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Hey there everyone,
i've been playing HotS for a couple of days now and i've come to realise that every T1 unit is basicly replaced by a spawned "free" unit in T2 and T3, while they themselves become more and more useless.
Lets look at what Zerg T1 units do and what replaces them why:
![[image loading]](http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/176/5/b/Beware_of_zergling_by_Dalthedragon.png)
Zergling
Often casters call zerglings "free" which is kind of true in mid to lategame.
While they are cheap and very mobile and make for a nice "meatshield" between you and your expensive units, they are so susceptible to +1 Zealots, AoE or forcefields that their direct fighting strengh decreases more and more throughout the lengh of the game that they end up as a throwaway mineraldump which tries to kill of unprotected expansions. Due to the ability of protoss to sim city their expos with warpgates and cannons, and zealotwarpins (who are very strong in defending expansions) they are even pretty bad at this.
The free Zergling: Broodling
The broodling replaces them in a way that the zergling never will be able to compete with. Its actually free, ignores the approaching distance to their target and they respawn over and over and over keeping the meat shield for your higher tier units up without reinforcement time, while having basicly the same combat strengh as zerglings. One broodlord can support 3 about 3 Broodlings in a fight, depending on the enemy AoE and dps in general. This makes the broodlord less supplyeffective than the zergling at first, but since the broodlings replenish this quickly makes up for their "inferior" numbers when facing high dps units.
![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100721022202/starcraft/images/9/9c/Roach_SC2_Head2.jpg)
Roach
The roach is supposed to be a cheap, beefy T1 counter which can take a punch while dealing decent damage themselves. The roach does this all pretty well, while being quite mobile, but this comes at the cost of 2 supply, basicly making roaches a midgame or nonstop pressure unit. Also it is once again so weak to forcefields and colossi (ill leave out storm since roaches are pretty good vs stormtech) that they turn out to be too weak to break deathballs or proper defense just by reinforcing or outnumbering.
The free Roach: Locusts
Now the locust is pretty beefy itself and being a free and high dps unit, it does everything a roach could do in a fight, but straight up better. Also it "heals up" by replacing all the dead and wounded by new fresh locusts, as long as the swarmhost lives. For the cost of 3 supply i get 2 roach equivalents, making the swarmhost way way more supply effective.
Why would i make roaches apart from having some to survive timings? If i try to break my opponent i gamble that they are not good enough or not well enough prepared to deal with a simple roach attack, leaving the roach only a role as a unit that helps me survive timings or punish obviously weak defenses. (Its faster better in smaller numbers and comes earlier than swarmhosts, thats all it does to be better)
![[image loading]](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/partipo/7797921/5657/5657_original.gif)
Hydralisk
Now the hydralisk has been and still is the ill family member of the zerg army. While it comes at T2, it is slow, expensive, pretty decent in terms of supply effectiveness. Its sick dps gets shut down due to its absurdly low HP and its tendency to clump up and cuddle with eachother.
This once again makes the hydralisk very very weak to all kinds of AoE damage. But unlike the other T1/1,5 Zerg units, it comes too late, too expensive and too weak for its time in the tech tree.
The free Hydralisk: Infested Terrans
Infestors and Infester Terrans come a the same time the hydralisk does. They are as mobile as the hydralisk offcreep until they get their speed upgrade at T3 (which is funny that a combatunit is the same speed as a caster). They come at the cost of 25 energy, allowing an infestor to spawn up to 8 of these high dps ranged glass cannons.
1 hydralisk deals 14,5 dps. As we compare this with 9,3 dps x number of infested terrans, we find out that the infestor is superior to the hydralisk as soon as they are capable of spawning 2 infested terrans. This explains why we almost never see hydralisks in pro games but tons and tons of infested terran eggs flying all over the place.
Once again, if you lose the IT's, you lost nothing, as long as the infestor still lives.
Conclusion:
I think we can all agree that it is way more impressive to see someone macro up insane amounts of units, using perfect injects and drone timings to crush incoming armys, while noone will every say:
"Did you see how (random zerg name) crushed (random protoss name) by watching his free units attack with no risk at all?"
