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Remember the old Sunken Colony?
Sunken Colony
-Cost: 175 minerals
-Armor: 2
-Damage: 40
Spine Crawler
-Cost 150 minerals
Armor: 2
Damage: 25 +[5 vs Armored]
Blizzard trades mobility for reduced damage, right?
Wrong, mobility is completely worthless because spine crawlers main job is to be a static defense. There really is only one place to defend in most cases, that is your natural expo, and most spine crawlers will only move around that area, if at all. They are so slow anyway that uprooting ( they don't have roots...) takes away sweet macro time.
Let's review Brood War attack mechanisms, Sunkens do 40 damage vs heavy units that is dragoons, vultures, tanks, goliaths, archons, reavers and lurkers. It also did absolute 40 damage against any kind of shield. Yet, PvZ was pretty balanced.
Spine crawlers do 25 dmg to light units, and that makes them better than sunkens in that respect.
But, they lost 10 damage against armored. Given that stalkers are better than goons, crawlers should be better than sunkens.
However, the drawbacks don't really make up for the extra +5 damage.
First of all, in broodwar you could time your sunken wall, if a M&M timing push was coming you could morph all your creep colonies and not be caught off guard. That gave zerg a lot of variety.
It meant that you could fend off an air attack or a ground attack all from one structure.
And because both structures were specialized, they were stronger than cannons!!!
Second, and this is only an assumption. Spine Crawlers seem to attack slower than sunkens.
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I'm not sure what your point is exactly...are you asking for a buff?
I haven't really seen any real isssues regarding the crawler, I don't think it needs fixing. I don't play Z so my opinion could be worthless, however, I do see the mobility used a lot, esp vs P. Sometimes you need to build the crawler in a safe position then bring it up after the initial attack subsides.
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Cannons seems the same
Turrets get ultra-buff, Bunkers can be salvaged
I think the damage should be a little bit more, or at least the attack speed should be faster.
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I like crawlers vs P, but against T it's nearly worthless. Early game they have marauders which just melt the damn things (they have range 6 and crawlers have 7), and siege tanks are obvious.
P zealot/stalker they're okay until he gets immortals and then colossi, then they're worthless again. Colossi just make the things a waste of resources, there's no point.
They suck. Hard. Both P and T got more mobility since SC1 and bases are usually much harder to defend. Open naturals for one, backdoor shit like blistering sands.. etc.
Unfortunately they're a better value than zerg units, so it's neccesary against certain timing pushes. Oh well. Fortunately Zerg can drone harder than SC1 so the cost isn't as severe
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i think they should have +10 vs armored and perhaps have a reduced root time.
original root time was 6 seconds, and is now 12 seconds. Personally i think root time should be 8 or 10 seconds, the nerf was warranted, though i believe it was an overnerf.
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The games are too different. Don't compare them
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The real problem is that there so much more damage in the game. Stimmed marauders can tear down a spine crawler in 2 seconds. Colossus/immortals can snipe a spine in a second. Hydras barely take any damage from cannons.
Bunkers are the best because they scale with your units and because they are free(ish).
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On August 21 2010 14:53 RoieTRS wrote:
The games are too different. Don't compare them
This. While we're at it lets compare Quake 2 deathmatch with Quake 3 deathmatch.
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I believe Sunkens did explosive damage, which would be 40 to large targets, 20 to small targets and 30 to medium targets. Am i right here or am I wrong?
Oh.... and stop comparing the two games. They are similar, but by no means are they anything close to the same.
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I'd expect an attack speed increase for both cannons and spine crawlers sometime in the future. I mean they aren't AWFUL defense structures, but they really stop doing their job after the 5-6 minute.
Remember how fast the sunken used to attack when SC was initially released. Yeah, it was pretty comical. Also, cannons used to do explosive damage, so Blizzard is usually aware of these concerns.
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On August 21 2010 15:08 RavenNevermore wrote:
I believe Sunkens did explosive damage, which would be 40 to large targets, 20 to small targets and 30 to medium targets. Am i right here or am I wrong?
