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It's usually better to do calculations on the worst, the median, and the best possible outcomes..
rather than just the best.
Worst case scenario your infestor gets killed immediately and you do 0 damage.
i understand median is difficult to calculate.
I am not arguing against the usefulness of neural parasite. But at the moment it is only useful if your opponent is getting thors or colossus and you have a numerical advantage, and he has very few tanks. And you have enough energy to cast it, and you can keep it alive for some duration of time, and not have its ability broken by something like graviton beam.
That sounds really whiney but that's a list of things you need to consider before investing in infestors. After all you probably could've bought 3 hydras with that gas.
Whereas the requirement for fungal growth is essentially, have enough energy (not very hard) and they need to have bio or some other low ranged and/or squishy unit type.
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it went from slightly useful to almost never useful after the nerf, and that was before people even used infested terrans. with how good infested terrans are at sniping vital units, which is what you use NP for indirectly except NP is pretty dumb to use against some units that IT helps against a lot, and a myriad of other things that NP can't do at all. i pretty much never use NP ever, nor will i ever use it except to just burn gas on randomly until it gets a long time duration, preferably infinite. i would rather have 1 more infestor with extra ITs ready to spawn on top of the FG and ITs i'm already going to have, or an actually useful tech for infestors that will increase their viability in more situations like burrow.
what makes NP suck no matter how much you might be able to get out of it, is i'm sacrificing my 150 gas unit for 1 momentum shift, gambling heavily in my opponent's favor. if i keep my infestor alive, it's an opponent's mistake to not immediately target fire the infestor and relying on your opponent to make mistakes for you is just not a good way to play.
this thread does make me wonder what the actual mathematical differences are between infested terrans over NP in terms of damage against thors and other units worth NPing. not enough to make me actually check, since i won't use NP even if it proves mathematically superior due to how likely the unit is to be sacrificed, but hey.
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I don't wanna be a Debbie Downer, but Neural Parasite is one of those spells that looks better on paper than it does in practice.
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i target fire the NP thor with my own roaches BEFORE the timer wears out. the battle is generally over at this point and i can kill it before it turns on me. ive found its even useful to target fire a NP unit while you are still engaged in a battle, this might sound counterintuitive but it seems to work.
using the burrow casting trick is of course, mandatory.
this is the change i made to my play when they nerfed NP length, it sucks but whatre u gonna do.
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here's the problem:
If the battle was actually so close that your victory was entirely dependent on your use of neural parasite...
then your margin of victory will be slim and you will have few leftover units at the end which means...
your meager units will be unable to kill all of those thors you NP'd before the 12 seconds is up. this is exactly why the 12 second duration makes NP suck.
On the other hand, if your army is massive, you'll be able to kill off the thors before NP wears off. but you probably would have won the battle easily anyway. And this is why NP is hard to balance... if you have a large army it makes you win way harder than before. if you have a small army, the benefit is negligible.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
Breaking NP is as easy as selecting 2 tanks and telling it to fire in the infestor. That's why NP is useless.
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On August 18 2010 10:50 MforWW wrote:
here's the problem:
If the battle was actually so close that your victory was entirely dependent on your use of neural parasite...
then your margin of victory will be slim and you will have few leftover units at the end which means...
your meager units will be unable to kill all of those thors you NP'd before the 12 seconds is up. this is exactly why the 12 second duration makes NP suck.
On the other hand, if your army is massive, you'll be able to kill off the thors before NP wears off. but you probably would have won the battle easily anyway. And this is why NP is hard to balance... if you have a large army it makes you win way harder than before. if you have a small army, the benefit is negligible.
also the archon has this kinda problem: if u win the battle anyway, theres no need to morph archons, better keep the templar for future storms. if u lose the battle, your stupid ball of blasting energy wont get 1 shot off...
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Interesting post but my experience doesn't agree.
I've lost games, and seen pros lose games, simply because NP is so dismal in it's current state. I still don't understand why this ability was nerfed so hard considering it's so easy to counter. On top of which, it's not particularly powerful if it last for 12 seconds anyhow.
