlings and see where it goes from there.
As mentioned somewhere above you also don't want to mess up the TvZ match up by overly nerffing the Brood Lord.
Another solution perhaps could be bringing the Phoenix's over charge ability back into the game, but make it a tier 3 upgrade (to match the tier 3 Brood Lord, but now I'm just throwing out random ideas)
Does anyone agree or disagree with what I said? (And for the most part look at what race the person plays when they either agree or disagree with me.)
You're part of the system of behavior you just outlined. An obvious one, too. >_>
lol its not worth reading once everyone realizes he argues with himself. "we cant listen to people who think broodlords aren't op, but we should listen to the protoss who says they are, and due to this reasoning, they are OBVIOUSLY op!"
i like the fact about the brood lord that it is morphed from the corruptor... (instead of guardian from mutalisk in sc:bw) so you have sufficient air->air support as well, if you leave 2-4 unmorphed
that helped me win a game where i actually survived the early- & mid-game vT xD
On March 08 2010 05:05 Mente wrote: Mothership>broodlord. Amirite?
yeah, but you can't have 12 motherships
you can have 12 carriers, now tell me what's more powerful brood lord of carrier. don't tell me it costs less it's just 50 less mins if you can afford the gas you will def have the mins for it as gas is hard as hell to get in this game
carriers should counter brood lords no problem, they are the same tier, no? remember you need hive and a greater spire. building a starport and a fleet beacon with chrono boost should be faster.
and of course it's going to take a while to balance the late game. blizzard really needs to get the ai for the broodlings right, though. could be a difficult task.
just two brood lords should by all means be able to pack a big punch. they are late game and very expensive.
On March 09 2010 07:48 meffo wrote: carriers should counter brood lords no problem, they are the same tier, no? remember you need hive and a greater spire. building a starport and a fleet beacon with chrono boost should be faster.
and of course it's going to take a while to balance the late game. blizzard really needs to get the ai for the broodlings right, though. could be a difficult task.
just two brood lords should by all means be able to pack a big punch. they are late game and very expensive.
Carrier do not counter hydra/broodlord army at all. Its slower to get in any respectable numbers and doesn't deal well with other zerg army compositions.
The biggest problem with broodlord is that it provides its own meatshield and with hydra backup it can chew up ground forces and air AA. Combined with corrupter it makes it even more difficult to engage the zerg and hope to come out on top.
Not to mention broodlord tech switch late game is not easily punishable either because roach/hydra do a well enough job defending mid-game pressure (unless you decide for a midgame all in).
Fix either has to be a broodling nerf (cost mana, cooldown per spawn, spawn only on kill, has to be premade like interceptors, i dont know) or reduce survivability of the broodlord
On March 08 2010 15:03 Mystlord wrote: If you want to think of it this way, brood lords are like the 3/3 mech army in TvZ of SC2. Fucking slow and really hard to stop.
How to beat 3/3 mech army TvZ in SC2? Counter where he's not, or an even better counter:
Don't let the game get to that point in the first place. You could also try the wearing down strategy.
Or you can think of it as a slower Archon/Reaver/Temp army :/. Anyway, the point is to not let the game get to that point in the first place.
I think part of the point is that "wear down" strategy of which you speak doesn't really work against brood lords the way it works against a 3/3 mech army. Every time you send waves of hydraling at the ball, it will melt but not before eating up some non-infinite mines, and doing damage to tanks that is non-free to repair. The only problem I see with the BL is, as has been said, the infinite-ness of the broodlings. Their numbers never diminish and there is no way whatsoever, without blink, to advance from the ground on the zerg's position.
On March 09 2010 07:48 meffo wrote: carriers should counter brood lords no problem, they are the same tier, no? remember you need hive and a greater spire. building a starport and a fleet beacon with chrono boost should be faster.
and of course it's going to take a while to balance the late game. blizzard really needs to get the ai for the broodlings right, though. could be a difficult task.
just two brood lords should by all means be able to pack a big punch. they are late game and very expensive.
Carrier do not counter hydra/broodlord army at all. Its slower to get in any respectable numbers and doesn't deal well with other zerg army compositions.
The biggest problem with broodlord is that it provides its own meatshield and with hydra backup it can chew up ground forces and air AA. Combined with corrupter it makes it even more difficult to engage the zerg and hope to come out on top.
Not to mention broodlord tech switch late game is not easily punishable either because roach/hydra do a well enough job defending mid-game pressure (unless you decide for a midgame all in).
Fix either has to be a broodling nerf (cost mana, cooldown per spawn, spawn only on kill, has to be premade like interceptors, i dont know) or reduce survivability of the broodlord
oh, i didn't say anything about countering hydras, but if you've never built a templar (either kind), i'll just go ahead and break it down for you.
what you're saying seems like carriers can't kill hydras, brood lords, corruptors, banelings, roaches or even a drone? it's not like you should be going all in carriers (even though that might work), you obviously need to compose your army just as carefully (or more so if you want to win) as your opponent. getting carriers is not slower than getting brood lords, it's faster (gateway, cybercore, double gas, stargate, fleet beacon, that's it) - and you won't need as many carriers. you can also get a mothership faster than the zerg can get brood lords.
yes, the brood lord will rape most ground units - and rightfully so. they cannot attack air, are very slow and to get one, you will need spawning pool, double gas, lair, spire, infestation pit, hive, greater spire and a corruptor, which can't be done in one go, or you'll just die to the first zealot.
hydras are quite strong, but will die to storms, dts or what ever.
or hydra/broodlord is just imba and there are no counters for it? i hope you realize how slow and expensive these units are in sc2, so you're certainly not picking your fights very well.
just like enough games has been played to balance the late game, that's just so silly.
On March 09 2010 07:48 meffo wrote: carriers should counter brood lords no problem, they are the same tier, no? remember you need hive and a greater spire. building a starport and a fleet beacon with chrono boost should be faster.
and of course it's going to take a while to balance the late game. blizzard really needs to get the ai for the broodlings right, though. could be a difficult task.
just two brood lords should by all means be able to pack a big punch. they are late game and very expensive.
Carrier do not counter hydra/broodlord army at all. Its slower to get in any respectable numbers and doesn't deal well with other zerg army compositions.
The biggest problem with broodlord is that it provides its own meatshield and with hydra backup it can chew up ground forces and air AA. Combined with corrupter it makes it even more difficult to engage the zerg and hope to come out on top.
Not to mention broodlord tech switch late game is not easily punishable either because roach/hydra do a well enough job defending mid-game pressure (unless you decide for a midgame all in).
Fix either has to be a broodling nerf (cost mana, cooldown per spawn, spawn only on kill, has to be premade like interceptors, i dont know) or reduce survivability of the broodlord
oh, i didn't say anything about countering hydras, but if you've never built a templar (either kind), i'll just go ahead and break it down for you.
what you're saying seems like carriers can't kill hydras, brood lords, corruptors, banelings, roaches or even a drone? it's not like you should be going all in carriers (even though that might work), you obviously need to compose your army just as carefully (or more so if you want to win) as your opponent. getting carriers is not slower than getting brood lords, it's faster (gateway, cybercore, double gas, stargate, fleet beacon, that's it) - and you won't need as many carriers. you can also get a mothership faster than the zerg can get brood lords.
yes, the brood lord will rape most ground units - and rightfully so. they cannot attack air, are very slow and to get one, you will need spawning pool, double gas, lair, spire, infestation pit, hive, greater spire and a corruptor, which can't be done in one go, or you'll just die to the first zealot.
hydras are quite strong, but will die to storms, dts or what ever.
or hydra/broodlord is just imba and there are no counters for it? i hope you realize how slow and expensive these units are in sc2, so you're certainly not picking your fights very well.
just like enough games has been played to balance the late game, that's just so silly.
this post is so biased >.> you claim that you shouldnt rush pure carriers and obviously need to balance your army composition then you argue that its much easier to get mass carriers than broodlords. you say you cant rush broodlords without dying, well its the exact same thing with carriers, if you skip templar and robotics facility tech, you are going to die to everything. plus you far overstate the opposing argument to the point its not even worth reading. From what i see its a crapton easier to transition into broodlords late-game than it is carriers, since hive and spire you already get in the normal course of things while toss usually ignore stargate completely for robo facility and/or templar archives. you sum up your argument with "you're certainly not picking your fights very well" this thread is full of people posting their experiences with how hard it is and how many different combinations they've tried against it and how they all fail, most of these players are far better than you and are obviously not a-moving random units and hoping it works.
Just wondering, has ANYONE ever managed to beat a hydra-corrupter-broodlord army straight up? (if both players were at near-equal levels and even in the game) havent seen anyone post a ____ works yet, other than a few smartasses saying 1 AA unit owns all broodlords.
I think it's too early to be calling this matchup imba. The way I see it:
If your opponent got to Brood Lords:
1. They had a significant advantage in the game, and were able to defend against inferior forces while they got the Brood Lord/Corrupter/Hydra mix out. In that case, you are just seeing their advantage in the form of a beastly unit comp, and they should be rolling over you, considering the time/tech/resource investment placed into it. The whole point of late-game units is to give you that extra oomph to make a final push.
2. They did not have a significant advantage, and you should have had an opportunity to attack. Probably even take out an expansion along with their entire ground force while the corrupters were being built and eventualy morphed. In that case, it was your fault in strategy/and scouting and deserve to be at a disadvantage. But I still think it can be countered.
As for how to counter it, I feel like the Mothership would be essential. Vortex those badboys out of play, most likely along with their Corrputer support. This leaves no broodlings to prevent you from moving your army of Speedlots/Sentry/Collosi up to kill the Hydras, and move a control group of Phoenix in position to kill the air forces when they come out of the Vortex. Then send the ground forces to take out an expo.
Considering how long Brood Lords take to get out, and how long they will be vunerable, especially on the ground, while getting to that tech, that unit comp should be reached in more than enough time. Or you should be able to attack and take out the Brood Lords ground support, and they should be much easier to take out on their own.
If you can't get there, you were probably too far behind in the game anyway and your fate was all but sealed.
Again, haven't tried this, but seems like it would work in theory.
On March 08 2010 09:04 Nyth wrote: I think the biggest problem with many of these issues is that currently the air supperiority units (Phoenix / Corruptor / Viking) plain suck. Especially the first 2. I personally didn't find Vikings too bad as they do quite a lot of damage. Corruptors are pretty bad except vs BCs and carriers, but zerg have mutas to fall back on. IMO Corruptors need some better mobility. Protoss feel in a bit of a hole at the moment. Phoenixes are really weak vs most units, and their light bonus doesn't prevent them from being totally annihilated by mutas or vikings. They have their speed going and their graviton beam. But that makes them nothing more than glorified overlord hunters.
This is mostly true. Corruptors are pretty solid, but overall the air vs air units are pitiful. Playing Terran, I'd gladly give up the gimmicky air-ground nature of Vikings for a few more hp or something to give them a chance against a zerg who is truly focused on air units. Broodlords with any combination of Hydras, Mutas, or Corruptors are extremely hard to deal with, regardless of what race you're playing.
On March 09 2010 07:48 meffo wrote: carriers should counter brood lords no problem, they are the same tier, no? remember you need hive and a greater spire. building a starport and a fleet beacon with chrono boost should be faster.
and of course it's going to take a while to balance the late game. blizzard really needs to get the ai for the broodlings right, though. could be a difficult task.
just two brood lords should by all means be able to pack a big punch. they are late game and very expensive.
Carrier do not counter hydra/broodlord army at all. Its slower to get in any respectable numbers and doesn't deal well with other zerg army compositions.
The biggest problem with broodlord is that it provides its own meatshield and with hydra backup it can chew up ground forces and air AA. Combined with corrupter it makes it even more difficult to engage the zerg and hope to come out on top.