Oh.... and stop comparing the two games. They are similar, but by no means are they anything close to the same.
Yeah sunkens did explosive.
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I'm pretty sure crawlers attack at the same speed as sunkens, if not slightly faster? I remember they even had to nerf the attack speed a little during beta as it was too fast.
Additionally, in this respect, stalkers are NOT stronger than goons. Goons did 20 damage to sunkens, while stalkers only do 14.
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It's not just terran who's defenses have been upgraded, cannons hp 200->300 is huge. Feels like zerg got the shortest straw here, because mobility can rarely be used as much.
I think spines aren't too vulnerable, hp is pretty much fine - counterable with immos but can push stalkers back good enough. Damage often feels very poor though - they feel a lot like tanks that require some dps to back them up, not being as much of killing machines on their own like cannons and pfort are imo. I don't really want them buffed, but T/P static def could be very slightly lowered. I just don't understand why cannons got such big HP upg, since cannon rushing has become so much easier now which shouldn't be wanted scenario. One cannon requiring 4 drones to kill feels too much.
Oh well, guess none of the static def really is too imba in solo. Bunker salvage for 100% cost is a bit too good maybe.
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They should reduce rooting/uprooting time. It's not only bad, it's boring - you rarely ever see crawlers crawling.
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I think that spine crawlers are pretty useless right now. The only thing they deter is hellions. as far as I can tell... that is the only thing they deter.
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If you had to pick would you take a damage increase a attack speed increase or a root time reduction?
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I hate how the Turret got such a huge buff that with a stack of 5-6 mutas you may as well just run away from the Turret.
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My only complaint about the Spines is the 50 second build time and the 12 second burrow. At least Sunken Colonies could be quickly made in response to a counter attack or a big unsuspected push. And yeah, they were much stronger than Spine Crawlers. Spines and Spores are a waste beyond that early part of the game where they don't matter anymore.
Also, the dynamics of Spine Crawlers -vs- Sunken Colonies is completely different. As a Zerg in BW, you were already producing Creep Colonies as part of your economy. There is one very distinct difference from BW and SC2:
Colonies counted as structures. We don't have that anymore in SC2, because tumors aren't structures, nor or Overlords. So, in BW, your opponents were very much obligated to seek and destroy your colonies in order to win. As they pushed forward you had more time to mass your defenses. Likewise, you already had these colonies out on the map and it only took 20 seconds to convert them into sunkens. 20 seconds its all it would take to turn your base into a death trap in a pinch. Now in SC2, if you wanted to do that, you would have to pull all of these drones off the line and make 50 second Spines that will probably never make it because your enemy doesn't have any other obstacles - honestly, they aren't stopping to give a shit about tumors, why would they? - other than your army. Break that and its easy pickens.
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The burrow time is too long it should revert back to the old time. I think it was 6 secs? Also the way it attacks is ridiculously dumb should make it look cooler but idk probably already too late for that right.
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On August 21 2010 15:08 RavenNevermore wrote:
I believe Sunkens did explosive damage, which would be 40 to large targets, 20 to small targets and 30 to medium targets. Am i right here or am I wrong?
Oh.... and stop comparing the two games. They are similar, but by no means are they anything close to the same.
Wow, I completely forgot about this one.
And no, the games are not that different at all. Zerg, specially is exactly the same.
Broodlords are guardians, Corruptors are Devourers, Infestors are defilers.
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On August 21 2010 19:22 rockslave wrote:
They should reduce rooting/uprooting time. It's not only bad, it's boring - you rarely ever see crawlers crawling.
You see them crawling, just never in battle, which was the point of the nerf to its root time. Spine crawlers are perfect for moving to new expansions when you take them, or building them before you have creep somewhere else then moving them in, but shouldn't be able to be run into the middle of the battle and planted.
