Whenever I see Idra play, it always baffles me that he never uses burrow, yet loves using roaches and infestors. I don't claim to be a great zerg player, because I don't even play zerg. However, from my point of view, Tunneling Claws, and Burrow, are 2 of the most underused abilities in SC2.
I don't have experience in this, however, I DO know how to do basic math. With only burrow, 29 burrowed roaches can regenerate at a rate of 1 roach worth of hp (145) a second. Meaning having injured roaches burrow for 2 seconds approximately pays for burrow. A single roach at 1 hp obviously takes 29 seconds to fully recover.
Now, factoring in tunneling claws, everything cuts in half. a single roach recovers in 15 seconds, and that same group of 29 roaches recovers at 2 roaches a second, and burrow is payed for in 1. That means, to make up the sheer monetary value of the upgrades, upgraded roaches need to burrow for about 3 seconds.
Judging from that, a zerg who uses roaches can retain a defenders advantage, and gain momentum after each attack better then the Protoss's regen, and repairing SCV's.
Then you can factor in the underground movement factor of the roaches. Now, I don't want to go in-depth as to what I see in it's uses, but from what I see, using tunneling claws to bypass defenses carries the same risks as using Dark Templars. Both are mid-game tech, and both depend on whether or not your opponent has detection. As such, such unreliable play is not nessecary to the ability's functions.
finally, It seems like zerg have forgotten the use of burrow in SC1. All explanation required for it, is basically summed up by it's liquipedia page: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Burrow
Of paticular note, I believe it has use in denying expansions (with creep-pooping overlords) and burrowing drones. when I play versus a zerg, I have been in endless situations where I kill a zergs expansion, then the escaping drones. They are still likely to die if they burrow, but not if you burrow before the opponent arrives. (queens can burrow too)
Conclusion: This is a discussion, not a guide. I'm interested to hear why zerg never use these, and perhaps this will clear it up. My inspiration for the thread, came from 2 battles in paticular, where one used burrow, and the other didn't:
Didn't: (watch at 1:00) Did:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m0RuVQ741c&feature=watch_response (watch at 2:10)
These games raised my awareness of the concept, as well as other games where the zerg seem entirely devoid of creativity.
I agree. I see people with 20 hurt roaches and can't comprehend why you wouldn't heal them all for 100/100. Even ignoring any other uses for burrow it seems weird.
I guess the mid-late game crappiness of roaches influences decisions, but it still seems like the wrong one.
I think it is underused, I think we will see more of it in the future as games get longer and 1 base plays and cheesy low macro game are not the popular norm they are today. Idra has a VERY robust strategy and im sure he has his reasons for going one way as opposed to another. I dunno im not idra and I don't pretend to wanna crunch the numbers and theorycraft. But yes in my humble opinion burrowed moving roaches are more threatening and definitely slow the attack from either P or T.
Well, to clarify my opinion of Idra, he doesn't do anything creative so he can go heavy macro. His macro is impeccable, but in large-scale battles, he usually goes with the strategy that requires the least micro, and tunneling roaches don't fit that description.
All those upgrades make you commit to roaches, which are easily hard countered, even if they have 1 ob or raven burrow is instantly useless aswell. (in the way mystic used em)
It's very underused, but it's not Idra's play. I would have been against it until I tried the challenge with the roaches and infestors. Holy crap, roaches regenerate sooooo fast. No need for claws, and many builds already get roach speed. If someone just had a high APM and were a micro player, then it would lead to some great powerful timing attacks! Perfect burrow micro with roaches on a timing attack would be insane.
But Idra isn't a micro player, he likes to just have more units instead of doing a cute timing push. That isn't bad, but it's just not Idra's style. I'd love to see someone else pick it up. Cella? Sen?
If I find myself with 20+ roaches, I always research burrow. There's no reason not to. Unfortunately usually by the time I have that number out, hard counters start to pop up and roaches start to become a liability.