Not to mention broodlord tech switch late game is not easily punishable either because roach/hydra do a well enough job defending mid-game pressure (unless you decide for a midgame all in).
Fix either has to be a broodling nerf (cost mana, cooldown per spawn, spawn only on kill, has to be premade like interceptors, i dont know) or reduce survivability of the broodlord
oh, i didn't say anything about countering hydras, but if you've never built a templar (either kind), i'll just go ahead and break it down for you.
what you're saying seems like carriers can't kill hydras, brood lords, corruptors, banelings, roaches or even a drone? it's not like you should be going all in carriers (even though that might work), you obviously need to compose your army just as carefully (or more so if you want to win) as your opponent. getting carriers is not slower than getting brood lords, it's faster (gateway, cybercore, double gas, stargate, fleet beacon, that's it) - and you won't need as many carriers. you can also get a mothership faster than the zerg can get brood lords.
yes, the brood lord will rape most ground units - and rightfully so. they cannot attack air, are very slow and to get one, you will need spawning pool, double gas, lair, spire, infestation pit, hive, greater spire and a corruptor, which can't be done in one go, or you'll just die to the first zealot.
hydras are quite strong, but will die to storms, dts or what ever.
or hydra/broodlord is just imba and there are no counters for it? i hope you realize how slow and expensive these units are in sc2, so you're certainly not picking your fights very well.
just like enough games has been played to balance the late game, that's just so silly.
this post is so biased >.> you claim that you shouldnt rush pure carriers and obviously need to balance your army composition then you argue that its much easier to get mass carriers than broodlords. you say you cant rush broodlords without dying, well its the exact same thing with carriers, if you skip templar and robotics facility tech, you are going to die to everything. plus you far overstate the opposing argument to the point its not even worth reading. From what i see its a crapton easier to transition into broodlords late-game than it is carriers, since hive and spire you already get in the normal course of things while toss usually ignore stargate completely for robo facility and/or templar archives. you sum up your argument with "you're certainly not picking your fights very well" this thread is full of people posting their experiences with how hard it is and how many different combinations they've tried against it and how they all fail, most of these players are far better than you and are obviously not a-moving random units and hoping it works.
Just wondering, has ANYONE ever managed to beat a hydra-corrupter-broodlord army straight up? (if both players were at near-equal levels and even in the game) havent seen anyone post a ____ works yet, other than a few smartasses saying 1 AA unit owns all broodlords.
if my post is not even worth reading, you are really contradicting yourself by giving me such generous response. i am inclined to thank you.
so if you scout a spire, you'll just get that robotics facility, twillight concuil, templar archives and what not, just ignoring the fact that your opponent is going air? you overstate my argument just as much as i overstated the previous posters. it is a fact that getting a carrier is faster than getting a broodlord, so is getting a mothership. i never said anything about how many carriers you should get. since this suddenly turned into an army composition discussion instead of a broodlord discussion, all we can do is generalize. any kind of accurate analysis is almost impossible in light of how large and complex the game is.
however, if the zerg is going broodlords only, it would pretty much the same as a toss going carriers only, at least regarding the result of skipping all the other tech and getting raped by units from a lower tier while you're teching up. also, if you go all in carriers and the zerg goes all in broodlords, you will stomp him like nothing. not that any pair of half decent players would play out a game like that, but anyways.
no, i didn't sum up my argument in any way that i'm aware off. i'm sure that a lot of people posting here is a lot better at playing the game than i am. not that it has anything to do with my voicing my opinion, but anyways.
i agree that it would be nice to see a protoss beating a large broodlord/corruptor/hydra army. it should not be a simple task, mind you.
and just to state a simple fact. brood lords can't attack air, so any flying AA units will own all broodlords. i won't say anything about the possibility of other units defending the broodlord, because this thread is called "[D] Broodlords too good vs P?" - and i have already been stating the obvious in excess.
On March 08 2010 05:05 Mente wrote: Mothership>broodlord. Amirite?
yeah, but you can't have 12 motherships
you can have 12 carriers, now tell me what's more powerful brood lord of carrier. don't tell me it costs less it's just 50 less mins if you can afford the gas you will def have the mins for it as gas is hard as hell to get in this game
I don't think it's fair to compare carrier to brood lord. Carriers rely on swarms of interceptors to deal damage. This means carriers benefit tremendously from air attack/armor upgrades. Meanwhile, the brood lord is fantastic without any attack/armor upgrades.
Carriers are more like ultras, in that they need upgrades to be truly effective. So you can't really 'fast tech' to carriers, since you have to wait for upgrades. But you can fast tech to brood lords.
On March 08 2010 05:05 Mente wrote: Mothership>broodlord. Amirite?
yeah, but you can't have 12 motherships
you can have 12 carriers, now tell me what's more powerful brood lord of carrier. don't tell me it costs less it's just 50 less mins if you can afford the gas you will def have the mins for it as gas is hard as hell to get in this game
I don't think it's fair to compare carrier to brood lord. Carriers rely on swarms of interceptors to deal damage. This means carriers benefit tremendously from air attack/armor upgrades. Meanwhile, the brood lord is fantastic without any attack/armor upgrades.
Carriers are more like ultras, in that they need upgrades to be truly effective. So you can't really 'fast tech' to carriers, since you have to wait for upgrades. But you can fast tech to brood lords.
fast teching to brood lords is a terrible idea, it simply takes too long and if your opponent scouts you you are susceptible to any kind of timing push. just like you dont fast tech to defilers+ultras in SC:BW.
I play zerg in silver division, so obvs im not the best, but here's how i see it: broodlords combined with any kind of AA support is insanely good, but it is damn hard to get there without getting wiped out by a timing push from either T or P. Broodlords are insanely resource intensive, and I have not been able to successfully deploy them without getting to three bases. I tried to go broodlords on just my main and nat, but got to make 2 which were promptly raped by phoenixes and sentries despite corruptor support. Securing three bases on these maps is no joke as defending your bases is a lot harder in SC2. Once you are at the point where you are properly containing your opponent and defending all three of your bases, though, you are in a pretty good position already and broodlords are units that just reinforce your advantage.
In short, the answer is: dont let z get to broodlords. If z were never able to make broodlords, you wouldnt have to call out imba imba every game. Keep scouting, if you see a spire going up get ready to put on some pressure on ground so he can never gather enough resources to successfully spawn more than 2 broodlords.
its not as if corruptors aren't useful before they become broodlords. Corruptors are the ideal counter to Collosi, and if you have a few survive to the lategame, it makes for a great transition.
On March 10 2010 01:55 lixlix wrote: its not as if corruptors aren't useful before they become broodlords. Corruptors are the ideal counter to Collosi, and if you have a few survive to the lategame, it makes for a great transition.
I wont argue with the fact that P has almost no answer to Z's midgame air (muta+corruptor) cuz P AA simply sucks balls. However, thats a different topic.
On March 09 2010 05:53 oxxo wrote: Seriously. Why is ANYONE using the argument 'don't let them get there'.
That says it all. They are OP if that is the case.
Carriers/BC/Mech3-3 are nothing like 'don't let them get there'.
There is a timing push before Carriers in TvP. BCs take forever to make and there is that same timing window. See FBH vs. Flash on Neo Medusa (GREAT GAME!!!) for an example. Mech 3/3 should never be reached. When it is reached, with Vessel support, it's unbeatable. See any of Flash's games on Destination as an example.
On March 08 2010 15:03 Mystlord wrote: If you want to think of it this way, brood lords are like the 3/3 mech army in TvZ of SC2. Fucking slow and really hard to stop.
How to beat 3/3 mech army TvZ in SC2? Counter where he's not, or an even better counter:
Don't let the game get to that point in the first place. You could also try the wearing down strategy.
Or you can think of it as a slower Archon/Reaver/Temp army :/. Anyway, the point is to not let the game get to that point in the first place.
I think part of the point is that "wear down" strategy of which you speak doesn't really work against brood lords the way it works against a 3/3 mech army. Every time you send waves of hydraling at the ball, it will melt but not before eating up some non-infinite mines, and doing damage to tanks that is non-free to repair. The only problem I see with the BL is, as has been said, the infinite-ness of the broodlings. Their numbers never diminish and there is no way whatsoever, without blink, to advance from the ground on the zerg's position.
I'm not talking about wearing the Broodlords down. I'm talking about not letting Zerg get Broodlords in the first place. There's a difference. You can stop Broodlords provided you have enough time to transition and enough units, of which you need to know that he's going Broodlords in the first place.
On March 09 2010 05:53 oxxo wrote: Seriously. Why is ANYONE using the argument 'don't let them get there'.
That says it all. They are OP if that is the case.
Carriers/BC/Mech3-3 are nothing like 'don't let them get there'.
In SC:BW you dont wanna let Z get to 5 gas 5/3 ultra ling defilers, nor do u wanna let P get to 3/3/3 archon reaver arbiter blue ball of death in PvZ, nor T to a 3/3 mech ball with a vessel cloud. Broodlord is just a unit that has its weaknesses, but combined with other units that cover its weaknesses, it becomes unstoppable. You dont wanna let your opponent get to broodlord corruptor hydra infestor army on 3 bases, but that doesnt mean broodlords are automatically imba. Broodlords without support from other units is like ultras without ling nor swarm.
Each broodlord can produce up to a maximum of 6 broodlings before the first set of broodlings start dying off, so it's not "an infinite number of broodlings" really.
Brood Lords are agonizingly slow and cannot shoot air, thus they require a lot of support.
It seems that psi-storm would counter these slow moving beasts pretty well.
On March 10 2010 03:34 TSL-Lore wrote: It seems that psi-storm would counter these slow moving beasts pretty well.
I don't think storm is a good counter to brood lords.
Brood lords have...275(?) health I think. Psi-storm does 80 damage. You do the math.
Actually, I'll do the math; that's over 3 full storms to kill a brood lord. I think a storm can hit 2 or 3 brood lords. Regardless, it takes a long time to kill a brood lord with storm. It's not like SC where 1 storm can take a full-health guardian down into the red.
On March 10 2010 03:34 TSL-Lore wrote: It seems that psi-storm would counter these slow moving beasts pretty well.
I don't think storm is a good counter to brood lords.
Brood lords have...275(?) health I think. Psi-storm does 80 damage. You do the math.
Actually, I'll do the math; that's over 3 full storms to kill a brood lord. I think a storm can hit 2 or 3 brood lords. Regardless, it takes a long time to kill a brood lord with storm. It's not like SC where 1 storm can take a full-health guardian down into the red.
since smart-casting makes storm so easy to cast now, you should be able to blanket a good portion of his army, hitting both the Brood Lords and Hydras underneath. Obviously you don't JUST get storm, you'd use it in conjunction with a good army mix. Take care of most of the Hydras and weaken the Brood Lords with storm, then continue fighting. Brood Lords and Hydras move to slowly that they should take a lot of dmg from the storms.
Come on, what happened to you scary Protoss's from SC1 that walked around in that unstoppable ball of fury? Nothing in this game should be "psi storm doesn't kill a brood lord in 1 cast, therefore it is not a counter."
Maxed Mech Vessels vs Maxed Ultraling Defiler means that Biomech comes out on top. However, the latter is easier to replenish and actually has a reasonable chance of beating the former because each time the swarms are laid and the ultraling gets into the tanks and vultures, a lot of them are bound to die, and Terran is hard pressed to replenish troops.
