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So Destructicon, I am one of those guys with a broken neural synapse somewhere.
I'm gonna make a few points in defense of fungal's design here, so I hope you read this and think about it before judging my medical condition again.
1) many games (RTS or non-RTS) work with root/silence/control-decreasing spells. And I haven't seen people claim that e.g. Dota is a bad game because you are forced into doing nothing after someone has applied such an effect to you. If we stay with the example of Dota, what is the counter to such stun spells? Avoiding to get into range of them and only getting into range when you are prepared to take losses. In short: countermoves that are applied before it is being casted.
2) It is absolutely untrue that fungal decreases the ability to retreat, more than other things. A popular unit composition in Starcraft is "Terran-Mech". Well, I haven't heard of that Mech army that could "just retreat" against MMM, roach(/hydra), zerglings, Ultralisks, chargelots, blinkstalkers etc. Or similarily, WoL Hydralisks. If you bring them to the party you must be prepared to let them die. Or anytime you fight zerglings with anything slower than hellions. Hell, just play Protoss against MMM and see how well you can retreat with your high Tier tech units that all get outrun by stimmed bio.
You even explicitely mention that you cannot retreat against Muta/Ling/Bling - yet you can optimize the loss. Well, how is that different from Infestors? The only difference is what I'm saying all along: the time for that optimization process is lower, because of the difference between melee attacks and 8range fungal. So all that is needed is to adjust the Infestor/opponent relationship in ways, that you have more time and you will get a similar dynamic as against Muta/ling/bling.
3) Fungal, like any spell/attack/unit is meant to be good against something. Terrans like you love to bring up how you cannot reactively "run out of a fungal". Well, you choose the wrong units to combat Infestors, so you either mix those units with something else or you are just strategically outplayed - which in a strategy game should be the main factor deciding about win or loss. It really has been shown, that you absolutely can afford to mix in tanks/ghosts/HTs/Colossi - counters to the "Fungal - Infestor" - or build compositions that include more beefy units like Thors/BC/Archons - units that don't care as much about getting fungaled.
4) A fungal only "decreases the micro" (after being applied) of some units and only for 4seconds. To do that to your whole army and do it repeatedly, I have to have many Infestors (and you have to make many mistakes). The core component of each strategy game is that if I play a certain strategy, you should try to counteract that strategy. In this case, if I have many Infestors, the first question should not be "how do I beat them with what I have". The question in any RTS should be "what should I build". As said in 3), the "Fungal-Infestor" can absolutly be countered by building certain compositions and therefore, if I wasn't for the incredible power of mass IT, mass Infestor and with it mass fungal shouldn't be too much of an issue, unless you neglect adjusting your strategy.
5) As always, it greatly depends on the enviroment. If I put fungal in a game with a ton of "dispel"-spells... would you still believe that fungal is bad design?
With all of those above points, I want to show that AoE root+DoT can be a good thing in an RTS game. Is the Infestor right now an issue in WoL? I certainly think so! Is "the problem" fungal's design? Not really. It's that you can have too much fungal-energy available strategywise due to a too versatile Infestor (compared to its counters) and that the reaction time after spotting Infestors is too little, even if you do all those good tricks proplayers use, like blink a stalker ahead, stim a few units ahead.
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On December 27 2012 23:22 Big J wrote:
So Destructicon, I am one of those guys with a broken neural synapse somewhere.
I'm gonna make a few points in defense of fungal's design here, so I hope you read this and think about it before judging my medical condition again.
1) many games (RTS or non-RTS) work with root/silence/control-decreasing spells. And I haven't seen people claim that e.g. Dota is a bad game because you are forced into doing nothing after someone has applied such an effect to you. If we stay with the example of Dota, what is the counter to such stun spells? Avoiding to get into range of them and only getting into range when you are prepared to take losses. In short: countermoves that are applied before it is being casted.
2) It is absolutely untrue that fungal decreases the ability to retreat, more than other things. A popular unit composition in Starcraft is "Terran-Mech". Well, I haven't heard of that Mech army that could "just retreat" against MMM, roach(/hydra), zerglings, Ultralisks, chargelots, blinkstalkers etc. Or similarily, WoL Hydralisks. If you bring them to the party you must be prepared to let them die. Or anytime you fight zerglings with anything slower than hellions. Hell, just play Protoss against MMM and see how well you can retreat with your high Tier tech units that all get outrun by stimmed bio.
You even explicitely mention that you cannot retreat against Muta/Ling/Bling - yet you can optimize the loss. Well, how is that different from Infestors? The only difference is what I'm saying all along: the time for that optimization process is lower, because of the difference between melee attacks and 8range fungal. So all that is needed is to adjust the Infestor/opponent relationship in ways, that you have more time and you will get a similar dynamic as against Muta/ling/bling.
3) Fungal, like any spell/attack/unit is meant to be good against something. Terrans like you love to bring up how you cannot reactively "run out of a fungal". Well, you choose the wrong units to combat Infestors, so you either mix those units with something else or you are just strategically outplayed - which in a strategy game should be the main factor deciding about win or loss. It really has been shown, that you absolutely can afford to mix in tanks/ghosts/HTs/Colossi - counters to the "Fungal - Infestor" - or build compositions that include more beefy units like Thors/BC/Archons - units that don't care as much about getting fungaled.
