Here is my question, some pro's (idra) and other players have said that the 1.3 fungal boost helps the ZvP matchup because it prevents sentries from casting, stalkers from blinking, and collosus from positioning; but I do not think this is true.
In a game situation where the Zerg is nearing max, and Protoss is 20-30 supply behind, which is where I think the army counts should end up if both players play well. I have used Fungal, and even though it does bonus damage, it does not nearly take out the shields of protoss units. I am not sure of the exact amount of Fungal damage vs. Armored but, if it locks part of the ball in place for a moment, and reduces the shield by around 1/4, where is the effectiveness?
Sentries can still FF enough (unless you are able to lead with infestors and successfully fungal ALL sentries, which is not a likely scenario). Then, after the fungal wears, the rest of the sentries can re-cast. It really does not do significant damage to the ball to justify the massive gas sink into infestation pit + infestors (and also if you want to get pathogen glands).
I don't really see many pros using Fungal vs. Protoss death balls right now, so i'm curious what other Zerg's that said the 1.3 change was going to help the match up vs. P reasoned their opinon on and why more Zerg's dont implement infestors if they are effective.
In season 1 I played ~1500 games and was 3.4k Masters so I know my micro could improve, but I have been playing against pretty decent Protoss opponents.
I think its hard to say right now. For some odd reason infestor play hasn't been getting as much use as most would have thought after the patch. I think most thought it would be widely used but for some reason it isn't. Could be that it doesn't do as well as was originally thought but I feel like pro zergs are still sticking to the roach\hydra corrupter. The games that I have watched with infestors is mainly ZvZ. In all other MUs, it almost seems like going into infestor tech (upgrades and building them) isn't very cost efficient and almost slows the zerg down and puts them behind the opponent. I think the main issue vs. the death ball is that when you move up to cast fungal your infestor almost always dies. Which is a huge investment for one spell. Time will tell imo.
FG does about 47 damage to armored, 36 to everything else.
How many Infestors have you been using, would be my question. Adding in 2-3 infestors wouldn't do much at all. Especially considering Colossi have the same range as the FG cast I believe. You want to have 7+ I would think. I like between 7-12 Infestors in my army.
I've been trying to get 8 or so infestors before they do their big push. If you are lucky and catch them in a ball while advancing towards you. You can keep chaining 2-3 fungals at a time and hold their entire army in place. Repeat as much as possible then engage smartly with your ling/roach/hydra army to mop up. Most of the sentries should be dead, all the shields gone and most of their army is around half health.
I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
Especially as protoss have got counters to infestors in colossi range and templar feedback.
Patch didn't do too much to change the infestor's situation in ZvP. I still think it's too much of an investment, too hard to micro; a strategy too prone to backfiring.
Whatever people say, you can't keep chaining fungals against a thermal lance army. Maybe in theory you can -- but doesn't work as well in practice. And it just gets harder and harder the longer the game progresses and the bigger the Protoss army gets.
2-3 infestors are always good. More than that commonly proves to be a waste.
On April 03 2011 11:57 LaLuSh wrote: I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
Especially as protoss have got counters to infestors in colossi range and templar feedback.
Patch didn't do too much to change the infestor's situation in ZvP. I still think it's too much of an investment, too hard to micro; a strategy too prone to backfiring.
Whatever people say, you can't keep chaining fungals against a thermal lance army. Maybe in theory you can -- but doesn't work as well in practice. And it just gets harder and harder the longer the game progresses and the bigger the Protoss army gets.
2-3 infestors are always good. More than that commonly proves to be a waste.
I agree completely with this. It's still so hard to make infestors cost effective agaisnt a collosus army, and a spell caster is really there for being cost effective. It also hasn't helped me too much vs blinnk stalker builds from my experience. They come too quickly for me to get infestors out in any meaningful number. Like you said, anything mroe than 2-3 infestors is overdoing it, which is true, but that also means you need to have near full energy on those infestors before they're good.
Only time I've found infestors really effective is against protoss who do some kind of stalker / sentry / immortal / ht without collosus play, but that's not as common now. I think 2-3 collosus is the magic number for toss in ZvP now. It's enough to make infestors really hard to use, nullify lings, and force zerg to not only make corruptors but also have to blindly guess how many to make. If the rest of the money just goes into a solid mix of stalker sentry immortal then its wtf for zerg
The problem is that most people only get 1 or 2 infestors. At those numbers, you won't even be able to bypass shields. For infestors to work, you need more than a couple. If you only use 1 or 2 FGs, then the P deathball will just retreat and let the shields recharge.
I see infestors with FG as the most cost effective against protoss atm.
Also, another problem I see with zergs is that they group their infestors with the rest of their army, and then proceed to A move in. Infestors then rush forward and die.
imo the infestor buff isn't that important versus toss since they can heal their shield quickly unless you fg them over and over in a short period of time. It is more of a buff versus Terran bio ball since it demolish them right now. Just my opinion, do not flame me please XD
the damaged was buffed to actually be noticeable when you have a lot of infestors.
problem is, they are still super easy to kill hard to micro, most of the time only ever get a single fungal off before being thermal lanced to death, and most importantly, they are slow to tech to, and super gas heavy. Even getting something like 4 infestors after your lair requires 850 gas counting the upgrade, thats enough gas to make 34 roaches. In other words, by making those 4 infestors, you now have 34 less roaches. zerg units in general are very gas heavy, and zergs just dont tend to have a lot of gas laying around. we are gas starved. always. So you cant actually even really think about getting infestors and anything else than lings before you have at least 3 bases up and running.
have you tried engaging and fungaling at the same time?
Fungal's total damage was not changed anyways - if you are trying to chain fungle I don't think you'll see full benifit. I would say try to engage with a regular army and have 2-3 infestors there. Key is to get the flank, but even comming from the front you can buy that critical few seconds to keep the FF from going up before you get in close. Since fungal DPS got 2x buffed, perhaps what you want to do is have your army fight and just use fungal as an AOE ability that punishes the deathball for getting too tightly packed up (and reducing the surface area you can hit).
You may also want to sac some lings when doing fungals to keep the deathball from autotargetting the infestor... like send in 3 lings ahead of the infestor so the collossi go on cooldown.
I actually think it makes a huge difference, look at IdrA's new ZvP style that he played against HuK, I think that it was working pretty darn well. It's an actual functional strategy that isn't imba on either side, so great vs heavy stalker mixes. Really enjoy that new style of playing against the deathball. Hopefully it works really well.
On April 03 2011 13:12 supdubdup wrote: Fungal Growths kill hallucinated units instantly, ofc it's helping. Sometimes it can kill observers.
Im pretty sure this thread isnt referring to hallucinated units nor observers, and im more sure thats not the intentions of infestors.
I believe 2 - 3 infestors should do, as more than that can get sniped pretty easily and about 8 infestors is a huge gas intake. They're just too squishy to slow off creep to fungal and escape, in addition FG has the same range as thermal (as mentioned before from previous posts)
Infestors fg versus toss is still not a good idea. The damage is... not really there tbh. The rooting is now half as effective as it was, which was what infestors we used for to begin with. I think people need to realize that the change was actually a nerf, a hardcore one too.
On April 03 2011 14:12 Killswitch wrote: Infestors fg versus toss is still not a good idea. The damage is... not really there tbh. The rooting is now half as effective as it was, which was what infestors we used for to begin with. I think people need to realize that the change was actually a nerf, a hardcore one too.
Commmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmpletely disagree.
ZvZ, infestors crush mass anything, doing significant amounts of bonus damage to roaches. I think the only thing you could argue the reduced time could be a nerf to is using infestors and queens to deal with mutalisks, where you'd be using the fungal to hold the mutas still while the queens nibble away at them.
ZvT, infestors kick the crap out of bio balls muuch harder than before (marauder extra dmg + fku medivac heals) and vikings. You could argue that it's a nerf against holding banshees still and visible for longer, or holding siege tanks out of siege mode longer. though it seems like a buff against pretty much everything else.
ZvP, infestors do seem less impacting, but mostly because of the power of protoss shields. If you commit to one fungal, you've gotta commit to many or the stalkers will just take shield damage, back off and regenerate. If you do manage to chain 5-6 fungals together, the impact is pretty devastating. In any case, it would be hard to call it a nerf regardless, as rarely were you presented with opportunities vP where you wanted to hold a bunch of their units in place so that your units had some sort of advantage in battle.
On April 03 2011 11:57 LaLuSh wrote: I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
I also think that the whole problem of fungal vs P is the notion of permanent damage.
Unless you can kill the death ball in a single fight, most of the damage of infestors will be regenerated by the time the zerg remax.
And the second fight is the problem for those who uses infestors. Infestors are the only unit 100% useless once out of energy, and how do you remax after putting all the colossus at half life without killing any ?
Infestors are still a great support units and don't really need a buff, but they are not the solution that will fix the deathball problem in ZvP.
I've been raping death balls in ZvP with infestors, ling infestor corrupter.. oh the pure destructive power! It adds an extra 9 dps to everything it hits.. might not sound a lot but it sure as hell is when you think about hitting everything until in the ball..
I think that neural parasite is way more useful against protoss death balls. take over all his colossus and you usually win. Of course your micro has to be better than your opponent one in the first place.
Given Idra's comments on FG being OP, I was expecting him to showcase some sick infestor play in MLG. I haven't seen this yet. There was infestor play in Idra vs Huk game 1, but he seemed to struggle with them. They got killed by collossi and stuck behind FF, to the point where it didn't really seem better than the standard roach/hydra/corruptor. Does anyone have an example of some really kickass infestor play in MLG so far?
I can't speak for the effectiveness of Fungal vs a Colossus army, but I just lost a game where I didn't go Colossus (my opponent was very roach heavy), so I went for Gateway+Immortal+Air and Fungal literally ate my army alive. I tried hard to pick off the Infestors, but my opponenet got down three in a row and did massive damage to my army.
The same way that Protoss often needs Colossus to counter Hydras, I think they will need them to counter Infestors now.
Just finished watching the second set of Idra vs Huk, and again no infestor play. Idra just used the standard roach/hydra/corruptor pushes that were used in patch 1.2.
On April 04 2011 05:47 Nakas wrote: Just finished watching the second set of Idra vs Huk, and again no infestor play. Idra just used the standard roach/hydra/corruptor pushes that were used in patch 1.2.
He had 12 infestors VS HuK on the game that HuK dced. I really wanted to see how well IdrA would use them.
Battles usually end before you can even get your 2nd or 3rd fungal chain off, and managing hydra/roach + corrupter and infestor at the same time isn't very easy since you have to spread with your ground, target fire colli with air, while fungling w/ infestors.
fungal is storm that cant be avoided for a higher mana cost. It completely destroys but you cant cast in once and then 1a suicide all your infestors. Keeping your infestors alive is important, and if you get to the point where you have 6+ infestors and broodlords you actually cant lose. The zerg "deathball" is the best in the game. fungallord is king and should be every zergs endgame goal in zvp
also fungal + neural is digusting if you have good positioning.(never underestimate neural on immortals, its nasty)
people complain that fights vs the p deathball don't last long enough for 3 fungals, well that also means they don't last long enough for neural to run out. You can easily have 7 infestors when toss has 3-4 colossi. you can neural all the colossi then start fungaling good chance 1 or 2 of your neuraling infestors get picked off so re-neural with a different one. You should still have energy for a 3+ fungals meaning protoss cant do anything about the neurals unless you position poorly.
It was a buff and a nerf. More damage to protoss units because most are armored but less time locking them down so they can get back to the business of FF and blinking again. I don't think you'll see much change at pro levels.
You can easily have 7 infestors when toss has 3-4 colossi.
not really, no. 7 infestors is a ton of gas. 1300 gas to be exact. if you are getting neural parasite, then thats another 150 gas, and you cant have it by the time a toss has 3 colossi. Well actually, you can, but you cant have that, plus an actual army, and infestors are just support units. Infestors are super gas heavy support units with super gas heavy upgrades, that are meant to support a super gas heavy army with super gas heavy upgrades. thats the problem, the gas.
Thats also the reason why stuff like marine-marauder-viking works much better against toss deathballs than roach hydra corruptor. without going into the whole range, and relative power of the units, mm viking is just a much more streamlined composition based on your income. a mineral unit, 2 units that are relatively cheap on gas, and 250 gas spent on upgrades. roach hydra corruptor, you are looking at a relatively gas cheap unit, 2 gas expensive units, and at least 350 gas on upgrades. So adding in more support units like infestors that are super gas heavy, with more gas heavy upgrades needed, is just not really possible most of the time. You can only get so much gas, even if you are 1 base up over your opponent.
In my games, i have noted that Infestors are mainly a way of stopping the toss ball from actually becoming a toss ball - all the time we hear : the best way to kill a toss ball is never to let the toss have it. And in me belief, infestors allow you for some agression, eating chunks of toss army before it reaches the critical mass. People seems to view them as a "counter to toss ball" - no unit in Zerg arsenal is a counter to the ball, but infestors are FINALLY a way to put some pressure on Toss. Of course, he can just stay on 2 bases and max a nice ball, but - a toss on 2 is way less dangerous than toss on 3, right?
