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This is something I have been playing around with a lot, and understand the mechanics enough to make a post.
Note that everything that applies to Neural Parasite here can also apply to Fungal Growth, I just feel NP is a lot more useful... and I don't want to say 'NP and FG' every time
Infestors can Neural Parasite while burrowed, and it's very very useful.
How is it done?
The entire thing relies on one fact, Infestors only lose the ability to SELECT the 'neural parasite' ability while burrowed. You can in fact cast neural parasite, and select a target for neural parasite.
How:
Here it is in its most basic form:
+ Show Spoiler +
Press the 'burrow' hotkey. Before the burrow command finishes, shift-right click where you want the infestor to move, and still holding shift, press the Neural Parasite hotkey. Keep holding shift
(Note, if the burrow animation is not enough time to issue a move and queue up NP, you can tell the infestor to move, shift-queue a burrow, and then shift-queue the NP. It will work just as well).
The reticule should change to the NP, you will see the range helper surrounding the infestor.
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/1947/screenshot2010081800245.jpg) You can't see it here, but the mouse pointer is the targeting reticule that you normally see when selecting NP.
Your Infestor will now move to wherever you queued him. Since you're still in spellcasting mode, you cannot issue new move orders or you will cancel the Neural Parasite. Since he is burrowed, you will be unable to select it again until you unburrow.
Once he finishes moving (or anytime during the move) you can issue the NP command.
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1947/screenshot2010081800245.jpg) The infestor has stopped moving.
You can wait as long as you want during this phase, and at your leisure, click on the NP target. If the target is not in range, you CANNOT select him, you must select a target in range.
+ Show Spoiler +
Note that when sending out the neural parasite, the Infestor takes NO damage - he is never visible to the Marine.
In this demonstration, an Infestor burrow-moves up to an enemy, and neural parasites another nearby enemy without ever becoming visible.
==
A bit more practical of a demonstration:
Steps with the exact keypresses (note that I use grid style, so burrow is 'b' and neural parasite is 'c', i don't know what the default hotkeys are)
(Click the pictures for larger image)
1) Three Infestors are sitting around.
+ Show Spoiler +
2) Select them, right click the bottom of the ramp, SHIFT+B (burrow), SHIFT+rightclick near the army (on the minimap), SHIFT+C. You must finish inputting these commands before the Infestors are finished burrowing. Keep holding shift
Note that Neural Parasite has been selected, as you can see in the bottom right.
+ Show Spoiler +
3) The infestors work their way over. You cannot input anything during this time, you must preserve the spellcast you queued up. You are still holding shift
+ Show Spoiler +
4) Still holding shift, left click three targets to smartcast three NPs. Now that NP has begun, you are free to do whatever. Select the thors and use 250MM cannon, select the siege tanks and focus fire, etc.
+ Show Spoiler +
5) See the destruction you have wrought, and run your infestors back home if you please
+ Show Spoiler +
==
I think that covers everything. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll answer them to the best of my ability.
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Excellent find if this does in fact work.
I play Z and T in mid-high diamond and have always felt that infestors should have kept burrowed NP from early beta/alpha. This not only buffs the infestor, but it also makes detection more and more important which is something that is lacking in SC2.
Enjoy it this while it lasts, guys!
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Oh shit I have to try this
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They didn't patch this yet? I'm surprised lol
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OMG. I have to do this next game.
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On August 18 2010 14:16 Barrin wrote:shh keep it down maybe they wont fix it 
I figure they'll fix it if they want, they must be aware of it.
I have never written a guide before, and wanted practice mostly
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Very powerful but very hard to do successfully..
yes it works
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The easier way is to press shift R+E while the infestors stand still (what strange hotkeys do you have?)
then simply click on a unit you want NP'd.. the infestor will move while burrowed and then NP
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On August 18 2010 17:49 ayadew wrote:
The easier way is to press shift R+E while the infestors stand still (what strange hotkeys do you have?)
then simply click on a unit you want NP'd.. the infestor will move while burrowed and then NP
The easier way also sucks, as you have to be within range 9 before you burrow - meaning they can see/kill your infestor before you do this. The method I describe involves moving up while stealthed and NP'ing multiple units without ever becoming visible.
Also, I specifically mentioned that I use grid style and don't know the default buttons.