4) A fungal only "decreases the micro" (after being applied) of some units and only for 4seconds. To do that to your whole army and do it repeatedly, I have to have many Infestors (and you have to make many mistakes). The core component of each strategy game is that if I play a certain strategy, you should try to counteract that strategy. In this case, if I have many Infestors, the first question should not be "how do I beat them with what I have". The question in any RTS should be "what should I build". As said in 3), the "Fungal-Infestor" can absolutly be countered by building certain compositions and therefore, if I wasn't for the incredible power of mass IT, mass Infestor and with it mass fungal shouldn't be too much of an issue, unless you neglect adjusting your strategy.
5) As always, it greatly depends on the enviroment. If I put fungal in a game with a ton of "dispel"-spells... would you still believe that fungal is bad design?
With all of those above points, I want to show that AoE root+DoT can be a good thing in an RTS game. Is the Infestor right now an issue in WoL? I certainly think so! Is "the problem" fungal's design? Not really. It's that you can have too much fungal-energy available strategywise due to a too versatile Infestor (compared to its counters) and that the reaction time after spotting Infestors is too little, even if you do all those good tricks proplayers use, like blink a stalker ahead, stim a few units ahead.
1) Other games have other general settings and Fungal would not be so terrible in BW, but since we have SC2 with its autoclumped tight formations and huge numbers of units Fungal IS a problem and too strong.
2) Why is it untrue? What else is there to block retreat? Even Forcefield isnt that bad at the end of a fight, because you have to put the Forcefield further than the unit to be blocked. So what else is there?
3) Fungal isnt good against "something" ... its good against EVERYTHING (except for Siege Tanks maybe, but they are locked in place already) and thats a difference.
4) You dont have to fungal the whole army to affect/limit the microing capability of an army. All you have to do is fungal a key clump in a tight spot and you can divide the enemys army in half ... just as wtih Forcefield.
The argument of "you should build the counter composition" is a hollow one, because there isnt any composition which is that easy to play for Terran or Protoss in the game ...
5) Starcraft is NOT a game where dispel spells should be an option. That only works in games like WoW or LoL.
----
Fungal is broken, because the whole package of the Infestor is broken. Just looking at the Spellcasters in BW you can see that they mostly had only one very useful spell and some semi-useful ones in addition to that, but the Infestor has the "micro blocking Fungal" and the "focus all your power on one point of time Infested Terran" spell. The combination of these is what makes it bad and if Infestors only had Fungal (and maybe abduct instead of Infested Terran) no one would build 20 Infestors.
Sadly Blizzard doesnt realize this ...
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Stop responding to people who are defending the current status of fungal please. People hate playing against it, people hate playing with them, its anti climactic and looks boring, and the spectators hate it. There isn't anything more to it. It needs to go.I honestly don't think people play the same game as us sometimes.
Same as Siege Tanks, Colossi, Forcefields, Swarmhosts, Tempests,...
I hate playing against it, its anti climatic and looks boring and I as a spectator hate it. TvT still makes me want to cut my wrists when I have to spectate 40 minutes of mass tanks slowly crawling around in the mid of the map until one player either makes a mistake (e.g. moved 1 pixel to close) or is overcome with utter boredom too and just rushes in not giving a fuck anymore.
And there are still people which state that this abomniation called "tank chess" is the pinnacle of entertaining play.
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On December 27 2012 23:59 Charon1979 wrote:Show nested quote +
Stop responding to people who are defending the current status of fungal please. People hate playing against it, people hate playing with them, its anti climactic and looks boring, and the spectators hate it. There isn't anything more to it. It needs to go.I honestly don't think people play the same game as us sometimes.
Same as Siege Tanks, Colossi, Forcefields, Swarmhosts, Tempests,... I hate playing against it, its anti climatic and looks boring and I as a spectator hate it. TvT still makes me want to cut my wrists when I have to spectate 40 minutes of mass tanks slowly crawling around in the mid of the map until one player either makes a mistake (e.g. moved 1 pixel to close) or is overcome with utter boredom too and just rushes in not giving a fuck anymore. And there are still people which state that this abomination called "tank chess" is the pinnacle of entertaining play.
This post made my heart ache. I agree that all of the above units can create less than ideal games to spectate (colossus and FF being most commonly mentioned) but TvT is still the most dynamic MU. There are a large number of counters to marine siege tank positional play:
- MMM (Polt's marauder micro, doom drops, multitasking with drops)
- banshees mixed in with air superiority
- BC switches
- raven play
- mech
So siege tanks post 2010 do not make TvT boring, it's incredibly dynamic and action packed. Siege tanks have enough weaknesses that they allow for each of those play-styles to function against them. Fungal works well against all of those combinations as it's THE counter to MMM and especially drops, it uncloaks banshees, it's good against BC (and very good against support units like vikings and ravens), it's mediocre against mech but supports the counter to mech (broodlords).
As for Big J, you're starting to repeat yourself a little with your massive posts. It seems people aren't reading what has been written before (not the whole thread, but in the last pages) so a summary post might be in order. As you're most invested, perhaps that's a job for you.
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On December 27 2012 23:59 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 23:22 Big J wrote:
So Destructicon, I am one of those guys with a broken neural synapse somewhere.
I'm gonna make a few points in defense of fungal's design here, so I hope you read this and think about it before judging my medical condition again.