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On August 21 2010 20:57 OhJesusWOW wrote:
Colonies counted as structures. We don't have that anymore in SC2, because tumors aren't structures, nor or Overlords. So, in BW, your opponents were very much obligated to seek and destroy your colonies in order to win. As they pushed forward you had more time to mass your defenses. Likewise, you already had these colonies out on the map and it only took 20 seconds to convert them into sunkens. 20 seconds its all it would take to turn your base into a death trap in a pinch. Now in SC2, if you wanted to do that, you would have to pull all of these drones off the line and make 50 second Spines that will probably never make it because your enemy doesn't have any other obstacles - honestly, they aren't stopping to give a shit about tumors, why would they? - other than your army. Break that and its easy pickens.
I'm not sure I follow what you are saying... In SC1 I don't really know a lot of people that built colonies for the creep at high levels (creep didnt do anything apart from building space). And turning your base in a death trap in a pinch? You mean you always had a bunch of unformed unused colonies standing around? There are some situations where I guess that could have been waranted but not all that often. I'm not going to comment on the state of balance the Spine Crawler is in now since I just dont have enough experience with it as a P (seems fine early game at least) but I feel your post sort of misses the point?
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On August 22 2010 00:09 Rev0lution wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2010 15:08 RavenNevermore wrote:
I believe Sunkens did explosive damage, which would be 40 to large targets, 20 to small targets and 30 to medium targets. Am i right here or am I wrong?
Oh.... and stop comparing the two games. They are similar, but by no means are they anything close to the same. Wow, I completely forgot about this one. And no, the games are not that different at all. Zerg, specially is exactly the same. Broodlords are guardians, Corruptors are Devourers, Infestors are defilers.
Mutas dont stack. reavers dont need shuttles, there is no scourge, zerg gets extra larva without hatchery, and roaches exist. zerglings are relatively weaker and so are mutalisks. These things completely change dominant strategies and the economy game is completely different than in brood war.
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The amount of time it now takes to burrow spine crawlers is stupid slow now. I don't quite get why they doubled the time, but the main reason I'd ever move spine crawlers is to move them back into range... and by the time you've uprooted, moved, and burrowed again, they've destroyed your crawler.
8 or 10 seconds would be better.
I do LOVE how they attack though. It's sort of silly looking.
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I find it odd that in a comparison of units from 2 different games, that you didn't add their health totals to see how much they had changed.
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On August 21 2010 20:57 OhJesusWOW wrote:
My only complaint about the Spines is the 50 second build time and the 12 second burrow. At least Sunken Colonies could be quickly made in response to a counter attack or a big unsuspected push. And yeah, they were much stronger than Spine Crawlers. Spines and Spores are a waste beyond that early part of the game where they don't matter anymore.
Also, the dynamics of Spine Crawlers -vs- Sunken Colonies is completely different. As a Zerg in BW, you were already producing Creep Colonies as part of your economy. There is one very distinct difference from BW and SC2:
Colonies counted as structures. We don't have that anymore in SC2, because tumors aren't structures, nor or Overlords. So, in BW, your opponents were very much obligated to seek and destroy your colonies in order to win. As they pushed forward you had more time to mass your defenses. Likewise, you already had these colonies out on the map and it only took 20 seconds to convert them into sunkens. 20 seconds its all it would take to turn your base into a death trap in a pinch. Now in SC2, if you wanted to do that, you would have to pull all of these drones off the line and make 50 second Spines that will probably never make it because your enemy doesn't have any other obstacles - honestly, they aren't stopping to give a shit about tumors, why would they? - other than your army. Break that and its easy pickens.
This was never the case in BroodWar, unless you were playing some really aweful players. Creep did nothing but let you place buildings, it wasn't in the creep in SC2. Creep colonies were only used to make sunks or spores, nothing else.
On August 22 2010 00:09 Rev0lution wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2010 15:08 RavenNevermore wrote:
I believe Sunkens did explosive damage, which would be 40 to large targets, 20 to small targets and 30 to medium targets. Am i right here or am I wrong?
Oh.... and stop comparing the two games. They are similar, but by no means are they anything close to the same. Wow, I completely forgot about this one. And no, the games are not that different at all. Zerg, specially is exactly the same. Broodlords are guardians, Corruptors are Devourers, Infestors are defilers.
