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On August 05 2010 03:58 bobcat wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2010 01:48 General-Gouda wrote:
I envision the Zerg as being something that starts out small and weak and eventually builds itself up into a huge and massive flood of organic death. The beginning and mid game seems to reflect that pretty well but the end game can leave something to be desired.
The race you are thinking of is called the protoss. Zerg are very strong early start that winds down as the game progresses due to increasing difficulty to micro manage as well as a lack of efficiency versus powerful late game protoss and terran units like siege tanks, colossuses, phoenixes and vikings. To compensate for this shortcoming in the common case that the zerg come up against a turtle, you are capable of expanding and fortifying expansions far more quickly than your opponents. Thus, with a constant resource advantage if you are able to keep your unspent resources low, you shouldn't have much trouble having more forces than your opponent, if you can position them well so that you aren't running head first into a wall of bullets and lazers you can take out a terran ball or a protoss force.
This thread is full of shit.
Seriously what game are you playing?
Z strong early?
Lack efficiency late game?
Z has trouble mid game and needs a early macro advantage early game to handle that.
If we get to t3 its often all good thanks to ultra
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Heh I'm pretty sure the matchmaker only wants me to play Terran. Thats all I get. And its getting worse and worse. I think in the end I miss swarm the most, even back in SC1 it was killer for breaking a Terran turtle and pretty much essential for stopping a terran ball. I don't know it just feels like somethings missing in the match up... ZvZ is the same shit but different units (zerglings/muta/scourge sc1 to the roach/hydra spam of sc2)
ZvP is pretty much a one trick pony for me, survive the early aggression and counter with tons of mutas while pushing into the base with lings... where as in SC1 ZvP was one of the craziest mash up of units ever. Lings, Hydras, Mutas, Scourge, Ultras, Defilers, Lurkers.... like every important zerg unit, and toss was the same thing, tons and tons of varied units.
I pretty much gave up vs T in the beta after the nydus worm nerf, like that thing needed any nerf. its loud as shit and terrans and toss were already putting depots/pylons all over their base... why did they nerf it again? I feel like my best success vs Terran has been stopping their early aggression (which is already difficult, hard enough to scout their shit with your overlord showing up just in time to get merc'd by a marine) and then wait for them to move out and sandwich their army with a huge mix of units. I think hydra speed would help a lot, maybe a bonus to their defense vs splash damage.
Hopefully some pro is like here's how its done and we can just copy him.
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All would be solved with Dark Swarm 
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On August 05 2010 04:47 Izzachar wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2010 03:58 bobcat wrote:On August 05 2010 01:48 General-Gouda wrote:
I envision the Zerg as being something that starts out small and weak and eventually builds itself up into a huge and massive flood of organic death. The beginning and mid game seems to reflect that pretty well but the end game can leave something to be desired.
The race you are thinking of is called the protoss. Zerg are very strong early start that winds down as the game progresses due to increasing difficulty to micro manage as well as a lack of efficiency versus powerful late game protoss and terran units like siege tanks, colossuses, phoenixes and vikings. To compensate for this shortcoming in the common case that the zerg come up against a turtle, you are capable of expanding and fortifying expansions far more quickly than your opponents. Thus, with a constant resource advantage if you are able to keep your unspent resources low, you shouldn't have much trouble having more forces than your opponent, if you can position them well so that you aren't running head first into a wall of bullets and lazers you can take out a terran ball or a protoss force. This thread is full of shit. Seriously what game are you playing? Z strong early? Lack efficiency late game? Z has trouble mid game and needs a early macro advantage early game to handle that. If we get to t3 its often all good thanks to ultra
i lol'd but this man speaks the truth
I don't know how any competent zerg player can think Z is strong early game and weak late game.
Maybe you are playing agianst noobs who fall for bling bust every game, that is m only explanation
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On August 03 2010 12:00 Clockwerk wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I pretty strongly agree with the points made in this thread, although it seems to me that there are deeper design issues for the race as well. Zerg units are pretty damn bland. For a race that has a struggle is straight-up fights, one would expect to see units with diverse abilities that allow for tactics that can annoy/harm the enemy without needing to directly engage. But this is not so. The zerg have one primary caster, the infestor whose abilities do add some variety into the mix. However, aside form that there's only the queen whose abilities are macro oriented) and the overseer (whose abilities are to assist scouting and perhaps delay key buildings a slight amount). The rest of the zerg units are very straightforward attackers.
