Like many of you, after Neural Parasite was nerfed from permanent to 15 measly seconds (not 12 like widely believed)I have rarely bothered to research it. I was having trouble with mass Thor+(misc other terran units), so I thought I would investigate it a little more to find out if Neural Parasite still was a good Thor counter. This is not an article on how ZvT sucks for Zerg and Neural Parasite is the answer by any means.
I am a 450 Diamond player (edit: one month later...now 900, thank you ladder inflation), not a pro, so take my analysis from that viewpoint. The below analysis assumes you are able to protect your infestors somehow for 15 secs, perhaps simply by keeping them behind your wall of roaches and casting Neural Parasite at its max range of 9 on the forward most Thor. I shall separate my findings in two sections, "Theory" and "Evidence".
THEORY
Thor cooldown: 1.28secs damage: 30 damage x 2
Neural Parasite Duration: 15 secs (EDIT: previously had this at 12 game seconds, but it's 15)
This means if you NP a thor it'll usually have time for 11 shots (occassionally 12 shots) before the effect wears off.
11x30(damage)x2(Thor's dbl atk) = 660 damage
Neural Parasite on a Thor deals 660 damage to the terran that would have been dealt to the zerg, for a damage dealt swing of 1320 health. But that is not actually all it does, as a butterfly effect is triggered in the respect that more zerg units are alive because of the decreased damage by the Terran force, so the zerg's firepower is also increased by units that would otherwise be dead. A very rough estimate is that by the Terran losing 660 points of firepower (enough damage to kill 4.5 roaches, factoring in their 1 armor) output over a 15 second period, the zerg will gain about 2 roach worth of additional fire power during that period. Forgive me if that is not perfectly accurate, it could be more like 1 or 1.5, it just depends when the roaches would have died to determine how much firepower is lost.
Bonus "Butterfly Effect" Damage from Zerg units staying alive longer: 2 roach @6shot each = 12 shots x 16 dmg = 192 damage just from units that are alive because the Thor is not shooting at the zerg for 15 seconds.
So the "should be dead" roaches did 192 damage for the Zerg, great, lets review:
Effect of Neural Parasiting a single Thor *660 damage to Terran over 15 secs *660 less damage to Zerg over 15 secs *192 more damage from roaches that aren't killed by NP'ed Thor Total Health Swing: 1512
Well that's pretty awesome, but in truth there is even more to consider.
Terran inflicts X less damage over that 15 secs because of the units lost from suffering 660 (NP'ed Thor) + 192 (the "ghost" roaches) damage. Of course the units are not lost immediately, but lost or damaged at some point over the 15 second span.
It is reasonable to assume that 852 damage over 15 secs might be enough to kill two unsieged tanks (160hp units) by the 6 second mark. That would be 6 seconds of unsieged tank fire "lost" from having the Thor and a few roaches firing on them, that would otherwise not be firing on them, had Neural Parasite not been cast. Since unsieged tanks cooldown is 1.04, they would lose a total of about 14 shots, or against roaches 288 damage (2x7x25 =350 - 14 = 336).
Revised Effect of Neural Parasiting a single Thor *660 damage to Terran over 15 secs *660 less damage to Zerg over 15 secs *192 more damage from Zerg units that aren't killed by NP'ed Thor *336 less damage from Terran units killed by Thor and "should be dead" zerg units. Revised Total Health Swing: 1848
Believe it or not there are additional levels of butterfly effects that could be calculated, but they become very hard to even approximate, and their effects get smaller and smaller. For example, the 336 damage of firepower the Terran lost from the two siege tanks that died at the 6 second mark means even more zerg units are alive to inflict MORE damage for those final 6 seconds.
Conclusion: you can get something like a 1500 - 2000 point health swing for Neural Parasiting a SINGLE Thor.
Possible Conclusion: Neural Parasiting two Thors would lead to greater than a 100% increase over the above analysis, considering the exponential nature of even more Zerg units alive to fire upon the terran units.
Caveat: Some have observed that they've NP'ed 4 Thors at once, killed the terran army, then the NP wears off and the 4 Thors kill the rest of the zerg army. This makes sense intuitively, I'd like to analyze it in a future post as it is an interesting scenario where you might be best served to only NP 50% of the Thors at a time.
EVIDENCE
I ran some tests the other day and was sort of surprised, check this out... (both forces stupidly just attack move each other in the open, with no sieging, and yes I know the roaches will do much better if microed, but I wanted identical situations to measure the effect of ONLY Neural Parasite)
Zerg force 1: 30 roaches (2250m/750g/60sup) Result: 5 Thors and 1 tank survive
Zerg force 2 (yes, I know you'd have fewer roaches if you get Infestors): same as above, add 2 infestors with Neural Parasite, cast NP on front two Thors. Result: 14 roaches, 2 infestors survive Retry Result: 12 roaches, 2 infestors survive
APPENDIX, Damage Output for some other Terran units over 15 seconds
Neural Parasite on an unsieged tank firing on armored units... 14 shots@25 each = 350 damage
On a banshee? 12 shots@12x2 each = 288 damage
Stimmed Marauder? 12 shots@20 each = 300 damage (you can even over-stim it to weaken it) Yep, theoretically not useless to Neural Parasite a Marauder, if it has stim and concussive shells. A 480 health swing can be enough to keep 2 roaches alive and probably kill 2 siege tanks (with the help of the 2 roaches that don't die)
Battle cruiser? (ground)65 shots@10 each = 650 damage (air)65 shots@6 each = 390 damage
Thor still will do a lot more damage to most ground units than a battle cruiser because armor will affect the BC's damage output more. (-65dmg versus armor 1, - 130 dmg vs armor 2, etc..).