1) many games (RTS or non-RTS) work with root/silence/control-decreasing spells. And I haven't seen people claim that e.g. Dota is a bad game because you are forced into doing nothing after someone has applied such an effect to you. If we stay with the example of Dota, what is the counter to such stun spells? Avoiding to get into range of them and only getting into range when you are prepared to take losses. In short: countermoves that are applied before it is being casted.
2) It is absolutely untrue that fungal decreases the ability to retreat, more than other things. A popular unit composition in Starcraft is "Terran-Mech". Well, I haven't heard of that Mech army that could "just retreat" against MMM, roach(/hydra), zerglings, Ultralisks, chargelots, blinkstalkers etc. Or similarily, WoL Hydralisks. If you bring them to the party you must be prepared to let them die. Or anytime you fight zerglings with anything slower than hellions. Hell, just play Protoss against MMM and see how well you can retreat with your high Tier tech units that all get outrun by stimmed bio.
You even explicitely mention that you cannot retreat against Muta/Ling/Bling - yet you can optimize the loss. Well, how is that different from Infestors? The only difference is what I'm saying all along: the time for that optimization process is lower, because of the difference between melee attacks and 8range fungal. So all that is needed is to adjust the Infestor/opponent relationship in ways, that you have more time and you will get a similar dynamic as against Muta/ling/bling.
3) Fungal, like any spell/attack/unit is meant to be good against something. Terrans like you love to bring up how you cannot reactively "run out of a fungal". Well, you choose the wrong units to combat Infestors, so you either mix those units with something else or you are just strategically outplayed - which in a strategy game should be the main factor deciding about win or loss. It really has been shown, that you absolutely can afford to mix in tanks/ghosts/HTs/Colossi - counters to the "Fungal - Infestor" - or build compositions that include more beefy units like Thors/BC/Archons - units that don't care as much about getting fungaled.
4) A fungal only "decreases the micro" (after being applied) of some units and only for 4seconds. To do that to your whole army and do it repeatedly, I have to have many Infestors (and you have to make many mistakes). The core component of each strategy game is that if I play a certain strategy, you should try to counteract that strategy. In this case, if I have many Infestors, the first question should not be "how do I beat them with what I have". The question in any RTS should be "what should I build". As said in 3), the "Fungal-Infestor" can absolutly be countered by building certain compositions and therefore, if I wasn't for the incredible power of mass IT, mass Infestor and with it mass fungal shouldn't be too much of an issue, unless you neglect adjusting your strategy.
5) As always, it greatly depends on the enviroment. If I put fungal in a game with a ton of "dispel"-spells... would you still believe that fungal is bad design?
With all of those above points, I want to show that AoE root+DoT can be a good thing in an RTS game. Is the Infestor right now an issue in WoL? I certainly think so! Is "the problem" fungal's design? Not really. It's that you can have too much fungal-energy available strategywise due to a too versatile Infestor (compared to its counters) and that the reaction time after spotting Infestors is too little, even if you do all those good tricks proplayers use, like blink a stalker ahead, stim a few units ahead. 1) Other games have other general settings and Fungal would not be so terrible in BW, but since we have SC2 with its autoclumped tight formations and huge numbers of units Fungal IS a problem and too strong. 2) Why is it untrue? What else is there to block retreat? Even Forcefield isnt that bad at the end of a fight, because you have to put the Forcefield further than the unit to be blocked. So what else is there? 3) Fungal isnt good against "something" ... its good against EVERYTHING (except for Siege Tanks maybe, but they are locked in place already) and thats a difference. 4) You dont have to fungal the whole army to affect/limit the microing capability of an army. All you have to do is fungal a key clump in a tight spot and you can divide the enemys army in half ... just as wtih Forcefield. The argument of "you should build the counter composition" is a hollow one, because there isnt any composition which is that easy to play for Terran or Protoss in the game ... 5) Starcraft is NOT a game where dispel spells should be an option. That only works in games like WoW or LoL. ---- Fungal is broken, because the whole package of the Infestor is broken. Just looking at the Spellcasters in BW you can see that they mostly had only one very useful spell and some semi-useful ones in addition to that, but the Infestor has the "micro blocking Fungal" and the "focus all your power on one point of time Infested Terran" spell. The combination of these is what makes it bad and if Infestors only had Fungal (and maybe abduct instead of Infested Terran) no one would build 20 Infestors. Sadly Blizzard doesnt realize this ...
2) If you try to retreat from zerglings, all of your slow units will get surrounded and killed. In fact, thors can't retreat from anything because of their movement speed. Movement speed differences between units also blocks retreats, that doesn't mean it is bad. Consider protoss gateway units, there is a reason P cannot move out against Z in the early stages of the game: zerglings. Nothing you send out will survive. Namely, sentries will all die, but P cannot fight Z without sentires. Zerlings are the reason for the stale early PvZ game, should they be removed from the game as well?
3) Fungal is definitely not good against everything, for example tanks, thors, collosi, immortals, BCs. However, the infestor is good against everything. Without IT, infestors are garbage against all of those units. The problem is that whatever units are good against fugnal, are terrible against IT (and neural, but that isn't used as often). It is IT that prevents units that should counter the infestor to now be counted by the infestor.
4) Fungal is not the reason there is no counter-composition, it is the fact that IT counters anything that is suppose to be good against infestors. Basically the same point I was trying to make with (3). The problem isn't that there is no good composition against fungal, the problem is that there is no good composition against infestors because they have fungal and IT. It's the IT that makes the infestor way too versatile, and therefore no good counter-composition exists.