But, since zerg early/midgame combatunits all lack the ability so hold their own in the lategame (neither by cost nor by supplyeffectiveness), the zerg players who want to win, will have to throw summons over and over and over again, until the enemy (who actually uses recources) gets starved out.
Since i already explained how zerglings cant do much in low numbers to break protoss expansions this results in a situation where tons and tons of spines and spores get spammed to back up the super slow summoner army, making any thought of basetrade/baserace pointless. This leads to boring games where noone attacks and we all see zerg turtle up, get a super expensive super effective summoner army and then wait for one big big fight which decides everything.
TLDR: Zerg T1/1,5/2 is way too weak in the lategame vs Protoss, this forces Zerg T2,5/3 to be stupidly strong and costeffective without support of early tier units. Zerglings are too weak to break lategame expansion defenses, leading to spines and spores being mineraldumps. This makes for boring turtle games.
Edit: I dont have a US version of SC2, so if anyone finds that this is something that blizzard should think about what i just wrote, feel free to post it on the blizzard US HotS forums.
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I can't agree with your arguments. Forced pigeonhole it seems.
Just some points:
- You can't remax on broodlings as fast as zerglings if all your forces die
- You can't attack and retreat with broodlings like you can with zerglings + nydus worm
- You can't chase things down with infested terran or defend your whole base with infested terran (you can chase things away, but you won't do any damage and you will hvae wasted energy)
Not gonna bother with more of the differences but maybe you should think of these 'summoner' units as post-max supply T1 additions?
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The thing is, i dont need to remax. Take a maxed army with zergling roach hydra compared to a maxed army of those summoning units i just described, both in the same endgame situation vs a protoss deathball.
You could probably remax 3 or 4 times with the early tier composition and still lose to the same protoss doomball that didnt get reinforcements, while the maxed T3 composition will rape that.
That way, i dont even have to remax. Of course, if i lose my army i could remax faster on T1 units. But by that time fights end up so strongly in favor of one side that the cheap unit remax will just die in storms, colossi laser beams ect. Losing your army in a lategame often ist GG unless you have the bank to somehow remax on another super army.
You are right that the early tier units are more mobile. But this doesnt help me in lategame, where everyone has a strong army and you cant win without beating that army at some point. The way things work out i dont have to chase down anything in lategame. I just push. Sooner or later they will have to engage me, or counter into tons of spines, spores ect and THEN face my slow superarmy coming home, spraying free units everywhere it goes.
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There is a lot of different styles of Zerg that you are unfamiliar with obviously, for instance you said Roaches are bad vs forcefields when really they aren't, There is ways to break forcefields, like a really fast burrow / roach burrow movement attack, It sounds like you really don't ever make banelings vs Protoss, they are INSANELY good vs protoss if you use them correctly, a lot of the situations you describe where you can't break lategame protoss expansions with just zerglings, if you add Banelings to the Zerglings with upgrades they will roll through expansions, and a lot of the time kill all, or the majority of the probes at that expansion in the process.
There is different ways to make the Zerg units that appear weak seem stronger by gaining early game advantages vs Protoss by doing builds that hardcounter there builds, a lot of the time I will open 2base mutalisk then take my 3rd a little later, harass with mutas and meanwhile go swarmhost ling, in my opinion it is important to tech switch as much as you can as Zerg to catch your opponent off guard.
There is many different ways to play the game, you should understand all of them before you think you are omniscient about it.
god bless zergy
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On October 17 2012 09:35 GGzerG wrote:
There is many different ways to play the game, you should understand all of them before you think you are omniscient about it.
I think the OP is just explaining something that is immediately obvious, although not entirely true in all situations. The Broodling is basically a free Zergling, the Locust is basically a free Roach, and the Infested Terran is basically a free Hydralisk.