On April 04 2011 06:07 Scaryman wrote: fungal is storm that cant be avoided for a higher mana cost. It completely destroys but you cant cast in once and then 1a suicide all your infestors. Keeping your infestors alive is important, and if you get to the point where you have 6+ infestors and broodlords you actually cant lose. The zerg "deathball" is the best in the game. fungallord is king and should be every zergs endgame goal in zvp
also fungal + neural is digusting if you have good positioning.(never underestimate neural on immortals, its nasty)
people complain that fights vs the p deathball don't last long enough for 3 fungals, well that also means they don't last long enough for neural to run out. You can easily have 7 infestors when toss has 3-4 colossi. you can neural all the colossi then start fungaling good chance 1 or 2 of your neuraling infestors get picked off so re-neural with a different one. You should still have energy for a 3+ fungals meaning protoss cant do anything about the neurals unless you position poorly.
Void Rays crap on the Zerg "Deathball"
Unless you have 12 infestors to chain the void rays to death (And if you did I'm sure the protoss would be smart enough to split the void rays)
Protoss has a unique ability to crap on every zerg unit except the corruptor which actually allows the zerg player to have a small part in dictating how the battle will occur.
Since the infestor was changed from a snare to a dps roll, it's kinda worse in providing actual support to units in ZvP.
Also, if you have 7 infestors by the time protoss has 3 colossus.
You won't have either an Army or Upgrades while the Protoss is way ahead.
Protoss aerial units are broken in this match up. Period. Blizzard tried to balance PvP with boosting voidrays, which was a complete fail, as every toss just happily 4 gates into Collosus anyway and Zergs are getting raped due to the "really too much needed VR + dmg to corruptors) and phoenix... well, as marine is a counter to baneling, phoenix is a counter to... hydra Strange.. BUT, again, dont fight the ball. Never let it happen.
On April 04 2011 00:08 Nakas wrote: Given Idra's comments on FG being OP, I was expecting him to showcase some sick infestor play in MLG. I haven't seen this yet. There was infestor play in Idra vs Huk game 1, but he seemed to struggle with them. They got killed by collossi and stuck behind FF, to the point where it didn't really seem better than the standard roach/hydra/corruptor. Does anyone have an example of some really kickass infestor play in MLG so far?
When were these comments made? IIRC he said the opposite because Protoss have very good counters to infestors.
On April 03 2011 23:55 B34ST wrote: I've been raping death balls in ZvP with infestors, ling infestor corrupter.. oh the pure destructive power! It adds an extra 9 dps to everything it hits.. might not sound a lot but it sure as hell is when you think about hitting everything until in the ball..
Thats a weird unit combination. Though in my mind i could see why it would be good. Lings as the main dmg dealer, Supplemental dmg from Infestors. Corrupters to take out colossi.
On April 03 2011 23:55 B34ST wrote: I've been raping death balls in ZvP with infestors, ling infestor corrupter.. oh the pure destructive power! It adds an extra 9 dps to everything it hits.. might not sound a lot but it sure as hell is when you think about hitting everything until in the ball..
Thats a weird unit combination. Though in my mind i could see why it would be good. Lings as the main dmg dealer, Supplemental dmg from Infestors. Corrupters to take out colossi.
Probably give this a try.
IMO, this would probably work better if you bypassed the corruptors all together and just get more infestors and fungal and neural parasite the colossus.
On April 04 2011 00:08 Nakas wrote: Given Idra's comments on FG being OP, I was expecting him to showcase some sick infestor play in MLG. I haven't seen this yet. There was infestor play in Idra vs Huk game 1, but he seemed to struggle with them. They got killed by collossi and stuck behind FF, to the point where it didn't really seem better than the standard roach/hydra/corruptor. Does anyone have an example of some really kickass infestor play in MLG so far?
When were these comments made? IIRC he said the opposite because Protoss have very good counters to infestors.
I believe he was quoted as saying this on an episode of SotG.
hmm seams interesting to me that so many zerg players are not happy with the change. i play zerg as my off race and think the new fungal growth is awsome. sureit is a little different but i think it is better when used correctly. besides imo the buff wasn't really there to help int he stalker sentry collosi ball- i think the new maps allow a proper remaxing of your army if you engage at the right place on the map so you have time to rebuild. i think the buff was to help witht he collosi zealot sentry voidray ball. just my 2 cents though
On April 04 2011 05:47 Nakas wrote: Just finished watching the second set of Idra vs Huk, and again no infestor play. Idra just used the standard roach/hydra/corruptor pushes that were used in patch 1.2.
He had 12 infestors VS HuK on the game that HuK dced. I really wanted to see how well IdrA would use them.
I felt the same way. It was going to be a more wide open engagement there on Shakuras than it was on his previous Crossfire game, so I imagine the infestors would have been more effective.
You can easily have 7 infestors when toss has 3-4 colossi.
not really, no. 7 infestors is a ton of gas. 1300 gas to be exact. if you are getting neural parasite, then thats another 150 gas, and you cant have it by the time a toss has 3 colossi. Well actually, you can, but you cant have that, plus an actual army, and infestors are just support units. Infestors are super gas heavy support units with super gas heavy upgrades, that are meant to support a super gas heavy army with super gas heavy upgrades. thats the problem, the gas.
Thats also the reason why stuff like marine-marauder-viking works much better against toss deathballs than roach hydra corruptor. without going into the whole range, and relative power of the units, mm viking is just a much more streamlined composition based on your income. a mineral unit, 2 units that are relatively cheap on gas, and 250 gas spent on upgrades. roach hydra corruptor, you are looking at a relatively gas cheap unit, 2 gas expensive units, and at least 350 gas on upgrades. So adding in more support units like infestors that are super gas heavy, with more gas heavy upgrades needed, is just not really possible most of the time. You can only get so much gas, even if you are 1 base up over your opponent.
From my own experience, +30% to armoured isn't that big of a deal since FG diddn't do much to armoured in the first place. However, I personally used FG for slowing down an army to allow me to recreate my army, however, now, it will be used more for dps it seems. It will be interesting to see how it adapts over the next few weeks.
I think the biggest issue is that infestors doesn't have good synergy with roaches and lings, which is what you can afford if you go for infestors. You can't afford blings or hydras together with infestors on 3 bases. The tech is also very slow and even if you get infestors they are useless before they have enough energy for a fungal so they are basically the anti-timing against warp gate builds.
On April 04 2011 06:30 tdt wrote: It was a buff and a nerf. More damage to protoss units because most are armored but less time locking them down so they can get back to the business of FF and blinking again. I don't think you'll see much change at pro levels.
What about saving 2 infestors' energy so that it can get to 3 FG and kill the sentries before engaging our army ? You can also spend ur surplus of minerals to get glings and suicide ur glings to save the life of the infestors and FG 3 times before dying against colossus ? I'm seriously thinking about using it more and more... Having way less FFs could be really interesting (it takes 3 FGs for sentries to be killed but you can already spend ur 3rd FG straight after the 2nd one since they have like 10 hp left after 2 FGs). Downside is obviously spreading ur sentries which pretty much renders infestors useless. Maybe you could lure them with glings so that the toss army get clumped again ?
what the hell are glings? zerglings are zerglings. lings are zerglings banelings are banelings. blings are banelings. speedlings are zerglings with the metabolic boost upgrade. cracklings are speedlings with the adrenal gland upgrade. but glings? what the hell are glings supposed to be?
And no matter what you meant by glings, its still not a great idea. Because all in all, you are investing a lot of gas in infestors (yes, even 2 infestors is a lot of gas), and a lot of time too. And then you are relying on greatly outmicroing your opponent to make them useful, if your opponent microes his colossi and one-shots them, blinks some stalkers and kills them, or spreads out his sentries a bit, and so on, then your big gas investment is once again useless.
its kind of like sending out 1 zealot to fight 2 marines. sure enough, if your opponent has shit micro, it could be a good idea, but making an investment that relies on your opponent having terrible micro just so that investment pays off for itself is a bad idea. Even if you do manage to kill the sentries, they are just there to amplify the toss army's potential, they arent the real army. Its great if you can kill the sentries, and your opponent can no longer cut off a third of your army and kill it. But if you have to sacrifice a third of your army to do that, then in the end, while you dont get crushed by the forcefields, you still get crushed in exactly the same way as if there had been forcefields.
running infestors forward to fungal the sentries, relies on your opponent mismicroing. Not only that, but it relies on your opponent mismicroing, 3 times in a row. And even once that happend, its still not like you are in a game winning advantage situation. its unlikely that you would be able to get 100% of his sentries, he can warp in some more, and even assuming the fact that you did get all his sentries, and he cant warp in any more, since you had to use up so much gas to do that, you still are not ahead, because the rest of your army is that much weaker now. just 3 infestors, with the upgrade, to fungal 3 times, is 450 gas for the infestors, 150 for the upgrade, 100 for the pit, thats 700 gas, thats 28 roaches that you now cant afford. or 7 corruptors less. good luck fighting a toss deathball, with 7 less corruptors, you will get raped by colossi and void rays.
I dont know about you guys, but infestors in ZvP just seems way too hard to pull off. First of all the damage pay off isnt that great. If you fungal once or even twice all his stalkers, sure it takes off 47 damage, but it just takes it off the shields. Fungal is also quite a small area of damage, so your going to have to lay down quite a few fungals to really have an effect. Not to mention you have to micro the slow infestors which could get picked off by blinked stalkers.
I haven't changed my ZvP at all since the patch. Same thing goes, roach heavy, with hydras, and 30-40 banelings for drops. Then 8-10 corruptor. And let me tell you, it works amazing even if my ground gets ff'ed to crap, by the end the deathball doesnt have any stalkers, sentries, zealots and the colossi are sometimes heavily damaged. When I pull it off flawlessly I can be left with 50-75%, at the very worst I trade armies with corruptors left over which is a huge plus for me still.
how greedy is it that you want to fungal all of their sentries? You need about 2-3 fungals to kill sentries and losing sentries is huge for a protoss army. it takes 3 fungals to kill vikings so broodlord infestor is pretty damn hard to stop, it takes 2 fungals to kill a group of marines with moderate medivac support, through testing it's ALMOST as if you seriously need 1 medivac for each individual marine to really out heal fungals not to mention that fungal catches medivacs too. I know this is a zvp thread so I'll get a little more on topic. Zergs who go straight for infestor after lair is a pretty solid strategy since protoss can't really move out anymore risking their sentries to get fungalled, they have to wait for colossus and the thermal lance giving zerg time to drone up so yeah infestor is pretty viable in all match ups
Zergs who go straight for infestor after lair is a pretty solid strategy since protoss can't really move out anymore risking their sentries to get fungalled, they have to wait for colossus and the thermal lance giving zerg time to drone up so yeah infestor is pretty viable in all match ups
Its called timing windows. protoss players who move out at completely random times and get crushed is nothing new. Either they want to move out and hit early, like for example a 6gate, so its timed before zerg has mutas, infestors, or large numbers of upgraded roache hydra. Or they want to wait for the lategame deathball. Theres really no reason why a toss would want to let you get your lair tech up, and then move out to attack you. and if you rush to get infestors super fast, then you cant really have enough gas to have for a example a bunch of +1 speed roaches with burrow. So if you rush for infestors super fast, a 6gate can still just move in, lose 100% of the sentries through terrible micro, having them all clumped up at the front in a nice circle, and then still roll all over you, because you dont have anything to deal with the stalkers.
I do like infestors, but I believe they're being used the wrong way, especially against death balls. (I still believe they need a HP buff)
With infestors, I'm starting to see a very good way to utilize them: infested terrans. Especially against toss, because you always (you should be, anyways) upgrade missile and carapace for roaches, they help amazingly towards infested terrans.
The infested terrans do 8 base damage and 10 with +2 missile. They are basically free supply marines! If you shoot them (the larva) dead center into the protoss ball, the collosus linear splash is ruined if they target the marines.
Plus, forcefields can't do anything if the units are inside the deathball, now can they? And fungal will keep them in place for this to work.
On April 04 2011 06:07 Scaryman wrote: fungal is storm that cant be avoided for a higher mana cost. It completely destroys but you cant cast in once and then 1a suicide all your infestors. Keeping your infestors alive is important, and if you get to the point where you have 6+ infestors and broodlords you actually cant lose. The zerg "deathball" is the best in the game. fungallord is king and should be every zergs endgame goal in zvp
also fungal + neural is digusting if you have good positioning.(never underestimate neural on immortals, its nasty)
people complain that fights vs the p deathball don't last long enough for 3 fungals, well that also means they don't last long enough for neural to run out. You can easily have 7 infestors when toss has 3-4 colossi. you can neural all the colossi then start fungaling good chance 1 or 2 of your neuraling infestors get picked off so re-neural with a different one. You should still have energy for a 3+ fungals meaning protoss cant do anything about the neurals unless you position poorly.