REPLAY (EDIT: Added this replay)
This isn't the perfect replay, but certainly I've been beaten by Terran of this skill (and worse) before. There are two battles were NP was used, the most important one to look at is the one at the 12 minute mark on my natural. There we see mis-micro from both sides (common among non-pros such low to mid diamond players), as it appears that the Terran once seeing the roach and infestors approaching, runs his forces back to his tanks in order to dodge, what he thinks will be Fungal Growth. During that move I Neural Parasite the Thor, then before he can direct his MM to snipe the infestor I fungal growth them and surround them with roaches. This allows the Neural Parasite to last the entire 15 secs, and because of lucky timing it actually gets off 10 shots (30x2x10 = 600 damage) instead of the usual 9. He only had 1 unit capable of sniping my infestor, his forward siege tank, which might not have had the sight range he needed once his MM retreated. I made a few mistakes myself, I lose one high energy infestor stupidly by running it up, casting nothing, then promptly dieing. Also, I had emerging hatchery units rallied to my ramp that did not participate in the battle as soon as they could have.
The terran's force was not large, but my force was pathetically small as well, and I lose one infestor for nothing.
(Notice the terran misclicks somehow when my overseer approaches and he kills his own Thor, so much for this replay's credibility, oh well, haha!)
In the later battle he has a solid defense of sieged tanks and a couple of Thor, and I'm still all roaches/infestor basically. I Neural Parasite the closest Thor, and it looks like the Terran tries to snipe the infestor but is surrounded by roaches so cannot get in range. Obviously this battle I had a huge army size edge thanks to the earlier win and my harassment on his natural with infestor/muta.
To be honest, I pretty much suck and I'd like to see some examples of pros successfully using NP against Thors. If they don't exist maybe its a tactic that only works for mid Diamond and below, but you can see it appears that it is possible by using a combination of roach wall plus Fungal Growth to protect your infestors.
Interesting post, I will consider using Infestors more now. But how does NP fare against toss? and Infestors are easily sniped as well, wouldn't 12 infested Terrans prove to be more useful? Especially against sieged tanks that can just snipe infestors?
just curious.. lots of people do complain about the NP not being worth it..
nice #'s Johnny.. the only thing that kind of screws up your research is that infesters often get sniped or FF and the NP can get cut short, the inevitable damage swing is always going to be present though, might not be as large as what you post (your #'s are obviously best case scenario)
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)
also... for you zergs out there.. I would really like to hear about someone using shift+click'ed infested terrans to create walls in the same fashion as protoss forcefields to block army mobility. A fully charged infestor can drop some 8-9 infested terrans simultaneously from the protection of burrow
On August 18 2010 00:45 hadoken5 wrote: Interesting post, I will consider using Infestors more now. But how does NP fare against toss? and Infestors are easily sniped as well, wouldn't 12 infested Terrans prove to be more useful? Especially against sieged tanks that can just snipe infestors?
I pre-emptively answered this in my 2nd paragraph with:
The below analysis assumes you are able to protect your infestors somehow for 12 secs, perhaps simply by keeping them behind your wall of roaches and casting Neural Parasite at its max range of 9 on the forward most Thor.
Sure infested terran are nice, I invite you to analyze the effects of 100 energy worth of infested terrans (4) versus a Thor army and we shall compare. My hunch is that Neural Parasite will be much better, so long as you keep the infestor from being sniped. I recommend swarming the Terran with many roaches, and/or using a second infestor for fungal growthing any units that might be able to snipe the Neural Parasiting infestor.
Wow there's a lot of number-crunching theorycraft going on there...probably a bit too much.
I'm nearly 100% certain if you go into a fight with your infestors and each one is able to NP a unit for the full 12 seconds, you'll win that battle. But this never happens, the infestor always dies and the NP is cut short.
The issue that people have isn't with the length of time NP lasts, it's with the fact that the infestor is so vulnerable and never gets to use NP to its fullest extent. Yes you say in your OP that you assume that each and every NP lasts for the full 12 seconds, but I have never once seen this turn the tide of a battle that you would have otherwise lost. If you are able to get off a full 12-second NP, your army was far bigger than your opponents and you would have won without the infestors anyway.