However, there are going to be situations where you want Zerglings instead of Broodlings, and where you want Roaches instead of Locusts. In fact, Roaches are superior to Locusts in a lot of situations. The one thing I can agree 100% is that Hydras suck compared to Infestors, although the Infested Terran is only one part of this issue.
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In most games I see this is the case, the late game Zerg army consists mainly of broodlords and infestors, with roaches and lings used in small numbers to defend bases or fight the clumps of stalkers that blink forward trying to snipe broodlords and infestors.
In a weird way I find the broodlord/infestor style quite "Zergy" as they spawn endless waves of free units which the Toss/Terran has to wade through. This fits in well with a swarm style. So I don't mind them being used as the main battle units, however it would make the game better if roach/ling could be better at assaulting expansions so that the game would be more dynamic. In BW there was Dark Swarm so every expo could be threatened by cracklings. This element is not present in SC2.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
The free Hydralisk: Infested Terrans
Infestors and Infester Terrans come a the same time the hydralisk does. They are more mobile than the hydralisk offcreep untill they get their speed upgrade at T3
Um, what? They are both 2.25 speed off creep, same as most units. Marine, zealot, immortal, colossus, archon, marauder, medivac, viking, the vast majority of units in the game. Hydras are faster on creep, and are more mobile anti air than infested terrans. Ive never seen somebody complain about hydralisks being less mobile than infestors before.
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there really isn't anything free about 2 supply.
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On October 17 2012 14:03 Cyro wrote:
Um, what? They are both 2.25 speed off creep, same as most units. Marine, zealot, immortal, colossus, archon, marauder, medivac, viking, the vast majority of units in the game. Hydras are faster on creep, and are more mobile anti air than infested terrans. Ive never seen somebody complain about hydralisks being less mobile than infestors before.
This is true, but mobility is not really the issue, it's utility. Infestors > Hydras in pretty much every situation.
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I agree with Qgelfich in most points. Yes, in some cases Zerglings and Roaches are better but since you have Infestors mobility isn't that of a problem anymore because of Fungal. So you even do not need to chase units down, because you just root them down.
The problem is, that the free Units are much better than the costly units what somehow is logical. In my opinion he is right, that the low tier units of zerg could need a fix, except the Roach. Yes there are upgrades which should make the Zergling more viable in Lategame as well as the Hydralisk in HotS. But I think that building placement works pretty well against Zerglings as well as if a runby happens, especially against Protoss, it is not that hard anymore because a few warped in Zealots will deal pretty fast with the Zerglings.
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Um, what? They are both 2.25 speed off creep, same as most units. Marine, zealot, immortal, colossus, archon, marauder, medivac, viking, the vast majority of units in the game. Hydras are faster on creep, and are more mobile anti air than infested terrans. Ive never seen somebody complain about hydralisks being less mobile than infestors before.
Fixed the infestor movement part, somehow i still had the prepatch speed of 2,5 in my head.
There is different ways to make the Zerg units that appear weak seem stronger by gaining early game advantages vs Protoss by doing builds that hardcounter there builds, a lot of the time I will open 2base mutalisk then take my 3rd a little later, harass with mutas and meanwhile go swarmhost ling, in my opinion it is important to tech switch as much as you can as Zerg to catch your opponent off guard.
The issue im talking about is mainly in the lategame. Against protoss you can only techswich so much in the lategame, since archons and blinkstalkers are decent against almost any type of zerg composition. Saying that your weak units appear stronger by gaining an early game advantage would rely on your opponent playing dumb hardcounterable builds and not scouting.
However, there are going to be situations where you want Zerglings instead of Broodlings, and where you want Roaches instead of Locusts. In fact, Roaches are superior to Locusts in a lot of situations.
I dont know in which lategame engagement vs a protoss doomball you would prefer 8 zerglings over a broodlord. And when would you rather have 3 roaches over 2 swarmhosts when you try to push the protoss? Early tier units dont even make for a stronger composition, i could always replace them with just MORE summoning units and have the same or better results.