Void Rays crap on the Zerg "Deathball"
Unless you have 12 infestors to chain the void rays to death (And if you did I'm sure the protoss would be smart enough to split the void rays)
Protoss has a unique ability to crap on every zerg unit except the corruptor which actually allows the zerg player to have a small part in dictating how the battle will occur.
Since the infestor was changed from a snare to a dps roll, it's kinda worse in providing actual support to units in ZvP.
Also, if you have 7 infestors by the time protoss has 3 colossus.
You won't have either an Army or Upgrades while the Protoss is way ahead.
voidrays are pretty good vs infestors with there low amount of hp and armoredness
and unless they have been going voidrays all game you corruptor count should easily be able to maintain air control and protoss can't suddenly build 20 voidrays at a time like you can with corruptors, since at this point you would have 4+ hatches. Protoss cant suddenly make 10 stargates and then voidrays. Once you get air control from the voidrays you have it forever.
My friend has always used heavy amounts of infestors, and is an absolute boss with FG. I never understood why there was such a lack of people using it. I CAN NOT go bio against him, as he always has infestors, and is generally able to just keep my army in place until the slowly die every time. :/
He's better than me in general which helps, but I just think infestors have so much potential that people haven't figured out yet. I'm going to assume I'm right too, as I kept saying the same thing about FF, everyone said I was an idiot, and now look at MC!
On April 03 2011 11:57 LaLuSh wrote: I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
Especially as protoss have got counters to infestors in colossi range and templar feedback.
Patch didn't do too much to change the infestor's situation in ZvP. I still think it's too much of an investment, too hard to micro; a strategy too prone to backfiring.
Whatever people say, you can't keep chaining fungals against a thermal lance army. Maybe in theory you can -- but doesn't work as well in practice. And it just gets harder and harder the longer the game progresses and the bigger the Protoss army gets.
2-3 infestors are always good. More than that commonly proves to be a waste.
thanks for the insight. i tried getting infestors but chaining a stalker collo ball is harder than i thought. oh and does it hurt a lot when you get blink sniped...
On April 04 2011 12:28 DeadPixels wrote: Honest question, if you simultaneously cast several fungal growths on the same group of units does the damage stack or are they just wasted fungals?
doesnt stack. you gotta wait until the 4 seconds is up to get maximum chain damage. you cant just put 10 fungals on enemy army in 1 second. itll be a waste.
I think quick infestors work great with the new gateway based builds made by the pros, but if you're facing opponents who have range or HT the fungal's become worth less.
You can easily have 7 infestors when toss has 3-4 colossi.
not really, no. 7 infestors is a ton of gas. 1300 gas to be exact. if you are getting neural parasite, then thats another 150 gas, and you cant have it by the time a toss has 3 colossi. Well actually, you can, but you cant have that, plus an actual army, and infestors are just support units. Infestors are super gas heavy support units with super gas heavy upgrades, that are meant to support a super gas heavy army with super gas heavy upgrades. thats the problem, the gas.
Thats also the reason why stuff like marine-marauder-viking works much better against toss deathballs than roach hydra corruptor. without going into the whole range, and relative power of the units, mm viking is just a much more streamlined composition based on your income. a mineral unit, 2 units that are relatively cheap on gas, and 250 gas spent on upgrades. roach hydra corruptor, you are looking at a relatively gas cheap unit, 2 gas expensive units, and at least 350 gas on upgrades. So adding in more support units like infestors that are super gas heavy, with more gas heavy upgrades needed, is just not really possible most of the time. You can only get so much gas, even if you are 1 base up over your opponent.
pro tip you dont need hydras
Of course you don't need hydras. What is optimal and what is necessary are different. At a certain point, roaches lose a lot of effectiveness against gateway armies due to forcefield and blink. That is when hydras become the better choice.
I ran into a guy using lings/blings/corruptor + fungal yesterday that just rolled me. I was up 200 vs170 supply with collosi/void/gateway before battle and down by 20 supply after battle. (I failed pretty hard on my FF but it was still pretty sweet for Zerg).
My problem with infester has always been how ridiculously easy they are to pick off. They are these giant glowing slugs that even leave a trail behind them, you just can't miss them. It's unreal how fast they get picked off in every single engagement. I also always keep all of my units in separate control groups so I pull them back immediately after casting but it just doesn't matter, most games by mid game I'm managing 4 different control groups of units. Infester just insta die in ZvP, stalkers can pick them off so damn fast that you can't even use them against blink stalkers because they will get picked off every time after casting 1 FG against anyone decent ( I'm in masters ). Even in ZvZ they get picked off by roaches pretty often, but I still think they are invaluable in ZvZ right now.
I wonder if the idea of infesters was for us to be able to abuse their borrow movement more, but the issue is every Protoss always rolls with an obs in their army so borrow just isn't available. I have used them a good deal after the patch but every time I've made them I've just gotten steam rolled, it just takes so many FG's to actually make a difference and since your infesters die after 1 FG like 75% of the time ... it just isn't effective.
I think fungal growth can be used effectively in high level when combined with baneling drops in high level masters play, at least in my experience. Usually if you just try to engage with roach/hydra and overlord with banes, a good toss player would either forcefield and target fire ovies, spread out or blink the stalkers away. But by using fungal growth, it prevents the deathball from doing any of that and becomes very cost effective. The increase in damage is also a big plus
I think Infestors are the most underused unit in SC2 compared to their potential. I try to get them in any matchup as they are always extremely usefull.
To chain fungal, it often helps to group an infestor with 4-6 lings as buffer so he doesn't get killed as soon as he gets in range - yes, they get killed in a second but fungal growth is insta-cast and if you shift-click the infestor into safety the opponent will only have a second as timing window to kill it. It's possible but extremely micro intensive to also use infested terran eggs to distract, though i've never been able to pull that off without messing my micro up and throwing infested terrans into the ball instead of fungaling it, but i'm just Diamond league with 100APM and non-existant multi-tasking. Repeat fungals with ling sacrifices until the army is weakened enough to be killed by your other units.
I don't understand why people complain about fungal mostly weakening the shields... yes, after 8 seconds the shields start regenerating, but it's still 36/47 damage per fungaled unit your other units don't have to do, unless you give him time to regenerate. If you manage to chain 2-3 fungals even in battle his army won't have a lot of shields left and some units like sentries are even dead. Yeah, EMP is a lot stronger against shields and sentries, but well, it doesn't root the opponents army and can't really be chained to hurt the protoss more (except for some units like the colossus that doesn't lose all the shields to one EMP).
Think of fungal as a slightly weaker psi storm the opponent can not kite out of, it's awesome. And don't forget that infested terrans can shoot up and do quite well against void rays, so you can even use those to clean up if he focussed all your hydras down or even defend against voidray harass with 4-5 infestors (fungal - spam infested terrans - fungal again - void rays (mostly) dead).
Oh, and don't get me started on Infestors vs phoenixes. Infestors hard-counter phoenixes.
On April 04 2011 12:28 DeadPixels wrote: Honest question, if you simultaneously cast several fungal growths on the same group of units does the damage stack or are they just wasted fungals?
All the area effect spells don't stack otherwise it would be GG as soon as player got a few HTs or infestors.
On April 04 2011 14:46 Synk wrote: My problem with infester has always been how ridiculously easy they are to pick off. They are these giant glowing slugs that even leave a trail behind them, you just can't miss them. It's unreal how fast they get picked off in every single engagement. I also always keep all of my units in separate control groups so I pull them back immediately after casting but it just doesn't matter, most games by mid game I'm managing 4 different control groups of units. Infester just insta die in ZvP, stalkers can pick them off so damn fast that you can't even use them against blink stalkers because they will get picked off every time after casting 1 FG against anyone decent ( I'm in masters ). Even in ZvZ they get picked off by roaches pretty often, but I still think they are invaluable in ZvZ right now.
I wonder if the idea of infesters was for us to be able to abuse their borrow movement more, but the issue is every Protoss always rolls with an obs in their army so borrow just isn't available. I have used them a good deal after the patch but every time I've made them I've just gotten steam rolled, it just takes so many FG's to actually make a difference and since your infesters die after 1 FG like 75% of the time ... it just isn't effective.
to cast 1 fungal only 1 infestor needs to move ahead of your army. This is another huge problem alot of zergs have. Almost every zerg i play moves his group of 5-7 infestors forward to cast 1-2 fungals. Instead of moving 1-2 infestors.
If people actually practiced infestor builds instead of trying it a few games and comparing it to builds they have done literally hundreds of times of course its gonna seem bad. Do you even consider how ridiculously overpowered something would have to be for you to be able to use it and win with no practice?
Also, as long is your not charging into a tiny choke roaches are more cost effective then hydras vs everything but immortals. You just have to scoot them up to melee range. They crap all over everything produced from the gateway and they scale better with upgrades.
Many of you are making a common rts mistake in saying if i get this hell get this. WELL DUH if you could just build something and win the game would not be balanced. Aggressive play with infestors rapes sentries. They cost 100 gas and they die faster then infestors if your killing sentries protoss has to chose were to cut gas and most likely it will be those sentries that get cut. if they go with less stalkers and more zealots to save gas to replace the sentries then you have won.
Do you know how much damage a fungaled zealot does to roaches? So you force the protoss into stalker colossi. If you hit the fungals protoss cant do a thing about neural.
Also many/most toss have 1 obs with their army and its normally right in the middle of it. Fungal will kill it without you even trying vs most players, you can see it if you hit it which means you can watch and die and burrow heal while the protoss bangs his head against the wall as all his units die to your roach colossus army.
I'm actually quite surprised to see this thread, as I've won many battles I would've definitely lost before the patch. Personnally I'm teching to infestors really late, after getting all the upgrades for roach and hydra and 2/2 (missile/armor). In the mid game I do the usual multi pronged harrassement, drops, up to 180 pop I play exactly the same. It's in the 200 pop fights that 4-5 infestors really make a difference. It's only diamond level though.
On April 04 2011 00:08 Nakas wrote: Given Idra's comments on FG being OP, I was expecting him to showcase some sick infestor play in MLG.
I havent seen all of Idras games from MLG. But that game of Huk vs Idra where Huk disced Idra had an army of alsmost exclusively roaches and infestors. He had around 8 or 9 infestors I believe and he was researching neural parasite. I can't imagine him using this kind of build/tactic without having practiced it and seen the potential. I guess the idea is to fungal everything in place and NP most/all the colossus. Even if the infestors get sniped right afterwards by blinking stalkers (fg only lasts 3 rl seconds) it would have denied a lot of damage from the colossus on the roaches which would have a better positioning by then aswell.
On April 03 2011 10:26 GOWPUD wrote: Here is my question, some pro's (idra) and other players have said that the 1.3 fungal boost helps the ZvP matchup because it prevents sentries from casting, stalkers from blinking, and collosus from positioning
What Idra said was wrong— I don't know what gave him the impression that it stops spellcasting. Fungal growth only prevents burrow/unburrow, siege/unsiege, fighter/assault mode, and blink (and units from being LOADED but thats kinda related to movement).
That said, I think a interesting idea could have been to keep fungal at 8 seconds, and make it disable all special abilities. It could even still be done at the current 4 second duration although I think it would be pretty pointless/useless considering how short it lasts?
Considering how bad corruption is though (and contaminate), one of the various ideas I've thought of would make corruption disable special abilities (although it would need to last much less time to be balanced.
On April 04 2011 14:27 Zeroes wrote: I really wish the range was longer on fg you get hit by everything before you can get close
No I don't think that's really the issue. The issue is the low infestor health, which I think is stupid that blizzard didn't decide to buff. The other issue is the range of the colossus— it makes more sense to me to be range 8 than range 9. The LEAST blizzard should have done was to remove the armored attribute from the damn thing... freaking gets owned by immortal, marauder, stalker, siege tank, void ray, all these hugely common hugely popular units, who also happen to be excellent vs the main unit that infestors are good with (the roach). The fact that roach-infestor gets owned so much by just an anti-armored unit is pretty lame in my opinion.
On April 04 2011 09:33 morimacil wrote: what the hell are glings? zerglings are zerglings. lings are zerglings banelings are banelings. blings are banelings. speedlings are zerglings with the metabolic boost upgrade. cracklings are speedlings with the adrenal gland upgrade. but glings? what the hell are glings supposed to be?