Terran on the other hand has a huge variety of flexible units. There are the vikings which have huge anti-air range and can land on the ground to reinforce or harass. The banshee is an air-to-ground attacker which is extremely useful if the enemy has no detection because it can cloak. Medivacs are both a dropship and medic in one. Reapers are fast ranged units that can jump over cliffs. Ravens are detectors that can cast powerful support abilities such as auto-turrets and seeker missles. Ghosts can cloak, snipe key units, and call down nuclear strikes. The list goes on but I hope this highlights the ridiculous fact that much of the terran army's vast variability hasn't even been explored because 1a2a can secure victory most of the time. Imagine when further strategies are explored!
Next lets look at the protoss. There are collosi which can fire over huge distances and ignore terran. Dark templar which are permanently cloaked and do huge damage, high templar that can cast huge psionic storms or deplete the enemy energy, phoenixes which can fire while moving and lift ground units into the air (rendering them ineffective for a decent duration), immortals which are great for tanking damage due to hardened shields, sentries which can create force fields to disrupt enemy attacks and block chokes, warp prisms which are both dropships and moving pylons (made even more devastating due to warp gates), stalkers which can blink, and of course the mothership with its mass cloaking and recall abilities.
Now let me reinforce these points with the fact that the zerg army has the fewest attacking units. Yes, the same race that has the least unit abilities and flexibility also has the fewest units that can be used in a fight. This, I think, is why so many zerg player are getting frustrated when people are telling us to "wait for the metagame to develop" and "explor more diverse strategies". The fact of the matter is that we havent been given much to work with in the first place. We are trying to explore more strategies and we are trying to develop new techniques, but it seems to me that our units have very little flexibility to work with and that saddens me. I love the concept of the zerg race but they lack the depth that I think they need to be viable.
I couldnt agree more!
This is exactly what I think.
Just about 3-4 days after the beta startet and I played some games with every race I just wrote in another forum that I feel zerg isnt nearly finished yet.
And back there people acted like they do now "wait for the metagame to develop" and "explor more diverse strategies". Look where we are now... same discussion different day.
And this will hold on at least till the expansion comes out or a patch will bring a bunch of new stuff for the zergs what will never happen because blizzard had to admit that they where very lazy (or leaked in ideas, had no more time or whatever) in the zerg design process.
And to all the people saying "just play terran or protoss then" I realy considered this but I just like my little slimy monsters to much even though they make me loosing more then I should...
Keep those complaint posts coming so hopefully blizzard will hear us! (even though I think they are very aware of the fact zerg isnt nearly where they are suposed to be but cant/wont admit)
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Broodlords work out pretty well for defending tight areas, for example naturals on Lost Temple. You just need a decent number of Zerglings to deter any blinking stalkers in ZvP and you can easily afford to drop his main/harass knowing your bases are safe. Harassing gold minerals expoes with them on LT/scrap station is pretty nice too in ZvP. Although in ZvT I never usually fall back, instead I'm just competing for map control all game with muta/ling/baneling
Though these definitely aren't failsafe ways to defend tight chokes, I'd love to see some new defense mechanics introduced :D
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Look at the OgreEli vs XLorD replay from EPS qualifier. I think it was 200supply vs 200supply at the end battle. I won't spoil it for you but look what happens at the end battle. RAPE.
If you don't care about spoiler:
+ Show Spoiler +Xel'Naga caverns is pretty "spacey" map for battles so units with some micro can reach stuff more easily but still rape happened.
There was a big unit mix by P. Some zealots, lots of stalkers, about 8 Immortals and 4 colossi. Zerg had about 11 Ultras and quite a number of Hydras. Maybe some zerglings. P army obliterated Z in 5 seconds. Immortals raped Ultras so bad that I was like "waaaaa" and colossi raped everything else. P lost like few units and Z all. Game over 2 minutes after. Now I am no pro so I won't speak what Eli could have done better, I am merely pointing out the last battle and how Ultras got raped vs a unit that isn't exactly end-game unit and still does tons of vs armored damage + in the hands of a player who will know how to do a proper focus fire. Maybe I'm wrong, but I never seen Ultras get raped so badly until this replay and I watch a lot of Zerg replays. So, Ultras? Just make lot of Immortals, shield them with meat wall and Ultras go to dust.