5) His point is, if dispell exists in SC2, then fungal isn't too strong. There is no reason that fungal is obviously poorly designed spell. I think a lot of people are forgetting the pre-queenpatch infestors. Usually zerg would have a muta-bling-ling army with a few supporting infestors. They would use the infestors to try to lock down a group of marines to have a favorable engagement. Fungals were exciting, because zerg would have a few chances at it, and they needed the fungal to get a good opening to attack. Back when only a few infestors were made to supplement an army, fungal was an exciting spell. The problem is, when zerg can cast 50 fungals in a fight, it doesn't matter if he misses or not, he just casts 10 more and hopes one of those lands. That is the problem. Everyone is saying storm is exciting, but image if protoss had IT on HT. That protoss had 40 HT as their ultimate composition. Then storms are not exciting at all. Oh, the ghosts sniped off 6 HT? Well doesn't matter now the other 34 HT are coming forward to storm you anyway. Storm would appear to be as broken as fungal appears to be right now.
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The problem
Infestor has strong synergy with other zerg units, which is good. On the other hand infestor has good synergy with infestor itself (can I say it like that?) meaning that infestors grow in strength exponentially, i.e. having 14 infestors is more than twice as good as having 7 infestors. Other spell casters such as HT and Ghost have more of a logarithmic growth rate, having 10 ghosts is less than twice as good as having 5 ghosts. Result of this is that getting infestors promotes getting more infestors instead of other stuff, and thus we have arrived to the current state of the game where infestor is the answer to any multipurpose army of T and P.
Infestor
Fungal as a concept is definitely an interesting idea, and it would be a shame to see it completely lost from the game. As in this thread (and in many others) has been pointed out, infestors are at the moment too easy to mass up to numbers that they could be effectively countered. This follows from the fact that support unit, that's what infestor was supposed to be, is too flexible and has too much uses. Thus there is no, or not enough, drawbacks on having too much infestors.
Fungal growth is a unique spell that has great synergy with the swarm nature of Zerg, it enables masses of melee/short-range units to close the distance to enemy army. Without infestors for example ultralisks would be clearly less useful as it is not particularly fast leading to situations where especially terran would kite ultras all day and all night. In these situations fungal has clearly a supportive role, it enables zerg damage dealers to actually contribute to the fight. Same thing in BL/corruptor/infestor armies: infestor locks down BL counters for corruptors to kill them. Also long range of fungal makes infestors quite snipers or actually mortars, they'll stay out of enemy range while carpet bombing the army with AoE damage. This with infestors decent mobility enables zerg players to keep infestors alive, which is not what terran and protoss can rely on with their ghosts and HT.
Spawning infested terrans is another good spell. It is one of my favourite harrassment methods and breaking siege lines with lobbing IT blobs to draw friendly fire to enemy tanks is enjoyable both as a spectator and a player. In addittion to these IT's can be used as a tactical tool, forcing enemy to give ground by sudden and temporary increase in DPS and health pool of the Zerg army. Also IT's contribute to Zergs somewhat limited anti-air (fun fact: in Finnish IT is abbreviation of Ilmatorjunta so anti-air).
The problem arises from the combination of the two spells, infestor becomes a completely self-supporting unit; fungal locks down everything, including the direct counters to infestor such as ghosts and HT, IT wears down colossi and siege tanks, at least in WoL. Any short-ranged or melee unit gets chain fungaled to death, while high damage slow attack-speed units are isimply overrun by masses of IT. Things that could kill 20+ infestors are similar numbers of ghost, colossi, siege tanks and tempests. All of these get then hardcountered by the instant tech swithc re-maxes that zerg production mechanics allow. Basically terran or protoss would have to sacriface the units they used to kill the infestors to not be instantly killed by the remax of Zerg.
Even if it is not an pure infestor army the combination of IT and fungal that makes the infestor so powerful. Free units to take care of the anti-air against BL and fungal to stop sniping attempts by ground units such as blink stalkers and stim marines. Essentially this means that Zerg gets more damage dealers in their army as infestor can protect BL or swarmhosts against anything without actual need for units such as corruptors or roaches.
Solutions
Basically it comes down to how much infestor can make with such a low supply count. Solutions for me seems to be in either making the infestor more specialized, or making the supply-power relation higher.
If we follow the path of specializing I would like to keep both fungal and IT in the game, but having them both on a same 2-supply unit does not look like a good idea for me. One thing I've been thinking is swapping fungal with blinding cloud. Vipers would have abduct and fungals, and would thus specialize in messing up the enemy positioning (pre-battle micro) while infestor with blinding cloud and IT would be more for in-battle micro, blinding groups of enemy and lobbing infested terrans to tank damage and add DPS where need to be. Following this path could lead to unexpected and undesirable consequences such as close to non-existant usage of some units, or accidental change in a place which does need to change. (i.e. Blizzard reasonings for queenrange and ovie speed buff)
What has been discussed already in the last few pages here is the supply-power ratio of the infestor. This line is probably easier to follow and easier to fine-tune if and when need to be. Recent changes such as projectile and range adjustments fall into this category. The problem here is that the nature of infestor will stay the same. It will be the same extremely flexible and multipurpose unit as it is now. While I agree that infestor is still necessary in several situations such as protecting brood lords and keepign ultras useful, this will not change the fact that especially terran bio has an inherit weakness of fungals. Now I must say that it is not entirely a bad thing, as without fungals terran would pump out MMM form two bases and outswarm the swarm with the cost and supply-efficiency of MMM. How to make infestor still be able to support the zerg army against MMM and blink stalkers AND work as anti-air versus vikings AND stay as a good harrassment tool AND be able to mess with siege lines, actually vipers can do that in HotS, without keeping the infestor in the seemingly overpowerful state they are at the moment?