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Blizzard, please, please do not nerf this. This, and spawning infested terran eggs on siegetanks to splash them to death by friendlyfire are the only tools i have to stop terran mech.
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No mather how much I love this bug I think Blizzard should and will patch this. Even if neural has been nerfed to oblivion and would be balanced as a burrowed cast spell this bug needs to go. Blizzard can't balance units or spells around bugs or else this would hurt the lower segments who are unable to do these nifty tricks and are stuck with worthless spells.
I would however want Blizzard to consider making the burrow cast a permanent change. Since the short duration of the spell, the high cost, it being channelled and the low survivability of infestors I don't think it would be overpowered.
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17070 Posts
On August 19 2010 05:08 Batch wrote:
No mather how much I love this bug I think Blizzard should and will patch this. Even if neural has been nerfed to oblivion and would be balanced as a burrowed cast spell this bug needs to go. Blizzard can't balance units or spells around bugs or else this would hurt the lower segments who are unable to do these nifty tricks and are stuck with worthless spells.
I would however want Blizzard to consider making the burrow cast a permanent change. Since the short duration of the spell, the high cost, it being channelled and the low survivability of infestors I don't think it would be overpowered.
This is just horrible reasoning. There are plenty of people who don't know how to storm or force-field effectively, but are you saying Blizzard should nerf those spells because slower players don't have the mechanics to cast the spells?
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Calgary26003 Posts
4v4 here I come. Work can't end fast enough.
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17070 Posts
Haha, in 4v4s I used to play, superiorwolf would mass infestors while we'd keep the opponents busy, then he'd go with mass infestor and burrowcast mass Infested Terrans in people's bases. It was hilariously funny.
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On August 19 2010 05:11 Empyrean wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2010 05:08 Batch wrote:
No mather how much I love this bug I think Blizzard should and will patch this. Even if neural has been nerfed to oblivion and would be balanced as a burrowed cast spell this bug needs to go. Blizzard can't balance units or spells around bugs or else this would hurt the lower segments who are unable to do these nifty tricks and are stuck with worthless spells.
I would however want Blizzard to consider making the burrow cast a permanent change. Since the short duration of the spell, the high cost, it being channelled and the low survivability of infestors I don't think it would be overpowered. This is just horrible reasoning. There are plenty of people who don't know how to storm or force-field effectively, but are you saying Blizzard should nerf those spells because slower players don't have the mechanics to cast the spells?
There is a difference between being able to storm effectively and being able to activate a command at all. Clearly Blizzard intended infested terran to be the only burrow-cast ability of the Infestor, by allowing the other spells to also be burrow-cast via the use of a "pressing two keys within the span of 200ms" Starcraft 2 starts to becomes akin to Street Fighter where only after hours of practicing a button combination can someone reliably pull off Zangief's 360 pile driver move. NOTE: I don't think burrow-cast is that hard to pull off, but some players might, and it might be dependent on how fast your computer is, slower computers being better for this bug I bet
Pretty sure if burrow-cast stayed in the game, it would lead to more players with slow keypress speed into buying mice and assigning macros to them, just to be able to do it. And who could blame them if all the faster zerg players were happily burrow-casting, exploiting a game flaw that wasn't meant to exist? What if a similar bug let Ultralisks fly, but only 200 APM players could manage to do it, keep that too?
Batch's reasoning is sound. Unintentional bugs can turn out to be beneficial for a game, but that does not mean the default should be to keep them around. I say this being a zerg player and really wanting a NP buff btw.
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On August 19 2010 06:09 Johnny_Vegas wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2010 05:11 Empyrean wrote:On August 19 2010 05:08 Batch wrote:
No mather how much I love this bug I think Blizzard should and will patch this. Even if neural has been nerfed to oblivion and would be balanced as a burrowed cast spell this bug needs to go. Blizzard can't balance units or spells around bugs or else this would hurt the lower segments who are unable to do these nifty tricks and are stuck with worthless spells.