Here's a good example of when NP goes horribly wrong. Note that if every NP that Ciara used during the last big battle had lasted for 12 seconds, the battle probably would have been won:
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)
I find your math sound, if you make a bunch of assumptions, IE
The thor constantly has something to shoot at for 12 seconds straight (they dont pull back) The infestor dosent get killed halfway through All of your roaches are all constantly firing for the duration of NP Absoloutley none of the damage dealt is overkill damage (eg hitting a zergling (35hp) with a thor shot(60 damage) Nobody has any upgrades
Plus, if you are going to start factoring in the damage gained by roaches not dying, and the damage gained by roaches not dying so they kill more so more roaches dont die, you may aswell make one of those geometric series you should have learnt in high school, (a/1-r) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_series
Although, for all intents and purposes you could give a number anywhere between 500-2500 and it would be reasonably accurate and convincing enough to make people use NP more
I kinda still wish it was infinite, back then i had terrans calling zerg imba, those were the days.
Actually, my issue with NP is directly tied to the 12 second duration.
The prospect of winning a battle, and now having a Thor forever, makes the 200/200 research of NP worth it.
The prospect of casting NP on a Thor, barely winning the battle, then the Thor breaking free and slaughtering whats left of my army makes 200/200 research laughable.
NP had enough issues with infinite duration, capping it at 12 seconds put a nail in the coffin real quick.
On August 18 2010 00:53 BlasiuS wrote: Wow there's a lot of number-crunching theorycraft going on there...probably a bit too much.
I'm nearly 100% certain if you go into a fight with your infestors and each one is able to NP a unit for the full 12 seconds, you'll win that battle. But this never happens, the infestor always dies and the NP is cut short.
Personally, ive had a game where I NP'd about 3 thors, sent in my whole army, kill everything else, lose pretty much my whole army, then the 3 thors lose the NP, kill my infestors then subsequently kill my natural.
You may also want to factor in the opportunity cost of NP. By choosing to NP, you fail to FG the MM ball alongside the Thor, which when stimmed, probably does more than 540 dmg in the stun time. Also apply the butterfly effect used in your logic, and you realize that it really becomes situational and there is no clear cut choice. Often times, I find FG the bio army produces better results (also because infestor dies when NPing).
On August 18 2010 00:53 BlasiuS wrote: Wow there's a lot of number-crunching theorycraft going on there...probably a bit too much.
I'm nearly 100% certain if you go into a fight with your infestors and each one is able to NP a unit for the full 12 seconds, you'll win that battle. But this never happens, the infestor always dies and the NP is cut short.
Personally, ive had a game where I NP'd about 3 thors, sent in my whole army, kill everything else, lose pretty much my whole army, then the 3 thors lose the NP, kill my infestors then subsequently kill my natural.
that probably had nothing to do with the NP length, and everything to do with how well you handled the battle. A 3-thor swing for 12 seconds should be more than enough to decisively win, let alone not lose your entire army and not lose your nat.
gonna call bullshit on that one, unless of course you can provide a replay.
You've analyzed the best case scenario for a neural parasite, but you haven't compared it to anything. Sure np might pull a 1080 health swing when cast idealy, but this swing is only present when compared to the same army in which the infestor sits back and does absolutely nothing.
Let's say you didn't go infestors with neural parasite, but instead put the infestor's resources into roaches instead. You'd have three or so extra roaches even before you factor in the np research costs. Those extra roaches can now tank an additional 450 damage, and can deal a couple hundred damage themselves.
So your damage swing from np over a very basic army isn't 1080, it's more like 400. Also keep in mind that the np requires additional micro to use, and that there are research costs involved, and that when going for infestors your army will experience a window of increased vulnerability while the infestors build up energy. Also your infestors might be killed before the np can last its full duration.
I'm not trying to imply that it's a useless spell (a potential 400 damage swing is nothing to scoff at), but it's not nearly as good as you make it sound. I think infestors and np could easily return to their former state (unlimited np duration) without causing problems.
On August 18 2010 01:05 Caelestis wrote: You may also want to factor in the opportunity cost of NP. By choosing to NP, you fail to FG the MM ball alongside the Thor, which when stimmed, probably does more than 540 dmg in the stun time. Also apply the butterfly effect used in your logic, and you realize that it really becomes situational and there is no clear cut choice. Often times, I find FG the bio army produces better results (also because infestor dies when NPing).
I added my replay after you posted this, but as you can see, when you rush to infestors relatively quickly you can usually employ both Fungal Growth and Neural Parasite. I think the key is to get a couple of infestors out quick so they can start building up energy. One nice thing about fast Infestors is that the Infestation Pit builds almost twice as quickly as the spire, so you will almost always be able to have fungal growth ready, but perhaps not Neural Parasite. The nice thing about the timing of Neural Parasite research is that it takes a while to get Thors, and longer for them to talk to your base, so you can usually have NP ready too.
Of course much like when rushing to muta, if you rush to Infestors without a decent ground army, there will be a timing window there where the Terran can abuse you. I don't even think I scouted well enough to know I'd be facing Thors, its just that I had decided on fast infestors + Neural Parasite before the start of the game to investigate their potential. About 75% of my games versus Terran, they make Thors, so I figured it was an ok gamble anyway.