And no matter what you meant by glings, its still not a great idea. Because all in all, you are investing a lot of gas in infestors (yes, even 2 infestors is a lot of gas), and a lot of time too. And then you are relying on greatly outmicroing your opponent to make them useful, if your opponent microes his colossi and one-shots them, blinks some stalkers and kills them, or spreads out his sentries a bit, and so on, then your big gas investment is once again useless.
its kind of like sending out 1 zealot to fight 2 marines. sure enough, if your opponent has shit micro, it could be a good idea, but making an investment that relies on your opponent having terrible micro just so that investment pays off for itself is a bad idea. Even if you do manage to kill the sentries, they are just there to amplify the toss army's potential, they arent the real army. Its great if you can kill the sentries, and your opponent can no longer cut off a third of your army and kill it. But if you have to sacrifice a third of your army to do that, then in the end, while you dont get crushed by the forcefields, you still get crushed in exactly the same way as if there had been forcefields.
running infestors forward to fungal the sentries, relies on your opponent mismicroing. Not only that, but it relies on your opponent mismicroing, 3 times in a row. And even once that happend, its still not like you are in a game winning advantage situation. its unlikely that you would be able to get 100% of his sentries, he can warp in some more, and even assuming the fact that you did get all his sentries, and he cant warp in any more, since you had to use up so much gas to do that, you still are not ahead, because the rest of your army is that much weaker now. just 3 infestors, with the upgrade, to fungal 3 times, is 450 gas for the infestors, 150 for the upgrade, 100 for the pit, thats 700 gas, thats 28 roaches that you now cant afford. or 7 corruptors less. good luck fighting a toss deathball, with 7 less corruptors, you will get raped by colossi and void rays.
Glings/Lings it's the same.
About Infestors, i was talking more about using it relatively early, or at least before the toss get colossus' range. And it's not like you have to spend all ur gas to get all those upgrades. I'm talking about a timing windows that relies on 3 (actually 4) FGs with only 2 infestors and without spending the energy upgrade. That's 300 gas. You'd need speed roaches but not tunneling claws or burrow since the whole purpose of my build is to kill the sentries with 3 FGs. I'm aware, I won't be able to kill all of them but i'm pretty sure that'd help a lot especially in the beginning. 300 gas is 12 less roach gas cost-wise. But it's not like you could have spent the missed gas on glings instead, since you'd get plenty of minerals and larvaes assuming you don't forget a single larvae inject. Having less FFs on the beginning of the game is HUGE. And even if he get colossus (possibly not range yet) you can always send ur remaining energy of the 2nd infestor on 3 infested terrans to help getting less hit. The only downside i see there really is spreading sentries.
On April 04 2011 09:33 morimacil wrote: what the hell are glings? zerglings are zerglings. lings are zerglings banelings are banelings. blings are banelings. speedlings are zerglings with the metabolic boost upgrade. cracklings are speedlings with the adrenal gland upgrade. but glings? what the hell are glings supposed to be?
And no matter what you meant by glings, its still not a great idea. Because all in all, you are investing a lot of gas in infestors (yes, even 2 infestors is a lot of gas), and a lot of time too. And then you are relying on greatly outmicroing your opponent to make them useful, if your opponent microes his colossi and one-shots them, blinks some stalkers and kills them, or spreads out his sentries a bit, and so on, then your big gas investment is once again useless.
its kind of like sending out 1 zealot to fight 2 marines. sure enough, if your opponent has shit micro, it could be a good idea, but making an investment that relies on your opponent having terrible micro just so that investment pays off for itself is a bad idea. Even if you do manage to kill the sentries, they are just there to amplify the toss army's potential, they arent the real army. Its great if you can kill the sentries, and your opponent can no longer cut off a third of your army and kill it. But if you have to sacrifice a third of your army to do that, then in the end, while you dont get crushed by the forcefields, you still get crushed in exactly the same way as if there had been forcefields.
running infestors forward to fungal the sentries, relies on your opponent mismicroing. Not only that, but it relies on your opponent mismicroing, 3 times in a row. And even once that happend, its still not like you are in a game winning advantage situation. its unlikely that you would be able to get 100% of his sentries, he can warp in some more, and even assuming the fact that you did get all his sentries, and he cant warp in any more, since you had to use up so much gas to do that, you still are not ahead, because the rest of your army is that much weaker now. just 3 infestors, with the upgrade, to fungal 3 times, is 450 gas for the infestors, 150 for the upgrade, 100 for the pit, thats 700 gas, thats 28 roaches that you now cant afford. or 7 corruptors less. good luck fighting a toss deathball, with 7 less corruptors, you will get raped by colossi and void rays.
Glings/Lings it's the same.
About Infestors, i was talking more about using it relatively early, or at least before the toss get colossus' range. And it's not like you have to spend all ur gas to get all those upgrades. I'm talking about a timing windows that relies on 3 (actually 4) FGs with only 2 infestors and without spending the energy upgrade. That's 300 gas. You'd need speed roaches but not tunneling claws or burrow since the whole purpose of my build is to kill the sentries with 3 FGs. I'm aware, I won't be able to kill all of them but i'm pretty sure that'd help a lot especially in the beginning. 300 gas is 12 less roach gas cost-wise. But it's not like you could have spent the missed gas on glings instead, since you'd get plenty of minerals and larvaes assuming you don't forget a single larvae inject. Having less FFs on the beginning of the game is HUGE. And even if he get colossus (possibly not range yet) you can always send ur remaining energy of the 2nd infestor on 3 infested terrans to help getting less hit. The only downside i see there really is spreading sentries.
Ok, heres the thing. I just against AI went for just 2 infestor on a drone farmed 2 base (15 hatch, 14 pool, gas at 50% pool) while skipping ling speed and any roach tech. 2 infestors with 150 energy occured at exactly 11:00 in game, thats skipping all unneeded units such as spotter or aggression lings or even spines for defense. I think that idea just flat out dies to a 6 gate, sorry.
On April 04 2011 09:33 morimacil wrote: what the hell are glings? zerglings are zerglings. lings are zerglings banelings are banelings. blings are banelings. speedlings are zerglings with the metabolic boost upgrade. cracklings are speedlings with the adrenal gland upgrade. but glings? what the hell are glings supposed to be?
And no matter what you meant by glings, its still not a great idea. Because all in all, you are investing a lot of gas in infestors (yes, even 2 infestors is a lot of gas), and a lot of time too. And then you are relying on greatly outmicroing your opponent to make them useful, if your opponent microes his colossi and one-shots them, blinks some stalkers and kills them, or spreads out his sentries a bit, and so on, then your big gas investment is once again useless.
its kind of like sending out 1 zealot to fight 2 marines. sure enough, if your opponent has shit micro, it could be a good idea, but making an investment that relies on your opponent having terrible micro just so that investment pays off for itself is a bad idea. Even if you do manage to kill the sentries, they are just there to amplify the toss army's potential, they arent the real army. Its great if you can kill the sentries, and your opponent can no longer cut off a third of your army and kill it. But if you have to sacrifice a third of your army to do that, then in the end, while you dont get crushed by the forcefields, you still get crushed in exactly the same way as if there had been forcefields.
running infestors forward to fungal the sentries, relies on your opponent mismicroing. Not only that, but it relies on your opponent mismicroing, 3 times in a row. And even once that happend, its still not like you are in a game winning advantage situation. its unlikely that you would be able to get 100% of his sentries, he can warp in some more, and even assuming the fact that you did get all his sentries, and he cant warp in any more, since you had to use up so much gas to do that, you still are not ahead, because the rest of your army is that much weaker now. just 3 infestors, with the upgrade, to fungal 3 times, is 450 gas for the infestors, 150 for the upgrade, 100 for the pit, thats 700 gas, thats 28 roaches that you now cant afford. or 7 corruptors less. good luck fighting a toss deathball, with 7 less corruptors, you will get raped by colossi and void rays.
Glings/Lings it's the same.
About Infestors, i was talking more about using it relatively early, or at least before the toss get colossus' range. And it's not like you have to spend all ur gas to get all those upgrades. I'm talking about a timing windows that relies on 3 (actually 4) FGs with only 2 infestors and without spending the energy upgrade. That's 300 gas. You'd need speed roaches but not tunneling claws or burrow since the whole purpose of my build is to kill the sentries with 3 FGs. I'm aware, I won't be able to kill all of them but i'm pretty sure that'd help a lot especially in the beginning. 300 gas is 12 less roach gas cost-wise. But it's not like you could have spent the missed gas on glings instead, since you'd get plenty of minerals and larvaes assuming you don't forget a single larvae inject. Having less FFs on the beginning of the game is HUGE. And even if he get colossus (possibly not range yet) you can always send ur remaining energy of the 2nd infestor on 3 infested terrans to help getting less hit. The only downside i see there really is spreading sentries.
Ok, heres the thing. I just against AI went for just 2 infestor on a drone farmed 2 base (15 hatch, 14 pool, gas at 50% pool) while skipping ling speed and any roach tech. 2 infestors with 150 energy occured at exactly 11:00 in game, thats skipping all unneeded units such as spotter or aggression lings or even spines for defense. I think that idea just flat out dies to a 6 gate, sorry.
EDIT: or even a 5 gate pressure.
you scout a 6 gate before you build infestation pit get roaches with burrow defend it laugh then get infestors.
In my experience, you can't blindly go directly into infestors, that way you don't have any means to deal with voidrays and protoss can take his third base uncontested. Plus if you get them early, it cuts into your upgrades. They're a nice add-on late game though, but unless I see them used to specifically counter a deathball in a professional tournament, don't think they will change the match-up. I'd love to be proven wrong though.
I like the "buff" and all but the problem with infestors is that they are so ridiculously fragile, that combined with the short range on FG makes it impossible to get more than one FG off. Every unit in the game outranges them and they get oneshotted by everything.
I'd honestly prefer them the way they were pre-patch but with their range increased.
On April 03 2011 10:26 GOWPUD wrote: Here is my question, some pro's (idra) and other players have said that the 1.3 fungal boost helps the ZvP matchup because it prevents sentries from casting, stalkers from blinking, and collosus from positioning
What Idra said was wrong— I don't know what gave him the impression that it stops spellcasting. Fungal growth only prevents burrow/unburrow, siege/unsiege, fighter/assault mode, and blink (and units from being LOADED but thats kinda related to movement).
That said, I think a interesting idea could have been to keep fungal at 8 seconds, and make it disable all special abilities. It could even still be done at the current 4 second duration although I think it would be pretty pointless/useless considering how short it lasts?
Considering how bad corruption is though (and contaminate), one of the various ideas I've thought of would make corruption disable special abilities (although it would need to last much less time to be balanced.
On April 04 2011 14:27 Zeroes wrote: I really wish the range was longer on fg you get hit by everything before you can get close
No I don't think that's really the issue. The issue is the low infestor health, which I think is stupid that blizzard didn't decide to buff. The other issue is the range of the colossus— it makes more sense to me to be range 8 than range 9. The LEAST blizzard should have done was to remove the armored attribute from the damn thing... freaking gets owned by immortal, marauder, stalker, siege tank, void ray, all these hugely common hugely popular units, who also happen to be excellent vs the main unit that infestors are good with (the roach). The fact that roach-infestor gets owned so much by just an anti-armored unit is pretty lame in my opinion.
I always thought that what IdrA meant by it stopping spellcasting was that it locks down the spell caster and it can't really position it's spells while immobile, but ya it was really an overstatement on his part. Anyway I never felt that this change would instantly change how zerg play vs protoss but overtime it would play strong role in holding units down and adding much needed DPS to the zerg army.
Maybe just Fungal *after* the P has forcefielded .. attack with some roaches to force a FF wall, you then have safe 15 seconds to FG the protoss = 3 to 4 fungals.
I find infestors frustrating partly because of EMP and Feedback.
Yeah they do have their place if the opponent don't have those units, but ... if he either have ghosts or templars, and he have decent micro, it just seems like so much wasted supply.
Maybe just Fungal *after* the P has forcefielded .. attack with some roaches to force a FF wall, you then have safe 15 seconds to FG the protoss = 3 to 4 fungals.
Well that kinda works out awkwardly again, because it requires you sacrificing a bunch of roaches, plus using up a lot of gas on infestors, to try and take out all his sentries. plus, the range is a bit awkward too. sentries have 5 range, forcefields are 4 units wide, so that means if a roach gets forcefielded inside, and sentries are attacking it from max range, the closest you get to them is range 9. which means you can just barely cast a fungal (fungal has range 9), but half the fungal will be wasted. so you end up investing a lot in infestors, and sacrificing a lot of roaches, to try and get half a fungal off on a clump of sentries at the front, and theres just a lot that can go wrong with that. plus, even if it does work, saccing a third of your army in roaches, plus using up 3 infestors to kill the sentries, so a 700 gas investment, thats a lot. even once the sentries are gone, if you spent 700 gas, and had to lose 10-15 roaches to kill of those sentries, its still not really a very awesome trade.
I'm talking about a timing windows that relies on 3 (actually 4) FGs with only 2 infestors and without spending the energy upgrade. That's 300 gas. You'd need speed roaches but not tunneling claws or burrow since the whole purpose of my build is to kill the sentries with 3 FGs. I'm aware, I won't be able to kill all of them but i'm pretty sure that'd help a lot especially in the beginning.