I would however want Blizzard to consider making the burrow cast a permanent change. Since the short duration of the spell, the high cost, it being channelled and the low survivability of infestors I don't think it would be overpowered. This is just horrible reasoning. There are plenty of people who don't know how to storm or force-field effectively, but are you saying Blizzard should nerf those spells because slower players don't have the mechanics to cast the spells? There is a difference between being able to storm effectively and being able to activate a command at all. Clearly Blizzard intended infested terran to be the only burrow-cast ability of the Infestor, by allowing the other spells to also be burrow-cast via the use of a "pressing two keys within the span of 200ms" Starcraft 2 starts to becomes akin to Street Fighter where only after hours of practicing a button combination can someone reliably pull off Zangief's 360 pile driver move. NOTE: I don't think burrow-cast is that hard to pull off, but some players might, and it might be dependent on how fast your computer is, slower computers being better for this bug I betPretty sure if burrow-cast stayed in the game, it would lead to more players with slow keypress speed into buying mice and assigning macros to them, just to be able to do it. And who could blame them if all the faster zerg players were happily burrow-casting, exploiting a game flaw that wasn't meant to exist? What if a similar bug let Ultralisks fly, but only 200 APM players could manage to do it, keep that too? Batch's reasoning is sound. Unintentional bugs can turn out to be beneficial for a game, but that does not mean the default should be to keep them around. I say this being a zerg player and really wanting a NP buff btw.
I've analyzed this in huge depth (I play fighting games very competitively) and I call them skill cliffs.
Normally if you chart 'skill' vs 'result', you see the result growing as you acquire more skill. It might go up gradually, and taper as it gets higher - like a logarithmic scale. If I partake in the korean pro-gaming training regiment for a month, I'm sure I'd see a huge increase in my skill. However, someone who's already a pro gamer will not experience the same growth. This is usually ideal in games.
What we see here is a skill 'cliff'. I made a big stink about this with regards to Fazing - it's simply if you don't have to skill to do a particular move, then you can't do it. If you are just fast enough, then you get a huge benefit. The graph in this regard wouldn't look like a linear progression, it would be horizontal, vertical line, horizontal. The difference between someone who can Faze and someone who can't Faze is huge compared to the guy who doesn't know what fazing is and the guy who can almost faze.
An analogy I use is Roll Cancelling in CVS2. It's when you input a roll (lp+lk) which normally lets your character roll on the ground, going invincible for a short period of time but being stuck in the roll animation shortly after. It's a good way to escape pressure, but if your opponent predicts it he can punish you for it.
Eventually folks discovered Roll Cancelling (RC). If you input a roll, and then within 2 frames inputted a special move (such as a fireball), then you would gain all the invincibility of the roll while you perform the special move. The entire pro scene shifted to RC sonic boom guiles, RC balls + electricity blankas, RC crazy kicks ken, etc.
The point is that someone who couldn't execute the (rather difficult) sequence of Roll Cancelling simply couldn't compete against someone who could. Now, for the game to be balanced, it has to be balanced in the presence of roll cancelling. This means that if you DON'T know how to roll cancel, you're simply underpowered.
Suddenly it's not a high-skill move or tactic anymore, it's an entry barrier. You simply have to learn it in order to compete. There are tons of these in fighting games.
I think something should either be allowed or not. If Neural Parasite is balanced around the ability to cast it while burrowed, then why not simply let players do it? Why force them to learn this sequence?
If NP is balanced around the fact that infestors can NOT cast it while burrowed, then it simply becomes too strong. If the game is perfectly balanced (obv it's not atm), and you add a useful ability to one race, then you are distrubing the balance.
I think Blizzard should pick one, allowed or not allowed, and do away with the skill barrier in either case.
That being said, I think Johny_Vegas is using too strong a hyperbole here. The method I described isn't difficult at all - I was able to do it while taking a screenshot after each step. You can press one button every 3 seconds and still do it - it's just a matter of knowing the sequence.
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Dang, I was beaten to the punch in telling the OP he was beaten to the punch.
I'll add your thread to the mechanics thread alongside with Zelniq's, yours is well thought out too
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This is a cool trick.
Would there be a huge problem with letting infestors cast their spells while burrowed without the use of an input glitch? Ghosts can nuke, snipe, and EMP while cloaked, but infestors can only spurt their terrans. It seems like the worst that could happen would be chain FGs on a ball of units, but... should have had detection, I guess.
I'm a terran player.
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This is horrible. needs to be patched. It's not an intended mechanic, but is OP for the infestor.