On August 18 2010 01:26 archwaykitten wrote: You've analyzed the best case scenario for a neural parasite, but you haven't compared it to anything. Sure np might pull a 1080 health swing when cast idealy, but this swing is only present when compared to the same army in which the infestor sits back and does absolutely nothing.
Agreed, that is beyond the scope of my post. Again, I'm not saying Neural Parasite is the best thing since reavers in an undefended drone line, I'm only posting some analysis regarding a specific situation in which NP could potentially be used, assuming you can protect the infestor for 12 secs.
Often times its valuable to study the best case scenario, as in this circumstance, players can see that if the infestor can be protected then NP is probably worth the cost. Once that is understood players can then work on tactics to protect their Infestors.
I could brainstorm on ways to protect infestors, but that was not the subject of my post.
On August 18 2010 00:59 schiznak wrote: I find your math sound, if you make a bunch of assumptions, IE
The thor constantly has something to shoot at for 12 seconds straight (they dont pull back) The infestor dosent get killed halfway through All of your roaches are all constantly firing for the duration of NP Absoloutley none of the damage dealt is overkill damage (eg hitting a zergling (35hp) with a thor shot(60 damage) Nobody has any upgrades
The assumptions were necessary to limit the complexity of my post. Obviously there are 500 different possibilities given variations on just what you've listed. My post shows one fairly common scenario. Other scenarios could be better or worse for the Zerg. Inferences can be made using knowledge gained from deeply analyzing a single scenario, but nobody has time to analyze them all.
The question I was trying to answer was basically: "Does Neural Parasite suck now that it only lasts 12 secs?" Hopefully my post and my replay show that there are situations where it can be very cost effective. Also I think my post illustrates that Thors are usually the best possible target for NP and the numbers show why this is the case.
One big question mark is if you are able to keep your infestors alive after you win the battle. If you are able to (no easy feat), then you might find yourself in a superior position if the Terran has lost his entire army.
Employing Neural Parasite is an unpredictable tactic which can lead to a big win or a big loss for either side. A lot of it is just going to come down to player skill. Again, maybe its effective use depends on the Terran being below a certain skill threshold, I am not sure, all my analysis does is demonstrate its potential.
Plus, if you are going to start factoring in the damage gained by roaches not dying, and the damage gained by roaches not dying so they kill more so more roaches dont die, you may aswell make one of those geometric series you should have learnt in high school, (a/1-r) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_series
No thanks, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. =p
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
Neural parasite is highly underestimated. First people are like "12 seconds = it sucks" and in this thread people are like "infestor dies!!!"# Very hard to kill an infestor at range 9 because the only thing that can hit them is tanks and the ones close enough usually die.
Use this a lot vs colossus too, and micro the colossus to my army so if infestor gets sniped the colossus gets instagibbed.
I edited my original post to correct the duration of Neural Parasite, which is 15 seconds, not 12. It has been mis-cited as 12 seconds (perhaps to make it sound weaker?) but in TheoryCraft we measure everything in game seconds. 12 seconds is its duration in real time on the faster speed setting.
NPing 2-3-4 Medivacs with the infestors being in safer position could also be really strong cause instead of their troops being healed it's yours and allllll of your units can be heal by them.
On August 18 2010 22:48 KingAnusIII wrote: NPing 2-3-4 Medivacs with the infestors being in safer position could also be really strong cause instead of their troops being healed it's yours and allllll of your units can be heal by them.
This definitely seemed viable back when NP was permanent, but it sounds like a tougher call now, as you'll only get 15 secs worth of healing (or less if Medivac is out of range of your units).
Nevertheless NPing a medivac is actually better than it sounds when you look at the numbers.
A medivac can heal 15 health per second, for a potential total heal of 225 hps over 15 seconds. There might be a tiny bit of time devoted to acquiring targets to heal however I have not tested.
Anyway, and this is the primary reason NP is misunderstood in general, you aren't just receiving a benefit, you are taking away benefit... So you aren't just getting 225 hps of healing, you are denying 225 hp of healing from the terran.
Other possible benefits:
The terran loses the vision that the Medivac provided. If you NP their only air unit(s), your high ground units cannot be hit. This usually will not be a factor, situational.
Reposition the Medivac to a location where it will be easy to snipe once NP wears off. Since they can heal while moving, might also get some healing out of this maneuver.
But of course the best time to Neural Parasite a Medivac is when you are intercepting a drop and are able to snipe it down with some queens/hydra. Pure theorycraft, forgive me as I've never pulled this off, but obviously a devastating move. Range 9 of NP is significant as its the longest range ground to air weapon a Zerg has at his disposal, exceeding that of upgraded hydra (6) or Queen (7) or Spore Crawler (7).
Medivacs sound like they'd be tough to NP in a traditional battle with MMM, unless you use the burrowed-casting trick. I don't like to recommend that trick as its probably just a bug that Blizzard will eventually fix.