Im sorry, but you are not making much sense. In the begining of what? of the game? If you want to make an infestation pit, and then 2 infestors, and then let them sit around for over 3 minutes to gather 150 energy, and then use them, thats 5 minutes. thats a TON of time really.
thats another thing that makes the infestors not very useful, appart from the whole super heavy on gas part. The fact that the timings for them are all wrong. You cant really get infestors out fast enough for the big gateway pushes, like a 4gate, or a 6gate. They just come too early, its already awkward to get burrow in time for a 6gate if you didnt start burrow within seconds of your lair finishing. and getting infestors out takes ~40 seconds more than getting burrow. Then, after the timing for gateway pushes passed, its possible and quite easy to get infestors, but you cant really use them very easily to be agressive. Thus you have to wait for the next toss push. At which point, he will have coloxen. which render your infestors useless. So you cant get them in time for when you would want them, and by the time you can actually get them, their moment of usefulness, their timing, has already passed.
I was really excited to use FG on protoss more in 1.3, but sadly thermal lance colossus still shut down infestors. You just can't chain fungals on a protoss army that has upgraded colossus in it, since they have the same range as FG. And since they die in 3 colossus hits, if there's 3+, you'll lose an infestor every time you try to use a fungal.
The only way FG will work on a protoss army that has colossus in it, is if FG outranges colossus.
In a [Q] thread you may ask about a specific, situational strategy, whether that is executing it yourself of playing against it. It is very important that you keep these threads specific. A general "How to FE against Zerg?" is not acceptable. This is the most important distinction from the [H] threads. As with [H] thread you must post one or several replays.
Post some analysis of the problem, and what you have tried so far. This not only avoids redundant advice but also shows people you have put some effort into this yourself.
As with the [H] threads, it makes it a lot easier to help you if you ask a couple of specific questions regarding the strategy you are unsure about.
Have you tried any infestor play yourself? I'm curious to see what people can come up with. Please post replays!
On April 06 2011 00:27 BlasiuS wrote: I was really excited to use FG on protoss more in 1.3, but sadly thermal lance colossus still shut down infestors. You just can't chain fungals on a protoss army that has upgraded colossus in it, since they have the same range as FG. And since they die in 3 colossus hits, if there's 3+, you'll lose an infestor every time you try to use a fungal.
The only way FG will work on a protoss army that has colossus in it, is if FG outranges colossus.
The idea is you chain the fungals while rushing the deathball with Roaches, not running in and trying to get a fungal in then backing off. At the very least, a few fungals will go off if the Colossus focus down the Infestors fast with good micro, but then you have tons of Roaches in their face that weren't hit by the Colossus yet, and your army is trapped.
And I think people are missing that point that this kind of tactic totally nullifies any kind of Gate + Immortal or Stargate pressure. Essentially, if you get Infestors, Protoss has to get either HT's or Colossus to deal with it. At least this has been my experience as a Protoss player.
Really I think it is the ultimate counter to the 5 or 6 gate push. Get burrow and tunneling claws, then get infestors and attack before too many Colossus are out.
The metagame was Gateway + Colossus (Void Ray sometimes too) vs Roach/Hydra/Corrupter, then people stopped making Hydras because they die so quick to Colossus (and Corrupters can take down the Void Rays), so Protoss responded by not making as many Colossus and focusing on Immortals. This would naturally see Zergs moving back to Hydras, but Infestors seems to be a better choice to me now, relegating Hydras to an anti-air only role in situations where Protoss rushes to Stargate tech.
You just can't chain fungals on a protoss army that has upgraded colossus in it, since they have the same range as FG.
well actually, fungal has a range closer to 8 than 9. You can fungal a unit that is 10 range away, at the very edge of your fungal. But if you want to get a full fungal off, and not half a fungal, then you need to move to 8 range of his army and not 9. here it is in pictures. range 10 to fungal a unit, range 9 to get off half a fungal, and the actual range 8 if you want to get a full fungal off.
And I think people are missing that point that this kind of tactic totally nullifies any kind of Gate + Immortal or Stargate pressure. Essentially, if you get Infestors, Protoss has to get either HT's or Colossus to deal with it. At least this has been my experience as a Protoss player.
people arent really missing the point on the fact that it nullifies gateway units that are alone or with immortals pretty well. We know that. But the fact that you can nullify gateway pushes is not all that useful in a real game, simply because the point at which you actually can get out enough infestors and still have an army, is much later than when gateway pushes would actually be happening.
see, its kind of the same reason why people are using hydras less now. a big roach-hydra army, with roach speed, hydra range, and a couple of upgrades, is incredibly awesome against gateway armies. Unfortunately, a 6gate will arrive before you can get all that up, so if you did invest in hydras, the investment doesnt pay off fast enough, and you end up dead. So instead, people go for roaches with burrow. Not because roaches with burrow are incredibly awesome against gateway armies, compared to roaches with infestors, or roaches with hydras. roaches with infestors or hydras would actually be superior in holding off gateway armies, but you cant get them up in time, thats why people go for roaches with burrow instead.
if you want to think of it differently: roaches with broodlords would do pretty damn well against a pure gateway army without blink. why do people not get roaches with broodlords to hold off a 6gate? because you cant get the broodlords up in time. its the same thing with infestors or hydras.
in short: infestors are great at negating gateway armies that dont have high templars or colossi in them, but they arrive at a time when pure gateway armies are gone, and the toss either killed you, tried to kill you and failed and is way behind, or is getting colossi/templars. And if he killed you, its too late. if you held off the big gateway push without infestors, you didnt need infestors. and if hes teching, then the infestors are useless again.
another different example of timings: speedling-baneling would be an incredibly awesome and easy way to hold off a 2rax. but it just doesnt come in time, so thats why people dont defend 2rax with speedling baneling, not because its bad. infestors are good at what they do, but they do it at the wrong time. compare that to ZvZ instead, and there, infestors are great. Why? because by the time you can get infestors, your opponent will have roaches, roach-hydra, or roach-infestor, and wont even be close to getting ultras or broodlords. So in ZvZ, they actually arrive in time to fight the units they need to fight, and before the units that counter them. in ZvP, they dont arrive in time to fight the units they are good against, and they arrive just as your opponent is getting the counter unit. thats why they arent used all that much.
On April 06 2011 00:27 BlasiuS wrote: I was really excited to use FG on protoss more in 1.3, but sadly thermal lance colossus still shut down infestors. You just can't chain fungals on a protoss army that has upgraded colossus in it, since they have the same range as FG. And since they die in 3 colossus hits, if there's 3+, you'll lose an infestor every time you try to use a fungal.
The only way FG will work on a protoss army that has colossus in it, is if FG outranges colossus.
The idea is you chain the fungals while rushing the deathball with Roaches, not running in and trying to get a fungal in then backing off. At the very least, a few fungals will go off if the Colossus focus down the Infestors fast with good micro, but then you have tons of Roaches in their face that weren't hit by the Colossus yet, and your army is trapped.
this doesn't solve the problem of forcefields though. You can't just 'rush the deathball' without proper positioning, FG doesn't change that at all. If you try to run in with your army to tank for your infestors, you'll end up losing units. Try to do this a few times and you'll lose half your army trying to get off a few fungals. Not worth it. I was eager to try and chain FG on units to soften the army before I engage. That's not possible. Also if you're up against colossus without corruptors, you're probably going to die. I'm not completely anti-infestor yet, but I'm still very skeptical.
I'd need to see some consistent play with infestors before I'm convinced. My experience has shown that they don't help against a stalker/sentry/colo much more than they did before 1.3. They help somewhat better vs a colo/void army since voids stack easily with each other and with colossus, but then again there's the issue of colossus killing your infestors as they run in and use fungal. I also have not seen hardly any good ZvP games where infestors were used to great effect vs a maxed protoss army. IdrA v Huk on crossfire showed some sweet infestor use, but that's just 1 game, and it wasn't really used late-game against a large protoss army.
On April 05 2011 19:40 theLiminator wrote: Are chained fungals with slings blings and ultras feasible? I think it might just smash the deathball?
It would require good flanking, but It could be REALLY deadly.
Baneling/ultra is really strong, but I'm not sure what the infestors role in this would be. He can't outrun blings anyway (unless he blinks), and they kill stuff so fast the FG would just go to waste. I'd rather get more blings or corruptors or something.
I have the same feelings about the new infestors as most others here. Amazing against alot of stuff that protoss either builds to early or doesn't build at all -- meh against the lategame deathball -- and a bit OP against terran (which was a fairly balanced matchup they didn't need to touch).
Are you guys trying to fungal the colossi themselves, or the surrounding stalker ball? I see no reason at all to do the former. Colossi will just shrug off a FG, but it takes a pretty beefy chunk out of a stalker's health bar, assuming you actually attack afterward instead of allowing the shields to recharge. Also, fungaling the stalkers means that you actually can outrange thermal lance, since the colossi will always be in the back or middle of the stalker ball, and won't be close enough to hit infestors fungalling big blobs of stalkers on the outsides.
I really like the sound of heavy speedling + a few baneling into fast lair with lots of infestor into corruptor. It transitions into late game broodlords/ultras very well. I think infestors are sooo much better now even against protoss. Their function is so different than it used to be that its almost like a new unit. I predict seeing infestors getting more and more play on the pro scene as the metagame evolves.
i think fungal doesn't really help vs the Deathball. I would rather spend the gas on a few ultras (to stomp forcefields) and a baneling flank/drop. Banelings seem to be the way for me to deal with the toss deathball anyway and they only seem to get shut down by forcefields. Every time i try to do some cute fungal things - well my opponent is really happy that he can roast some low hp high gas units for free with his colossi. The holding-in-place part isn't really that important vs a deathball since your opponent loses way too much dps if he tries to run/kite anyway assuming you dont build ling only. And as said, there are more valuable gas sinks, espeially as it has been pointed out that for a good fungal you have about only 8 range on your infestors (or less depending on where you fungal).
Vs smaller blink stalker armies i feel like the change has been a real nerf, by the time my lings surround those stalkers the 4 seconds are over and they blink again. Vs marines - to be honest, if my opponent invests as much gas in medivacs as i do in infestors he still wins and barely ever loses much (medivacs still outheal fungal on single targets), also a small group of 3-4 stimmed marines can kill my infestors sooo fast (and fungal on 3 marines is most of the time a waste of energy).
I always thought to make their dps vs healed/repaired units significant fungal should prevent any healing/repearing on the fungaled unit (with 8 seconds duration). This would really help vs bio armies late game, would prevent mass repaired thors etc. and would allow one full energy infestor to take out a drop of 8 marines by himself. As it is now, you have to have a spine as well because your fungals will kill only about 5 marines max and the remaining will still shred your expo. Also fungal should fully penetrate shields but with the 8 seconds duration (so same dps as half penetration on 4 seconds duration). After all i want my infestors to help getting a nice surround/prevent the enemy from kiting and bind the opponent on his current position, not a pseudo-storm. And last but not least i think infestors are too big of a unit. Their size doesn't help to prevent getting emped when clumped up but in fact makes them so much easier to spot for the opponent. I sometimes have a hard time to see HT in my opponents Deathball between Zealots, sentries (have energy bars as well), Colossi and Void rays. Ghosts can hide in groups of marines or just cloak. But infestors? If burrowed, they can't cast NP/Fungal and if not burrowed - well they make up for half of my visual army size so you can't miss them. I really hope for them to get smaller in the future.
You just can't chain fungals on a protoss army that has upgraded colossus in it, since they have the same range as FG.
well actually, fungal has a range closer to 8 than 9. You can fungal a unit that is 10 range away, at the very edge of your fungal. But if you want to get a full fungal off, and not half a fungal, then you need to move to 8 range of his army and not 9. here it is in pictures. range 10 to fungal a unit, range 9 to get off half a fungal, and the actual range 8 if you want to get a full fungal off.
that's crazy. probably why they reverted the projectile change too then, as you would have to be even closer as to not miss.
In regards to the OP and the 1.3 Infestor vs Protoss deathballs;
For me, the changes to FG are definitely a buff for ZvP, and make infestors stronger, mostly in the late game. The buff to FG is not strong enough for infestors to be a mid game option for me. I just dont think any decent protoss is going to let you live until you have pathogen up, and a decent number of infestors. The longstanding issues are also still there, they are large, slow and have low HP.
I think that ling / roach / bane + drops is still the strongest mid game option on most maps. For late game, Infestors are definitely a good option now, as they work well with the above comp, or with any brood based comp.
Still pretty early days for the new patch, so any analysis should be taken with a grain of salt.
On April 03 2011 12:27 themell wrote: The problem is that most people only get 1 or 2 infestors. At those numbers, you won't even be able to bypass shields. For infestors to work, you need more than a couple. If you only use 1 or 2 FGs, then the P deathball will just retreat and let the shields recharge.
I see infestors with FG as the most cost effective against protoss atm.
Also, another problem I see with zergs is that they group their infestors with the rest of their army, and then proceed to A move in. Infestors then rush forward and die.
This. Everyone does this, WHY. DIMAGA did this vs MVP ~_~ They should be on a separate hotkey, possibly auto-following your roaches or hydras, but never in your 1A group.