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On August 19 2010 07:31 silencesc wrote:
This is horrible. needs to be patched. It's not an intended mechanic, but is OP for the infestor.
Agreed, ZvT is OP due to infestor burrow.
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On August 19 2010 07:40 ChrisLeBlanc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2010 07:31 silencesc wrote:
This is horrible. needs to be patched. It's not an intended mechanic, but is OP for the infestor. Agreed, ZvT is OP due to infestor burrow.
haha I play toss, I just hate infested terran spamming while burrowed =S. It's a bug I think that spells can be cast while burrowed.
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On August 19 2010 07:40 ChrisLeBlanc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2010 07:31 silencesc wrote:
This is horrible. needs to be patched. It's not an intended mechanic, but is OP for the infestor. Agreed, ZvT is OP due to infestor burrow.
Eventually, every thread ends up as ZvT balance
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On August 19 2010 07:52 silencesc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2010 07:40 ChrisLeBlanc wrote:On August 19 2010 07:31 silencesc wrote:
This is horrible. needs to be patched. It's not an intended mechanic, but is OP for the infestor. Agreed, ZvT is OP due to infestor burrow. haha I play toss, I just hate infested terran spamming while burrowed =S. It's a bug I think that spells can be cast while burrowed.
Except that using Infested Terrans while burrowed is intended while Fungal and Neural Parasite is not... And even though Fungal and NP are not intended it still takes a fair amount of skill to use this effectively.
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This is actually an interesting discussion. The thing is, competitive gaming always revolves around exploiting a game to it's fullest, using every trick at your disposal to gain an edge. This results in skill cliffs in virtually every game, as no game is without it's own bugs and quirks. In most competitive communities, being able to master these tricks is an essential skill in remaining competitive, exactly like fdsdfg said. So the question is, when someone discovers an exploit like this, should they fix it?
Despite the fact that it seems clear that Blizzard did not intend that Neural Parasite be used this way, it may not be necessary that they change it. Lots of very balanced games contain many unbalancing tricks. How is this possible? Well, these tricks often become parts of the landscape, becoming an essential part of the "balance" despite the fact that they were originally unintended. Look at the Muta moving shot from BW, for example. Was it originally intended? Does it matter? I don't know, but it eventually evolved to become a very important asset for Zerg players as they realized it's importance.
So let's say that they leave this infestor "bug" in play. This will obviously increase the power of the Infestor by a tremendous amount, but who can say how it will effect the overall balance of the race? If this bug swings ZvT or ZvP in the Zerg's favor by a tremendous amount, then it is clear that it must be patched. If not, then why change it? It is simply a way for a skilled zerg player to squeeze a unit for more utility, and the other player will have to deal with it accordingly. Besides, so many people are complaining that SC2 doesn't have the same depth as BW. Isn't stuff like this exactly what we want to see?
This isn't to say that Blizzard should let every silly bug stay in the game, obviously. I'm just pointing out that people should consider these things carefully before screaming "IMBA", because many great competitive games contain exploits exactly like this, and still remain balanced.
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Nice to see that someone is still using neural parasite, I myself have not even thought about that ability with 12 sec channeling and infestors 90 hp.
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On August 19 2010 09:35 Mindspider wrote:
This is actually an interesting discussion. The thing is, competitive gaming always revolves around exploiting a game to it's fullest, using every trick at your disposal to gain an edge. This results in skill cliffs in virtually every game, as no game is without it's own bugs and quirks. In most competitive communities, being able to master these tricks is an essential skill in remaining competitive, exactly like fdsdfg said. So the question is, when someone discovers an exploit like this, should they fix it?
Despite the fact that it seems clear that Blizzard did not intend that Neural Parasite be used this way, it may not be necessary that they change it. Lots of very balanced games contain many unbalancing tricks. How is this possible? Well, these tricks often become parts of the landscape, becoming an essential part of the "balance" despite the fact that they were originally unintended. Look at the Muta moving shot from BW, for example. Was it originally intended? Does it matter? I don't know, but it eventually evolved to become a very important asset for Zerg players as they realized it's importance.