TL;DR infestor has is too good at too many things. Zerg needs something for those, but if it is only one unit to do those things how to make it balanced so that the unit cannot be massed and stays as an actual support unit?
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On December 27 2012 23:22 Big J wrote:
So Destructicon, I am one of those guys with a broken neural synapse somewhere.
I'm gonna make a few points in defense of fungal's design here, so I hope you read this and think about it before judging my medical condition again.
1) many games (RTS or non-RTS) work with root/silence/control-decreasing spells. And I haven't seen people claim that e.g. Dota is a bad game because you are forced into doing nothing after someone has applied such an effect to you. If we stay with the example of Dota, what is the counter to such stun spells? Avoiding to get into range of them and only getting into range when you are prepared to take losses. In short: countermoves that are applied before it is being casted.
2) It is absolutely untrue that fungal decreases the ability to retreat, more than other things. A popular unit composition in Starcraft is "Terran-Mech". Well, I haven't heard of that Mech army that could "just retreat" against MMM, roach(/hydra), zerglings, Ultralisks, chargelots, blinkstalkers etc. Or similarily, WoL Hydralisks. If you bring them to the party you must be prepared to let them die. Or anytime you fight zerglings with anything slower than hellions. Hell, just play Protoss against MMM and see how well you can retreat with your high Tier tech units that all get outrun by stimmed bio.
You even explicitely mention that you cannot retreat against Muta/Ling/Bling - yet you can optimize the loss. Well, how is that different from Infestors? The only difference is what I'm saying all along: the time for that optimization process is lower, because of the difference between melee attacks and 8range fungal. So all that is needed is to adjust the Infestor/opponent relationship in ways, that you have more time and you will get a similar dynamic as against Muta/ling/bling.
3) Fungal, like any spell/attack/unit is meant to be good against something. Terrans like you love to bring up how you cannot reactively "run out of a fungal". Well, you choose the wrong units to combat Infestors, so you either mix those units with something else or you are just strategically outplayed - which in a strategy game should be the main factor deciding about win or loss. It really has been shown, that you absolutely can afford to mix in tanks/ghosts/HTs/Colossi - counters to the "Fungal - Infestor" - or build compositions that include more beefy units like Thors/BC/Archons - units that don't care as much about getting fungaled.
4) A fungal only "decreases the micro" (after being applied) of some units and only for 4seconds. To do that to your whole army and do it repeatedly, I have to have many Infestors (and you have to make many mistakes). The core component of each strategy game is that if I play a certain strategy, you should try to counteract that strategy. In this case, if I have many Infestors, the first question should not be "how do I beat them with what I have". The question in any RTS should be "what should I build". As said in 3), the "Fungal-Infestor" can absolutly be countered by building certain compositions and therefore, if I wasn't for the incredible power of mass IT, mass Infestor and with it mass fungal shouldn't be too much of an issue, unless you neglect adjusting your strategy.
5) As always, it greatly depends on the enviroment. If I put fungal in a game with a ton of "dispel"-spells... would you still believe that fungal is bad design?
With all of those above points, I want to show that AoE root+DoT can be a good thing in an RTS game. Is the Infestor right now an issue in WoL? I certainly think so! Is "the problem" fungal's design? Not really. It's that you can have too much fungal-energy available strategywise due to a too versatile Infestor (compared to its counters) and that the reaction time after spotting Infestors is too little, even if you do all those good tricks proplayers use, like blink a stalker ahead, stim a few units ahead.
Not sure why you use DoTA as an example. Almost all Disables in MOBA games have long cool downs. Especially for AoE spells. The same goes for MMORPGs, most MMOs have immunity system in place once you have been hit by a CC (Crowd Control) or have CC breaks. Have an AoE root + Dot you can spam and chain in a game where units natural clump up is just bad design. Giving it to a versatile caster you can mass just makes it worse.
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4713 Posts
I almost don't feel the need to reply any more when Rabiator countered your points so well, but I'll go ahead.
1 To expand on his point, again the general settings of a MoBA are totally different from an RTS, especially SC2. In MoBAs you don't die right away from getting stunned in a 1 vs 1 situation, though it does put you in a bad position, you can react to it afterwards and somehow still escape. It can be deadly in gank situations but then again so are many other things in 2 vs 1 or 3 vs 1, however in team fights there are, again lots of ways to mitigate the effects of stuns, there are spells that can heal you, pull you into a better position, shield you etc.
A stun feels like a punishment for being out of position, without being a disproportionately large punishment, because there are both ways to prevent its effects or mitigate them.
In this context fungal is just flat out bad, you have a spell with a radius larger then what the other similar spell casters have, in a game where units automatically clump up, and where the effects of such mistakes can't either be easily prevented or easily mitigated.
2nd Again, why is it untrue that fungal prevents retreating? Units that are fungaled can't move at all, they can only sit there and shoot or die. In all the examples you have you at least have the option to retreat, even if sometimes at a loss. There are ways to retreat as well, using defensive nukes to cover an escape, using FFs to block off pursuit, with fungal there is no such choice, once you commit you remain firmly committed.