Maxed Archon/Reaver/Templar/Zealot vs Maxed Ultrahydra Defiler means that the blue ball is going to destroy the latter. However, it is really easy for a non maxed blue ball to be picked off unit by unit. Archons and Reavers die reasonably quickly to Hydra fire. Ultras can soak storms and will obviously outclass Archons under swarm so you can pick off bits of the blue ball, never actually letting it achieve Maxed status. Also, a Ultraling Defiler drop will kill an unwary Protoss that does not weaken his maxed army by placing parts of it at his expansions
Maxed Zealot/Goon/Templar/Arbiter vs Maxed Mech Vessels is a pretty even fight depending on upgrades, stasis vs emp and storms, and just plain old mine craziness. Mech is obviously favored in a direct confrontation but Protoss might have a good shot turning the fight into an elimination race with Recalls. Alternatively, the Protoss can have maxed Carriers, and the mechanics of Carriers vs Goliaths are mostly map dependent.
These three scenarios are what I tend to call "Even Endgames" in SC1, because it tends to occur only when the combatants take approximately equal damage. As you can see, while Zerg looks like it comes out on the short end of both matchups, they have very viable ways of dealing with maxed Protoss and Terran balls. So what happens in an even ZvP endgame for SC2?
Maxed Broodlord/Hydra vs All Maxed Protoss unit compositions. It is fairly clear that air will be eaten by Hydras and that ground will be stopped from moving and eaten by Brood Lords before it is able to kill the Hydras. So Zerg comes out ahead on a head to head battle. Well someone has to, right? So let us examine the counters to coming out behind in we learned in SC1.
Be a zerg: Outproduce and kill the army bit by bit. This might look like a great idea with warpgates and such but Broodlords over Hydras, due to their ability to spawn infinite hp, do not actually die. Unless your micro is absolutely stunning, it is difficult to throw enough waves fast enough at a Zerg so that a Broodlord/Hydra army doesn't die. Besides, your opponent is a zerg. A zerg which can now spawn larva. This plan is doomed.
Be a zerg 2: Kill the army bit by bit as it tries to come up. Immediately we see a fatal flaw in this plan. Picking off hydras bit by bit is a stupid thing to say and when the Zerg spawns their 3 Brood Lords at once, they already have their necessary army composition where this plan no longer applies.
Learn from ZvP and PvT: Drop expansions and force a mobility issue. This is, I feel, the only viable strategy in an Even Endgame. Motherships can mass recall troops everywhere. Phase Prisms lets you warp stuff in at various places. Brood Lords are slow. If they're halfway across the map, you might destroy half their base before they either get to your base or go back to theirs.
Of course, I feel that this is still somewhat unfair. There were viable ways, in SC1, to engage Endgame armies as other races. If you got up to close to mech, you could whittle it down. If you caught the blue ball growing, you could snipe key units. Neither of these methods are viable against Hydra/Broolord. The moment the Broodlords pop, you have no choice but to force an elimination race. It is an unengageable army. Or at least an army that is far less engageable than equivalently sized armies of SC1. Besides, even if the army were engaged, Zerg is not Terran. Zerg produces units very, very quickly. So it seems that Zerg managed to gain the ability to create an invincible army without losing their production capabilities. I dunno. It seems unfair.
I'm not sure if broodlords are overpowered or not but I think the assertion that they are just 50 minerals cheaper than a carrier is a faulty one.
1st, broodlords take 2 supply compared to the 6 supply of the carrier.
2nd carriers take another 200 minerals to build interceptors.
3rd of all, that period of time where you had the use of the corruptor (one of the best anti air units/counters to collosi in the game) can't be discounted.
Like if I can upgrade phoenix to carrier by paying 200/150 with interceptors already built, there would be no end to calls of overpowered.
so Broodlords costwise is much cheaper than carrier.
On March 10 2010 03:56 Ecrilon wrote: Be a zerg: Outproduce and kill the army bit by bit. This might look like a great idea with warpgates and such but Broodlords over Hydras, due to their ability to spawn infinite hp, do not actually die. Unless your micro is absolutely stunning, it is difficult to throw enough waves fast enough at a Zerg so that a Broodlord/Hydra army doesn't die. Besides, your opponent is a zerg. A zerg which can now spawn larva. This plan is doomed.
this infinite hp thing is being thrown around too casually. So is the spawn larva argument. You can spawn larva all you want, but with your main mined out and potentially having your nat almost mined out, 300 gas per BL is not by any means an easy investment to make, so no, they are not infinitely replenishable as ultra/lings were in SC1. As for the infinite hp thing, as someone pointed out, the effective number of broodlings active at any given time is 6 per BL, so 3 BL x 6 = 18 broodlings, and killing 18 broodlings every few seconds with a lategame terran/toss army I dont think is such an impossible feat to accomplish.
Be a zerg 2: Kill the army bit by bit as it tries to come up. Immediately we see a fatal flaw in this plan. Picking off hydras bit by bit is a stupid thing to say and when the Zerg spawns their 3 Brood Lords at once, they already have their necessary army composition where this plan no longer applies.
What? I dont understand what you said here... it just seems like you said engage zerg and try to kill them little by little... not a very brilliant tactic by all means.
Learn from ZvP and PvT: Drop expansions and force a mobility issue. This is, I feel, the only viable strategy in an Even Endgame. Motherships can mass recall troops everywhere. Phase Prisms lets you warp stuff in at various places. Brood Lords are slow. If they're halfway across the map, you might destroy half their base before they either get to your base or go back to theirs.
Yea, there we go.
Of course, I feel that this is still somewhat unfair. There were viable ways, in SC1, to engage Endgame armies as other races. If you got up to close to mech, you could whittle it down. If you caught the blue ball growing, you could snipe key units. Neither of these methods are viable against Hydra/Broolord. The moment the Broodlords pop, you have no choice but to force an elimination race. It is an unengageable army. Or at least an army that is far less engageable than equivalently sized armies of SC1. Besides, even if the army were engaged, Zerg is not Terran. Zerg produces units very, very quickly. So it seems that Zerg managed to gain the ability to create an invincible army without losing their production capabilities. I dunno. It seems unfair.
Starcraft is one big elimination race, don't see why you are trying to avoid it, especially when you will most likely win it given the dps of MMM armies. If engaging an army head on seems stupid, dont do it. Guerrilla warfare is a legitimate strategy and I see no reason why you are just counting it out. An sc1 corollary would be cracklings+defilers going for expansions rather than trying to engage a maxed out army in the middle of the map. Furthermore, as far as production capability goes, as I've outline above, having to spend 350/300 min/gas on each unit that take time to spawn+morph does not constitute a quickly replenishable army.
One immediate strategy i can think of as P is utilizing vortex: disable BL's and a significant portion of hydras, it's like a shorter version of stasis. You will no doubt have a mothership by then as it is lower on the tech tree than brood lords, and there is no reason to not go stargate when you see a spire going up after lair.
No offense intended, just wanted to dissect your post to the nitty gritties so generalizations like "infinite hp" and "infinitely replenishable army" dont get thrown around too often without actually thinking it through,
On March 10 2010 04:13 amoeba wrote: I'm not sure if broodlords are overpowered or not but I think the assertion that they are just 50 minerals cheaper than a carrier is a faulty one.
1st, broodlords take 2 supply compared to the 6 supply of the carrier.
2nd carriers take another 200 minerals to build interceptors.
3rd of all, that period of time where you had the use of the corruptor (one of the best anti air units/counters to collosi in the game) can't be discounted.
Like if I can upgrade phoenix to carrier by paying 200/150 with interceptors already built, there would be no end to calls of overpowered.
so Broodlords costwise is much cheaper than carrier.
well first off theyre not cheaper than carriers, they are the same price without intercepters. I can see why just carrier vs BL would seem unfair, but first of all the tech tree for carrier is gate->cybernetics->stargate->fleet beacon, compared to broodlord's spawning pool-> lair->spire->infestors pit->hive->greater spire. You can't just discount that. Second, carrier has 300hp and 150 shield, compared to BL's 275hp, no shield. Not to mention they are slow as shit. Finally, comparing carrier to BL unit-to-unit is meaningless, as you're never gonna see a game where it's both players teching to BL and carriers asap, and then squaring off with a pure BL/carrier army.
Rotinegg, for point 1, It seems like you're telling me that there is a Protoss army composition that IS able to beat a Broodlord Hydra army. This is a claim that has been refuted again and again in this thread.
For point 2, Refer to my second point about how a Zerg will deal with a Protoss ball before it gets to max. The rudeness is unecessary.
For the rest of your point, I never said inifinitely replenishable. You did. But a Zerg army with BLs will now crush a Protoss army cost for cost. And their units will produce faster. I don't care how much it costs for you to MAKE a BL. How much does it take for me to kill it? It costs more. And Zerg will replenish faster than a Protoss.
On March 10 2010 04:29 amoeba wrote: my point still stands that broodlords are much cheaper than carriers.
ok, point acknowledged. are you implying you would square off against a BL-hydra army with carriers then?
no, where did I say that? my whole point is to counter those who were saying broodlords deserve to be powerful because they are a late game unit and comparing them costwise to carriers.
Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, I really didn't understand it, i thought you just said kill hydras one by one, but now I do, so again, im sorry about that.
An army composition that is able to beat a hydra/broodlord army, maybe not, but whats an army composition to beat the giant blue ball of death with a zerg? your argument was that zerg should snipe off key units before it grows to critical mass, which doesnt necessarily translate to a way zerg can beat a maxed blue ball of death protoss army. Rather, it sounds more along the lines of the "dont let your opponent get there" arguments.
I exaggerated when I said infinitely replensihable; perhaps a better word choice would have been an army more quickly replenishable than the other two races'? The only reason it is so is because of the cost effectiveness of hydras and BL's with a maxed army, but saying that is talking about a very specific game mechanic without taking into consideration many other factors that could weigh in to the bigger picture, such as economic damage you could have inflicted early on to not let Z have enough resources and time to climb up the full tech tree to begin with. I am in agreement with you about the cost-effectiveness of zerg units, it's just that it's not fair to zerg to just throw out provocative claims like "BL's imba"
On March 10 2010 04:29 amoeba wrote: my point still stands that broodlords are much cheaper than carriers.
ok, point acknowledged. are you implying you would square off against a BL-hydra army with carriers then?
no, where did I say that? my whole point is to counter those who were saying broodlords deserve to be powerful because they are a late game unit and comparing them costwise to carriers.
well in that case my point also stands that they take longer to spawn and are significantly higher up on the tech tree, and I am in agreement with those that say they deserve to be powerful, and I think their costefficiency compared to carriers as late-game units is warranted.
yes they are higher up the tech tree, but you get the use of a very good intermediate unit in the meantime. This is huge. Its also much much easier for zerg to switch tech. To throw up a carrier army, protoss has to put up multiple starports.
So while it seems like oh, just go to starport -> fleet beacon, realistically you aren't going to do a 1 starport carrier pump. In real game situations, broodlord armies won't come out later than carrier armies.
It is very much a "don't let your opponent get there" argument. However, it is a very different argument for Brood Lords. When you grow a blue ball, you get archons, you get reavers, you get templars, all at the same time. A smaller blue ball is understandably easier to tackle, so you tackle it, and kill off a few Archons/Reavers/Templar. This is fine, and your opponent is able to reach a good mass, but never a critical mass. It's different with BLs. You get hydras, then more hydras, yet more hydras, then you suddenly get a bunch of Brood Lords and you've already achieved critical mass. There's no real growing phase like there is for a blue ball. You can engage Hydras all you want to technically whittle the force down but you're not hitting the key units like you can in a blue ball.
In an Even Endgame situation, both of you take even economic damage. The power the Protoss is able to produce on even footing with the Zerg is less than that of Zerg now that Zerg has BLs.
On March 10 2010 04:56 amoeba wrote: yes they are higher up the tech tree, but you get the use of a very good intermediate unit in the meantime. This is huge. Its also much much easier for zerg to switch tech. To throw up a carrier army, protoss has to put up multiple starports.