So let's say that they leave this infestor "bug" in play. This will obviously increase the power of the Infestor by a tremendous amount, but who can say how it will effect the overall balance of the race? If this bug swings ZvT or ZvP in the Zerg's favor by a tremendous amount, then it is clear that it must be patched. If not, then why change it? It is simply a way for a skilled zerg player to squeeze a unit for more utility, and the other player will have to deal with it accordingly. Besides, so many people are complaining that SC2 doesn't have the same depth as BW. Isn't stuff like this exactly what we want to see?
This isn't to say that Blizzard should let every silly bug stay in the game, obviously. I'm just pointing out that people should consider these things carefully before screaming "IMBA", because many great competitive games contain exploits exactly like this, and still remain balanced.
It's true, as a pro scene gets developed, there are hundreds of tricks that also become entry barriers to the competitive scene. Going back to fighting games.. there are the standard combos, special, super inputs that any seasoned fighting game player can pick up in an afternoon. But then you get to the very specific, difficult stuff. 3-way option selects in SF4, ROM variations in MVC2, wavedashing in Melee, etc. These things take a lot of practice until you can execute it in your game - and you can either execute it reliably or you can't - there's no in-between.
That's the part that I hate - there's no difference fighting someone with "What the hell is safejump?" and "I can almost safejump reliably". Neither of them are going to do safejumps at crucial times because the guy who can almost do it knows that if he attempts it and is a little off, he will eat huge damage.
Then there's a huge difference between that guy and "Yeah I can safejump after sweep and throw". Now I have to deal with potential safejumps after every sweep or throw.
The next guy has totally mastered safejumps. I don't really have to do anything differnet from the last guy. They're both going to be safejumping on me... either you can hit the 1 frame window or you can't. There's not much variability.
That's why I like muta micro - you get folks like Jaedong who just bring it levels above the rest of the 'superpros' because it's not a mesa - you can keep climbing up after learning the skill.
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Did anyone else know you can use neural parasite on an enemy's worker and build with it? Just found that out last night in a 2v2 o.O
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And I'd argue that the Neural Parasite glitch is going to have a learning curve, as well. I need to experiment with it, but it doesn't seem to be tremendously difficult to do. I imagine that will change, though, when I am in the middle of a major battle. So I can see a fairly high skill ceiling for learning this trick, because being able to pull it off at critical moment will still be much more difficult than pulling it off on, say, a line of immobile siege tanks defending a terran's ramp. And the best players will be able to use tricks like this reflexively, offsetting the Infestor's infamous fragility. In response, Terran and Protoss players will need to bring more detectors into fights when they know that Infestors might be in play.
I don't know whether it should be fixed or not, but I unless it becomes game-breaking, I will try to master the trick and work it into my play-style. Honestly, I can see way too many fun applications of this to pass it up
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An interesting fact about this trick: In 2v2 or higher games, if you give your teammates control of your units, they can move the Infestor around (and into position) while you have the spell queued up.
The trick is a bit impractical at higher levels, as you literally can't do anything until you cast your spell. You can't deselect the Infestor or cancel the targeting between the time you burrow and the time you find your target.
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You can see this trick in use here. Scroll down the page a bit.
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I'm sorry to bump this thread but I was just thinking about this glitch when I was talking about the old glitch in BW where you could glitch 2 templars morphing into an Archon to cause the High Templars to have the ability to ' float ' or ' fly ' . I think that if this glitch was broughten back into effect for LOTV that it could add some more in depth level to game play. Although, I understand it could potentially be a little broken, I think this was really really cool and it wasn't necessarily easy to pull off in the midst of all the other stuff happening in the game.
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If I recall, Neural Parasite was being removed and replaced with something else. At Blizzcon it was an AOE damage buff but they might have since changed it. I think Blizz has it in their heads that NP is to be removed. A pity I say just because it removes the only way for one race to legitimately build another's units 
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yeah, let's remove a skill that could be incredible if altered slightly:
- no need to research
- slightly reduced range
- can use while burrowed (no need for a glitch)
I get a little teary-eyed just imagining hitting neurals on a couple widowmines next to a bioball...but at present this is simply never happening (if someone has a replay i'd gladly eat my words, regurgitate them and eat them again to see this)
but not to worry, I'm sure the team is working hard on some way to make infestors incredible...i suuuuure hope it's another activation spell
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I like NP as well! I use it vs thor-hellbat regularly in gold 3on3s!!
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