Compare that with terran. Marines are a staple of every bio/mech composition, so are hellions in mech. Blinkstalkes are the core unit of a protoss lategame army and make for an awesome reinforcement as soon as the fight starts.
Plus neither the swarmhost nor the broodlord or the infestor feel zergy. They are super larva efficient, giving me the feeling that i dont even need to inject, while being super slow and immobile. They also are all pretty high range, which doesnt feel zerglike at all....
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So they add 1 new unit with summons and now they are the summoner race? 
I actually like that you can choose to have a summoner composition. It's a great way to make Zerg feel, behave, and be played against differently than the other races. It also really helps reinforce the swarmy nature of the race without having to make their units bad.
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Locusts are "hardlimited" by the amount of Swarm Host. There can always only be 2 locusts per hosts. The locusts are simply the fighting incarnation of swarm hosts, kind of like marauders don't do damage, yet their projectiles do and you have to deal with the marauders, to get rid of the projectiles.
TLDR: 2locusts basically cost 3supply and 200/100
Broodlings are "softlimited" by the amount of Broodlords, as they are timed. On top of that, they are way weaker than zerglings and it's not like the broodlords main purpose is making broodlings, broodlings are rather just a sideeffect of building your air-to-ground superiority unit. Noone actually cares about broodlings, include the damage of broodlings in the broodlord, give it a short slow effect + damage reduction effect (simulating the path-blocking and the shot-eating of broodlings) and nothing will change.
TLDR: Noone builds broodlords to "produce" broodlings instead of zerglings, you build broodlords because you want air to ground artillery.
Infested Terrans are "softlimited" by the amount of infestors and their energy. It's the only one that is somewhat true. You build Infestors to get the ranged fighting power that hydras should give you and the amount of energy an Infestor can store and the strong ranged ball effect in SC2 make them simply superior to any form of unit that you would have to build. It's basically like having the ability to spawn a 200/200 temporary marineball, so you can create a temporary 400/200 army, which is just silly.
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On October 17 2012 21:44 Big J wrote:
Locusts are "hardlimited" by the amount of Swarm Host. There can always only be 2 locusts per hosts. The locusts are simply the fighting incarnation of swarm hosts, kind of like marauders don't do damage, yet their projectiles do and you have to deal with the marauders, to get rid of the projectiles.
TLDR: 2locusts basically cost 3supply and 200/100
Broodlings are "softlimited" by the amount of Broodlords, as they are timed. On top of that, they are way weaker than zerglings and it's not like the broodlords main purpose is making broodlings, broodlings are rather just a sideeffect of building your air-to-ground superiority unit. Noone actually cares about broodlings, include the damage of broodlings in the broodlord, give it a short slow effect + damage reduction effect (simulating the path-blocking and the shot-eating of broodlings) and nothing will change.
TLDR: Noone builds broodlords to "produce" broodlings instead of zerglings, you build broodlords because you want air to ground artillery.
Infested Terrans are "softlimited" by the amount of infestors and their energy. It's the only one that is somewhat true. You build Infestors to get the ranged fighting power that hydras should give you and the amount of energy an Infestor can store and the strong ranged ball effect in SC2 make them simply superior to any form of unit that you would have to build. It's basically like having the ability to spawn a 200/200 temporary marineball, so you can create a temporary 400/200 army, which is just silly.
Disagree with broodling because it is not the same as a projectile. The broodling's effect can be eliminated by focus firing so it's not the same as damage negation. Its block can be removed by high dps or blink, which is different from a pure slow. On the other hand, locusts can be equivalent to having a unit with a shield that regenerates and attacks can only be made while shield is up. Infested terrans are nothing like hydras short of firing at range. They can't out run any units so unlike hydras, their usefulness is usually limited to immobile targets. They are also initially much more mobile since they effective teleport to their spawn area with minimal set up time.
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Honestly, I already play this way in WoL. HotS doesn't cause this problem, it was around a LONG time before HotS.