The real strength of fungal vs Protoss death-ball comes when you start chain-casting it. 1 fungal tickles the shields, 6 fungals locks down a pile of stalkers and void rays and there's no hope of escape. I actually think we're going to start seeing much more than "2-3" infestors in a group - more like 5-6 - enough that you have the energy required to lock down a part of the ball and just laugh as you chain-cast fungal til it all dies. You still need corruptors so they dont just lead with colossi to prevent infestors from getting in range. (If they do? Then you get to pick them off. Victory anyway!)
Really, when you have corruptors out, is the protoss gonna stick his colossi in the front of his army so that they "counter infestors" ? No... If they do you just get free colossi kills which is what you want in the first place and you don't even need much fungal.
On April 06 2011 00:27 BlasiuS wrote: I was really excited to use FG on protoss more in 1.3, but sadly thermal lance colossus still shut down infestors. You just can't chain fungals on a protoss army that has upgraded colossus in it, since they have the same range as FG. And since they die in 3 colossus hits, if there's 3+, you'll lose an infestor every time you try to use a fungal.
The only way FG will work on a protoss army that has colossus in it, is if FG outranges colossus.
The idea is you chain the fungals while rushing the deathball with Roaches, not running in and trying to get a fungal in then backing off. At the very least, a few fungals will go off if the Colossus focus down the Infestors fast with good micro, but then you have tons of Roaches in their face that weren't hit by the Colossus yet, and your army is trapped.
And I think people are missing that point that this kind of tactic totally nullifies any kind of Gate + Immortal or Stargate pressure. Essentially, if you get Infestors, Protoss has to get either HT's or Colossus to deal with it. At least this has been my experience as a Protoss player.
Really I think it is the ultimate counter to the 5 or 6 gate push. Get burrow and tunneling claws, then get infestors and attack before too many Colossus are out.
The metagame was Gateway + Colossus (Void Ray sometimes too) vs Roach/Hydra/Corrupter, then people stopped making Hydras because they die so quick to Colossus (and Corrupters can take down the Void Rays), so Protoss responded by not making as many Colossus and focusing on Immortals. This would naturally see Zergs moving back to Hydras, but Infestors seems to be a better choice to me now, relegating Hydras to an anti-air only role in situations where Protoss rushes to Stargate tech.
Very good observations here and this is how I've started to play as well. I saw ret's stream the other day and he played like this too. In one game the toss went for a 3 gate expand directly into VRs/phoenixes. Ret's response was getting hydras early on. As he spotted the robo bay he made enough roaches to stop a VR/single collosus poke and then he eventually switched to infestors. What I like about this build is you can tech to hive a lot earlier and you can still survive a 3 collosus push (with some corrupters) or any VR/collosus builds. Plus as you said, it allows for a tunneling claw opening which will defend a 5 or 6 gate long enough for you to get infestors to roll him.
The OP is just terrible terrible whine. FG takes 1/4 of shields? Stalker is the most common protoss unit and has 80 shields. 1/4 is 20 damage. FG makes around 48 damage to armored. This is not just ignorance, you are spreading disinformation this way and encouraging further stupid whine. Please close this thread someone.
The Infestor seems like a unit that works well with the roach in ZvP. It is also Zergs longest range ground unit, so FF doesn't play a huge roll in stopping fungal or trapping infestors. IMO the infestor is a great tech choice if you want to get very little or no hydras in the mid game and stick to a roach centric army. Opening up a quicker hive tech against a turtle toss is never a bad thing either.
One replay from yesterday - roach/hydra/corruptor but with 7 infestors!
On April 03 2011 12:27 themell wrote: The problem is that most people only get 1 or 2 infestors. At those numbers, you won't even be able to bypass shields. For infestors to work, you need more than a couple. If you only use 1 or 2 FGs, then the P deathball will just retreat and let the shields recharge.
I see infestors with FG as the most cost effective against protoss atm.
Also, another problem I see with zergs is that they group their infestors with the rest of their army, and then proceed to A move in. Infestors then rush forward and die.
The real strength of fungal vs Protoss death-ball comes when you start chain-casting it. 1 fungal tickles the shields, 6 fungals locks down a pile of stalkers and void rays and there's no hope of escape. I actually think we're going to start seeing much more than "2-3" infestors in a group - more like 5-6 - enough that you have the energy required to lock down a part of the ball and just laugh as you chain-cast fungal til it all dies. You still need corruptors so they dont just lead with colossi to prevent infestors from getting in range. (If they do? Then you get to pick them off. Victory anyway!)
Really, when you have corruptors out, is the protoss gonna stick his colossi in the front of his army so that they "counter infestors" ? No... If they do you just get free colossi kills which is what you want in the first place and you don't even need much fungal.
you don't need colossus out in front to be able to hit infestors. Just keep them above the stalkers.
You can't chain fungals against an army that has lance colossus in it.
Another thing, by the time the first few colossus are out, you can have infestors or corruptors, but not both.
I facepalm every time I see someone saying "the new fungal growth is wayyy better"!
Honestly, the spell wasn't changed that drastically. 36 vs 47 damage is not a big deal. 4 seconds vs 8 seconds is not a big deal. Let's say you hit 5 Stalkers with the fungal... It used to be 180 damage, but now it is 235 damage.
Infesters aren't suddenly the counter to Stalker+Sentry+Colossus+Voidray.
The problem isn't that they don't do enough damage. It's that they only can do some damage. An Ultralisk on the other hand can tank a ton of damage for the rest of your army, while an Infester basically gets two-shot. Something has to tank Stalker+Colossus+Voidray damage. If you don't choose Ultralisk, you have to choose Roach.
On April 07 2011 23:46 Juice303 wrote: The Infestor seems like a unit that works well with the roach in ZvP. It is also Zergs longest range ground unit, so FF doesn't play a huge roll in stopping fungal or trapping infestors. IMO the infestor is a great tech choice if you want to get very little or no hydras in the mid game and stick to a roach centric army. Opening up a quicker hive tech against a turtle toss is never a bad thing either.
One replay from yesterday - roach/hydra/corruptor but with 7 infestors!
It was a build up game with both sides getting 200 supply before the Zerg finally attacks.
The map was Shakuras, and the unit compositions were something like...
Protoss: 3 Colossus, 30ish Stalker, 6 Sentry, 1 Void Ray, 3-4 zealots (Protoss suicided 15 zealots before the battle to make more supply for Void Ray it looks). +3 attack upgrades +0 armor.
Zerg: 27 Hydra, 30 Roach, 13 Corruptor, 7 Infestor, and a single Broodlord. +2 range/+2 carapace.
The zerg did a great job of spreading creep, took a fairly early 3rd, and had as a result had 50% gas income than the Protoss for a good 5 minute window.
Zerg had corruptors and infestors on separate hotkeys from his army, and appeared to have superior micro. Protoss didn't use guardian shield, nor force fields. I think the Zerg would have won without the 7 infestors, but the multiple fungals that he landed made the final battle a cake walk. Protoss's unit composition appeared to have been too stalker heavy, as he easily could have afford more Colossus/Voids, he just didn't have the supply left.
One notable thing about this game was the utter lack of conflict before the 22 min mark. There was a single ling run by and a zealot sacrifice, both of which did minimal damage. Thanks to ease of defending 3 bases on that map (the 3rd not quite as easy to defend) both sides just massed up, with the only viable options for Zerg aggression (besides a frontal assault) being Ventral Sacs, Nydus or Muta, none of which he had.
The zerg seemed to be a level above the Protoss skill wise. I was very impressed with that Zerg though, I think he could have beaten a much better Protoss with that unit composition.
On April 08 2011 01:08 Sajuuk7 wrote: I facepalm every time I see someone saying "the new fungal growth is wayyy better"!
Honestly, the spell wasn't changed that drastically. 36 vs 47 damage is not a big deal. 4 seconds vs 8 seconds is not a big deal. Let's say you hit 5 Stalkers with the fungal... It used to be 180 damage, but now it is 235 damage.
Infesters aren't suddenly the counter to Stalker+Sentry+Colossus+Voidray.
The problem isn't that they don't do enough damage. It's that they only can do some damage. An Ultralisk on the other hand can tank a ton of damage for the rest of your army, while an Infester basically gets two-shot. Something has to tank Stalker+Colossus+Voidray damage. If you don't choose Ultralisk, you have to choose Roach.
This alone is the big change. All you're comparing is one infestor using a single fungal growth and running away or offing himself. Against all units the DPS has been doubled. Against armored it has been more than doubled.
So using your comparison, in that same 8 seconds against the 5 stalkers you hit, it used to be 180 damage, but now it is 470 damage. That's over 2.5x more damage dealt in the same time period. Kind of a big deal.
Obviously this means you'd need two fungals, that's the tradeoff.
So using your comparison, in that same 8 seconds against the 5 stalkers you hit, it used to be 180 damage, but now it is 470 damage. That's over 2.5x more damage dealt in the same time period. Kind of a big deal.
This makes me facepalm more. This is not how it works in a real situation at all.
Yes the DPS has been doubled. That doesn't mean you have more or less Fungals to use. If you have 3 Infesters that can each cast Fungal twice. You have 6 fungals. 6 fungals each hitting 5 Stalkers without overlap = ~1400 damage. You can't just multiple it by 2.5x more damage in the same time period...
If they are approaching your base, you will simply fungal them for less amount of time, or more amount of time before the battle ensues. Either way, you will have done the damage of 6 fungals in whatever amount of time.
Obviously this means you'd need two fungals, that's the tradeoff.
This is inaccurate as well. There is no tradeoff. You still deal the same amount of damage total no matter what the duration is. (other than that small bonus to armored they threw in)
I don't see how that should make you facepalm any more. Yes, if you are able to drop all of your fungals before an engagement there is no difference. How often is that possible? The difference is now fungal actually has a useful property in the engagement rather than essentially being harass before the engagement.
As often as you like whenever you feel like microing. Unless they put all of their thermal lance colossus in the very front of their army while advancing, you can get free shots off with the instant cast 9 range fungal growth. Why engage before weakening the opponent?
...essentially being harass before the engagement.
It still deals the same amount of total damage... other than the small bonus to armored.
When a deathball is approaching, I'd love to see any player use as many fungals as "whenever he felt like microing." What's more likely to happen is after the first pot shot, the next time you're going to get your infestor(s) blinked on and sniped before a fungal lands.
Again, you're in theorycraft land where you can land all your infestors worth of energy before the engagement begins. This rarely if ever happens. The fungal change has allowed infestors to be used as a dps spellcaster during the engagement rather than a deathball softener prior to the engagement. The spell's roll has drastically shifted, I'd say.
Whether or not it's going to turn out to be a staple of ZvP who knows. But I find it funny that it can be dismissed like that without ever really given a shot.
On April 03 2011 11:57 LaLuSh wrote: I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
Especially as protoss have got counters to infestors in colossi range and templar feedback.
Patch didn't do too much to change the infestor's situation in ZvP. I still think it's too much of an investment, too hard to micro; a strategy too prone to backfiring.
Whatever people say, you can't keep chaining fungals against a thermal lance army. Maybe in theory you can -- but doesn't work as well in practice. And it just gets harder and harder the longer the game progresses and the bigger the Protoss army gets.
2-3 infestors are always good. More than that commonly proves to be a waste.
Disagree completely. I don't think I've won a PvZ where Z has gotten a decent number of infestors out. I had a game where I was up a base the entire game (even bases is often considered to be advantage: P), ahead in food (Z should be ahead in an even game), and got completely rolled by ~6 infestors. Colossi with range aren't a counter. Templar feedback is 100% necessary, but it's not a proper counter since you wind up spending as much gas on tech and templar as Z spent on infestors. Storm sucks against roaches so you don't get much value out of the templar beyond defending the infestors, and since Z typically has access to more gas, it's a losing trade for P. I'm not going to call infestors imbalanced because it's too early and I need to work out responses, but against standard P play styles, infestors are really freaking good.
Haha thanks for the battle report Johnny, nice little website btw. I agree that the battle was one sided and that the protoss micro was almost completely missing(other then the bad blink at the beginning of the engagement). Fungal still seemed to help end the fight a bit faster.
One big thing I have noticed while controlling infestors is that you should just have them hang out behind a army and use fungal to force a infestor forward to cast the spell. Generally what I end up doing is move commanding my infestors forward, casting a couple fungals and the ones that did not cast just keep charging to the spot I move commanded, and in turn get fried up.
Infestors have a snare ability and if controlled right should be able to retreat out of most situations. Burrow can also be a major savior for your festors.
I feel the change was much too early anyway. The matchup was in infancy at the time of the patch, and changing things generally doesn't help right away either.
@kcdc - Storm is good against Roaches. It goes through armor and is good against clumped units... like Roaches. Also, with FFs you can limit the amount a player can run out of Storms.
@Dellward - It takes three Colossus attacks to kill an Infester.
@Kreos - If you had 3 Infesters: You could run up once when they are halfway across map and fungal twice. Fungal twice again when they get closer to your base. And fungal twice again during the battle. That would be the 6 fungals. This is not impossible.