The problem with burrow move is that they graphically change, and so it is immediately obvious once they see a single roach that they need to get detection right now, and that is exactly what they do.
The only time I use it as part of an actual build is when protoss fast expands, and I decide to nydus in, I'll make sure my roaches have burrow, because they will not have detection, at least nothing more than a cannon or two here and there.
Terran is another matter. You just never know when he's going to scan and eat half your roaches. I would get burrow, but then again I'd never go mass roach against terran in the first place because a lot of their units so hard counter them in great numbers it isn't such a hot idea.
I thought this thread was going to be about using burrow for sneaky roaches, which I don't think is very 'solid' because it's easy to counter, like you said. But that second video is really impressive. An observer could mess with it a bit, but it was amazing how few roaches he lost. The amount of upgrades needed is a bit daunting (I think letting roaches move when burrowed baseline would be a nice buff) but I will definitely try and burrow more in battles.
Even with detection, if they are attacking a burrowed roach, they are attacking something that is healing FAST and can probably take an extra hit or two over a normal roach. Remember, the purpose of the roach is to take the damage anyways, it's the tank. That only adds to its tanking ability.
Roaches are really awful past mid game and generally you get upgrades for troops with long term potential. Burrow's not a bad idea but tunneling claws I always seem to want to put into something else. it's not the minerals but the gas I always seem cheap on wanting to spend.
On September 06 2010 04:21 rackdude wrote: Even with detection, if they are attacking a burrowed roach, they are attacking something that is healing FAST and can probably take an extra hit or two over a normal roach. Remember, the purpose of the roach is to take the damage anyways, it's the tank. That only adds to its tanking ability.
Roaches don't really heal fast anymore and are very slow moving when burrowed. So burrowing them mid battle will cause more harm than good. The old roach was both fast and healed well so it was a legit strat.
But then burrow is awesome against drone harasses as well. You got a cloaked banshee incoming and no units/overseer nearby? Just burrow your drones/queen since he won't waste a scan on killing 2 drones. A hellion harass? Same. A muta harass in ZvZ? Just burrow and you're fine. The ultimate harass-blocker is the burrow ability. Even if you lose one of your expansions you can just burrow the drones/queen until the enemy army has died or backed off and then unburrow and set your drones on your other expos. So burrow do have multiple usages (baneling burrows anyone? )
On September 06 2010 04:21 rackdude wrote: Even with detection, if they are attacking a burrowed roach, they are attacking something that is healing FAST and can probably take an extra hit or two over a normal roach. Remember, the purpose of the roach is to take the damage anyways, it's the tank. That only adds to its tanking ability.
Roaches don't really heal fast anymore and are very slow moving when burrowed. So burrowing them mid battle will cause more harm than good. The old roach was both fast and healed well so it was a legit strat.
On September 06 2010 04:21 rackdude wrote: Even with detection, if they are attacking a burrowed roach, they are attacking something that is healing FAST and can probably take an extra hit or two over a normal roach. Remember, the purpose of the roach is to take the damage anyways, it's the tank. That only adds to its tanking ability.
Roaches don't really heal fast anymore and are very slow moving when burrowed. So burrowing them mid battle will cause more harm than good. The old roach was both fast and healed well so it was a legit strat.
It's not imba fast anymore, but it's pretty damn fast.
I think burrow + tunneling claws aren't used too often because terran/toss usually make Rauders/Stalkers, which sort of negates the effectiveness of roaches in general. Micro burrowing them in battle is sort of hard to do, and splash damage might kill them even if you try to save them. On top of that, roaches are looked at as a tanking unit, so if you burrow one in combat, that just means your softer units are going to be focussed down even quicker. Roaches are fairly cheap, too, so I don't think it's necessarily the most important thing in the world to save their little lives at the cost of expensive early game tech -- which leaves you vulnerable to early game timing pushes.