3rd Except infestors fungals are good against everything, just the ability to deny movement is a super powerful tool in a game focused so much on positioning, the damage is the cherry on top of the cake, but it definitely adds insult to injury. Your point here is moot because infestors are good against any composition from any race and are used in all match ups and in all compositions.
4th Its funny that you say fungal only limits micro for 4 seconds when getting just one off guarantees you can get 2nd or 3rd or 4th off. And you don't even need many infestors, one can get off 2 fungals, 2 can chain 4 fungals etc. Its funny you mention strategy as a key component in this, but, up till the recent fungal range nerf there was very little to nothing you could actually do to counter infestors, this risks being the case again if the 10 range thing goes trough.
5th Yes fungal in a game with a lot of dispels wouldn't be as bad, but ultimately that isn't a fun dynamic to have in an RTS, I should worry about baby buffs and debuffs, I want to manage units, armies, flanks. It also brings up an element of unfairness when a certain race is made too reliant on debuffs and then faces up against a race which has lots of immunities or dispels, again leading to a feeling of staleness.
Now @ Glorfindel21
Your hit the nail on the head with your first statement, yes the consequences are totally different in for pre-splitting against certain spells. And thank you for also strengthening my point. You just described how against storm you can dodge and bait them if you have great game sense and reflexes, you also described how against infestors you must play perfectly just to have a chance, just to trade cost efficiently. Thank you very much for strengthening my point, that one spell rewards more micro, while the other one limits it.
Actually no, its not false, because you don't always get the full damage of storm, yes if you stay in a full storm you die, but good micro should mitigate a lot of those effects, which is a good thing and its how the game should be.
Also units under storm can still fire with good enough twitch reflexes, many times you see a small group of units sent out to assassinate HT, they go trough storms they fire on the move and get out of storms just fine, the same principle can be applied to retreats too, and you can still save many units if you are careful.
Also ultimately you have a choice here, you could sit some of your units trough a storm if you think you still can get out of the engagement cost efficiently, or you can dodge and split against them, both are valid choices depending on circumstances, fungal on the other hand removes choice all together, you can only sit and try to focus fire. Yeah, nice try on twisting my words to make them more fitting of your argument.
Yeah TvT is unforgiving too, but it is much more forgiving then fungal, that's the point I wanted to make, walking into a bad situation will cost you, for sure, its good thing to be punished, but the punishment never feels game ending.
Your ZvT example yeah, the pre-splitting and sieging part is pre-battle micro that you can do in any MU, but in TvP you can actually hit and run, split, dodge and retreat if needed, tell me how you plan to hit and run, split and dodge bad stuff once a fungal lands? Oh you can't I forgot, nice arguing there buddy.
And if you think I'm just singling out fungal because I hate it alone no, I hate all spells and mechanics where you lose the game with one mistake, but fungal is the worst offender here, because it denies you the ability to micro while also doing damage and opening you up for following fungals, all the while giving zerg good position/the ability to reposition freely.
While it is rare too see entire armies fungaled, I have seen that too, however you can still get away with fungaling another critical part of the army and then cleaning up, and its not at all rare for me to see 2-3 fungals give enough of an opening for further fungals and for the zerg army to get into position and close the gap for a game ending engagement. Its laugable how you say infestors must be well controled when it is agreed upon that the amount of effort a zerg needs to put into controling his infestors is low compared to the amount of effort that is needed to control an army to mitigate its damage, hell you yourself said "you need so many pre-splits, perfect tank positions, perfect hit and run".
And no that's not a creed, that's fact, fungal is badly designed, in a game where units clump up so badly, where micro is pivotal to success, a unit that can do damage, at a relatively safe distance, while also locking down units, opening them up to further damage, which leads to the loss of said units or good position, well I can't understand how you don't see that as a problem.
Lastly what I meant was, Blizzard's design flaw regarding fungal can be understood and explained given the fact they couldn't predict all the outcomes of putting in smart casting, making casters more common and their new pathing system, now that we know all this a spell like fungal should never, ever see the likes of day again, specifically because it abuses all those shortcomings int he system, it is disproportionately punishing for the ease of use, it leads to predictable engagements, it negates lots of micro and it does damage.
Anyway, I'm done arguing about this, I've made my point twice now, and others have acknowledged it and argued in its favor again. The point is any micro limiting ability is bad design, especially in the context of a game where micro is pivotal to success, and where the ease of using said abilities that limit micro is disproportionately easy compared to the counter measures. Ultimately, it provides boring and anti-climatic engagements because, seeing proper battle of micro, of getting the better concaves, arcs, the splitting and dodging, has proven to be far more exciting then the alternatives.
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On December 27 2012 23:59 Charon1979 wrote:Show nested quote +
Stop responding to people who are defending the current status of fungal please. People hate playing against it, people hate playing with them, its anti climactic and looks boring, and the spectators hate it. There isn't anything more to it. It needs to go.I honestly don't think people play the same game as us sometimes.
Same as Siege Tanks, Colossi, Forcefields, Swarmhosts, Tempests,... I hate playing against it, its anti climatic and looks boring and I as a spectator hate it. TvT still makes me want to cut my wrists when I have to spectate 40 minutes of mass tanks slowly crawling around in the mid of the map until one player either makes a mistake (e.g. moved 1 pixel to close) or is overcome with utter boredom too and just rushes in not giving a fuck anymore. And there are still people which state that this abomniation called "tank chess" is the pinnacle of entertaining play.