My current build in WoL, which is the most successful build I have been using in ZvP in recent time involves getting to 3 base, massing spines all over my nat and 3rd while pumping infestors as fast as possible until I get to the 20+ range, at which point I will switch over to making BL until they are in the 10+ range, then I make a group of about 30-40 cracklings, and back to infestor/corruptor spam, I never stop making spine crawlers, worker production counts are often 200+ for me in any decent ZvP now.
There are a few major reasons for why this works, and seems better than standard play.
1) Force Field
To keep from rambling, it nullifies virtually every Zerg ground unit in the game. Making my army easy to chop up and destroy one piece at a time has the effect of making me just not make an army.
2) Zerg units suck
Roaches are half-way decent until Stalkers get blink and/or colossi hit the field. Sadly, even before that, you have to contend with force fields and immortals which, everyone should know, both destroy the power of the roach.
Lings are worthless except for harass. Hydras aren't EVER worth making in ZvP. Ultras are laughable. Mutas, while fun, aren't very effective unless you were already ahead. I guess Banelings are good, but again, force fields > banelings.
Basically... why make anything BUT BL/infestor/corruptor? There really is no reason to so long as you can get to that point.
3) Competing with Protoss tech is expensive.
Protoss has the capability of Chrono Boosting whatever tech they want out very quickly. Often time, this means they can be on 3/3 around the same time I am finishing up 2/1/0. While Protoss will likely invest in an important unit-specific upgrade like Blink or Thermal Lance or both, I have to invest in an upgrade and tech structure for every single ground unit I want to use, sometimes multiple upgrades even. If I don't use roaches, I can save the gas from roach speed. If I don't bother with lings until 20+ min into the game, I can save the money from metabolic boost. All these little things add up. Get to infestors, get the upgrade, maybe get +1 ranged weapons for ITs. Other than that, just secure my position and force a stalemate, once I have established 3/4 bases, I can afford all the upgrades I need to really fight Protoss with a ground army, but now there are Colossi everywhere, so that's out... guess I'll just work on broods.
If I want to fight with a legit army, I am going in wth sub-par upgrades. If I want decent upgrades, I can't afford a decent army, let's just skip the whole thing and play defense for the first 30 minutes of every game.
4) Blizzard is fucking retarded
Protoss has been badly designed since release. Warp Gate has been problematic, Colossi have been disliked, Force Field has been talked about endlessly, and yet, they do nothing.
Zerg isn't much better. The race barely functioned at release. Outside of the Infestor changes, nothing has really done anything good for the race vs Protoss. I guess the roach range was nice, but those days are long since past.
The solution:
Honestly, if we want non-stupid ZvP, Blizzard has to give Zerg a way to engage the Protoss army in the mid-game. Namely, reduce the effectiveness of the Colossus. Force Fields are strong, problematic even, but they don't completely shut down all ground-based play. Colossus do, and they are bad for the game. If Zerg had a way to deal with Force Fields, that would be nice, but the Colossus is clearly broken and the major source of why Zerg has no incentive to build actual costly units at all.
Personally, I don't see the Swarm Host doing anything for ZvP. The MU is evolving into a scenario where Zerg wants as many spines and infestors as possible to secure more bases, Swarm Hosts simply reduce the number of Infestors available. Vipers might be nice, but they will also be secondary.
I could always be wrong, but for the first time in months, I feel like I can clearly see how to play ZvP properly, and it's fucking stupid.
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On October 17 2012 22:25 ddrddrddrddr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 21:44 Big J wrote:
Locusts are "hardlimited" by the amount of Swarm Host. There can always only be 2 locusts per hosts. The locusts are simply the fighting incarnation of swarm hosts, kind of like marauders don't do damage, yet their projectiles do and you have to deal with the marauders, to get rid of the projectiles.
TLDR: 2locusts basically cost 3supply and 200/100
Broodlings are "softlimited" by the amount of Broodlords, as they are timed. On top of that, they are way weaker than zerglings and it's not like the broodlords main purpose is making broodlings, broodlings are rather just a sideeffect of building your air-to-ground superiority unit. Noone actually cares about broodlings, include the damage of broodlings in the broodlord, give it a short slow effect + damage reduction effect (simulating the path-blocking and the shot-eating of broodlings) and nothing will change.