On September 06 2010 04:21 rackdude wrote: Even with detection, if they are attacking a burrowed roach, they are attacking something that is healing FAST and can probably take an extra hit or two over a normal roach. Remember, the purpose of the roach is to take the damage anyways, it's the tank. That only adds to its tanking ability.
Roaches don't really heal fast anymore and are very slow moving when burrowed. So burrowing them mid battle will cause more harm than good. The old roach was both fast and healed well so it was a legit strat.
Protoss didn't have an Observer in either games. That would have made the difference even if Burrow was used. Burrow Drones is something people are trying.
Getting burrow/roach upgrades means you usually commit to roaches, and if you commit to roaches you might as well GG. Burrow is only good once in the game and it usually isn't game changing in ZvT or ZvP. However, I do find burrow roaches effective in ZvZ as detection is usually forgotten by most zerg players.
On September 06 2010 04:21 rackdude wrote: Even with detection, if they are attacking a burrowed roach, they are attacking something that is healing FAST and can probably take an extra hit or two over a normal roach. Remember, the purpose of the roach is to take the damage anyways, it's the tank. That only adds to its tanking ability.
Roaches don't really heal fast anymore and are very slow moving when burrowed. So burrowing them mid battle will cause more harm than good. The old roach was both fast and healed well so it was a legit strat.
Did you watch the second game?
You cannot prove a theory by using an example.
Ya but you said "mid battle will cause more harm than good" will means 100% of the time and that second vid provides an excellent counterexample.
OT I think roaches are very excellent, with claws you allways have the option of retreating without taking fire, So you can always withdraw and consolidate forces. The one problem i see with it, is it can be disastrous if t spams scan when you burrow or a toss army likes to keep an observer with their army
What about having your roach force on two hotkeys, half and half? Come in with both forces, making sure the majority of one half is taking the damage, when they get low, burrow 'em, let the second half do the tanking for a bit, and when they get low, burrow them and raise your other force up, rinse and repeat.
Well, whenever I have a bunch of hurt roaches, it's usually after I won a huge battle. And if I win a huge battle, I just want to 'go for it', regardless of how bad a tactical move it winds up being.
Besides, I don't want so many live roaches anyway. Bastards cost me two supply.
Yeah it sounds like roaches mid/lategame crappiness is indeed what stops people doing this. That's something that needs fixing anyway (1.5 supply?), so hopefully they'll see more use if that happens.
Burrow is good anyway though imo. Drones, healing your hurt roaches (even if you make 0 more), banelings. Surely worth 100/100!
On September 06 2010 06:40 Saracen wrote: The reason why people don't do this is that no one goes mass roach. However, if they did go mass roach, then of course this would be a good idea.
Well that's half the point. People here are claiming it doesn't work because roaches are bad anyway. But this can make them more viable. It's pretty clear not everyone is watching the example and just saying 'roaches are bad'.
That julyzerg game is another good example in the last minute, roaches beat a good amount of stalkers and a few immortals that have detection as they can get past the forcefields.
On September 06 2010 06:40 Saracen wrote: The reason why people don't do this is that no one goes mass roach. However, if they did go mass roach, then of course this would be a good idea.
I think just the burrow upgrade is well worth the 100/100. Don't really nessesarily needs the claw upgrade for it to be worth it.
On September 06 2010 06:40 Saracen wrote: The reason why people don't do this is that no one goes mass roach. However, if they did go mass roach, then of course this would be a good idea.
actually watch the video above your post, it's pretty funny
On September 06 2010 04:44 Zips wrote: I think burrow + tunneling claws aren't used too often because terran/toss usually make Rauders/Stalkers, which sort of negates the effectiveness of roaches in general. Micro burrowing them in battle is sort of hard to do, and splash damage might kill them even if you try to save them. On top of that, roaches are looked at as a tanking unit, so if you burrow one in combat, that just means your softer units are going to be focussed down even quicker. Roaches are fairly cheap, too, so I don't think it's necessarily the most important thing in the world to save their little lives at the cost of expensive early game tech -- which leaves you vulnerable to early game timing pushes.