Are you crazy? TvT is the most fun matchup to watch right now by far... Battles and drops everywhere.
Look at baby vs flash for example (mech vs mech).
I recomend you to watch some recents TvT before make clueless statements.
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1) Other games have other general settings and Fungal would not be so terrible in BW, but since we have SC2 with its autoclumped tight formations and huge numbers of units Fungal IS a problem and too strong.
2) Why is it untrue? What else is there to block retreat? Even Forcefield isnt that bad at the end of a fight, because you have to put the Forcefield further than the unit to be blocked. So what else is there?
3) Fungal isnt good against "something" ... its good against EVERYTHING (except for Siege Tanks maybe, but they are locked in place already) and thats a difference.
4) You dont have to fungal the whole army to affect/limit the microing capability of an army. All you have to do is fungal a key clump in a tight spot and you can divide the enemys army in half ... just as wtih Forcefield.
The argument of "you should build the counter composition" is a hollow one, because there isnt any composition which is that easy to play for Terran or Protoss in the game ...
5) Starcraft is NOT a game where dispel spells should be an option. That only works in games like WoW or LoL.
1) Oh wait...wait...where does the micro comes from ? Where ? Mostly from clumping ! Yes : the essence of split is clumping. So if units would not clump up, there would be no pro moves, no epic split, etc. Is baneling too strong because of clumping ? Micro can deal with it.
2) You missed the point. What he meant is that retreating units v Zerg are often (but not always) slower, or partly slower than it's zerg counterpart. Meaning that you have to trade being cost-efficient knowing you will lose a certain part of your army. In fact, depending on our objectives, defeating the other army is not always the goal : trading can be enough. Zerg particularly know it, it's called run-by.
That's why fungal is not that much a problem : your army, even not fungaled, will be at least partly destroyed if you retreat. So the only point would be here the damage dealt by fungal, and honestly, 40 is quite low for a 75 mana spell that needs a research to get done.
3) No. Fungal is worse in proportion with the high HP units. A fungaled thor laughs. The real importance for big units being fungaled is the rooting. But again, it depends of your use of the unit. If the thor goes in the front line, he will most likely absorb fungals and tank lings/roach while 3/3 marines do the crazy dps. Fungal is bad for big units if AND ONLY IF they are at any point in the fight not placed where they should be (according to the player strategy). If you have a lone thor in the middle, it's your fault if it's fungaled and NOT defended (since a lone fungal on a thor won't do anything).
4) The only way i can see it right is for protosses that don't spread their sentrys when they push...which is stupid. Either way i've seen Polt dealing with infest like a boss with hit&run/attack with power micro. But the real question is : why terran don't build ghost in this matchup or why they feel it's not effective.
What BigJ means is if you want to adapt to the oponent with what you have, you did wrong before that step. What you say is that there is no build that exactly counters infestor : that's why we discuss how to change numbers (order : build, numbers, concept).
5) Agreed, but only because it would add much more complexity and specific responses, whereas unit (or spell) must always be used against more than one unit.
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On December 27 2012 23:59 Charon1979 wrote:Show nested quote +
Stop responding to people who are defending the current status of fungal please. People hate playing against it, people hate playing with them, its anti climactic and looks boring, and the spectators hate it. There isn't anything more to it. It needs to go.I honestly don't think people play the same game as us sometimes.
Same as Siege Tanks, Colossi, Forcefields, Swarmhosts, Tempests,... I hate playing against it, its anti climatic and looks boring and I as a spectator hate it. TvT still makes me want to cut my wrists when I have to spectate 40 minutes of mass tanks slowly crawling around in the mid of the map until one player either makes a mistake (e.g. moved 1 pixel to close) or is overcome with utter boredom too and just rushes in not giving a fuck anymore. And there are still people which state that this abomniation called "tank chess" is the pinnacle of entertaining play.
What is the last time you watched a TvT? 2010? Long ago it used to be a bit like what you describe (only a bit, and I dont see how 'tank chess' would be an abomination, it is just getting into position before your opponent), but for a long time now everyone knows several counters to tank lines, that is true for pro's, but also on casual levels.
The rushing into opponents tank lines and dying horribly is also not something because of boredom, it is just an alternative way of saying gg. You only do it when you have lost already (or when you really make a decission error).
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On December 28 2012 01:29 Glorfindel21 wrote:Show nested quote +
1) Other games have other general settings and Fungal would not be so terrible in BW, but since we have SC2 with its autoclumped tight formations and huge numbers of units Fungal IS a problem and too strong.
2) Why is it untrue? What else is there to block retreat? Even Forcefield isnt that bad at the end of a fight, because you have to put the Forcefield further than the unit to be blocked. So what else is there?
3) Fungal isnt good against "something" ... its good against EVERYTHING (except for Siege Tanks maybe, but they are locked in place already) and thats a difference.
4) You dont have to fungal the whole army to affect/limit the microing capability of an army. All you have to do is fungal a key clump in a tight spot and you can divide the enemys army in half ... just as wtih Forcefield.
The argument of "you should build the counter composition" is a hollow one, because there isnt any composition which is that easy to play for Terran or Protoss in the game ...
5) Starcraft is NOT a game where dispel spells should be an option. That only works in games like WoW or LoL.