On April 08 2011 02:27 Sajuuk7 wrote: @Kreos - If you had 3 Infesters: You could run up once when they are halfway across map and fungal twice. Fungal twice again when they get closer to your base. And fungal twice again during the battle. That would be the 6 fungals. This is not impossible.
And again, you're dismissing that infestors only have the harassment role and they're finished. What a lot of people are suggesting that you seem to dismiss is that with MORE than 2-3 infestors, they can have a potential spellcasting DPS role.
No one should be "dismissing" infestors at this point - it is true that they die extremely fast and are practically useless if caught by a nice Stalker blink...however they are still extremely useful if you watch them and keep them safe from P shenanigans. Especially in the early midgame when P's colossus count is low, infestors can trash stalker balls with the help of roach/hydra or even ling/bling.
Late game is harder because the P army grows in size and it's harder to FG everything at once (if not impossible), but FG can still help immobilize P while the Z gets into position; plus, if you're lucky enough to land 5-6 consecutive FG's, you destroy the P deathball automatically...and that's pretty powerful, regardless of how easy it is for infestors to die/be sniped.
I agree that at this point, I myself wouldn't make more than 2 or 3 infestors, just because they are so fragile and I can't trust myself to reliably watch them all the time; however, with good micro and minimap watching, then 8-9 infestors would become a viable means of stopping the P death ball. I just don't have the skill to pull that off as a Z at this point....I prefer teching to ultras or BL's to trash the P deathball.
I think zerg's need to find the right amount of them to make. From what I have seen the ones that use it are spamming them. So I double robo colossus blink stalker and they have roach infestor, leaving my colossus generally unchecked. Target fire any infestors you can with a colossus and blink spread stalkers. But this makes me stuck on defense because of the gas I need to hold a third base. Zerg needs to find a way to abuse that as well.
On April 03 2011 11:57 LaLuSh wrote: I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
Especially as protoss have got counters to infestors in colossi range and templar feedback.
Patch didn't do too much to change the infestor's situation in ZvP. I still think it's too much of an investment, too hard to micro; a strategy too prone to backfiring.
Whatever people say, you can't keep chaining fungals against a thermal lance army. Maybe in theory you can -- but doesn't work as well in practice. And it just gets harder and harder the longer the game progresses and the bigger the Protoss army gets.
2-3 infestors are always good. More than that commonly proves to be a waste.
Disagree completely. I don't think I've won a PvZ where Z has gotten a decent number of infestors out. I had a game where I was up a base the entire game (even bases is often considered to be advantage: P), ahead in food (Z should be ahead in an even game), and got completely rolled by ~6 infestors. Colossi with range aren't a counter. Templar feedback is 100% necessary, but it's not a proper counter since you wind up spending as much gas on tech and templar as Z spent on infestors. Storm sucks against roaches so you don't get much value out of the templar beyond defending the infestors, and since Z typically has access to more gas, it's a losing trade for P. I'm not going to call infestors imbalanced because it's too early and I need to work out responses, but against standard P play styles, infestors are really freaking good.
I'd love to see that replay, I've had a hard time finding good ZvP replays making good use of infestors, where the zerg isn't a level or two above the Protoss skill wise. Even I, merely a high diamond, have had nice games with infestors, only to watch the replay and relealize the Protoss never used Chronoboost, or only made 4 gateway on 2 base.
I think the day of the infestor is on its way but their proper usage has yet to be mastered.
Here are a few things I think players haven't really figured out, that will change the metagame once they are discovered:
#1 - Unit composition What units synergize with infestors best? How many infestors should I make for a given unit composition? At what point do I abandon/pursue infestors, based on the enemy's composition? Are they best used alone (commando style), in small groups (multi-prong attacks), or as part of the main army?
#2 - Energy Management I've seen quite a few games where the Zerg burns 100% of infestor energy during a single battle, but then loses to a follow up attack. How should energy be managed when using infestors? Should some infestors be left back at base to charge up energy, and/or ensure a charged infestor is available for the 2nd battle? At what point are there too few enemy units where I decide to NOT cast fungal, and simply run away?
#3 - Timing Do I rush to infestors or add them in during late game? Do I slowly add them to my army, or make many at once?
#4 - Use as Harassment If I have 4 infestors, do I keep them with my main army, or send 1 or 2 to harass expansions? If I harass should I favor Fungal Growth, Infested Terran or both? Should I use Infested Terran to snipe tech, depots, or go for harvesters? Should I try to burrow my infestors into position, or lob infested terran over a cliff (into the main for instance, on Slag Pits, with the aid of an Overlord for vision). Are ventral sacs going to be much help here?
#5 - Spell Selection Should all energy be saved just for fungal, or can we identify situations where it is better to use Infested Terran or Neural Parasite? In late, late game, and I have 8 infestor with full energy, should I consider using them to make 64 infested terran? Is there something to be worked out here in regards to using infested terran as a form of late game supply efficiency? (infestor at full energy, 1 infested terran "costs" 1/4 of a supply).
#6 - Infestor Preservation How reckless do we want to be with infestors? Are they worth sac'ing for a decent fungal? Can we find techniques to keep them alive? In what situations do we decide that they are too expensive too risk on certain types of missions? Should infestors in the main army be kept burrowed most of the time, or unburrowed so they can move faster?
On April 03 2011 11:57 LaLuSh wrote: I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
Especially as protoss have got counters to infestors in colossi range and templar feedback.
Patch didn't do too much to change the infestor's situation in ZvP. I still think it's too much of an investment, too hard to micro; a strategy too prone to backfiring.
Whatever people say, you can't keep chaining fungals against a thermal lance army. Maybe in theory you can -- but doesn't work as well in practice. And it just gets harder and harder the longer the game progresses and the bigger the Protoss army gets.
2-3 infestors are always good. More than that commonly proves to be a waste.
Disagree completely. I don't think I've won a PvZ where Z has gotten a decent number of infestors out. I had a game where I was up a base the entire game (even bases is often considered to be advantage: P), ahead in food (Z should be ahead in an even game), and got completely rolled by ~6 infestors. Colossi with range aren't a counter. Templar feedback is 100% necessary, but it's not a proper counter since you wind up spending as much gas on tech and templar as Z spent on infestors. Storm sucks against roaches so you don't get much value out of the templar beyond defending the infestors, and since Z typically has access to more gas, it's a losing trade for P. I'm not going to call infestors imbalanced because it's too early and I need to work out responses, but against standard P play styles, infestors are really freaking good.
I'd love to see that replay, I've had a hard time finding good ZvP replays making good use of infestors, where the zerg isn't a level or two above the Protoss skill wise. Even I, merely a high diamond, have had nice games with infestors, only to watch the replay and relealize the Protoss never used Chronoboost, or only made 4 gateway on 2 base.
I think the day of the infestor is on its way but their proper usage has yet to be mastered.
Here are a few things I think players haven't really figured out, that will change the metagame once they are discovered:
#1 - Unit composition What units synergize with infestors best? How many infestors should I make for a given unit composition? At what point do I abandon/pursue infestors, based on the enemy's composition? Are they best used alone (commando style), in small groups (multi-prong attacks), or as part of the main army?
#2 - Energy Management I've seen quite a few games where the Zerg burns 100% of infestor energy during a single battle, but then loses to a follow up attack. How should energy be managed when using infestors? Should some infestors be left back at base to charge up energy, and/or ensure a charged infestor is available for the 2nd battle? At what point are there too few enemy units where I decide to NOT cast fungal, and simply run away?
#3 - Timing Do I rush to infestors or add them in during late game? Do I slowly add them to my army, or make many at once?
#4 - Use as Harassment If I have 4 infestors, do I keep them with my main army, or send 1 or 2 to harass expansions? If I harass should I favor Fungal Growth, Infested Terran or both? Should I use Infested Terran to snipe tech, depots, or go for harvesters? Should I try to burrow my infestors into position, or lob infested terran over a cliff (into the main for instance, on Slag Pits, with the aid of an Overlord for vision). Are ventral sacs going to be much help here?
#5 - Spell Selection Should all energy be saved just for fungal, or can we identify situations where it is better to use Infested Terran or Neural Parasite? In late, late game, and I have 8 infestor with full energy, should I consider using them to make 64 infested terran? Is there something to be worked out here in regards to using infested terran as a form of late game supply efficiency? (infestor at full energy, 1 infested terran "costs" 1/4 of a supply).
#6 - Infestor Preservation How reckless do we want to be with infestors? Are they worth sac'ing for a decent fungal? Can we find techniques to keep them alive? In what situations do we decide that they are too expensive too risk on certain types of missions? Should infestors in the main army be kept burrowed most of the time, or unburrowed so they can move faster?
These are the kinds of posts that I really think the zerg community at a whole needs to think about. Zerg, in general, seem to have really gotten so frustrated with the matchup that we want to just slam what is familiar and comfortable into the toss game after game and hope it turns out well.
Blizzard drastically changed one of our most dynamic units and it has yet to seen the light of day in a competition yet, mainly because infestors are an unfamiliar unit to the matchup. However, over the next few months (probably) the top tier players are going to be trying to figure out the answers to those questions and we'll start seeing just how pivotal or not the unit will be.
On April 03 2011 11:57 LaLuSh wrote: I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
Especially as protoss have got counters to infestors in colossi range and templar feedback.
Patch didn't do too much to change the infestor's situation in ZvP. I still think it's too much of an investment, too hard to micro; a strategy too prone to backfiring.
Whatever people say, you can't keep chaining fungals against a thermal lance army. Maybe in theory you can -- but doesn't work as well in practice. And it just gets harder and harder the longer the game progresses and the bigger the Protoss army gets.
2-3 infestors are always good. More than that commonly proves to be a waste.
Disagree completely. I don't think I've won a PvZ where Z has gotten a decent number of infestors out. I had a game where I was up a base the entire game (even bases is often considered to be advantage: P), ahead in food (Z should be ahead in an even game), and got completely rolled by ~6 infestors. Colossi with range aren't a counter. Templar feedback is 100% necessary, but it's not a proper counter since you wind up spending as much gas on tech and templar as Z spent on infestors. Storm sucks against roaches so you don't get much value out of the templar beyond defending the infestors, and since Z typically has access to more gas, it's a losing trade for P. I'm not going to call infestors imbalanced because it's too early and I need to work out responses, but against standard P play styles, infestors are really freaking good.
I'd love to see that replay, I've had a hard time finding good ZvP replays making good use of infestors, where the zerg isn't a level or two above the Protoss skill wise. Even I, merely a high diamond, have had nice games with infestors, only to watch the replay and relealize the Protoss never used Chronoboost, or only made 4 gateway on 2 base.
I think the day of the infestor is on its way but their proper usage has yet to be mastered.
Here are a few things I think players haven't really figured out, that will change the metagame once they are discovered:
#1 - Unit composition What units synergize with infestors best? How many infestors should I make for a given unit composition? At what point do I abandon/pursue infestors, based on the enemy's composition? Are they best used alone (commando style), in small groups (multi-prong attacks), or as part of the main army?
#2 - Energy Management I've seen quite a few games where the Zerg burns 100% of infestor energy during a single battle, but then loses to a follow up attack. How should energy be managed when using infestors? Should some infestors be left back at base to charge up energy, and/or ensure a charged infestor is available for the 2nd battle? At what point are there too few enemy units where I decide to NOT cast fungal, and simply run away?
#3 - Timing Do I rush to infestors or add them in during late game? Do I slowly add them to my army, or make many at once?
#4 - Use as Harassment If I have 4 infestors, do I keep them with my main army, or send 1 or 2 to harass expansions? If I harass should I favor Fungal Growth, Infested Terran or both? Should I use Infested Terran to snipe tech, depots, or go for harvesters? Should I try to burrow my infestors into position, or lob infested terran over a cliff (into the main for instance, on Slag Pits, with the aid of an Overlord for vision). Are ventral sacs going to be much help here?
#5 - Spell Selection Should all energy be saved just for fungal, or can we identify situations where it is better to use Infested Terran or Neural Parasite? In late, late game, and I have 8 infestor with full energy, should I consider using them to make 64 infested terran? Is there something to be worked out here in regards to using infested terran as a form of late game supply efficiency? (infestor at full energy, 1 infested terran "costs" 1/4 of a supply).
#6 - Infestor Preservation How reckless do we want to be with infestors? Are they worth sac'ing for a decent fungal? Can we find techniques to keep them alive? In what situations do we decide that they are too expensive too risk on certain types of missions? Should infestors in the main army be kept burrowed most of the time, or unburrowed so they can move faster?
Synergy wise, I have actually had the most success with speedling/banelings
The reasoning is that to get good maximum usage of fungal AND neural parasite, the protoss must be pinned back. Roaches, being a ranged unit, once engaging the Protoss ball, make the protoss ball naturally spread into a line. All good protoss (as well as good zergs) will begin fanning out to out-flank using their ranged units. With both players trying to get "the better concave" fungal growth becomes greatly mitigated, at most catching 5-6 stalkers mid-late in the battle.