Example:
Was in a 2v2 not long ago. ZT vs ZT. I went tank/marine to counter thor/marine while the zergs both went air. At one point the enemy had about 8 thors attacking 3 of my tanks and a handful of marines. My partner NP'd 3 thors. He tried to focus fire as best he could and easily took one down. The enemy backed off and as he was trying to kill the second (of the 3) NP'd thors the spell broke and the 2 remaining thors marched off.
Ultimately he lost 3 infestors shortly after since they were exposed... 3 infestors for 1 thor dead and one thor damaged.
I could give a whack of other examples; but probably don't need to. In practice the spell is crap. If it was an unlimited duration it would actually be a threat. The enemy would have lost 3 thors until he committed to killing the Infestors - then he would get them back. As it stands, NP is a non-issue when dealing with large units with huge HP pools that can take 12 seconds of damage.
On top of which, I believe the 12 second timer causes another problem. If you have a smaller-scale battle and you NP a thor at some point you have to decide between two options: do you a) kill the NP'd unit before the timer wears out or b) let the timer run out and risk the NP'd unit escaping or doing damage to you? If you pick "a" you have to stop your units from attacking their current target and then focus down a unit that you "own" - which means you're giving up damage from one place to dish it out somewhere else. If you choose "b" you might just end up letting a unit escape, or kill you, when it should have been yours from the start.
With regard to that... I played a game on Desert Oasis where I had about 4-5 hydras an infestor and some lings vs. marine/marauder and one thor. I NP'd the thor, I chose "b" and when all was said and done, I was left with 2 hydras and an infestor with a NP'd thor. Pre-nerf, I just won that battle... except that NP wore out and the thor proceeded to pick off my low HP hydras while the Infestor managed to run away. So I lost, what I normally would have won pre-nerf.
I'm sure I only see NP on b.net when I or my partner use it - desperately hoping to find a place where it's actually worth striving for. I never see an enemy use it - which is unfortunate because it has the potential to be a really dynamic spell that actually forces players to adapt their strategies as soon as Infestors hit the field.
It was always easy to stop. Now it's easy to stop and weak. Awesome.
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Any experience you have with someone casting NP while unburrowed should be immediately thrown out. That's like saying nukes never land because your ghosts without cloak always die when trying to nuke.
To the op...
Great post, really backs up what I've intuitively still felt. I've still been having great success with NP vs Terran*.
Burrow casting + coordinated attack will let the NP get off without a problem. Even if they scan they still have to target the infestors which can be doubly hard if there are unit standing on top of them.
*it's unusable vs protoss because of observers.
NP isn't so much about winning battles you can't otherwise win. It's about winning battles with more stuff. Using NP can save you a ton of resources and units.
Really that's why the infestor is amazing and why the infestor fails as a unit. Unlike templar, ghost, or any defensive unit the infestor can't really win you battles that you otherwise can't win. What the infestor does is cause battles to go in your favor with minimized (or even no) losses.
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On August 18 2010 13:35 Logo wrote:
Any experience you have with someone casting NP while unburrowed should be immediately thrown out. That's like saying nukes never land because your ghosts without cloak always die when trying to nuke.
Umm...
I might be wrong but isn't that a glitch or a bug? I was under the impression that NP was meant to be cast while above ground, and the underground cast was a glitch that is yet to be fixed. It sure plays that way.
If that's the case, then I wouldn't put too much weight on the argument that NP is good "if you cast it while burrowed" and any evidence of it's "proper use" should be chucked.
It almost always plays out like this:
Massive battle: You NP and your Infestors are annihilated almost instantly if the enemy has a clue.
Small-scale battle: a) You NP and the damage you do with NP is less than what you could do with ITs or FGs, b) you NP and have to focus fire the target before it turns and escapes or kills you, c) you NP the target and it serves you well for the entire duration only to pop free and escape or kill you after 12 seconds, or d) you NP, win the battle and manage to kill the NP'd unit.
When is the last time you saw "d" happen when you weren't already going to win? Or how about: when is the last time "d" wouldn't have happened anyway if you built more hydras/roaches with the tech/cost that went toward an Infestor with NP?
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On August 18 2010 10:58 T.O.P. wrote:
Breaking NP is as easy as selecting 2 tanks and telling it to fire in the infestor. That's why NP is useless.