So while it seems like oh, just go to starport -> fleet beacon, realistically you aren't going to do a 1 starport carrier pump. In real game situations, broodlord armies won't come out later than carrier armies.
^ that is true, tech switching is easier for zerg because their production facilities are already in place, but that's just the nature of zerg.. to be versatile and have an all-over-the-place feel.
about the real game situations, I don't really know what to say because I have never had a protoss go carriers on me, even in late game situations. Maybe it has to do something with the fact that I'm only in silver league, but I have had plenty of games where I was in the middle of trying to climb up the tech tree to get to BL's but lost the game simply because I didn't have enough hydras when they popped or died to a timing push/drop harrass. It's not a walk in the park to fend off early-mid game aggression while reserving enough resources to steadily climb up the tech tree.
On March 10 2010 04:56 amoeba wrote: yes they are higher up the tech tree, but you get the use of a very good intermediate unit in the meantime. This is huge. Its also much much easier for zerg to switch tech. To throw up a carrier army, protoss has to put up multiple starports.
So while it seems like oh, just go to starport -> fleet beacon, realistically you aren't going to do a 1 starport carrier pump. In real game situations, broodlord armies won't come out later than carrier armies.
^ that is true, tech switching is easier for zerg because their production facilities are already in place, but that's just the nature of zerg.. to be versatile and have an all-over-the-place feel.
about the real game situations, I don't really know what to say because I have never had a protoss go carriers on me, even in late game situations. Maybe it has to do something with the fact that I'm only in silver league, but I have had plenty of games where I was in the middle of trying to climb up the tech tree to get to BL's but lost the game simply because I didn't have enough hydras when they popped or died to a timing push/drop harrass. It's not a walk in the park to fend off early-mid game aggression while reserving enough resources to steadily climb up the tech tree.
yes that is the nature of zerg. But this argument has no place in a balance discussion.
as to why you haven't had any protosses go carriers, its because protoss is forced to go robo to counter the rest of the zerg army namely roach push followed by mass hydra and honestly carriers suck against zerg. assuming protoss avoids the many zerg tech switches like midgame muta, etc, and reaches lategame, they run in to broodlords.
In pvz it is typically the protoss that is reactionary and the zerg that is proactive.
On March 10 2010 05:00 Ecrilon wrote: It is very much a "don't let your opponent get there" argument. However, it is a very different argument for Brood Lords. When you grow a blue ball, you get archons, you get reavers, you get templars, all at the same time. A smaller blue ball is understandably easier to tackle, so you tackle it, and kill off a few Archons/Reavers/Templar. This is fine, and your opponent is able to reach a good mass, but never a critical mass. It's different with BLs. You get hydras, then more hydras, yet more hydras, then you suddenly get a bunch of Brood Lords and you've already achieved critical mass. There's no real growing phase like there is for a blue ball. You can engage Hydras all you want to technically whittle the force down but you're not hitting the key units like you can in a blue ball.
In an Even Endgame situation, both of you take even economic damage. The power the Protoss is able to produce on even footing with the Zerg is less than that of Zerg now that Zerg has BLs.
To me, if zerg has been able to amass enough hydras to support BL's and push out, it doesn't sound like they are on an even footing. I don't know how much you consider an adequate amount of hydras to support 3 BL's, but colossi rape my hydras, and in some games by the time I have BL's he has enough to match my hydras. With hydras decimated, BL's get wiped out in about 0.5 seconds, and suddenly i have P ground army raping my base. Admittedly, I usually win the games where I can get to late game with 3 bases against P, but those are also the games during which i successfully contained him to his main/nat all game, and his main is mined out so effectively he is having to fend off my BL/hydra army with units from 1 base. On games where i was heavily harassed, I never win even if I get to BL/hydra army simply because they pop out too late and my opponent's army is considerably larger.
On March 10 2010 04:56 amoeba wrote: yes they are higher up the tech tree, but you get the use of a very good intermediate unit in the meantime. This is huge. Its also much much easier for zerg to switch tech. To throw up a carrier army, protoss has to put up multiple starports.
So while it seems like oh, just go to starport -> fleet beacon, realistically you aren't going to do a 1 starport carrier pump. In real game situations, broodlord armies won't come out later than carrier armies.
^ that is true, tech switching is easier for zerg because their production facilities are already in place, but that's just the nature of zerg.. to be versatile and have an all-over-the-place feel.
about the real game situations, I don't really know what to say because I have never had a protoss go carriers on me, even in late game situations. Maybe it has to do something with the fact that I'm only in silver league, but I have had plenty of games where I was in the middle of trying to climb up the tech tree to get to BL's but lost the game simply because I didn't have enough hydras when they popped or died to a timing push/drop harrass. It's not a walk in the park to fend off early-mid game aggression while reserving enough resources to steadily climb up the tech tree.
yes that is the nature of zerg. But this argument has no place in a balance discussion.
as to why you haven't had any protosses go carriers, its because protoss is forced to go robo to counter the rest of the zerg army namely roach push followed by mass hydra and honestly carriers suck against zerg. assuming protoss avoids the many zerg tech switches like midgame muta, etc, and reaches lategame, they run in to broodlords.
In pvz it is typically the protoss that is reactionary and the zerg that is proactive.
Well you brought up the point about tech switching first so I was just commenting on it. Now i feel like a kid screaming you did it first! anyway, about carriers, yea they are useless against a zerg army, I was started to wonder if something significant had changed in SC2 to allow carriers to be used against Z. So P is reactionary is PvZ, but P has answers to almost everything that Z throws at it, or at least i think so... for lings there's zealots, roaches there's stalkers+immortals, hydras have immortals+colossi.. now I did say earlier that i think P has no answer to Z air harass earlier in this thread, and I do concede that corruptors are very useful in that midgame situation where mutas+corruptors are just LOLing all over your bases, but that's not really BL's fault, that's more of a ZvP IMBA thread material
to make a comparison to SC1. In SC1, guardians never saw play in a zvp because goon templar just killed them too quickly. Guardians also weren't terribly effective in ZvT either but at least saw some usage.
Did guardians need a buff? probably. So their damage got buffed by 5 and they spawn broodlings each shot and they got 125 more hp. sounds like a big upgrade but they also cost more.
Problem now is that stalkers cost the same as dragoons yet do 8 to non armored and 14 to armored, significantly less damage than the 20 explosive (20 to large, 15 to medium, 10 to small) of dragoons. stalkers also have 20 less hp than dragoons.
So in a PvZ in sc2, you are never going to see that many stalkers because frankly they get owned by zerg ground. so now protoss is pretty much forced to go zealot/collosus to fight zerg ground, neither of which can attack air.
In addition, broodlings provide excellent blockers for hydras so that zealots can't really get to them.
stalkers don't really counter roach. stalkers don't really counter much of anything and immortals don't really counter hydras since hydras aren't armored. in fact an immortal vs hydra fight in sc2 is similar to a dragoon vs hydra fight in sc1 (hydras usuallly won that one with equivalent cost armies) except now immortals cost so much more than dragoons in sc1.
Honestly i'm not sure why blizzard decided to nerf the dragoon, its not like they were that great in sc1.
I brought up tech switching being easy for zerg because I wanted to point out that while BL is higher up the tech tree, protoss needs to invest more in buildings to switch to a lategame air army.
you can't really counter this argument by saying "well but thats how zerg is...." we know thats the flavor of zerg but this has no relevance in a balance discussion was my point.
^ understood, you have a good argument and I have nothing more to say. I do think Z is OP against P atm, but hopefully they will find other ways of finding a balance rather than nerfing BL's cuz frankly BL's are the only thing that lets me have a chance to win against T
well I think giving BL mana and having spawn broodlings be an auto cast orb effect might be a good solution.
I mean it still won't effect zvt very much and you can still get a lot of broodlings out even with a just spawned broodlord but it allows protoss to maybe counter by using feedback. this also makes templar a more viable alternative as opposed to every protoss going collosus.
On March 10 2010 05:37 amoeba wrote: to make a comparison to SC1. In SC1, guardians never saw play in a zvp because goon templar just killed them too quickly. Guardians also weren't terribly effective in ZvT either but at least saw some usage.
Did guardians need a buff? probably. So their damage got buffed by 5 and they spawn broodlings each shot and they got 125 more hp. sounds like a big upgrade but they also cost more.
Problem now is that stalkers cost the same as dragoons yet do 8 to non armored and 14 to armored, significantly less damage than the 20 explosive (20 to large, 15 to medium, 10 to small) of dragoons. stalkers also have 20 less hp than dragoons.
So in a PvZ in sc2, you are never going to see that many stalkers because frankly they get owned by zerg ground. so now protoss is pretty much forced to go zealot/collosus to fight zerg ground, neither of which can attack air.
In addition, broodlings provide excellent blockers for hydras so that zealots can't really get to them.
How come your zealot/collosus army doesn't have any psi-storm in it? Both Hydras and Broodlords are pretty slow units, psi storm would benefit a lot.
On March 10 2010 06:28 amoeba wrote: because it takes a crapload of gas and sci storm is frankly less effective than collosus and takes forever to research.
Its like saying why you don't go both reavers and templars in Sc1, sure, once you are on 4+ bases , its possible, but it happens very very late.
That's ridiculous. I've seen plenty of PvZs in SC1 where the protoss has both reavers and psi storm.
Anyway, collosus/zealot is not as gas intensive as hydra/broodlord at all. Going pure ground when you see a spire is just stupid.
storm also does less damage than their sc1 counterpart while hydras have more HP.
lets not forget hydras do like 2.5x the damage they did in sc1 to zealots. templar zealots is just not very viable army against hydra right now, and if you do templar, collosus dual tech, it takes a lot of gas in the midgame.
I'm not sure what your point of contention is. storm isn't really a viable solution to broodlords considering you need 4 storms to kill a BL. storm is barely a solution to hydras at the moment.
Lol yup Sc2 storms are retarded. It looks sweet and you're like yeeeaaaaahhhhh diiiieeee then you get walked over. Definitely not worth wasting my precious gas on.
On March 05 2010 20:18 Mente wrote: Furthermore if you're getting into that late game vs a zerg and he has the cash to throw all that stuff at you, you probably did something wrong in the midgame. There are several incredible timing pushes that protoss has in their arsenal that can completely stop zerg in their tracks. Plus with the combo of storm/harass capabilities I don't think there's much else to say.
If you watch the rep you'll see that Wax went 2base muta -> broodlord and pretty much get steamrolled. But he manages to get 6-7 broodlords on my cliff and I think its pretty ridiculous the amount of damage they can do. Irrespective of the current metagame and whatnot, the very fact these guys can deal an obscene amount of damage is wrong. If SC2 becomes "protoss has to kill zerg in the mid game with a timing push else lategame zerg wins" then again, that's just not right.
Keep in mind most of sc1 has been entirely developed around timing pushes though. Don't be surprised if you have to take advantage of a lot of them in sc2 prior to the zerg powering drones the whole time.
On March 10 2010 05:37 amoeba wrote: So in a PvZ in sc2, you are never going to see that many stalkers because frankly they get owned by zerg ground. so now protoss is pretty much forced to go zealot/collosus to fight zerg ground, neither of which can attack air.
In addition, broodlings provide excellent blockers for hydras so that zealots can't really get to them.
This is exactly what happened to me 5 minutes ago. I had more resources, i owned his ground force. I scout spire so i switch to 2 stargate and start pumping phoenix and chrono boosting my stargates and I still get owned. I even destroyed all his expo workers after i just had collosus and he had a couple corrupter, and got those collosus away. I still got owned by mass corrupter+broodlord.
Im still kind of new (been playing for a couple of days, im gold 1v1 and got a couple plat 2v2). Here is the replay.