Another thing. Look here: http://rts-sanctuary.com/index.php?portal=SC2&showforum=331
Check out how many replays involves Zerg players.
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I think we can all agree that the amount of complaints from the Zerg players can not just simply be tucked under the "L2P Rug" and forgot about. If even players like IdrA and Sheth state that zerg has problems, I believe everyone should listen and try to get the message across.
Butthurt Terrans who come into threads like this and tell Z players to use more Nydus and other crap should not make claims that they fully understand the works of a race they did not have the time to master. Theorycrafting is nice, but at the end of the day the players with the most practice in the matter should have the last word.
I believe Team Liquid is doing a great job at making visible the valid concern of pro players and its in our best interest that their voices are heard and that the issues with the Zerg race are shown to Blizzard as fast as possible.
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I agree with Sheth, i'm at the point now where my zerg has to be X much better vs a terran and sometimes protoss just to give them a run for their money, so i have switched to random just cause i think zerg is underpowered.
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On August 05 2010 15:16 Spikeworld wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 12:00 Clockwerk wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I pretty strongly agree with the points made in this thread, although it seems to me that there are deeper design issues for the race as well. Zerg units are pretty damn bland. For a race that has a struggle is straight-up fights, one would expect to see units with diverse abilities that allow for tactics that can annoy/harm the enemy without needing to directly engage. But this is not so. The zerg have one primary caster, the infestor whose abilities do add some variety into the mix. However, aside form that there's only the queen whose abilities are macro oriented) and the overseer (whose abilities are to assist scouting and perhaps delay key buildings a slight amount). The rest of the zerg units are very straightforward attackers.
Terran on the other hand has a huge variety of flexible units. There are the vikings which have huge anti-air range and can land on the ground to reinforce or harass. The banshee is an air-to-ground attacker which is extremely useful if the enemy has no detection because it can cloak. Medivacs are both a dropship and medic in one. Reapers are fast ranged units that can jump over cliffs. Ravens are detectors that can cast powerful support abilities such as auto-turrets and seeker missles. Ghosts can cloak, snipe key units, and call down nuclear strikes. The list goes on but I hope this highlights the ridiculous fact that much of the terran army's vast variability hasn't even been explored because 1a2a can secure victory most of the time. Imagine when further strategies are explored!
Next lets look at the protoss. There are collosi which can fire over huge distances and ignore terran. Dark templar which are permanently cloaked and do huge damage, high templar that can cast huge psionic storms or deplete the enemy energy, phoenixes which can fire while moving and lift ground units into the air (rendering them ineffective for a decent duration), immortals which are great for tanking damage due to hardened shields, sentries which can create force fields to disrupt enemy attacks and block chokes, warp prisms which are both dropships and moving pylons (made even more devastating due to warp gates), stalkers which can blink, and of course the mothership with its mass cloaking and recall abilities.
Now let me reinforce these points with the fact that the zerg army has the fewest attacking units. Yes, the same race that has the least unit abilities and flexibility also has the fewest units that can be used in a fight. This, I think, is why so many zerg player are getting frustrated when people are telling us to "wait for the metagame to develop" and "explor more diverse strategies". The fact of the matter is that we havent been given much to work with in the first place. We are trying to explore more strategies and we are trying to develop new techniques, but it seems to me that our units have very little flexibility to work with and that saddens me. I love the concept of the zerg race but they lack the depth that I think they need to be viable. I couldnt agree more! This is exactly what I think. Just about 3-4 days after the beta startet and I played some games with every race I just wrote in another forum that I feel zerg isnt nearly finished yet. And back there people acted like they do now "wait for the metagame to develop" and "explor more diverse strategies". Look where we are now... same discussion different day. And this will hold on at least till the expansion comes out or a patch will bring a bunch of new stuff for the zergs what will never happen because blizzard had to admit that they where very lazy (or leaked in ideas, had no more time or whatever) in the zerg design process. And to all the people saying "just play terran or protoss then" I realy considered this but I just like my little slimy monsters to much even though they make me loosing more then I should... Keep those complaint posts coming so hopefully blizzard will hear us! (even though I think they are very aware of the fact zerg isnt nearly where they are suposed to be but cant/wont admit)
Both of these posts are very good - and I also want to express a lot of frustration Zerg players have had with creative strategies.