TLDR: Noone builds broodlords to "produce" broodlings instead of zerglings, you build broodlords because you want air to ground artillery.
Infested Terrans are "softlimited" by the amount of infestors and their energy. It's the only one that is somewhat true. You build Infestors to get the ranged fighting power that hydras should give you and the amount of energy an Infestor can store and the strong ranged ball effect in SC2 make them simply superior to any form of unit that you would have to build. It's basically like having the ability to spawn a 200/200 temporary marineball, so you can create a temporary 400/200 army, which is just silly. Disagree with broodling because it is not the same as a projectile. The broodling's effect can be eliminated by focus firing so it's not the same as damage negation. Its block can be removed by high dps or blink, which is different from a pure slow.
Yeah, but it could be balanced that on average it does the same. But that's not even the real point. The point is that you don't build Broodlords to produce broodlings. They have a nice effect, but if they were plain guardians, they would still work similarily. The point of them is simply that they have enough range and damage and fly, so they are actually worth building against ground superiority armies.
On October 17 2012 22:25 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
On the other hand, locusts can be equivalent to having a unit with a shield that regenerates and attacks can only be made while shield is up. Infested terrans are nothing like hydras short of firing at range. They can't out run any units so unlike hydras, their usefulness is usually limited to immobile targets. They are also initially much more mobile since they effective teleport to their spawn area with minimal set up time.
Of course ITs are nothing like Hydras, they don't suck balls out of various reasons, some which you have given. But their role - namely dishing out a fuckton of damage against ground and air costefficiently (when deployed in the combat in the right ways) - is actually what people expect hydralisks to do.
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On October 17 2012 23:37 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 22:25 ddrddrddrddr wrote:On October 17 2012 21:44 Big J wrote:
Locusts are "hardlimited" by the amount of Swarm Host. There can always only be 2 locusts per hosts. The locusts are simply the fighting incarnation of swarm hosts, kind of like marauders don't do damage, yet their projectiles do and you have to deal with the marauders, to get rid of the projectiles.
TLDR: 2locusts basically cost 3supply and 200/100
Broodlings are "softlimited" by the amount of Broodlords, as they are timed. On top of that, they are way weaker than zerglings and it's not like the broodlords main purpose is making broodlings, broodlings are rather just a sideeffect of building your air-to-ground superiority unit. Noone actually cares about broodlings, include the damage of broodlings in the broodlord, give it a short slow effect + damage reduction effect (simulating the path-blocking and the shot-eating of broodlings) and nothing will change.
TLDR: Noone builds broodlords to "produce" broodlings instead of zerglings, you build broodlords because you want air to ground artillery.
Infested Terrans are "softlimited" by the amount of infestors and their energy. It's the only one that is somewhat true. You build Infestors to get the ranged fighting power that hydras should give you and the amount of energy an Infestor can store and the strong ranged ball effect in SC2 make them simply superior to any form of unit that you would have to build. It's basically like having the ability to spawn a 200/200 temporary marineball, so you can create a temporary 400/200 army, which is just silly. Disagree with broodling because it is not the same as a projectile. The broodling's effect can be eliminated by focus firing so it's not the same as damage negation. Its block can be removed by high dps or blink, which is different from a pure slow. Yeah, but it could be balanced that on average it does the same. But that's not even the real point. The point is that you don't build Broodlords to produce broodlings. They have a nice effect, but if they were plain guardians, they would still work similarily. The point of them is simply that they have enough range and damage and fly, so they are actually worth building against ground superiority armies. Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 22:25 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
On the other hand, locusts can be equivalent to having a unit with a shield that regenerates and attacks can only be made while shield is up. Infested terrans are nothing like hydras short of firing at range. They can't out run any units so unlike hydras, their usefulness is usually limited to immobile targets. They are also initially much more mobile since they effective teleport to their spawn area with minimal set up time. Of course ITs are nothing like Hydras, they don't suck balls out of various reasons, some which you have given. But their role - namely dishing out a fuckton of damage against ground and air costefficiently (when deployed in the combat in the right ways) - is actually what people expect hydralisks to do.