On March 10 2010 05:39 amoeba wrote: stalkers don't really counter roach. stalkers don't really counter much of anything and immortals don't really counter hydras since hydras aren't armored. in fact an immortal vs hydra fight in sc2 is similar to a dragoon vs hydra fight in sc1 (hydras usuallly won that one with equivalent cost armies) except now immortals cost so much more than dragoons in sc1.
Honestly i'm not sure why blizzard decided to nerf the dragoon, its not like they were that great in sc1.
It wasn't really possible to leave any unit that did explosive or concussive damage unchanged from SC1 without affecting balance hugely. The balance implications are too huge. Consider the units that dealt special damage (and were used):
vulture firebat dragoon hydralisk siege tank goliath (air)
of these, only the hydra survives largely unchanged in sc2 (and to some extent, the tank). And hydras are massively more powerful in sc2 as a result.
Besides this, stalkers don't need an expensive range upgrade to be useful like dragoons did in sc1, plus have a new power in blink. Obviously they needed to be "nerfed" somewhat compared to the sc1 goon. I agree that they are a tad too weak, though... bumping base dmg to 10 would help
If Archons dealt splash damage, then they could be a reliable counter for Broodlords. But, for now, it seems like a combination of storm-spamming, sentries/stalkers and a few phoenix have to do the trick for now.
On March 12 2010 18:00 jtype wrote: If Archons dealt splash damage, then they could be a reliable counter for Broodlords. But, for now, it seems like a combination of storm-spamming, sentries/stalkers and a few phoenix have to do the trick for now.
archon does splash but it is crap vs air because air dont clump as much as ground , and generally i feel air is a bit stronger in sc2 then in sc1
On March 12 2010 18:00 jtype wrote: If Archons dealt splash damage, then they could be a reliable counter for Broodlords. But, for now, it seems like a combination of storm-spamming, sentries/stalkers and a few phoenix have to do the trick for now.
archon does splash but it is crap vs air because air dont clump as much as ground , and generally i feel air is a bit stronger in sc2 then in sc1
Do they deal splash damage in SC2? I thought that this was something quite a few people had been complaining about.
Also, I was thinking mainly in terms of actually dealing with the broodlings themselves, so that your stalkers/sentries could be free to take shots at the Broodlords. Of course, the bonus damage that Archons do to bio units would also be very helpful.
It's funny that a replay of Broodlords being fairly easily beaten is posted to say that they are imbalanced. Let's see like 10+ games of Broodlords being unstoppable before jumping to conclusions.
I'm a zerg player and I enjoy the power of broodlords, but what about void rays in the unit mix instead of phoenixes? I think they lose from mutalisks and win vs corruptors/broodlords?
On March 12 2010 22:35 Cade)Flayer wrote: It's funny that a replay of Broodlords being fairly easily beaten is posted to say that they are imbalanced. Let's see like 10+ games of Broodlords being unstoppable before jumping to conclusions.
... they weren't easily beaten, just consider the amount of damage they did before dying - and how much more effective they would have been with a semi-decent economy
You're probably not going to be able to find a one unit answer to Broodlords. I suggested psi-storm earlier in this post as something to throw into your army composition, not as a straight counter. It seems that a mix of psi-storm, sentry/stalker, warpray or even carrier would do it.
People will complain that that's very difficult to get, but Brood Lords are top tier and require more tech to get than anything else in the game. By that point, protoss should have developed most or all of their tech tree.
Protoss has always and will continue to always find success in having a good unit mix in their ball of destruction.
I have now browesed most of this thread and onle once have ive seen what no one seem to be remember, the fact that at exactly 6 seconds after being spawned a broodling dies on it's own accord no matter what it's hp, it's a temprary unit just like the broodlings that spawn from buildings, they only last a short time then dies, so infinite? Don't think so, also if you want hard counter as toss, to take out hydras in that combo, go Dark Templars, the nature of the Brood Lords attack causes the broodling to spawn next to it's target, so if they arent targeting the dark templar then it's most likely gonna fly past it, not flying past it, then you most likely messed up plasement and it's your own fault, as for Anti-Air units, you say stalkers suck, ever tried UPGRADING them? even mutalisks suck till you get the 2nd damage upgrade down, at which point they become a threat, before that they'll hardly do any damage unless in big numbers, and then the zergplayer will most likely not need BL's, same with stalkers, fully upgraded they'd wipe out brood Lords pretty fast if you focused firerd them, and the Mothership is one of Toss's best units, after all corruptors can't hit what they can't see, what they got an overseer?... just kill it, not that hard, worst case scenario use the vortex ability to take the broodlords AND hydras in it's AOE out of the game for some time, allows you to mop up those that didn't get dragged in and position your units so you can kill those that will reappear.. and if anyone of you start yelling biased let it just be known i play Zerg, so im pretty much giving you the recipe of my own demise
On March 13 2010 13:55 -orb- wrote: I can't believe brood lords didn't get nerfed this patch
Perhaps becaus they are NOT imbalanced? see my other post for a pretty easy hands-on how to counter em
everything in your post was wrong. dts cant be used as a main fighting unit because theyre so fragile relative to their cost. their only use beyond early game is harass. stalkers are *ok* vs broodlords, if the zerg has absolutely nothing else. unfortunately any other unit z has destroys them, meaning theyre hardly a good option in a normal scenario. also mutas do not need upgrades to be very strong.
On March 12 2010 17:50 iG.ClouD wrote: Fun to see again zerg players stating broodlords are fine when they are as imbalanced as banelings and need to get nerfed.
Depending on who you believe, every single zerg unit is imbalanced and needs to be nerfed.
And yet, Zerg are supposedly not winning any more than Protoss, and Protoss and Zerg are not winning much more than Terran.
It's hard to believe that a race which has nothing but overpowered units ever loses, unless that race is crippled in some other way (say, needing to choose between more supply, more workers, or more units to kill things.)
Some one (a LOT of some one) is beating Zerg. How are they doing it? Maybe that's a more useful exercise than declaring that every unit is imbalanced, since zerg aren't just terran or protoss with better units. They are a completely different race with unique weaknesses to exploit.
Logical counter should be the warp ray . I don't think they need nerfing . They are hive tech require greater spire and are being made from the corruptor ( very expensive ) and are slow as hell . By the time the zerg has them if protoss is at on equall economy with the zerg they should have warp rays ready maybe carriers or a lot of phoenixes mixed in their army.... That or just outmusle the zerg ground army with a mixed in stalkers with blink sniping the broodlords .
On March 12 2010 17:50 iG.ClouD wrote: Fun to see again zerg players stating broodlords are fine when they are as imbalanced as banelings and need to get nerfed.
Depending on who you believe, every single zerg unit is imbalanced and needs to be nerfed.
And yet, Zerg are supposedly not winning any more than Protoss, and Protoss and Zerg are not winning much more than Terran.
It's hard to believe that a race which has nothing but overpowered units ever loses, unless that race is crippled in some other way (say, needing to choose between more supply, more workers, or more units to kill things.)
Some one (a LOT of some one) is beating Zerg. How are they doing it? Maybe that's a more useful exercise than declaring that every unit is imbalanced, since zerg aren't just terran or protoss with better units. They are a completely different race with unique weaknesses to exploit.
The reason why Zerg isn't winning that much more than Protoss and Terran is because a lot of games don't get to the point of Brood Lords. However, once they do, the Brood Lords will always, without fail, do a ridiculous amount of damage disproportionate to the Zerg's economy/army size. Very very often, when it gets to that point, Zerg wins.
The issue is that once BLs get into play, whether or not they're too powerful. The issue isn't that Zerg as a whole is imba, it's about BLs specifically. The argument is that BLs, or any other unit for that matter, shouldn't be an automatic "i win" unit, like the mothership was before the nerf.
The problem with stalkers as a counter is that they just suck against everything else and Zerg will most definitely have "everythign else" to destroy the stalkers or make massing up stalkers very unviable. Void rays would be a logical counter, but they are countered by hydralisks, which is usually the support unit for BLs. Phoenix don't counter BL. At all. Carriers dont' do that much damage to BLs because of the nature of the Interceptor attacks and they're also more expensive than BLs.
On March 12 2010 17:50 iG.ClouD wrote: Fun to see again zerg players stating broodlords are fine when they are as imbalanced as banelings and need to get nerfed.
Depending on who you believe, every single zerg unit is imbalanced and needs to be nerfed.
And yet, Zerg are supposedly not winning any more than Protoss, and Protoss and Zerg are not winning much more than Terran.
It's hard to believe that a race which has nothing but overpowered units ever loses, unless that race is crippled in some other way (say, needing to choose between more supply, more workers, or more units to kill things.)
Some one (a LOT of some one) is beating Zerg. How are they doing it? Maybe that's a more useful exercise than declaring that every unit is imbalanced, since zerg aren't just terran or protoss with better units. They are a completely different race with unique weaknesses to exploit.
The reason why Zerg isn't winning that much more than Protoss and Terran is because a lot of games don't get to the point of Brood Lords. However, once they do, the Brood Lords will always, without fail, do a ridiculous amount of damage disproportionate to the Zerg's economy/army size. Very very often, when it gets to that point, Zerg wins.
The issue is that once BLs get into play, whether or not they're too powerful. The issue isn't that Zerg as a whole is imba, it's about BLs specifically. The argument is that BLs, or any other unit for that matter, shouldn't be an automatic "i win" unit, like the mothership was before the nerf.
The problem with stalkers as a counter is that they just suck against everything else and Zerg will most definitely have "everythign else" to destroy the stalkers or make massing up stalkers very unviable. Void rays would be a logical counter, but they are countered by hydralisks, which is usually the support unit for BLs. Phoenix don't counter BL. At all. Carriers dont' do that much damage to BLs because of the nature of the Interceptor attacks and they're also more expensive than BLs.
I was responding to a specific comment which said that broodlords and banelings (LOL) are OP and should be nerfed. I've also seen numerous comments (not in this thread but as a general sentiment) that Zerglings, Hydralisks, Roaches, Mutalisks and ever Corruptors are OP and need to be nerfed. It's utterly ridiculous how quickly people want to label EVERY ZERG UNIT as OP.
Now as to the specific example of broodlords, the fact is that for terran they are almost trivial to counter. Vikings have terrific range and knock them out of the sky from the safely of a an MnM ground force. Or, you can use siege tanks to clear out the ground clutter of hydralisks, and then take out BLs with stimmed marines. If half your force is killing broodlings and the other half is killing BLs, they go down fast. Unlike mutalisks, brood lords can't be bounced around and force you to chase or fall back. Apparently the issue for Protoss isn't that BL are actually OP but that protoss players either lack the correct plan, or lack a strong enough counter.
I don't have any particular insight for protoss players. I don't play Protoss very often and I don't play them very well, so I never get to the stage of having to stop broodlords. I suspect that void rays, carriers, or high templars would be the proper response. A good enough response? I have no idea. I'll take your word for it that it's not. Maybe Phoenix needs to be be buffed vs massive units?
Getting back to the general case though: I am not the greatest BW player, but in most Zerg v Terran pro games I've seen, if Zerg get to the point of being able to combo upgraded ultralisks with defilers, that's game over. Terrans don't have a good counter to that, so in order for Terrans to win, they have to either contain Zerg and pressure them so that they never have that much extra gas, or they simply have to win with an early push.
Given the various drawbacks that zerg have especially early in a game, why is it not legit to look at broodlords the same way that SC/BW ultras are? If you let your zerg opponent get to them, and mass them, with the backup they need to keep them alive, then why shouldn't you be at a disadvantage? You said that most games don't get to that point, and yet some games do, and supposedly that's an automatic win for Zerg. So doesn't that mean that in the games that don't reach that point, they're losing more than they're winning? Doesn't that imply that there is some mid game balance issue that's working against Zerg?