Zerg players got early roaches with burrow to sneak in and do heavy damage - burrowing to regen and popping up to attack. Roach burrowed movement speed was nerfed, regen heavily nerfed, armor nerfed. So that's not viable anymore. Remember battlereport 2 with the zerg in the Terran mineral line? No longer possible.
Infestors would engage and turn the tide of the battle with choice NPs. It was sometimes smart to build a bunch of infestors and NP a LOT of units to just chase away the rest of the opponent's units. Then NP was made 15 second duration and this was now completely unviable.
Zerg would sometimes surprise opponents with a nydus, but nydus got an extra 10 seconds to the build time.
Zerg loves to expand creep everywhere. Some folks started using overlord creep to help spread creep tumors faster, so the timer to create a new creep tumor was increased to make this impossible.
Zerg came up with a pretty creative strat where he moves forward with a bunch of queens to assist in battle - or cancelling a hatch to leave some creep, laying a tumor there, and putting spine crawlers outside the opponent's base. In response, Queens' movement speed was made absolute garbage off creep so this was no longer doable.
It takes the longest and most investment for Zerg to get drops, so anything you do to prepare for it vs T or P you don't need to do as well to prepare against Z.
Mutalisk harass was popular, especially with a corruptor to lock down static D, but then T got thor + missile turret buffs and P got phoenix buffs. Corruptor had its ability removed.
My point is that Zerg HAS been trying to do creative play, we've been trying it since day one - it's not like all the zerg players are idiots. We just never had many options to begin with, and the options we've had have been plucked from our hands while nobody else has lost a single harass/attack option. It's not hard to feel neglected.
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I just did some math, and I can definitely see some imba in these numbers. The following are the figures for fastest time to reach max tech for each race, that is, when all units become available on one base/command center. This model assumes infinite resources.
Terran: 235 seconds (rax+fac+star+fusion)
Protoss: 290 seconds (pylon+gate+cyber+twilight+dark shrine (DT is the longest thing to tech to, surprisingly))
Zerg: 425 seconds (pool+lair+infest pit+hive+transport)
For the zerg model, add 100 more for burrow and 60 for pneumatized, bringing the one-base tech time to a whopping 585 seconds! The zerg have twice the tech time of the other two races, not to mention the difficulties in tech switching due to every tech building only allowing one or two new units to be built. Also, the zerg must conserve their very valuable gas for speed upgrades and waste 50 seconds producing a queen on the first base. This adds minutes onto the tech time of the zerg in-game. I cry imba!
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On August 05 2010 20:43 argie wrote:Look at the OgreEli vs XLorD replay from EPS qualifier. I think it was 200supply vs 200supply at the end battle. I won't spoil it for you but look what happens at the end battle. RAPE. If you don't care about spoiler: + Show Spoiler +Xel'Naga caverns is pretty "spacey" map for battles so units with some micro can reach stuff more easily but still rape happened.
There was a big unit mix by P. Some zealots, lots of stalkers, about 8 Immortals and 4 colossi. Zerg had about 11 Ultras and quite a number of Hydras. Maybe some zerglings. P army obliterated Z in 5 seconds. Immortals raped Ultras so bad that I was like "waaaaa" and colossi raped everything else. P lost like few units and Z all. Game over 2 minutes after. Now I am no pro so I won't speak what Eli could have done better, I am merely pointing out the last battle and how Ultras got raped vs a unit that isn't exactly end-game unit and still does tons of vs armored damage + in the hands of a player who will know how to do a proper focus fire. Maybe I'm wrong, but I never seen Ultras get raped so badly until this replay and I watch a lot of Zerg replays. So, Ultras? Just make lot of Immortals, shield them with meat wall and Ultras go to dust. Another thing. Look here: http://rts-sanctuary.com/index.php?portal=SC2&showforum=331Check out how many replays involves Zerg players.
Eli lost that game cause he refused to tech switch out of ultras, even after he saw huge numbers of immortals he still went for it and even attacked. Immortals are supposed to hard counter ultras and they do that very nicely. And thats what you saw in this game and a Z failing to adapt.
A 200/200 investment in a spire, or 350/350 in greater spire is not much at all that late in the game and is way more worth it then 1 new ultra.