The line formation is terrible for infestors, because with stalkers at the flank and colossus at the center of the "line of fire", it becomes very hard to get off a good fungal OR a good parasite. Not to mention your infestors will be mixed in with the roaches and hydras, which the colossus are naturally shooting, it also becomes hard to move the infestors in without them getting leisurely focus fired.
With speedlings, the protoss is instantly balled by the surround, sometimes even forcing themselves into a tighter ball using forcefields. The colossus will do great damage on the speedlings. However, because infestors are allowed to cast in those 2-5 seconds the speedlings are still active, they are able to secure the entire Protoss army with two-three fungals, and chain-neural colossus to devastating effect.
Also, banerain + fungal provides the most potent Zerg ZvP splash damage, and can annihilate an army in seconds, only to be succeeded by hivetech Baneling/ultralisk/infestor/speedling, which is a nightmare for any Protoss to deal with without a sharp transition into mass voidray
As for harassment I feel baneling drops are more cost efficient and less risky than infestor harass. However on high ground ledges (3rd blue mineral base in Xel'naga, 3rd base in Typhon Peaks), just one or two infestors on the high ground can do much more than their cost.
Infestor preservation is a must, because in late game PvZ, well-micro'd blink stalker balls with support are the enemy of both broodlords and ultralisks, to be able to fungal and prevent blink spread vs ultralisks and blink forward (to snipe BL) is absolutely invaluable
On April 03 2011 11:57 LaLuSh wrote: I have always been of the opinion that fungal growth should (partially) ignore shields and do direct damage to armor (like a light version of plague from broodwar).
With fungal being a projectile as it was in the PTR build, I think fungal doing half of its damage to armor and half of its damage to shields would have been a good compromise.
Especially as protoss have got counters to infestors in colossi range and templar feedback.
Patch didn't do too much to change the infestor's situation in ZvP. I still think it's too much of an investment, too hard to micro; a strategy too prone to backfiring.
Whatever people say, you can't keep chaining fungals against a thermal lance army. Maybe in theory you can -- but doesn't work as well in practice. And it just gets harder and harder the longer the game progresses and the bigger the Protoss army gets.
2-3 infestors are always good. More than that commonly proves to be a waste.
Disagree completely. I don't think I've won a PvZ where Z has gotten a decent number of infestors out. I had a game where I was up a base the entire game (even bases is often considered to be advantage: P), ahead in food (Z should be ahead in an even game), and got completely rolled by ~6 infestors. Colossi with range aren't a counter. Templar feedback is 100% necessary, but it's not a proper counter since you wind up spending as much gas on tech and templar as Z spent on infestors. Storm sucks against roaches so you don't get much value out of the templar beyond defending the infestors, and since Z typically has access to more gas, it's a losing trade for P. I'm not going to call infestors imbalanced because it's too early and I need to work out responses, but against standard P play styles, infestors are really freaking good.
I'd love to see that replay, I've had a hard time finding good ZvP replays making good use of infestors, where the zerg isn't a level or two above the Protoss skill wise. Even I, merely a high diamond, have had nice games with infestors, only to watch the replay and relealize the Protoss never used Chronoboost, or only made 4 gateway on 2 base.
I think the day of the infestor is on its way but their proper usage has yet to be mastered.
Here are a few things I think players haven't really figured out, that will change the metagame once they are discovered:
#1 - Unit composition What units synergize with infestors best? How many infestors should I make for a given unit composition? At what point do I abandon/pursue infestors, based on the enemy's composition? Are they best used alone (commando style), in small groups (multi-prong attacks), or as part of the main army?
#2 - Energy Management I've seen quite a few games where the Zerg burns 100% of infestor energy during a single battle, but then loses to a follow up attack. How should energy be managed when using infestors? Should some infestors be left back at base to charge up energy, and/or ensure a charged infestor is available for the 2nd battle? At what point are there too few enemy units where I decide to NOT cast fungal, and simply run away?
#3 - Timing Do I rush to infestors or add them in during late game? Do I slowly add them to my army, or make many at once?
#4 - Use as Harassment If I have 4 infestors, do I keep them with my main army, or send 1 or 2 to harass expansions? If I harass should I favor Fungal Growth, Infested Terran or both? Should I use Infested Terran to snipe tech, depots, or go for harvesters? Should I try to burrow my infestors into position, or lob infested terran over a cliff (into the main for instance, on Slag Pits, with the aid of an Overlord for vision). Are ventral sacs going to be much help here?
#5 - Spell Selection Should all energy be saved just for fungal, or can we identify situations where it is better to use Infested Terran or Neural Parasite? In late, late game, and I have 8 infestor with full energy, should I consider using them to make 64 infested terran? Is there something to be worked out here in regards to using infested terran as a form of late game supply efficiency? (infestor at full energy, 1 infested terran "costs" 1/4 of a supply).
#6 - Infestor Preservation How reckless do we want to be with infestors? Are they worth sac'ing for a decent fungal? Can we find techniques to keep them alive? In what situations do we decide that they are too expensive too risk on certain types of missions? Should infestors in the main army be kept burrowed most of the time, or unburrowed so they can move faster?
Synergy wise, I have actually had the most success with speedling/banelings
The reasoning is that to get good maximum usage of fungal AND neural parasite, the protoss must be pinned back. Roaches, being a ranged unit, once engaging the Protoss ball, make the protoss ball naturally spread into a line. All good protoss (as well as good zergs) will begin fanning out to out-flank using their ranged units. With both players trying to get "the better concave" fungal growth becomes greatly mitigated, at most catching 5-6 stalkers mid-late in the battle.
The line formation is terrible for infestors, because with stalkers at the flank and colossus at the center of the "line of fire", it becomes very hard to get off a good fungal OR a good parasite. Not to mention your infestors will be mixed in with the roaches and hydras, which the colossus are naturally shooting, it also becomes hard to move the infestors in without them getting leisurely focus fired.
With speedlings, the protoss is instantly balled by the surround, sometimes even forcing themselves into a tighter ball using forcefields. The colossus will do great damage on the speedlings. However, because infestors are allowed to cast in those 2-5 seconds the speedlings are still active, they are able to secure the entire Protoss army with two-three fungals, and chain-neural colossus to devastating effect.
Also, banerain + fungal provides the most potent Zerg ZvP splash damage, and can annihilate an army in seconds, only to be succeeded by hivetech Baneling/ultralisk/infestor/speedling, which is a nightmare for any Protoss to deal with without a sharp transition into mass voidray
As for harassment I feel baneling drops are more cost efficient and less risky than infestor harass. However on high ground ledges (3rd blue mineral base in Xel'naga, 3rd base in Typhon Peaks), just one or two infestors on the high ground can do much more than their cost.
Infestor preservation is a must, because in late game PvZ, well-micro'd blink stalker balls with support are the enemy of both broodlords and ultralisks, to be able to fungal and prevent blink spread vs ultralisks and blink forward (to snipe BL) is absolutely invaluable
I agree once you get drops or ultras that ling/bane/infestor has amazing synergy. However until you get one of those two techs, FF hardcounters ling/bane.
But I have seen some high-level players adopt bane drop + infestor play, namely Naugrim & HayprO. However at the tournament level infestor play generally doesn't do well.
Alright guys, I've found something REALLY interesting while playing with Infestors and discovered something that could potentially change how infested terrans are used. I'm not to sure of this and I definitely need some input on what I'm about to say.
Basically, I've noticed that I've never used infested terrans outside of minor mineral line harass and building sniping. Why is this? Well, quite frankly, when you've got above 4 infestors with over half full energy, you invest so much time spamming Shift-Clickthat your focus on other aspects of the game is dulled. Well, I thought "Huh, isn't there a faster way to make infested terrans? If only there was a batch spawn ability..."
Well then I got to thinking "Is there a way you can enable mouse clicks on your keyboard?" I do some googling and sure enough, there is. By going into Accessibility and enabling Mouse Keys, your + sign on your number pad acts as a double click... So I change my Infested Terran hotkey from T to Delete (Something close enough to the Number pad + so I don't have to use both hands) and by spamming Shift-(Delete)-+ While clicking on my mouse, I was astonished at how quickly you could queue infested terrans. It might just be a neat gimmick but I definitely think that, at the very least, mass infested terrans can become more viable with this technique.
What are your thoughts guys?
EDIT: Quick replay in a unit test map. At 1:10 is when I start testing all the stuff, I was messing with my hotkeys for the first minute. The funny thing is, my apm peaks at 720 when using this method, literally double what my APM was using the normal method (I might be a little slower at clicking but I think you'll get the idea). http://rapidshare.com/files/456374696/InfestedTerranSpam.SC2Replay
I disagree with the op. Infestors are really awesome in zvp. One thing that people often don't think about in supply effectiveness. In the late game, I could care less about cost effectiveness. It doesn't matter if your 200 supply army is going to get brutally destroyed by protoss. A infestor does so much more damage than a roach and they cost the same supply.
On April 04 2011 12:28 DeadPixels wrote: Honest question, if you simultaneously cast several fungal growths on the same group of units does the damage stack or are they just wasted fungals?
Um.. if fungal growth damage stacked ZvX would be a joke. I believe only AOE damage that stacks in SC2 is thermal lance. (I could be wrong)
@usethis2 thermal lance, ultra damage, and tank splash, I believe all stack (none else do though) (thats because these are all over instantly rather then being a DOT like storm or fungal).
As to infesters, I have used infesters quite a bit, they are very usefull. However I think people underestimate some things about infestres. First burrow is CRITICAL with infesters. Being able to move and not be seen is very powerful in any matchup. Also casting FG/IT and then burrowing all your infesters so they cant be targeted is very good.
Secondly, people underestimate how powerful infested terrans are at harrass. If you have 2 infesters drop all thier energy (assuming about 125 energy each which seems about avr) in infested terrans at a base, it will kill all the workers or the hatchery/nexus/command center no problem (command center might be able to pick up and move away, but it depends on how you spread your IT). Although it wont kill a PF (you can drop just a few IT behind the mineral lines so the scvs cant keep mining)
Thank you obsid for the correction. And yes, I agree that a lot of Z players could better control the infestors. Even in GSL games I see them a-moving infestors with zerglings/banelings and let them die in the middle. I don't know how infestor micro works but if it's anything like HT they should always have infestors in separate group (or even multiple separate groups) and take better care of them.
I dont think that saving infestors should be a big concern. perhaps if you were to find a way to rush for infestors pretty fast, not die, and have them be useful, then yeah, saving them is a good idea. Like in ZvZ if it gets into roach vs roach, and you get some early infestors, then youd really want to save them for later.
But once you get maxed, well its prebably best to have the infestors a-move into the deathball and let them die. with high templars, once they are oom, well you can make archons, so its best to keep them alive.
But infestors, once they are oom, they are useless. Then, you need to wait over 2 minutes to get back to 75 energy, while its only 50 seconds to remake some infestors. So if you get into a lategame ZvP, the big battle of max vs max is likely to decide the game. if you sac your infestors, well they can soak up a small amount of damage, and I guess everything helps, and then you can remax. If you keep them alive, I dont see the advantage really, since now you have a lot of supply used up in infestors with no energy, that wont help you kill him, kill his expos, survive the rest of his army, or whatever. If you have a lot of money, then clearly, having 20 food of actual units building right after the fight, is better than having 20 food of infestors just sitting around even in a situation where you have little cash, having 10 infestors just sitting around for 2 minutes doesnt really seem worth it, might as well have had them soak up 900 more damage from the ennemy deathball, and have some other units still alive for those 2 minutes.
Now I'm only playing in diamond league but I think this is a decent example of how effective fungals can be when a Protoss clumps up their units.
I was the protoss and I did the normal good ol' 3 gateway sentry expansion against a zerg. As soon as I saw IdrA pull his nifty burrowed roach play, I decided I was never going to 6 gate again. So I've been kind of doing a push after I get 5 gateways and an immortal or two. This guy I was facing however, didn't get roaches. I scouted poorly and didn't realize he was going ling/baneling/infestor. Because I clumped up my units so heavily, one or two fungals effectively nullified my ability to abuse range + forcefields and he just kept pumping lings to eventually whittle down my forces to nothing. I couldn't take a 3rd base because we were close positions and the lings gave him so much map control versus roaches. He also had a shocking amount of queens which didn't allow me to tech switch into heavy void ray play.
I guess in hindsight I could have just gotten like 15 phoenixes and lifted all of his queens but that's why I'm only in diamond
i'm only bronze...but wouldn't it be more efficient to neural parasite the collossi? i know it can get hard with FF's and i guess the angle would be hard to pull off...
EPT
![[image loading]](http://img827.imageshack.us/i/infestorrange.jpg/)
![[image loading]](http://www.battlereports.com/vegas/infestors1/zealots1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.battlereports.com/vegas/infestors1/zerg_army.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.battlereports.com/vegas/infestors1/protoss_army.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.battlereports.com/vegas/infestors1/battle.jpg)