TL;DR: Maybe BL's are imbalanced and unable to be dealt with (I don't think so, but who cares what I think) but if that imbalance is the only thing keeping the matchups balanced, then isn't that either a good thing, or an issue that needs to be addressed in sum, rather than just nerfing the one unit?
On March 12 2010 17:50 iG.ClouD wrote: Fun to see again zerg players stating broodlords are fine when they are as imbalanced as banelings and need to get nerfed.
Depending on who you believe, every single zerg unit is imbalanced and needs to be nerfed.
And yet, Zerg are supposedly not winning any more than Protoss, and Protoss and Zerg are not winning much more than Terran.
It's hard to believe that a race which has nothing but overpowered units ever loses, unless that race is crippled in some other way (say, needing to choose between more supply, more workers, or more units to kill things.)
Some one (a LOT of some one) is beating Zerg. How are they doing it? Maybe that's a more useful exercise than declaring that every unit is imbalanced, since zerg aren't just terran or protoss with better units. They are a completely different race with unique weaknesses to exploit.
Uh yeah because it's rare that games get to brood lords.
When they do it's almost auto loss unless you have a RIDICULOUS advantage over the zerg already.
Statistics are averaged out, and I'd be willing to bet you the majority of games don't involve brood lords.
On March 12 2010 17:50 iG.ClouD wrote: Fun to see again zerg players stating broodlords are fine when they are as imbalanced as banelings and need to get nerfed.
Depending on who you believe, every single zerg unit is imbalanced and needs to be nerfed.
And yet, Zerg are supposedly not winning any more than Protoss, and Protoss and Zerg are not winning much more than Terran.
It's hard to believe that a race which has nothing but overpowered units ever loses, unless that race is crippled in some other way (say, needing to choose between more supply, more workers, or more units to kill things.)
Some one (a LOT of some one) is beating Zerg. How are they doing it? Maybe that's a more useful exercise than declaring that every unit is imbalanced, since zerg aren't just terran or protoss with better units. They are a completely different race with unique weaknesses to exploit.
Uh yeah because it's rare that games get to brood lords.
When they do it's almost auto loss unless you have a RIDICULOUS advantage over the zerg already.
Statistics are averaged out, and I'd be willing to bet you the majority of games don't involve brood lords.
So why aren't games getting to that point? Do zerg just not know that it's an auto win for them? Are they losing because they're trying to get BLs? Are they losing because protoss is just better in mid game?
Imagine that1000 games get played between Z and P, and only 100 of them get to the stage where zerg can make broodlords and of those 100, Z wins 90 and P only wins 10. Brood Lord is OP, we conclude.
But then we look at the overall statistics, and we see that over all, P won 500 games and Z won 500 games. That means in games where BL didn't appear, P had a 490-410 advantage, winning 54.5% of the time vs 45.5 for Z. Well, that seems pretty imbalanced too, doesn't it? Maybe not as imbalanced as the late game Brood Lord advantage, but since 90% of games don't go that far, it's a more relevant imbalance, even though it's smaller.
Furthermore, maybe games only actually reach the brood lord stage when Z has completely outplayed P anyway. Maybe those BL wins could have nearly as easily been Mutalisk wins or Hydralisk wins or Infester wins just because the very fact that zerg could reach T3 and morph his spire and then morph his corruptors meant he went the entire game without being contained or strongly pressured.
I think the fact that you can say "Brood Lords are OP!' at the same time that Protoss are doing fine vs Zerg is just as much an indicator that P are OP in the matchup. What if the real "fix" is to make BLs more expensive, or less powerful, but mutalisks or hydras or cracklings get buffed instead?
He had quite a RIDICULOUS advantage over me. The only reason I didn't die right there was because of the broodlords in the nick of time (and the random ass expo to slow him down). They really need to be dealt with like carriers, sniped immediately instead of getting distracted by the broodlings.
You just need to be on top of scouting as P and get a phoenix count when you see that greater spire. it's just "too good" right now coz every single time P gets caught with his pants down.
Acually, for your information that army combination i said above is acually taken from a match on my laptop before it decided to to completely highwire, and also my brood lords were wiped AND i were killed off shortly later, also total build time for a broodlord is greater then any other unit, heck even most buildings, the cocoons transfer the damage taken to the finished broodlord and the cocoons can't do anything but hang there, top it of with the cocoons having no armor they are pretty voulnerable the 34 sec it taces for a corruptor to morph, dunno if damage works the other way around to incase of a cancel.
Still, if you let your oponent tech that heavy then your definetly doing something wrong,the shortest time needed to tech broodlord is several times longer then it takes to tech carriers or cruisers, if your seriously taking it so laid back that a Zerg oponent finds it prudent to use broods on ya then it's pretty much your own fault, and if the zerg player is desperate enough to do it while he is at a disadvantage you should be able to kill off any expansions he had made for himself, since seriously the fastest you can get to brood lord is between 15-20 min if you create 6 drones for 2 extractors (constant gathering) and 20 on minerals, and only create the needed buildings, remove about 3 minutes if you expand and double that number (52 workers) due to extra construction time.
On March 05 2010 20:14 FortuneSyn wrote: Broodlords are one of my favorite units, so great!!! They break terrans with many tanks, and can really put the hurt on in isolated scenarios vs P (like Lost Temple close spots). Remember they are expensive (300/250) and tech heavy as fuck. Remember that 4 broodlords are more expensive than 4 colossus :O
I think this is the point here, they are a very expensive unit . I think we need A LOT more games played before we can look at late game balance.
This. But honestly BL seems kinda imbaaa.
Broodlings should not have to take 2 hits from zealots.
From my current understanding , Broodlords are only used when it gets to late enough game, which it usually doesn't happen often enough because PvZ/ZvP games usually end much earlier. The situation is when it DOES get to that point in the game. The fact that the broodlings mess up the AI for the AA ground units is a really frustrating thing that players go through when they are up against broodlords. Now I never really experienced broodlords firsthand, but from what I've seen and read so far, Blizzard should probably attempt to fix the AI problem with broodlings, which will probably make the broodlords a little less harder to deal with, and will probably make it much easier to identify what it is about the broodlord that should be nerfed.
I find the only way to beat broodlords, once a zerg actually gets to them(mostly on twilight fortress 2v2, but some on desert oasis and such), is to have an economic edge(at least 1 base ahead) and to basically just THROW dozens of blinking stalkers into them in the hopes that your sheer macro advantage will be enough to overtake them and whittle away his resources faster then he can completely DECIMATE yours.
So yeah to recap....you see a fire and decide that the best course of action is to simply throw enough fuel on it to smother the **** out of it and hope you have enough fuel.
On April 22 2010 10:31 Silver777 wrote: I find the only way to beat broodlords, once a zerg actually gets to them(mostly on twilight fortress 2v2, but some on desert oasis and such), is to have an economic edge(at least 1 base ahead) and to basically just THROW dozens of blinking stalkers into them in the hopes that your sheer macro advantage will be enough to overtake them and whittle away his resources faster then he can completely DECIMATE yours.
Agreed. Brood lords are a bit too good at their job (at least against the protoss, can't speak for terran).
On April 22 2010 18:24 PatandPat wrote: man blink with stalkers and Ht with storm... very simple obviously wont counter if they get like 10 (but ive never seen a zerg get that many lol)
yeah they're still strong, although they were recently nerfed. But there's a strong window of attack midgame which protoss has. Broodlords swing it back for Z
just the concept of a flying fat manta ray spitting out little creatures to do damage is just silly. I just wish they just turn broodlord into a semi spell caster and take away the broodlings.
On April 22 2010 18:11 Glufs wrote: How are carriers against Broodlords? Same tier.
Obviously Carriers own Broodlords They can't hit air...
You missed the point. Then I could have said Phoenixes instead, but people complain they get owned by Corrupters. How about Carriers? Do they get owned by corruptors? If not, then they should be taken into consideration against broodlords, as they are the same tier (instead of just talking about low tier counters).
On March 05 2010 18:59 diehilde wrote: i dont think broodlords are too good atm, although I dont really know against protoss. but messing with them would seriously harm zvt balance, as its about the only thing that saves you from a maxed m&m&m&tank ball
ZvT Balance? I've noticed if I've got M&M full upgraded against broodlords who are also upgraded, broodlords just rip through my entire army in a few seconds. They're easily the best late game tech unit, Carriers and Battlecruisers don't even compare.
On April 22 2010 18:11 Glufs wrote: How are carriers against Broodlords? Same tier.
Obviously Carriers own Broodlords They can't hit air...
You missed the point. Then I could have said Phoenixes instead, but people complain they get owned by Corrupters. How about Carriers? Do they get owned by corruptors? If not, then they should be taken into consideration against broodlords, as they are the same tier (instead of just talking about low tier counters).
corruptor own carriers pretty easy (they are basically the hard counter)
I play terran and whenever zerg gets broodlords its an automatic victory for him. Vikings are supposed to counter them, but hydras will kill vikings fast, and even if you have a lot of vikings they cannot kill the broodlords fast enough as they have freaking 275 hp. The best thing is that the zerg can safely transition to them in every macro game.
Their hp needs to be nerfed, and they could also cost 6 food instead of 4 as they are now.
I think best way to deal with brood lords is stalker + blink since they are one of the only protoss units that do extra damage to armored (void rays aren't bad either, but are really gas heavy)
One idea I had was to maybe make them morph off of the Mutalisk rather than the corrupter.
Whenever I've had a macro game against a zerg they just get so many corrupters to get broodlords then however many they have left are just anti air. Atleast if they morph off of the mutalisk you won't have instant anti air, meaning Pheonix's would be alot better against Brood lords and even void rays as they won't already have a million corrupters just by building them to get lords.
I bet if people had an equal amount (resource wise) in void rays when BL popped out they would go down in a matter of seconds. I pop BL on a Protoss and for some reason they never see it coming and complain but the game has been going for a while so...
If he has BLs, you should have Medivacs, so if you see he is going for some broodlords, make more Medivacs, when they engage you, simply load your M&M ball into your Medivacs.
You should always have Vikings escorting them and killing BLs at the same time, Curruptors shouldn't be a problem because they cost a lot, and he doesn't have the resourses, because he spent them on BLs, unless he is way ahead, then it gets harder.
The only thing that should be changed in BL is that AA should attack the BL instead of Broodlings imo.
and for PvZ, I guess Voidrays and Psi storms maybe?
On April 22 2010 22:23 Topazas wrote: If he has BLs, you should have Medivacs, so if you see he is going for some broodlords, make more Medivacs, when they engage you, simply load your M&M ball into your Medivacs.
If you hide 3/4 of your army, you have to be far ahead and hope he has BLs only.
I play P and I agree that there is no real solution for brood lords however I am beginning to think archons may be a solution. Watch this vid:
My only problem is that the archons will just melt to the zergs ground/broodlings army before they even get in range to broodloords. I think a nerf the armor, hp, or range of the BL would be ok however I think the best solution is just to give them energy. Keep everything else the same however limit the length of periods they can shoot the broodlings. This will also give HT a fighting chance to FB the BL's if they are lucky enough to escape from the broodlings.
have you tried massing some archons.. seems they can AOE down the broodlings and then target fire the lords ftw. mix in sentry/stalker/storm and moderate phoenix
I haven't taken the time to read all 13 pages of this thread to see if this solution was mentioned, but I've heard some success stories with Blink along with my own success. You kind of have to make enough other "stuff" to hold off his other "stuff" while your stalker army blinks in and does its job.
On April 22 2010 23:08 DorF wrote: Archons kill broodlords , end of story
no they don't isn't true 1on1 and isn't true even when you have more
On April 22 2010 23:46 NightOne wrote: I haven't taken the time to read all 13 pages of this thread to see if this solution was mentioned, but I've heard some success stories with Blink along with my own success. You kind of have to make enough other "stuff" to hold off his other "stuff" while your stalker army blinks in and does its job.
and if he keeps his brood lords overhis "stuff" and you have nowhere to blink?