I just wanted to talk about the "you don't build brood lords for broodlings" bit.
While this is true, I WOULD build broodlings/zerglings if I had the capability of getting them past force fields into meaningful combat. The biggest problem with Zergs ground units is that they can't even engage the protoss army in cost-effective ways when both sides play right. Part of the reason Brood Lords are so good is that they allow their Broodlings to do exactly this.
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On October 17 2012 23:51 Jermstuddog wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 23:37 Big J wrote:On October 17 2012 22:25 ddrddrddrddr wrote:On October 17 2012 21:44 Big J wrote:
Locusts are "hardlimited" by the amount of Swarm Host. There can always only be 2 locusts per hosts. The locusts are simply the fighting incarnation of swarm hosts, kind of like marauders don't do damage, yet their projectiles do and you have to deal with the marauders, to get rid of the projectiles.
TLDR: 2locusts basically cost 3supply and 200/100
Broodlings are "softlimited" by the amount of Broodlords, as they are timed. On top of that, they are way weaker than zerglings and it's not like the broodlords main purpose is making broodlings, broodlings are rather just a sideeffect of building your air-to-ground superiority unit. Noone actually cares about broodlings, include the damage of broodlings in the broodlord, give it a short slow effect + damage reduction effect (simulating the path-blocking and the shot-eating of broodlings) and nothing will change.
TLDR: Noone builds broodlords to "produce" broodlings instead of zerglings, you build broodlords because you want air to ground artillery.
Infested Terrans are "softlimited" by the amount of infestors and their energy. It's the only one that is somewhat true. You build Infestors to get the ranged fighting power that hydras should give you and the amount of energy an Infestor can store and the strong ranged ball effect in SC2 make them simply superior to any form of unit that you would have to build. It's basically like having the ability to spawn a 200/200 temporary marineball, so you can create a temporary 400/200 army, which is just silly. Disagree with broodling because it is not the same as a projectile. The broodling's effect can be eliminated by focus firing so it's not the same as damage negation. Its block can be removed by high dps or blink, which is different from a pure slow. Yeah, but it could be balanced that on average it does the same. But that's not even the real point. The point is that you don't build Broodlords to produce broodlings. They have a nice effect, but if they were plain guardians, they would still work similarily. The point of them is simply that they have enough range and damage and fly, so they are actually worth building against ground superiority armies. On October 17 2012 22:25 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
On the other hand, locusts can be equivalent to having a unit with a shield that regenerates and attacks can only be made while shield is up. Infested terrans are nothing like hydras short of firing at range. They can't out run any units so unlike hydras, their usefulness is usually limited to immobile targets. They are also initially much more mobile since they effective teleport to their spawn area with minimal set up time. Of course ITs are nothing like Hydras, they don't suck balls out of various reasons, some which you have given. But their role - namely dishing out a fuckton of damage against ground and air costefficiently (when deployed in the combat in the right ways) - is actually what people expect hydralisks to do. I just wanted to talk about the "you don't build brood lords for broodlings" bit. While this is true, I WOULD build broodlings/zerglings if I had the capability of getting them past force fields into meaningful combat. The biggest problem with Zergs ground units is that they can't even engage the protoss army in cost-effective ways when both sides play right. Part of the reason Brood Lords are so good is that they allow their Broodlings to do exactly this.
True, true. But as it stands, you still don't build broodlords because they are "the better zerglings", as the OP seems to put it.
Also for that part, if it wasn't for forcefields and Colossi doing quite greatly against lings(and blings), Archons and Templar do probably even better and bigger stalkerballs do quite well vs zerglings, if you use Terrain properly. But yeah, forcefields are probably the biggest problem that force roaches early on.
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EPT