marauders and stalkers - especially in this cases i think burrow would bring a hudge advandage.. since they both are soft counters..
and we are talking about 100/100 wich is nothing in comparison to the benefits you gain. you can simply pull your hydras away and if he follows you he will move just above your roaches wich is nice too
The problem with your math is that, yes, the roaches are healing extremely fast but if your army consists of only roaches, your DPS drops to zero. The times that burrowed roaches are good are when your HPS (healing per second) is more than the enemies DPS. Also, you must consider that not all your roaches will be injured so only a few will take advantage of the healing while the rest just sit taking damage and not giving any. This being said, there's plenty of burrow micro that is untapped. Burrowing the front roaches moving them to back and rinse and repeating could be interesting if you had the micro ability to do it.
Also, I'm assuming enemy has detection in my post. It very could be that they don't in that case burrowed roaches are amazing!
edit: i keep forgetting tunneling is 100/100 and not 150/150 anymore.
On September 06 2010 07:56 Uhh Negative wrote: The times that burrowed roaches are good are when your HPS (healing per second) is more than the enemies DPS.
with the tunneling claws update the roaches have indeed more HPS than the enemy Stalkers has DPS, and storm damage for example is just halfed. I hope in the future we will see more roach micro coming up :D
I just don't find mass Roaches useful enough compared to Muta/ling. Roaches use up both minerals and gas, like Muta/ling, however they are countered hard by certain units, while Mutas and lings each counter the other's weakness. More importantly, Muta/ling is far more mobile than Roach, and you can do serious economic damage to the opponent's mineral line.
If you were to try Roach/ling vs a tier 1 Protoss army, you run into heaps of trouble. You have Forcefields blocking both the units, Zealots that tear the lings to shreds before they can take out the Stalkers together with the Roaches, and even having just Roaches and Zealots alive after a battle isn't as good a situation as Mutas against Zealots, since you need to micro the Roaches before all the Zealots are dead giving the toss enough time to get out Stalker reinforcements, while Mutas could just ignore the Zealots and go straight for his mineral line.
The only time I get mass Roach is when the Protoss gets High Templar (to combat my Hydras, which I only get if the toss opens with Stargate tech).
Roaches are considered poor in the mid game, but perhaps Tunneling Claws is the solution.
do you think being able to tunnel under FF's and regenerating, similar to how fanta-prime was using them, would help alliviate some of the disadvantages of roaches in the mid game?
Though, obviously 10 hps wouldn't help much against immortals, who 3-shot Roaches...
When you burrow roaches right after they attack, does they're attack still cooldown? I was fooling around in a unit tester the other day but I couldn't glean all that much from it (I'm a very average player).
If it does still cooldown, then you could take advantage of roach burrow to fight units with a faster attack speed (I.E marauders, stim marauders, etc.). Attack, burrow, unburrow, attack, etc.
On September 06 2010 07:31 Effect010 wrote: marauders and stalkers - especially in this cases i think burrow would bring a hudge advandage.. since they both are soft counters.. nice too
I'm pretty sure that Marauders are hard counters. They obliterate Roaches to the point where it's ridiculous. Stalkers are soft counters, but with Blink they can kite Roaches quite well. The reason why I don't get Burrow is usually because I forget and is not as quite a priority for me unlike some things such as Ovie Speed or more Queens. Getting Burrow purely for Roaches requires you to get the other upgrades as well, which requires gas that could be used for units or more important upgrades. Like another person said, burrowing Roaches mid-battle mostly does more harm than good. When burrowed, Roaches are quite slow even with the Speed Upgrade, and what makes it worse is that your opponent can see your Roaches movement. MutaLing is a much more viable strategy IMO.
The difference is that when idra plays, he is playing against quality players. meaning that there is no reason they should ever get caught off gaurd with burrow, unless traps. Agaisnt a good P or T, burrowing post battle just means free kills for them since your retreat is so much slower.