Broodlords are similar to guards, corrupters have similar aspects to devours, however infestors are defilers? Don't call that fat stupid thing the equivalent to my unit that made my shit near invincible =(.
Anyway, on topic. It felt like the sunk was stronger than the spine crawler. It did a little more damage, for the most part, and was a lot easier to quickly get up and defend your base (especially if you had creep colonies ready to be made into sunks on maps with short rush distances).
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Or attack speeds. If a Stalker does 14 damage, but attacks 50% faster than a Dragoon, the damage is almost the same.
Just like how they patched Thors in Beta. They did 45 + 45, and now they do 30 + 30, yet their attack speed was increased such that its DPS wasn't changed at all.
Damage isn't everything, you must factor in the attack speed too. Another example: Tanks in tank mode doing more DPS than in Siege. Marines doing more DPS than Marauders, etc.
There's any combination of things that are different that you can't perceive to the fullest extent to make any rational claims about.
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First off, why are you comparing little things like attack speed of sunken v spine crawlers? Comparing something like that is meaningless without the context of the rest of the game.
Second:
On August 21 2010 14:17 Rev0lution wrote:
Wrong, mobility is completely worthless because spine crawlers main job is to be a static defense. There really is only one place to defend in most cases, that is your natural expo, and most spine crawlers will only move around that area, if at all.
Can't agree with you here, any maps with an open natural and/or backdoor to main or nat require you to defend in at least 2 places.
Just for ladder 1v1 this includes:
-Blistering Sands (backdoor into main)
-Kulas Ravine (2-rocks backdoor into main, nat is somewhat wide open, or can at least be avoided on the way to your main)
-Xel'Naga Caverns (wide-open nat)
-Delta Quadrant (wide-open nat)
-Scrap Station (backdoor into nat)
Also, the mobility is important. Often times you have to put a crawler in your main & nat to protect against reaper/hellion play if you don't go roaches. It's incredibly useful to be able to later on move these to your nat, or even your 3rd. Also it prevents crawlers from being useless once you hold off a rush and expand, since you can then just bring your crawlers to your expo once it's up. And let's not forget the fact that you can use your crawlers to push out towards your opponents base on some maps, such as Steppes of War.
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My largest complaint with Spine Crawlers is their insane build time. You can make them when you scout your opponent starting to move out of his main and they still won't be done when he gets there. :X
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Perhaps one improvement that no one would object to is changing the dumb attack animation. The ridiculous thing just pokes its enemies, and makes the most trivial sound...
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I prefer moving the new spine crawler. You also leave out the fact you don't need to make a creep colony THEN morph it to a sunken. You can move the new spine crawler when you expand to get them from panic static defense into a better position to defend your natural and main.
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On August 21 2010 20:57 OhJesusWOW wrote:
My only complaint about the Spines is the 50 second build time and the 12 second burrow. At least Sunken Colonies could be quickly made in response to a counter attack or a big unsuspected push. And yeah, they were much stronger than Spine Crawlers. Spines and Spores are a waste beyond that early part of the game where they don't matter anymore.
This. They're strength is okay (I think Turrets are kind of OP, honestly), but their build time and root time is retarded. I agree that the nerf in beta was warranted, but they went waaay too far. I say 9 second root time, and 30 or 40 second build time, at most.
Don't even get me started on Spores. Worst static defense in the game by a long shot.
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The only problems with crawlers are root/build time being too high. Also your OP is totally wrong on dmg done to units in BW. Half of those are medium armor.
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for me, spines only serve a couple purposes:
1) fend off a variety of terran harrass
2) assist/delay with Protoss gateway pushes
after this, spines are near useless, here are my ideas to make them more useful and maintain balance:
I liked in BW you can build a creep colony before the spawn pool finished, then morph it to a sunken after your pool finishes, this can help immensely vs cheeses, if you scout a cheese while your pool is halfway, you can start your defense, then complete it when pool finishes
instead of 50 seconds and 100 minerals for spin
it could be:
25 sec/50 mineral for a crawler (would need to find a use for this. Maybe trading minerals for creep spread instead of queen energy)
25 sec/50 mineral upgrade to spine crawler
25 sec/25 mineral morph back to a regular crawler for later game versatility
perhaps a lair upgrade to spine damage??