On April 22 2010 23:46 NightOne wrote: I haven't taken the time to read all 13 pages of this thread to see if this solution was mentioned, but I've heard some success stories with Blink along with my own success. You kind of have to make enough other "stuff" to hold off his other "stuff" while your stalker army blinks in and does its job.
and if he keeps his brood lords overhis "stuff" and you have nowhere to blink?
While your other "stuff' is engaging his "stuff" ie zealots vs zerglings (basic example) then you blink beside, or behind, or in front... the options are endless... well actually you have 4 in this example provided since you can't blink on top of the zerglings (you could but stalkers take a beating on top of cracklings).
Most likely, however, his broodlords will be behind his "stuff' because a) they are slow moving and b) the opponent probably wants zerglings in front in order to utilize broodlords longer range. (more likely)
Therefore what is likely to happen vs a smart opponent with brood+zling is this... you engange zerglings front line with broodlords support raping zealots. You blink behind zerglings, if he's smart he disengages with your zealots and starts hammering your stalkers with what is left of his zerglings and his fresh broodlords. You execute micro, attack-walk your stalkers toward the broodlords and blink into/ontop of the broodlords and destroy them while your zealots (hopefully with speed upgrade because you had researched bilnk on the same tech buildling) will clean up.
However, not ever situation is as basic as this one. More complex micro may and should be involved as the skill level gets higher. I don't believe that broodlords are imba or unbeatable, they are just hard and uncomfortable to play against. I don't anticipate a nerf of more than 2 damage to what they do really... think about how much damage guardians in Sc1 do? However, broodlings effing up your AI is a pain, especially for those utilizing attack-move (ie the archon vs broodlord video).
On April 22 2010 23:46 NightOne wrote: I haven't taken the time to read all 13 pages of this thread to see if this solution was mentioned, but I've heard some success stories with Blink along with my own success. You kind of have to make enough other "stuff" to hold off his other "stuff" while your stalker army blinks in and does its job.
and if he keeps his brood lords overhis "stuff" and you have nowhere to blink?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayj3TJex47o ? Granted one was damaged but the it wasn't even close and the archons weren't microed i.e just sitting there attacking broodlings for most of the time. Broodlords do pathetically low DPS their strength lies in the range + the damage the broodlords do/tank.
Broodlords are needed to break a turteling players defense. Zergs just cant run into storm + Collosus + cannons + rest of the army. anyone disagreeing should watch the game between Dimaga and Hasuobs on LT where Dimaga had a HUGE economical advantage, but couldn`t attack with his ground force, because his 150 Supply Army would have died in less than 10 seconds due to the powerful AOE attacks. I personally see broodlords as the counter to such a turtle-playstyle and beside that some people should read Drone`s thread again.
On April 22 2010 23:08 DorF wrote: Archons kill broodlords , end of story
no they don't isn't true 1on1 and isn't true even when you have more
On April 22 2010 23:46 NightOne wrote: I haven't taken the time to read all 13 pages of this thread to see if this solution was mentioned, but I've heard some success stories with Blink along with my own success. You kind of have to make enough other "stuff" to hold off his other "stuff" while your stalker army blinks in and does its job.
and if he keeps his brood lords overhis "stuff" and you have nowhere to blink?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayj3TJex47o ? Granted one was damaged but the it wasn't even close and the archons weren't microed i.e just sitting there attacking broodlings for most of the time. Broodlords do pathetically low DPS their strength lies in the range + the damage the broodlords do/tank.
The archons WEREN'T microed. Like they happened to kill 10 drones and about 20 broodlings + an OL before figuring they'd go munch on the BLs. Simple target fire probably wins for the archon because you move faster though I'm not sure if you'd have to switch to take out broodlords for a second. Doubt it though, they do a lot of damage.
for my part broodlords = gamebreaker unit so if you let the zerg have it your probably dead and anyway u were probably dead before that since u prolly let him mass drones like crazy to give him to opportunity to make broodlords
On April 23 2010 00:16 ImLotus wrote: for my part broodlords = gamebreaker unit so if you let the zerg have it your probably dead and anyway u were probably dead before that since u prolly let him mass drones like crazy to give him to opportunity to make broodlords
You like to quit the game when you fall behind on macro for a few mins? Srsly, we need to drop this "oh man if you let him get BL, you deserve to loose," trash. It's not even close to valid. Long games happen with good players. It just so happens that almost all the long PvZ games come down to a certain unit follow by a steam-roll.
Oh and what was that video meant to prove? Really now, some half-dead (or worse) brood lords not moving and just sitting there in front of some full hp archons. Thats a propaganda film.
I've never won a game against bls... Toss simply doesn't have a decent unit against them. Stalkers are the only unit that does some damage, but blinking them into the middle of a hydra/roach/ling/whatever army to snipe a few bls is basically suiciding them. Phoenixes are simply pathetic and storm hits no more than 2 bls at once and you need 4 storms for one bl...
TLDR: If you let zerg get large number of broodlords when you are pretty even, you are fucked.
I had a game where I completely destroyed zerg with an immortal timing push, he simply refused to gg and get out. He started building stuff all over the map just to piss me off. He ended up sneaking a base, which I saw before he was even able to put up an extractor. So I moved in my forces, the hatch had 200 health left, but I decided I will toy with him just because he was being an asshole. I pulled my forces back, built nexus everywhere, built 30+ warp gates, 5 robo, 4 stargate, and got every building and upgrade imaginable. I allowed him the natural but I started building cannons all around his base, and started massing up colossus. He massed up hydras and brood lords, and before I know it, he started attacking my cannon field, and broke many cannons even though colossus melted the brood lings. So I just a moved my colossus into the base to kill the hydras, used warp gates to replenish with stalkers and got carriers to steam roll him. It was fun, but again, if I did not have the cannon field, maxed out zerg with broodlords would have done a lot of damage. There aren't very counters to properly supported broodlords, and that needs to change imo.
Lol at anyone saying archons (range 2) are a counter to broodlords. They can't even counter mutas because of larger muta range (range 3) and you really think they'll counter an air unit with a range of 9? x]]]
And a broodlord support army is usually hydralisk, not zerglings. Hydras are slow enough (off creep) to be able to accompany the broodlords without leaving them totally behind.
Brood lords are NOT undefeatable. However, every PvZ I play where it gets to brood lords if I'm not already ahead economically I will most certainly lose. Once BLs come into play it's basically a war of attrition. Protoss has to just keep throwing shit at the brood lords/zerg army and deny expos and hope to whittle them down eventually.
On April 23 2010 03:35 aLt)nirvana wrote: I made a detailed post in another thread and it was basically about how Zerg have an absolutely unbeatable combo of broodlords and hydras.
Its a good thing very very few zergs know about this.
i find it funny that very very few zergs know about this, yet every single toss and terran do.
On April 23 2010 03:35 aLt)nirvana wrote: I made a detailed post in another thread and it was basically about how Zerg have an absolutely unbeatable combo of broodlords and hydras.
Its a good thing very very few zergs know about this.
Protoss have an absolutely unbeatable combo of colossi and void rays.
Its a good thing very very few protoss know about this.
On April 23 2010 03:35 aLt)nirvana wrote: I made a detailed post in another thread and it was basically about how Zerg have an absolutely unbeatable combo of broodlords and hydras.
Its a good thing very very few zergs know about this.
Protoss have an absolutely unbeatable combo of colossi and void rays.
Its a good thing very very few protoss know about this.
ahahaha i was thinking the same thing, its funny in all these threads you get the feeling that the protoss player has NO IDEA what the colossus is
i think BL are the new carriers of SC2 but more imba. interceptors cost 25 mineral and dies super fast even to stimm'ed marines. broodlings on the other hand are free and can not be shot down in mid air.
i agree with Plexa that protoss is pretty much screwed if zerg gets to BL. corruptors and hydras just ownz any protoss response.
You're all thinking inside the box. You say the problem is that your air units get owned by the zounds of hydras on the ground, but there's an easy soulution:
drumroll, please.....
mass hallucination. Granted, it can be countered by an overseer, but without detection (snipe the overseer...) the hydras/corruptors will be busy shooting at the hallucinations while your *real* voidrays totally own those BLs. By the time the zerg gets 6 BLs, corruptor support and the mass hydras underneath you *should* have a nice number of sentries, let's say a low 10 to keep it simple. Say you have each sentry cast 1 hallucination because you want to keep some energy for fields/shields, that's 20 voidrays to confuse your opponent. Do they buy you enough time to wreak havoc?
On April 23 2010 03:35 aLt)nirvana wrote: I made a detailed post in another thread and it was basically about how Zerg have an absolutely unbeatable combo of broodlords and hydras.
Its a good thing very very few zergs know about this.
Protoss have an absolutely unbeatable combo of colossi and void rays.
Its a good thing very very few protoss know about this.
ahahaha i was thinking the same thing, its funny in all these threads you get the feeling that the protoss player has NO IDEA what the colossus is
BLs completely own colossi and there's no way you will have a decent number of colossi AND void rays without already being economically ahead. Void rays and colossi are both pretty damn expensive and have relatively long build times. You also can't neglect the cost of all the zealots and stalkers and sentries that you will need to provide support and protection for your colossi and void rays.
no one (good) is saying that BLs are unbeatable. rather, BLs do damage disproportionate to their cost. Like I've been saying, in order to beat BLs you need to have an economic advantage before the Zerg gets BLs otherwise you will lose.
brood lords maybe expensive and high tech but no other top tier "ultimate unit" can turn the tide like 4-5 brood lords can. compared 2 the more expensive BCs/Carriers id rather have 5 brood lords then 4 BCs or carriers
Collossi come out sooner and dominate zerg ground just as hard. Don't see the problem. A handful of void rays is usually enough - say 3-4. You're not trying to crush the zerg army in 1 epic battle. Just snipe at broodlords when it's safe and chase off hydras with storms. Once they're down to manageable numbers, you can a-walk your ball of death and dominate zerg ground as usual.
On April 23 2010 10:04 Hallitossis wrote: Collossi come out sooner and dominate zerg ground just as hard.
You're right, they're out sooner.
You're way wrong about them dominating just has hard. Certainly not with neural parasite now at 9 range. This is gunna be a really lolzy patch for PvZ.
Considering that mass Stalker is fairly powerful against anything the Zerg has (save for Zerglings, which is why you have Colossi), Blinkers should be able to take care of Brood Lords.
Throw down Guardian Shields, have at least 2 Colossi to insta-roast any Hydras, and blink your Stalkers in range. Obviously, positioning plays a huge role.
Can somebody make a video of mass Blinkers + 2+ Colossus vs. Mass Hydra + BL? I want to be able to see how exactly it would play it (well, not exactly, but you know what I mean)
On April 23 2010 10:23 Zeke50100 wrote: Considering that mass Stalker is fairly powerful against anything the Zerg has (save for Zerglings, which is why you have Colossi), Blinkers should be able to take care of Brood Lords.
Throw down Guardian Shields, have at least 2 Colossi to insta-roast any Hydras, and blink your Stalkers in range. Obviously, positioning plays a huge role.
Can somebody make a video of mass Blinkers + 2+ Colossus vs. Mass Hydra + BL? I want to be able to see how exactly it would play it (well, not exactly, but you know what I mean)
What game are you playing? Stalkers are mediocre against everything the Zerg has. They simply die too fast against everything. Often, Zerg will accompany BLs with hydralisks and hydralisks absolutely demolish stalkers.
Colossi do a good job at killing hydras, but BLs do a good job at killing colossi. In addition, neural parasite has range of 9 again so that's another colossi killing skill for the Zerg.