At the lower levels, burrow play is much more viable. But playing against really good players, its too much of a risk to burrow and hope they dont scan/move obs over.
On September 06 2010 04:14 ZaaaaaM wrote: All those upgrades make you commit to roaches, which are easily hard countered, even if they have 1 ob or raven burrow is instantly useless aswell. (in the way mystic used em)
Having used burrowed tunneling roaches with success in several games recently I would like to dispell this myth.
Say you are against a toss player. He has colossi and the usual gateway mix (and an observer). You have roach hydra ling (heavy on the roaches, with the appropriate upgrades). If you move in with the roaches then burrow most of them, move under, the protoss player is either forced to move back (getting very hurt by the hydras and lings and whatever roaches you don't burrow) or he has to keep shooting what is up because units won't auto target the burrowed roaches (and clicking them is near impossible under your own units).
As a consequence you can get under his army and pop up to snipe colossi. If he runs the colossi away (frequent reaction) just pop up and kill the stalkers/zealots (which are now stuck between roaches and the rest of your army). The other rather simple thing to do is have an overseer around and snipe the observer.
Remember as well that roach regen is very very fast with the claws so you can actually tank like crazy while burrowed.
1) It gets HARD HARD HARD countered by detection units,
Sure, roaches are tough buggers and can take many more hits when they're regening 15 hp/sec. However, Opponent doesn't need incredible dps kill off roaches when they're not attacking back at all. The regen basically nullifies about 1 zealot's worth of damage, or about 1.3 stalkers. So take the ChiTa/Mystic game. If ChiTa had detection, and it was 15 stalkers against 15 burrowed roaches, the end result is basically like 10-12 stalkers wailing on your 15 burrowed roaches instead of 15. It's not good enough. You still lose roaches, which end up being free kills for your opponent.
2) In large ranged combats, damage is not distributed enough to make it well worth the burrow.
In a big ranged battle with, say, 25 roaches and a pile of stalkers and zeals, less than half of them end up taking damage at any given time, usually like 1/3-1/4. Burrowing all roaches allows you to heal up those roach (lets say 4-6 roaches worth of HP), but at a cost of 100% of your damage output. Turning off your damage hose for 5-10 seconds allows your opponent to push across the map. Positional advantages in Starcraft can mean everything, and giving your opponent that time to advance or reposition, even against a foe they cannot see, can often spell death.
Now, there's the whack-a-mole crazy-micro idea where you burrow ONLY the hurt roaches, move them somewhere, then pop them back up. You really need to segregate them out of the main control group because it's impossible to tell whose burrowed and whose not from the console. This is doubly hard because there's no single command to "add unit to control x, and remove from control y" so moving a single unit would require you to:
hit control group 1 click hurt roach hit R shift+2 (optional, issue move command) double click unburrowed roaches shift+1
You literally have less than one second to pull that off during a fire fight because you need to the damage taking roaches constantly. That is extremely precise 400+ APM with no command spamming. Not even 17 year old koreans could pull that off.
Bonus Reason: Against ranged units with sufficiently high DPS, the time spent burrow/unburrowing actually is long enough to just lose out. Even with fully-healed roaches, you are still losing roaches between volleys. Stalkers don't quite deal enough DPS to lose lots to this, but Marauders, Hydras, and most definitely Immortals do. Roach burrow is entirely nullified against these units because you can't efficiently trade even with the burrowed heal rate.
For these reasons, I would argue that roach burrow is not underused at all. It's used a decent % of the time it would be appropriate, which is not that often.
Well this goes to resources to upgrade again. It costs 100/100 for burrow, and I think 150/150 a piece for the glial upgrade, and the tunneling upgrade. You don't need glial for burrowing, but roaches without speed are pretty bad. So, that costs 400/400 total, and zerg almost never has 400 gas laying around
One idea is to have 2+ control groups of roaches and try to do something similar to the infamous Boxer's Dropship + Tank micro from BW, burrow one group and unburrow another while moving the burrowed ones closer to the oponent making their units to continually change targets and spread the damage.