I always use NP in ZVP/ZVT and if I get a good amount of infestors (2-4) and NP, I can usually dominate an opposing mid/late game army with extremely minimal losses. IMO, it works especially well with high dmg output armys like ling/hydra, since your doods stay not dead for more than 4 seconds
On August 19 2010 01:14 uberdeluxe wrote: great job, a little more math than I like XD
I always use NP in ZVP/ZVT and if I get a good amount of infestors (2-4) and NP, I can usually dominate an opposing mid/late game army with extremely minimal losses. IMO, it works especially well with high dmg output armys like ling/hydra, since your doods stay not dead for more than 4 seconds
Hrm makes sense regarding the high DPS army, hadn't thought about that. In my original analysis this would lead to a larger chunk of damage from the zerg units that would otherwise be dead from Thor fire, had NP not been cast. Especially makes sense in the Thor vs Hydra scenario because Thor kill Hydra pretty quickly and Hydra have such high DPS, not having the Thor wail on the hydra for 15 secs would be that much more beneficial.
Perhaps the only downside to Hydra instead of Roach here is that the roach will do a better job of creating that wall to protect your infestor.
NP seems to be worth it if you can get them off on expensive units as people have suggested. Since you steal his units for 12 seconds, not insane but still advantageous for your units, you somewhat downplay the role of "expensive" units. It seems efficient to effectively 'counter' pricey thors with the relatively cheap infestors.
I haven't done the math or testing of it in game, so just my personal theories on it. Let me know if that's somewhat logical.
I just wanted to ask you, if you can make a graph describing number of seconds in neural parasite as a function of its effectiveness (number of HP you actually gain), also set it to 4 different situations where the number of roaches, lings, siege tanks and thors vary.
I realize its not such an easy job to do, but it could be way much more useful for people to understand how the efficiency changes. Maybe even proving that the infester is very efficient (or possibly not efficient).
Assuming they researched it, would it be possible to NP a thor and then instantly 250mm cannon another one of their thors/tanks/etc? Will the cannon stop if they kill the Infestor mid cast?
When you NP a Medivac that has units loaded will that function like in the original broodwar that you get the medivac and the units in it, too? If so, will they be permanently yours to command like if you NP a probe and build a nexus?
It doesn't make sense to me that people complain about the nerf, and then are like, "the hard part is keeping them alive for 12 seconds".
Look, Infestors are really powerful. Spam Infested Terran and Fungal growth and you don't even have a need for NE. Infestors + Hydra + Ultra = beats any composition terran can throw at you.
On August 19 2010 22:30 Semoirethe wrote: Assuming they researched it, would it be possible to NP a thor and then instantly 250mm cannon another one of their thors/tanks/etc? Will the cannon stop if they kill the Infestor mid cast?
On August 18 2010 21:24 Slayer91 wrote: Neural parasite is highly underestimated. First people are like "12 seconds = it sucks" and in this thread people are like "infestor dies!!!"# Very hard to kill an infestor at range 9 because the only thing that can hit them is tanks and the ones close enough usually die.
Use this a lot vs colossus too, and micro the colossus to my army so if infestor gets sniped the colossus gets instagibbed.
Have you tried using neural parasite? I don't know about other zerg players here. It is pretty difficult to get, let's say 4 infestors with both upgrades BEFORE the inevitable push, ie 800 minerals and 1000 gas. Not to mention you have to wait for 25 more energy on each infestor, just to pull off a NP. The question comes down to, do you want to contain the Terran with 10 mutas and expand more, or invest in a few infestors that may or may not win you the battle.
Sure I've won some games where the infestor is on high ground (Lost temple) and NP'ed thors below, but also lost some games in the same situation when the Terran just used a scan on the high ground after the thor got NP'ed and 1 shot killed the infestors. I've also lost many games due to the push coming before enough energy on the infestors, as well as many games due to no map control = terran on same bases as me and turtle till death ball.
Having infestors is just too damn risky, 1 micro mistake = gg, and also you have to depend on micro mistakes of the Terran player to not scan and focus fire the infestors with tanks. So you tell me, if you had a skill that says "50% chance to kill target enemy unit" and takes a long time research and be ready, would you invest in it?
On August 19 2010 23:19 Ainsworth wrote: It doesn't make sense to me that people complain about the nerf, and then are like, "the hard part is keeping them alive for 12 seconds".
Look, Infestors are really powerful. Spam Infested Terran and Fungal growth and you don't even have a need for NE. Infestors + Hydra + Ultra = beats any composition terran can throw at you.
Infestors: 2 upgrades cost 300/300, 100/150 for each infestor Hydras: 1 upgrade cost 150/150, 100/50 for each hydra Ultra: 1 upgrade cost 150/150, 300/200 for each ultra
So basically you are suggesting melee, ranged AND armor upgrades AND infestors. I don't think you've ever played this matchup before? most zergs die before ultras come, yet you are suggesting to get EVERY gas intensive unit zerg has? Common man we are playing 1v1 ladder here, not 30 minutes no rush.