On April 23 2010 03:35 aLt)nirvana wrote: I made a detailed post in another thread and it was basically about how Zerg have an absolutely unbeatable combo of broodlords and hydras.
Its a good thing very very few zergs know about this.
Protoss have an absolutely unbeatable combo of colossi and void rays.
Its a good thing very very few protoss know about this.
Collossi and what?!
Mutas will rape that. The Void Rays won't be doing jack diddly to them before they fall to bits. Then there's Roaches/Hydras. What, are the Collossi gonna tank Hydra and Roach damage while you wait for your Void Rays to charge up?
Even sending a suicidal wad of Corruptors in to focus-fire Collossi would work just fine, since Collossi can't outrun them. They'll easily fall before the Void Rays charge up.
This may sound like a silly idea, but what about using the mothership to help with Broodlords? Surely you can get a mothership at the same time Broodlords come out and if you snipe any overseers, you're in for a massive chance against the bl's
Don't see Brood Lords as much of a balance problem. The insane costs, the longest and most expensive tech path by far, the creeping slowness, the several minutes of advance warning a player gets from starting the hive to the first popping out. That they can't attack air, and the air force is usually well available and out already once Brood Lords are available etc.
So they are very hard to get, but easy to prepare for against and counter (just not with ground units other than stalkers).
So the only nerf I could agree with is reducing their attack rate, possibly with increasing their damage again. As a result you get less broodlings per lord, so the critical mass of broodlords is higher, maybe at about 6-7 instead of 4-5. Less broodlings means less meat shield, so a ground army can manage them and move past them with some micro. And the reduced tanking ability of the Brood Lords would open up the possible use of Ultras again.
And a nice upgrade for the Ultra would be a charge-like ability, maybe call it blood rage, with a cooldown or even energy, that can push non massive ground units around in an AOE and break tight balls up. Would work incredibly well in combination with Zerglings, due to the increased area of attack that results from that.
On April 23 2010 03:35 aLt)nirvana wrote: I made a detailed post in another thread and it was basically about how Zerg have an absolutely unbeatable combo of broodlords and hydras.
Its a good thing very very few zergs know about this.
Protoss have an absolutely unbeatable combo of colossi and void rays.
Its a good thing very very few protoss know about this.
ahahaha i was thinking the same thing, its funny in all these threads you get the feeling that the protoss player has NO IDEA what the colossus is
On April 27 2010 04:07 MindRush wrote: i've seem protoss blink stalkers past the broodling line and under the broodlords, target-firing them
thats exactly what I did to defeat them, however the toss also had basically no ground army that was raped pretty quick by 6 colossi. I also hurt his econ pretty bad as a result but the game dragged on for much longer because of broodlords. I think in the hands of a great zerg player in a late game situation where both players are like on 4 bases their power may become pretty extreme.
On April 22 2010 23:08 DorF wrote: Archons kill broodlords , end of story
no they don't isn't true 1on1 and isn't true even when you have more
On April 22 2010 23:46 NightOne wrote: I haven't taken the time to read all 13 pages of this thread to see if this solution was mentioned, but I've heard some success stories with Blink along with my own success. You kind of have to make enough other "stuff" to hold off his other "stuff" while your stalker army blinks in and does its job.
and if he keeps his brood lords overhis "stuff" and you have nowhere to blink?
While your other "stuff' is engaging his "stuff" ie zealots vs zerglings (basic example) then you blink beside, or behind, or in front... the options are endless... well actually you have 4 in this example provided since you can't blink on top of the zerglings (you could but stalkers take a beating on top of cracklings).
Most likely, however, his broodlords will be behind his "stuff' because a) they are slow moving and b) the opponent probably wants zerglings in front in order to utilize broodlords longer range. (more likely)
Therefore what is likely to happen vs a smart opponent with brood+zling is this... you engange zerglings front line with broodlords support raping zealots. You blink behind zerglings, if he's smart he disengages with your zealots and starts hammering your stalkers with what is left of his zerglings and his fresh broodlords. You execute micro, attack-walk your stalkers toward the broodlords and blink into/ontop of the broodlords and destroy them while your zealots (hopefully with speed upgrade because you had researched bilnk on the same tech buildling) will clean up.
However, not ever situation is as basic as this one. More complex micro may and should be involved as the skill level gets higher. I don't believe that broodlords are imba or unbeatable, they are just hard and uncomfortable to play against. I don't anticipate a nerf of more than 2 damage to what they do really... think about how much damage guardians in Sc1 do? However, broodlings effing up your AI is a pain, especially for those utilizing attack-move (ie the archon vs broodlord video).
Yeah that's great and all except for how broodlords shoot broodlings, and your other "stuff" as protoss is going to want to attack the broodlings, which will result in your stalkers getting completely trashed if you decide to blink them closer to the broodlords
Its crazy how every suggestion someone makes about a unit that could help toss in fighting off BL, some person comes with a random zerg unit that will counter even though it will not dominate the unit composition at that moment in time... Just be realistic about game situations. most BL armies will come with masshydra to fight off anti-air. having mutas with BLs defeats the purpose of having the broodlords against toss because they will just mass anti air. void rays and colossi with a small meat shield sounds viable. Im not saying that BLs arent or are OP im just sayin let strategies develop before all of you scream OP. overtime if you see that its is completely impossible toi stop a SCOUTED brood lord push, then BLIZZARD will see its OP and change it...
Someone mentioned in another thread that I thought was quite clever: Archons. They'll tear all Broodlings to pieces as they spawn. The Broodlings themselves are a bigger pain than the damage of the Broodlord's initial hit, because they cause your army to keep firing at them, but Archons will obliterate the things quickly and get your army shooting the right targets.
Haven't tried it in practice, but seems like it'll work. Just need a LOOOOOT of HTs to Psi Storm the crap out of everything and have a standing army of Archons ready.
One of my few wins against Z who made it to BL included a lot of archons, but i had him drastically out econ'd so i'm not sure this would be viable in a more even based game. =/ I also carted around a warp prism to continually spam down more blink stalkers with my army.
Please note this is only theory - I do not have beta key, so take with grain of salt =) What seems like best choice is Mothership, high number of blink stalkers and few sentries. The purpose of Mothership is to vortex enemy hydras, immediately after that blinking your stalkers under corruptors and broodlords and engaging with sentry+guardian shield and force fielding, if that will help.
Units coming out of vortex are completely surrounded. To this composition you can add a few colossi (depending on ratio of his BLs and hydras), but with that you probably need to snipe his overseer, which even if succesfull will be terribly costly. High templars can definately work too, but you need something to kill broodlings fast, because of range 6 on storm. Archons actually might work for that. Containing hydras by FF if you are gonna do that is needed, they are killed by 2 storms (counting their regen in) You probably need insane micro for all of this, though =) If the zerg player is not morphing his old corruptors, but new, you can always one shot them with feedback, but that's quite a gimmick.
Trying to kill his bases faster than he can kill yours is another option, not really good one though. =)
However, drop of 4 immortals sniping his greater spire can create huge opportunity for push, If he made 3+ broodlords it will still cost you a lot though. Problem with drop is that he probably has complete air superiority.
Another gimmick is to push hydras back fast with huge amount of FF and blinking insanely fast to kill as many air as you can. This seems about the only things that can work, except for the awesome hallucination spam, of course all in all seems unproportionally hard to counter, if I could suggest a change, it would be something along lines of +2 to air attack of stalkers, to perserve the protoss flavor (I-cannot-counquer-air-).
Another thing to consider is that you are probably ahead in upgrades, if you do not build obscene amount of air units.
Edit: Not to mention that infestors completely kill my strategy (along with every strategy posted here so far IIRC) - effective radius of 10 on instant fungal growth is a lot.
I think it's just a tad far-fetched to assume the protoss has a mothership, high templar, blink stalkers, and colossi by the time the first brood lords are in play. That's fully upgraded units from all three tech lines and the mothership takes a whopping almost 3 mins to build herself. While vortex would provide a nice window to try and snipe the brood lords un-guarded. In practice i think you'd loose the mothership before it got in position more often than not. And if the vortex did manage to go off, you'd loose the ship immidiately there-after, and spend another ~3mins building a new one since you can only have 1 at a time.
While the Colossus is a tad far-fetched stalkers and templars (same tech) and mothership are IMO not. Templar tech is viable alternative to robo if I am not misinformed. Mothership will not be sniped THAT immediately. If we consider range of stalker (6) that is same as corruptors, and that mothership is holding about 2 (inches ?? ) back, all stalkers get 12 free damage on the corrs. Even pretending he has 10 corruptors (which is kind of ridiculous, pretending he also has about 30 hydras and 5 BLs :D) she gets shot down in about 7,6 seconds (slower speed ?).
Mothership is build in about 107 seconds if I didn't mess up math on chrono boost. If this action is succesful however, you should expect to win by quite a large margin (even if losing mommaship) which should allow you to destroy zergs expansion, if nearby (considering how small maps now are, there should ). It is a far shot, but I think one of the best presented so far.
I wish people would stop saying archons are counters to brood lords. They are NOT by any means a half-decent counter to brood lords if the opponent has any form of micro at ALL. Your archons will NEVER EVER even touch the brood lords.
Currently, the only good counter to BL toss has is blinking stalkers. However, stalkers get murdered really quickly by mass hydras, which will accompany the BLs 99% of the time. In other words, you will be basically sacrificing almost all of your stalkers in order to kill the BLs. Yes, protoss should have colossi in order to kill the hydras, along with sentries and zealots for extra support, but the colossi will not kill the hydras quickly enough so that you don't sustain massive stalker casualties. Again, BLs are NOT undefeatable but protoss absolutely needs an economic advantage prior to BLs coming into play or they will almost always lose.
Funny thing is that decent toss WILL HAVE huge economic advantage when Z got BL after the huge tech path, thanks to stalker / force field / immortal / colossus =)
I know your gonna pound me for not having a source but I recall somewhere reading that Broodlords are getting looked at for possible nerfing. Not just because of there attack but the 250 hp as well. I believe the article also had dustin browder talking about how lurkers were originally a tier 3 unit but didnt fit and how ultralisks dont get used much and are basically useless.
Funny thing is that decent toss WILL HAVE huge economic advantage when Z got BL after the huge tech path, thanks to stalker / force field / immortal / colossus =)
What? When does the protoss ever have a HUGE econ advantage in PvZ lol. After powering drones in early game zerg is usually ahead then it seems to even out, but i would never say the protoss has a econ advantage unless the zerg is doing something horribly wrong
i didnt read the whole thread but stalker + blink is very good against broodlord, you blink over the broodling and focus fire the broodlord and good game.
you just need to dont care about broodling and shot the broodlord down asap.
Broodlords are just really strong vers ever race lol all you can really do is Viks/Phoenix/Void Ray or suicide your blinking stalker/stimed marines pasted the meat shield or hope there is no meat shield : P.
On April 27 2010 11:35 WormSy wrote: Funny thing is that decent toss WILL HAVE huge economic advantage when Z got BL after the huge tech path, thanks to stalker / force field / immortal / colossus =)
Yea, if the zerg forgets what corrupters, infestors, roaches, and hydras are, sure.
I agree, broodlords are too good vs Protoss. The reason they're too good, however, isn't their high damage and hitpoints, it's the broodlings they shoot. The hitpoint buffer they provide against the enemy cluster is just too powerful. And this is why I propose they shoot banelings instead.
EPT
Again, I urge you to watch the rep.
.
."
).
) back, all stalkers get 12 free damage on the corrs. Even pretending he has 10 corruptors (which is kind of ridiculous, pretending he also has about 30 hydras and 5 BLs :D) she gets shot down in about 7,6 seconds (slower speed ?). 