I'm not saying I'm better myself but it doesn't exactly take an expert to see what went wrong in that game
I feel ZvP is a very balanced and fun MU
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Did some more math, Zerg definitely got the short end of the stick in SC2. The same formulas applied in SC1:
T: 330 (rax+fac+star+science+phys lab)
P: 280 (pylon+gate+cyber+stargate+fleet)
Z: 520 (pool+lair+Q nest+hive+ventral)
If the zerg time was scaled down in proportion to the new terran tech time, the 425 number two posts up should actually be 370, or 340 if you discount transport research (520/330 *235 =370 or 480/330 *235 =340, subtracted 40 numerator for the difference b/w ventral and greater spire). Relatively speaking, the Zerg must hold out much longer than they used to against the other two races before reaching maximum tech.
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On August 06 2010 03:30 fdsdfg wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2010 15:16 Spikeworld wrote:On August 03 2010 12:00 Clockwerk wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I pretty strongly agree with the points made in this thread, although it seems to me that there are deeper design issues for the race as well. Zerg units are pretty damn bland. For a race that has a struggle is straight-up fights, one would expect to see units with diverse abilities that allow for tactics that can annoy/harm the enemy without needing to directly engage. But this is not so. The zerg have one primary caster, the infestor whose abilities do add some variety into the mix. However, aside form that there's only the queen whose abilities are macro oriented) and the overseer (whose abilities are to assist scouting and perhaps delay key buildings a slight amount). The rest of the zerg units are very straightforward attackers.
Terran on the other hand has a huge variety of flexible units. There are the vikings which have huge anti-air range and can land on the ground to reinforce or harass. The banshee is an air-to-ground attacker which is extremely useful if the enemy has no detection because it can cloak. Medivacs are both a dropship and medic in one. Reapers are fast ranged units that can jump over cliffs. Ravens are detectors that can cast powerful support abilities such as auto-turrets and seeker missles. Ghosts can cloak, snipe key units, and call down nuclear strikes. The list goes on but I hope this highlights the ridiculous fact that much of the terran army's vast variability hasn't even been explored because 1a2a can secure victory most of the time. Imagine when further strategies are explored!
Next lets look at the protoss. There are collosi which can fire over huge distances and ignore terran. Dark templar which are permanently cloaked and do huge damage, high templar that can cast huge psionic storms or deplete the enemy energy, phoenixes which can fire while moving and lift ground units into the air (rendering them ineffective for a decent duration), immortals which are great for tanking damage due to hardened shields, sentries which can create force fields to disrupt enemy attacks and block chokes, warp prisms which are both dropships and moving pylons (made even more devastating due to warp gates), stalkers which can blink, and of course the mothership with its mass cloaking and recall abilities.
Now let me reinforce these points with the fact that the zerg army has the fewest attacking units. Yes, the same race that has the least unit abilities and flexibility also has the fewest units that can be used in a fight. This, I think, is why so many zerg player are getting frustrated when people are telling us to "wait for the metagame to develop" and "explor more diverse strategies". The fact of the matter is that we havent been given much to work with in the first place. We are trying to explore more strategies and we are trying to develop new techniques, but it seems to me that our units have very little flexibility to work with and that saddens me. I love the concept of the zerg race but they lack the depth that I think they need to be viable. I couldnt agree more! This is exactly what I think. Just about 3-4 days after the beta startet and I played some games with every race I just wrote in another forum that I feel zerg isnt nearly finished yet. And back there people acted like they do now "wait for the metagame to develop" and "explor more diverse strategies". Look where we are now... same discussion different day. And this will hold on at least till the expansion comes out or a patch will bring a bunch of new stuff for the zergs what will never happen because blizzard had to admit that they where very lazy (or leaked in ideas, had no more time or whatever) in the zerg design process. And to all the people saying "just play terran or protoss then" I realy considered this but I just like my little slimy monsters to much even though they make me loosing more then I should... Keep those complaint posts coming so hopefully blizzard will hear us! (even though I think they are very aware of the fact zerg isnt nearly where they are suposed to be but cant/wont admit) Both of these posts are very good - and I also want to express a lot of frustration Zerg players have had with creative strategies. Zerg players got early roaches with burrow to sneak in and do heavy damage - burrowing to regen and popping up to attack. Roach burrowed movement speed was nerfed, regen heavily nerfed, armor nerfed. So that's not viable anymore. Remember battlereport 2 with the zerg in the Terran mineral line? No longer possible. Infestors would engage and turn the tide of the battle with choice NPs. It was sometimes smart to build a bunch of infestors and NP a LOT of units to just chase away the rest of the opponent's units. Then NP was made 15 second duration and this was now completely unviable. Zerg would sometimes surprise opponents with a nydus, but nydus got an extra 10 seconds to the build time. Zerg loves to expand creep everywhere. Some folks started using overlord creep to help spread creep tumors faster, so the timer to create a new creep tumor was increased to make this impossible. Zerg came up with a pretty creative strat where he moves forward with a bunch of queens to assist in battle - or cancelling a hatch to leave some creep, laying a tumor there, and putting spine crawlers outside the opponent's base. In response, Queens' movement speed was made absolute garbage off creep so this was no longer doable. It takes the longest and most investment for Zerg to get drops, so anything you do to prepare for it vs T or P you don't need to do as well to prepare against Z. Mutalisk harass was popular, especially with a corruptor to lock down static D, but then T got thor + missile turret buffs and P got phoenix buffs. Corruptor had its ability removed. My point is that Zerg HAS been trying to do creative play, we've been trying it since day one - it's not like all the zerg players are idiots. We just never had many options to begin with, and the options we've had have been plucked from our hands while nobody else has lost a single harass/attack option. It's not hard to feel neglected.