I can do it with all my Tanks, actually, since they're not gonna overkill.
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I am not disagreeing that when using NP the infestor usually gets killed. And I consider burrow-casting a glitch so I did not include that in my analysis.
Neural Parasite should not be cast if you don't first consider whether your Infestor is safe. If he's not safe, don't cast it, cast FG or Infested Terrans instead, or wait for a better opportunity.
I disagree with those that say it will only win you battles you already would have won though... If you are able to get the NP off for the full 15 secs on a Thor, you at least see a 1000+ health swing in your favor, probably lopsidedly winning you the battle. I had an example in my post where I used the unit tester to test its effect, where simply adding 2 NP's (on Thors) caused 14 roaches and an infestor to survive, but without the 2 NPs all 30 roaches die with 4 Thor (wounded) and a tank remaining.
Obviously Blizz nerfed it to 15 secs as a perma NP completely nullified BCs and Thors (and carriers, Motherships, etc..). I'd like to see it go to 20 -30 secs maybe.
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what stupid about it. is the enemy units attack the infestors and not its own unit first. i think they should switch this
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Thanks for the analysis, personally I will continue to avoid using it :D
On August 18 2010 16:38 Johnny_Vegas wrote: I had an example in my post where I used the unit tester to test its effect, where simply adding 2 NP's (on Thors) caused 14 roaches and an infestor to survive, but without the 2 NPs all 30 roaches die with 4 Thor (wounded) and a tank remaining.
Obviously Blizz nerfed it to 15 secs as a perma NP completely nullified BCs and Thors (and carriers, Motherships, etc..). I'd like to see it go to 20 -30 secs maybe.
The unit tester is a terrible way to check for this.You mightve as well spawned 2-3 broodlords and tell us how you can wipe out unlimited ground armies of any composition with them...
In real world your infestors will die instantly, unless you are facing a bad opponent.
I do think/hope an increase to 30 secs is realistic and probably in our future
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NP can probably win fights depending on the situation, just seems that Fungal Growth is more reliable and versatile.
Hopefully Blizz does something with NP to make it worth the energy.
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When dealing with mass "Massive units" (Ultralisk, Thor, BattleCruiser, Broodlord), It's common sense to throw in a few Neural Parasite Infestors in to your unit mix, it may not look like much but believe me, I always use Infestors when given the chance now as Zerg, they are excellent units and the ability to CONTROL an enemy unit is often overlooked, if you use them well and don't send your Infestors into the fire, proper micro can destroy an other wise invulnerable enemy army. I recommend always using it because it does more damage than it looks, though keep Infestors behind a wall of roaches when dealing with Thors in particular, they can kill Infestors in 2 hits if i'm right.
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On August 18 2010 20:10 LoLiver wrote:
When dealing with mass "Massive units" (Ultralisk, Thor, BattleCruiser, Broodlord), It's common sense to throw in a few Neural Parasite Infestors in to your unit mix, it may not look like much but believe me, I always use Infestors when given the chance now as Zerg, they are excellent units and the ability to CONTROL an enemy unit is often overlooked, if you use them well and don't send your Infestors into the fire, proper micro can destroy an other wise invulnerable enemy army. I recommend always using it because it does more damage than it looks, though keep Infestors behind a wall of roaches when dealing with Thors in particular, they can kill Infestors in 2 hits if i'm right.
You seem not to know that you cannot mind control ultralisks (they are specifically immune, they turned that way towards the end of the beta), which means that you haven't actually tried it in a long while. How much of this post stems from actual experience and at which level of play?
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Looks like we gotta do some build like fast infestor or something is we look mech strat 
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On August 18 2010 00:55 Nik0 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2010 00:48 iNdo-Man wrote:
does EVERYONE know that if you activate NP and immediately hit "R" for burrow you can NP a unit and have your infester burrowed and protected. (might be a trick not everyone is familiar with)
if im not wrong this is considered an exploit
So what if it is a bug/exploit? So was grouping an ovie with mutas in BW causing them to stack. These little things add depth and can really distinguish players.
OT: I have been trying to use Infestors with NP in ZvT, but it is very difficult to keep them alive long enough. However, seeing these potential numbers, I'm more motivated to keep trying.
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EPT