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On August 22 2010 05:03 Zergzilla wrote:
You also leave out the fact you don't need to make a creep colony THEN morph it to a sunken.
I actually view this as a negative thing, rather than a positive one. In BW I can have my 4 creep colonies sitting there ready to be made into sunks IF my opponent pushes out. Thus allowing me to have 200 minerals that I wouldn't normally have, had I made them into sunks right away. In SC2 I'm forced to spend the whole amount of the defensive structure in 1 go, unless the map has such a huge rush distance I can plop them down and the opponent arrives when they are finished. But this would be quite a rare case.
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You guys are aware that any change made to the spine crawler is going to break ZvZ, right?
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On August 22 2010 00:30 Boonesbane wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2010 19:22 rockslave wrote:
They should reduce rooting/uprooting time. It's not only bad, it's boring - you rarely ever see crawlers crawling. You see them crawling, just never in battle, which was the point of the nerf to its root time. Spine crawlers are perfect for moving to new expansions when you take them, or building them before you have creep somewhere else then moving them in, but shouldn't be able to be run into the middle of the battle and planted.
do you seriously believe that a rooting time reduced to 6 seconds would lead to people mass proxy spine crawler rushing? mebbe in zvz but other that that this idea is rediculous since spines are slower than snails offcreep. it absolutly should be reduced to 6. 12 seconds is not even funny. people are using those uproots just because they have to, not because its so useful to let a stupid useless defense building stand around in a base defense for 12 seconds just so it can be killed off in the last 3...
and yes all P and T stationary defenses have been upgraded and yes all Z stationary defenses have been nerfed which is kind of one of the reasons why Z has a hard time in sc2 in the early game.
imo the spines roots should definetly be reduced to 6 mebbe even 5. and on top of that it would be kind of a nice idea to let them borrow offcreep with 12 seconds. its hard to pull off and since 12 seconds is a lot of time and because crawlers are so superslow offcreep. that would give Z an equivalent to Ts bunker rushes/proxy raxes and Ps proxy gate/cans. even if not rly practical in use it would open up a bigger variety for z early openings and make up for the lack of dmg. mobility instead of dmg...
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Damage is fine, build time and root time is a little too long. The side effect of this is, you have to build your spine crawlers way ahead of time to be cautious instead of squeezing them in as your opponent leaves their base. This really stunts your economy since as zerg you want to be powering drones until the last possible second.
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Tanks used to also do more damage but now we're saying smarter tanks for less damage?
Hydras used to be T1
SCVs used to have 60 hp
Stalkers used to be dragoons and do 20 damage
Don't try to compare one unit from BW to SC2 without comparing the whole game itself. The entire game has changed, it's not like we're playing BW and the sunken has been replaced by the spine crawler.
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On August 22 2010 06:36 kidcrash wrote:
Damage is fine, build time and root time is a little too long. The side effect of this is, you have to build your spine crawlers way ahead of time to be cautious instead of squeezing them in as your opponent leaves their base. This really stunts your economy since as zerg you want to be powering drones until the last possible second.
The annoying thing is how map dependent this is. Close spawns on Metalopolis, you have to build spine crawlers to match their army the whole time. Far spawns you can build it as soon as you spot him moving out.
On August 22 2010 06:45 dhe95 wrote:
Tanks used to also do more damage but now we're saying smarter tanks for less damage?
Only more damage against armored(large) targets - and even then only damage, not DPS.
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the point of the post is that sunkens and spore collonies both suck in sc2. they used to be pretty cool in bw but now they are absolutely worthless.
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I like making spine crawlers to shut down early harass, but after that they become almost useless imo.
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Netherlands19135 Posts
Why is this in strategy. Plus there is not a single point to the whole topic and spinals actually attack faster.
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Netherlands19135 Posts
Plus it was 40 to large, 20 to smaller in BW. (Explosive damage type)
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EPT