If you are gonna NP Thors, you might as well focus fire some of your forces on the thors so that when it wears off, it is either dead or just about dead and can't cause damage against you.
NPing a thor and making sure not to weaken it is just asking for trouble.
i saw a sick game between ogsthewind vs ogstop where thewind goes infestors + roaches, does a couple of good drops with them, NPs thors, wipes out top's main base scvs and is ahead like 2 bases... then top cleans it up, Ds up, then wins the whole game 2-basing with marines and tanks. woot?
On August 18 2010 00:45 hadoken5 wrote: Interesting post, I will consider using Infestors more now. But how does NP fare against toss? and Infestors are easily sniped as well, wouldn't 12 infested Terrans prove to be more useful? Especially against sieged tanks that can just snipe infestors?
Honestly with the new changes you might see less tanks. But lets say there are tanks, it will take 2 tanks shots to kill an infestor, add that damage along with the reaction time that it takes to attack the infestors and the damage the thors already get off in that time along with the splash damage from the tanks that was wasted on single targets.
NP just needs one "small" buff. if a infestor gets killed while NP'ing the remaining mindcontrol time is halfed instead of it just stopping instantly.
so if a infestor gets killed instantly you still have 6 seconds left. if a infestor gets killed after 4 seconds you still have 4 seconds ( (12-4)/2) left.
and suddenly its a great spell that can be used in many situatiuons.
t/p can still counter it with feedback/emp but random collosus/tanks making the whole spell useless will be a smaller problem.
QUOTE::: For example, the 336 damage of firepower the Terran lost from the two siege tanks that died at the 6 second mark means even more zerg units are alive to inflict MORE damage for those final 6 seconds.
what you're saying is.. NP results in less fire power for the terran meaning you automaticly have an advantage meaning you will do more damage.
But. if you do more damage the terrans firepower will drop quicker than yours that will result in a never ending cycle of dmg reduction of the terran forces and dmg ingrease for the zerg force. sooo.. if i'm not mistaking.. your.. theoretical NP disadvantage/advantage will always result in a win for the zerg in an equaled firepower battle. As the firepower drops for the other team and the fire power ingreases because of the duration *not even counting the extra firepower of the thors* the zerg units will be alive... it will theoreticly always result in a win statistic for the zerg without any micro and positioning from both teams.
this is all just theory and im not saying that i'm speaking the truth. it's just.. im thinking thattt.. i might be able to give you a simple math.. thingy.. to prove what i'm saying.. let me think lol.. ehhh.
20=20. and a NP gives -1 to the terran and overall +1 to the zerg. in terms of duration and numbers. that means NP=20+1;20-1. if there is an overall number advantage to 1 side. that side will automaticly win. sooo.. i hope you get what i mean.. as i aint a native speaker.. BUT i think it all comes down to how 20=20 is the fire power. for both sides. NP will transfer 1 point to the zerg. 21-19. and 21 is and will always be higher than 19. without micro/positioning/upgrade/armor extra bonus dmg. in a 1a2a fight
thank you for making me able to use my brains[EDIT: Brain. lol. i dont have multible brains.] for once.
The real thing you should NP when approaching a massive thor/metal army is the raven above, and laying an pdd for your mutas / lings.
Instant Ownage, Thors shoot so slow they take forever to eat through the energy of a pdd.
Also, you should always try to NP while burrowed (Hold Shift, Click Move, Click Burrow, Click Target NP before Burrow = Infestor moves to the spot he is told to burrow, burrows, moves towards the NP target and NP's it from underground).
U actualy need to get in range .... and anything that u want to NP outranges the skill... Did u tried to NP a mech army? just a few tanks and a ton of gas that u invested into infestors are gone in an instant !
I think FG has much more usage ...
But against Mass Carriers or stuff like that, it can be awesome !
oh, and what if the infestor gets just shot down by a tank? OO, you didnt think about it, did you? And it's a bit funny how you make it sound NP is strong because thor is dealing insane ammounts of demage.
That being said infestors are good, and NP can be used against Thors indeed, but only if you have means to provide safety for your expensive infestor, which is impossible in some scenarios
But you had the right idea, terran units are so good zerg's best chanse is to make them fight each other
On August 18 2010 22:48 KingAnusIII wrote: A medivac can heal 15 health per second, for a potential total heal of 225 hps over 15 seconds. There might be a tiny bit of time devoted to acquiring targets to heal however I have not tested.
FG does 35 damage over 8 seconds, 70 over 16 seconds, per unit. If you can FG 4-6+ units, it is a better use of the energy. Plus, units in the FG cannot move. FG is perfect against MMM.
But of course the best time to Neural Parasite a Medivac is when you are intercepting a drop and are able to snipe it down with some queens/hydra.
Not verified, but I read somewhere else that Medivacs with units inside are immune to NP.