This is pretty dead on. ONE zealot can kill a Nydus before it can spit anything out. So can ~10 workers even if you drop the nydus at the far end of the base. All P and Z have to do is build some pylons / depots around to counter it really and pay attention of course. I've still had success with the Nydus but it's pretty ridiculous in its current state.
Revamped Nydus (back to 10sec) and NP (~30sec) would help immensely at this point. Infestors are fragile enough as it is to warrant such a short NP timer.
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I'd actually go as far as to say that Blizzard had Zerg being optimal in BW, and the new units broke it. It seems to me they are desperately trying to make Roaches, Banelings, and Infestors viable and useful, but the problem is that the existence of these units have caused stability issues for Zerg. These two units existing means that they can't give us lurkers (fulfill similar role), can't give us hydras (roaches and banelings need to be Tier 1 apparently?), and can't give us defilers (infestors to replace defilers).
I'd think everyone in the Zerg community would be happy to just give us BW Zerg back (plus Queen macro mechanic), as I don't think Zerg can ever be perfectly balanced with these new units
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Do not worry fellow zerg players, in the end all will be good. I have faith in Blizzard straightening up the situation (mainly the maps)
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I kind of liked when neural parasite was insta-cast (not channeled) and only 50 energy. I could build a few infestors and spam it across a supporting army and kill the big units easily, then finish up as NP wore off.
As it is, another problem with NP is the "tentacle insertion time" or cast time... half the time my infestors die from the unit it's NPing while the tentacle is moving. It'd be a much cooler animation + much more easy to use if the tentacle "snapped" into units.
In terms of the "tech time" arguments, while I agree that it takes much longer to "get" to Ultras/Brood Lords, you'd never one-base that shit. That's not how Zerg works. Hatcheries are 100 minerals less than the other races' stuff for a reason. And... considering that you have another hatchery to research stuff at, you can't really take into account stuff like overlord drop, queens, and burrow. I do agree that Lair/Hive tech times should be looked at though... 80 seconds for Lair and 100 seconds for Hive seems excessive.
Zerg has seen some pretty excessive nerfing as well. The Nydus nerf was needed, but doubling the time was a little over the top. I'd say a nice happy medium of 15 seconds would be fair and people would have plenty of time to see+kill it. Also... I'd really love the ability to cancel the damn thing. The increase in cost to burrow, overlord transport, and overlord speed also hurt a lot. I do laugh at how ridiculously strong roaches used to be though... and even after all the nerfs, they still hold up pretty well.
We'll just have to wait a bit for some real balance stuff... I still win plenty as Zerg in Diamond, so it's not impossible. It just is a little hard compared to 1a terran.
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On August 07 2010 01:46 TheSambassador wrote:
I kind of liked when neural parasite was insta-cast (not channeled) and only 50 energy. I could build a few infestors and spam it across a supporting army and kill the big units easily, then finish up as NP wore off.
As it is, another problem with NP is the "tentacle insertion time" or cast time... half the time my infestors die from the unit it's NPing while the tentacle is moving. It'd be a much cooler animation + much more easy to use if the tentacle "snapped" into units.