I dont have the skills to do it because im rather new to serious rts game, so if anyone good is willing to try and share comments i will be glad.
I've used burrow + claws to some success in ZvT, usually when T has gone hellion/thor/siege tank. Burrowing roaches, moving them under the T army, and then popping up the instant the tanks unsiege has won me several games. That being said, it's very situational, and only works once or twice in a game, tops.
I think burrow is so underused is because when you get lair you aren't thinking of burrow, you are thinking of tech for hydras, infestors or mutas which are all gas heavy. Even getting overlord speed or upgrades usually takes priority. I actually think if burrow was brought to T1 after spawning pool, then more Zerg players would get it because there aren't that many options with a hatchery in the current state of the game.
But really, the roach burrow move only really works once until your opponent gets smart and counters it and then all the money spent on the research is basically wasted. If anything, you better be damn sure you are going to win, or your probably going to lose immediately after losing your roaches. Against good players, it's only cute to use burrow move because of how much it costs and how easily it can be countered.
If I build roaches it is almost always after hydras or right before if I spot a zealot push. They're worthless in all but a very few situations pre lair tech and even after lair you need to get a good bit of creep down to move them around fast enough.
I usually get them to counter a zealot and colossi heavy protoss army. They don't do very good dps to the stalkers or colossi but they form a protective barrier between the hydras and the zealots and colossi and their dps on zealots is cost effective. To keep them alive for longer you can burrow and unburrow them to get the enemy to keep switching targets, spreading out the damage a bit. They're cheap with high hit points and only the stalkers are doing their marginal bonus damage to them.
The reason you rarely see them is because you need the upgrades and creep to make them worthwhile. Creep takes time, which is sped up by overlord puke at lair tech, all 3 upgrades are lair tech, the upgrades cost 350/350 total to use a 75/25 unit. Assuming you get enough to make the upgrades cost effective that's pretty much your first 12 hydras worth of gas gone, which means you could be getting wrecked by banshees, void rays or mutas. If you get those hydras or mutas and don't get the roaches right away, most protoss and terran midgame units hardcounter the roaches leaving a select few situations where you really want them.
To get good use out of them I normally have burrow already researched, when I spot whatever unit combo I can do well against with roaches I start researching glial reconstitution and then use my 2 to 3 hatcheries and pump out a good 10 - 14 right away sometimes 20 if I've been running well and I have surplus larva. I normally favor hydras over mutas so I at least have some upgrades up for them already.
You are really underestimating the power of Tunneling Claws Roaches against Toss. I've come to the point where I avoid Hydras at all cost cause they become an extremly costly, extremly useless unit once there are 2 Collossi on the field - meaning every bit of minerals/gas you've put into them evaporates into uselessness once the Toss survives a certain stage of the game.
Proper upgraded Roaches on the other hand are able to go toe to toe against a Gateway/Robotics composition a lot longer. Sure - once we're talking about a 150 supply stalker/collossi ball of death things change, but I've found myself able to put huge amounts of pressure on P in the midgame, allowing me to expand/tech further and/or keep his amount of units at a manageable size. They are also a lot more mobile than Hydras, who are just painful to play off creep.
Roaches suffer against early Blinkstalkers, but aside from that they get countered a lot softer once they get all their upgrades than many people seem to believe - I pretty regularly beat P who thought their Stalkers+3Immortals or Stalkers+3Collossi should beat pure Roaches and overestimate themselves (1600+, just to fight the claim that they are completly horrible ^.-)
Concerning ZvT: Yes they are basically a worthless lategame unit and it hurts to put gas into their upgrades - but they are at the same time the only unit that's able to stall pure mech long enough to get to tier 3. I'm still not sure about burrow though - it's neat to trade units against an agressive T, but nearly useless against anywhone who plays defensive and just waits for their critical amount of thors : /
EPT
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