On August 18 2010 22:48 KingAnusIII wrote: A medivac can heal 15 health per second, for a potential total heal of 225 hps over 15 seconds. There might be a tiny bit of time devoted to acquiring targets to heal however I have not tested.
FG does 35 damage over 8 seconds, 70 over 16 seconds, per unit. If you can FG 4-6+ units, it is a better use of the energy. Plus, units in the FG cannot move. FG is perfect against MMM.
But of course the best time to Neural Parasite a Medivac is when you are intercepting a drop and are able to snipe it down with some queens/hydra.
Not verified, but I read somewhere else that Medivacs with units inside are immune to NP.
You definitley can't NP a medivac with units inside.
I tested this because in SC1 when you mind controlled a transport unit with units inside, the transport as well as everything inside of it was mind controlled permanently. Also, I don't see the need to NP a transport about to drop to shoot it down when you can just FG it outside of your base to shoot it down while it can't move.
Suppose that you NP two Thors that are in the front line of the terran army as the terran army is moving and immediately he sieges his tanks, will the tanks hit the Thors first as their primary target without micro?
250mm Cannon was OP when it stunned an ultralisk for 5 seconds and did 500 dmg... An Infestor practically stuns one of your thors for 12 seconds and makes him do 500+ damage to your army and its UP...
I was never good at understanding logic over the internet, anyone care to explain.
I think the responses to this theory have completely controverted the original post. As many have already said, in practice neural parasite is not cost effective. Against the perfect world math behind NP stands the overwhelming forces of common sense and experience. Everyone can plainly see that there are way too many highly relevant factors not included in the analysis:
a) high risk of losing infestor/s before neural parasite completes b) relative dmg per unit with parasite vs fungal growth/infested terrans c) relative research time and gas cost of parasite vs fungal growth/infested terrans d) relative cost in APM/micromanagement of the battle (especially if you're fighting on 2 fronts)
On September 23 2010 01:03 Competent wrote: For the people complaining in this thead...
250mm Cannon was OP when it stunned an ultralisk for 5 seconds and did 500 dmg... An Infestor practically stuns one of your thors for 12 seconds and makes him do 500+ damage to your army and its UP...
I was never good at understanding logic over the internet, anyone care to explain.
P.S. Great post OP, we need more Zerg like you.
The OP is just saying NP is good. It's not like other zergs don't TRY NP, we try it and it doesn't work.
I'll take a shot at explaining it to you:
250mm cannon was OP when it stunned an ultra and dealt 500 damage. It also didn't require a research and was available on an already cost-effective unit.
NP requires a research on a unit that has no viability outside its spells. If it uses NP, that's energy it doesn't spend on its other uses (fg, it). It also doesn't do any damage, and the infestor has only 80hp until it dies and the NP is broken.
So it's not a cool ability that you can use when needed like 250mm cannon - it's a research-able ability that enables NP but at the cost of FG. That's a lot to ask from a research-able ability.
Think of it like HSM on Ravens - most Terrans aren't too keen on HSM since the Raven already has useful abilities, HSM requires a research, and it takes up a lot of energy. Consider that Infestors cost about the same as a Raven, can't fly (and we have a crowded ground game), have about HALF the survivability (!!), and HSM is far more powerful than NP.
On September 23 2010 01:46 RexFTW wrote: There is the use that nobody remembers. NP a dropship full of dudes, then kill the dropship .
Why not just fungal growth it? Wouldn't NPing it just be a waste of energy?
If you FG it he can still unload the units. If you're trying to take it down with 2 queens or something, you're better off NP'ing to keep the units inside.
To all the responders... I believe I answered almost everything previously, but it is a big thread, so I don't blame you for not reading it all. For the record, in my games I use FG way more than Neural Parasite, and half the time I research NP I forget I even have it. Many games researching NP does you nothing, so I'm not saying to research it every game, or always use it instead of FG. I'm also a huge fan of infested terran both in raids and supplementing certain army types. Infested Terran, even moreso now that tanks 2 shot them instead of 1 shot them.
The OP is just saying NP is good. It's not like other zergs don't TRY NP, we try it and it doesn't work.
I'll take a shot at explaining it to you:
250mm cannon was OP when it stunned an ultra and dealt 500 damage. It also didn't require a research and was available on an already cost-effective unit.
NP requires a research on a unit that has no viability outside its spells. If it uses NP, that's energy it doesn't spend on its other uses (fg, it). It also doesn't do any damage, and the infestor has only 80hp until it dies and the NP is broken. - fdsdfg
Yeah, I agree Fungal Growth is usually going to be better, with the added hugely practical bonus of it being auto-researched. The reason I made the original post was because I thought Neural Parasite had perhaps been dismissed too quickly by the SC2 masses. It does indeed have a use, if a very limited one, and I think primarily that's using it on Thor heavy terran armies.
My post was long enough without going into an analysis comparing NP to fungal growth, but I will say a few things about that anyway.
Fungal Growth is clearly superior against most unit types, costs less energy, is easier to use effectively, auto-researched, and so on... Just because this is the case does not mean that Neural Parasite does not have its niche.