In terms of the "tech time" arguments, while I agree that it takes much longer to "get" to Ultras/Brood Lords, you'd never one-base that shit. That's not how Zerg works. Hatcheries are 100 minerals less than the other races' stuff for a reason. And... considering that you have another hatchery to research stuff at, you can't really take into account stuff like overlord drop, queens, and burrow. I do agree that Lair/Hive tech times should be looked at though... 80 seconds for Lair and 100 seconds for Hive seems excessive.
Zerg has seen some pretty excessive nerfing as well. The Nydus nerf was needed, but doubling the time was a little over the top. I'd say a nice happy medium of 15 seconds would be fair and people would have plenty of time to see+kill it. Also... I'd really love the ability to cancel the damn thing. The increase in cost to burrow, overlord transport, and overlord speed also hurt a lot. I do laugh at how ridiculously strong roaches used to be though... and even after all the nerfs, they still hold up pretty well.
We'll just have to wait a bit for some real balance stuff... I still win plenty as Zerg in Diamond, so it's not impossible. It just is a little hard compared to 1a terran.
At the very least though you have:
spawning pool (more expensive than the gateway or barracks in fact, so a little slower already) + queen (it's suicide to go lair before 1st queen) + lair + t2 building for tier 2 units. Compare this to barracks => factory => tech lab swap (so 5 secs max) and getting siege tanks ...
Thors, which are tier 3, come out before zerg tier 2 can and with about the same gas cost in tech (lair+100 for hydra or 200 for muta compared to 225 for a thor with factory armory tech lab). The problem is not so much that 1 unit but the fact that Terran can, by the time we get one of our tier 2 units, have access to any unit except the battlecruiser giving them 12 options to our 4-5. Add to that that they can wall off and spend 200 minerals on defense then scan with orbital while denying most scouting and it makes the matchup extremely difficult in the midgame.
Furthermore it is somewhat difficult for zerg to hide tech, between the relatively open ramps, the fact that we have to build on creep (though this can be put to the side) but more importantly that the Terran can scan the same building every time to know what tier we are at. If a Terran scans a lair, he knows damn well he doesn't have to deal with ultras or broodlords for a long time still.
A change I think would be sensible would be Nydus time to be diminished again or for Nydus to be burrowed until it pops (so cannons or turrets may work but supply depots and pylons would not). It is coming up so why not have it burrowed then it pops, if they have observers, ravens or well placed turrets they can see it, otherwise they get surprised. This also would somewhat allow zerg to force turrets even without a spire.
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For me, one of the biggest problems of zerg is their inability to scout effectively. This leaves zerg players anticipating all kinds of push/harass options, and makes it very difficult to deal with all of them.
The second problem I see are the costly overlord upgrades for speed, and the ability to become drop ships (especially this one) 200/200 is just too much. These upgrades are useful, and effective yet much more powerful tier 1 upgrades as stim and concussive shells are so much cheaper.
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On August 07 2010 00:49 AdonaiMSRT wrote:
Did some more math, Zerg definitely got the short end of the stick in SC2. The same formulas applied in SC1:
T: 330 (rax+fac+star+science+phys lab)
P: 280 (pylon+gate+cyber+stargate+fleet)
Z: 520 (pool+lair+Q nest+hive+ventral)
If the zerg time was scaled down in proportion to the new terran tech time, the 425 number two posts up should actually be 370, or 340 if you discount transport research (520/330 *235 =370 or 480/330 *235 =340, subtracted 40 numerator for the difference b/w ventral and greater spire). Relatively speaking, the Zerg must hold out much longer than they used to against the other two races before reaching maximum tech.
I always thought that the only problem of Zerg in any matchup was that they're just teching waaaayyyy too slow. If you could actually get some Ultras out when the Terran does his T3 timing push it would be reasonably easy to counter these strats. It would also be way easier to defend those stupid Protoss 1-base-5gate cheeses if you could get to hydras just a little faster. At the moment it's basically always a fight of getting the perfect amount of spine crawlers out and a few lings to delay his push.
the problem is that the other races have many units available with one building, while we have buildings for each specific unit. and even then, we have to tech our main building (hatch/hive) just to enable these buildings. imo the building time of these should be made shorter to compensate.
Also, the ling speed upgrade needs way too long imo. We have to go special gas->pool builds before expanding just to be able to defend against reapers/hellions in time.
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EPT