Neural Parasite actually has a few advantages that were not mentioned: +2 range over Fungal Growth. Takes effect instantly, whereas FG is damage over time. Compliments Fungal Growth, because it punishes certain spread out units (i.e. such as a leading Thor), whereas FG punishes tightly packed, smaller, lower health units. potentially better against high health targets such as Colossus, Thors, BCs, Carriers, Broodlords, etc.
If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to take a guess on how I should spend my infestor energy it would be something like this.
ZvT: Fungal Growth: 75% Infested Terran: 15% Neural Parasite: 10% (versus Thor and Battle Cruisers and maybe the occassional raven and medivac)
ZvP: Fungal Growth: 75% Infested Terran: 20% Neural Parasite: 5% (Colossus, Immortals, High Temp to storm other high temp, and if you ever saw them...Carriers, Motherships)
basically impossible to get NP off on a terran army. and considering how fast the terran army decimates the zerg army the NPing infestors will be killed in less than a second. its a useless ability.
if it had range 13 it would be usable, maybe.. but not really. the terran would just stim forward and kill all the infestors and they would be wasted. Basically, if you dont get a perfect FG off on a terran bio army, you lose. game over, no way to win. Agaisnt mech it's also pretty much a lost battle, the way to beat terran in mech is to keep tossing units until he runs out of minerals, is there another way?
On September 23 2010 01:03 Competent wrote: For the people complaining in this thead...
250mm Cannon was OP when it stunned an ultralisk for 5 seconds and did 500 dmg... An Infestor practically stuns one of your thors for 12 seconds and makes him do 500+ damage to your army and its UP...
I was never good at understanding logic over the internet, anyone care to explain.
P.S. Great post OP, we need more Zerg like you.
The OP is just saying NP is good. It's not like other zergs don't TRY NP, we try it and it doesn't work.
I'll take a shot at explaining it to you:
250mm cannon was OP when it stunned an ultra and dealt 500 damage. It also didn't require a research and was available on an already cost-effective unit.
NP requires a research on a unit that has no viability outside its spells. If it uses NP, that's energy it doesn't spend on its other uses (fg, it). It also doesn't do any damage, and the infestor has only 80hp until it dies and the NP is broken.
Infestors have 90 HP btw.
Watch Fruitseller play, he shows how cost effective an infestor is.
And I liked the OP's post.
So it's not a cool ability that you can use when needed like 250mm cannon - it's a research-able ability that enables NP but at the cost of FG. That's a lot to ask from a research-able ability.
Think of it like HSM on Ravens - most Terrans aren't too keen on HSM since the Raven already has useful abilities, HSM requires a research, and it takes up a lot of energy. Consider that Infestors cost about the same as a Raven, can't fly (and we have a crowded ground game), have about HALF the survivability (!!), and HSM is far more powerful than NP.
On September 23 2010 01:46 RexFTW wrote: There is the use that nobody remembers. NP a dropship full of dudes, then kill the dropship .
Why not just fungal growth it? Wouldn't NPing it just be a waste of energy?
If you FG it he can still unload the units. If you're trying to take it down with 2 queens or something, you're better off NP'ing to keep the units inside.
Great how you give advice as if you were knowing wtf you're talking about when you can't even NP a dropship that has a cargo.
Contemplate this, IdrAs favorite unit of the zerg is Infestor, and if you watch his games he pretty much always gets it, something which I very much agree on as FG is essential stuff in pretty much every MU. Now, how often have you seen him do NP? I've seriously never seen him research or get NP. This goes for all the pro zergs, none of them use NP. I used NP in beta when you didn't need to research it, it lasted forever, and cost 25 mana ( iirc ). At that point under some special compositions it was good ( vs very heavy mech when you catch them out of position before they siege on creep ). Now days it's totally useless and should never be researched.
There's a few reasons for this. First of all the spell is so got damn visible, you get a phat juicy tentacle going from the controlled unit to the easily targeted large and super squishy infestor. This creates a situation where if the opponent pays attention to the battle, you need to match his number of units with your number of infestors, or else you get what I'll call the infestor domino effect, where when the first infestor dies all the others follow to very simple target fire. Basically the problem is that the infestor is a very very squishy unit for its cost and tech investment. It's just all around a very poor spell, to heavy of an investment which relies on perfect positioning and an opponent that isn't paying attention.
Good stuff, a lot of depth in the damage swing that I never considered.
You have to consider the stage of the game though. While NP is still very viable, any late game tech path can handle a couple of infestors. Collosi/Tanks/Air units have the range, ghosts can emp or snipe (both 10 range, 2 snipes will kill), templar can feedback (range 9, will kill instantly if they have enough energy for NP)
You guys are either complete idiots, or ignorant fools to think NP is anything except a sick Blizzard joke.
You're an idiot if you think NP isn't useful because the infestor "might" die. You could take that same argument for just about any unit in the game. That's like saying zerglings are a joke because hellions rape them.
EPT