1) Oh wait...wait...where does the micro comes from ? Where ? Mostly from clumping ! Yes : the essence of split is clumping. So if units would not clump up, there would be no pro moves, no epic split, etc. Is baneling too strong because of clumping ? Micro can deal with it. 2) You missed the point. What he meant is that retreating units v Zerg are often (but not always) slower, or partly slower than it's zerg counterpart. Meaning that you have to trade being cost-efficient knowing you will lose a certain part of your army. In fact, depending on our objectives, defeating the other army is not always the goal : trading can be enough. Zerg particularly know it, it's called run-by. That's why fungal is not that much a problem : your army, even not fungaled, will be at least partly destroyed if you retreat. So the only point would be here the damage dealt by fungal, and honestly, 40 is quite low for a 75 mana spell that needs a research to get done. 3) No. Fungal is worse in proportion with the high HP units. A fungaled thor laughs. The real importance for big units being fungaled is the rooting. But again, it depends of your use of the unit. If the thor goes in the front line, he will most likely absorb fungals and tank lings/roach while 3/3 marines do the crazy dps. Fungal is bad for big units if AND ONLY IF they are at any point in the fight not placed where they should be (according to the player strategy). If you have a lone thor in the middle, it's your fault if it's fungaled and NOT defended (since a lone fungal on a thor won't do anything). 4) The only way i can see it right is for protosses that don't spread their sentrys when they push...which is stupid. Either way i've seen Polt dealing with infest like a boss with hit&run/attack with power micro. But the real question is : why terran don't build ghost in this matchup or why they feel it's not effective. What BigJ means is if you want to adapt to the oponent with what you have, you did wrong before that step. What you say is that there is no build that exactly counters infestor : that's why we discuss how to change numbers (order : build, numbers, concept). 5) Agreed, but only because it would add much more complexity and specific responses, whereas unit (or spell) must always be used against more than one unit.
1. The typical dumb answer ... obviously with "forced spreading" the micro comes from CLUMPING IT ... just watch or play BW since you clearly havent.
2. The retreating units are slower, BUT if you choose to retreat you can retreat ALL YOUR UNITS and Fungal slices off a small part of it to be eaten piece by piece. If you werent able to do that Zergs might not want to pursue. Fungal can also lock part of your defensive force of Marines in place to be killed by friendly Siege Tank fire and if they werent locked down they could be out of range of that fire. The whole "anti-movement concept" is a terrible idea ... just as Forcefield is ... and the only acceptable version of such a spell is Stasis from BW, where the affected units were immune to damage while they were affected.
3. Well there isnt any point in trying to rescue your Thor with a Medivac since it will be dealt with easily through the use of Fungals.
4. The game isnt for pros with super fast reflexes only, but also for "Joe Bronzelague". Could YOU do what you praise Polt for doing? I wouldnt think so.
5. The point is that effects like Fungal last only a few seconds AND Starcraft is a game with FEW units per race and equally FEW spells per race ... and wasting one of them on a "counterspell" is dumb.
On December 28 2012 00:47 convention wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 23:59 Rabiator wrote:On December 27 2012 23:22 Big J wrote:
So Destructicon, I am one of those guys with a broken neural synapse somewhere.
I'm gonna make a few points in defense of fungal's design here, so I hope you read this and think about it before judging my medical condition again.
1) many games (RTS or non-RTS) work with root/silence/control-decreasing spells. And I haven't seen people claim that e.g. Dota is a bad game because you are forced into doing nothing after someone has applied such an effect to you. If we stay with the example of Dota, what is the counter to such stun spells? Avoiding to get into range of them and only getting into range when you are prepared to take losses. In short: countermoves that are applied before it is being casted.
2) It is absolutely untrue that fungal decreases the ability to retreat, more than other things. A popular unit composition in Starcraft is "Terran-Mech". Well, I haven't heard of that Mech army that could "just retreat" against MMM, roach(/hydra), zerglings, Ultralisks, chargelots, blinkstalkers etc. Or similarily, WoL Hydralisks. If you bring them to the party you must be prepared to let them die. Or anytime you fight zerglings with anything slower than hellions. Hell, just play Protoss against MMM and see how well you can retreat with your high Tier tech units that all get outrun by stimmed bio.
You even explicitely mention that you cannot retreat against Muta/Ling/Bling - yet you can optimize the loss. Well, how is that different from Infestors? The only difference is what I'm saying all along: the time for that optimization process is lower, because of the difference between melee attacks and 8range fungal. So all that is needed is to adjust the Infestor/opponent relationship in ways, that you have more time and you will get a similar dynamic as against Muta/ling/bling.
3) Fungal, like any spell/attack/unit is meant to be good against something. Terrans like you love to bring up how you cannot reactively "run out of a fungal". Well, you choose the wrong units to combat Infestors, so you either mix those units with something else or you are just strategically outplayed - which in a strategy game should be the main factor deciding about win or loss. It really has been shown, that you absolutely can afford to mix in tanks/ghosts/HTs/Colossi - counters to the "Fungal - Infestor" - or build compositions that include more beefy units like Thors/BC/Archons - units that don't care as much about getting fungaled.
4) A fungal only "decreases the micro" (after being applied) of some units and only for 4seconds. To do that to your whole army and do it repeatedly, I have to have many Infestors (and you have to make many mistakes). The core component of each strategy game is that if I play a certain strategy, you should try to counteract that strategy. In this case, if I have many Infestors, the first question should not be "how do I beat them with what I have". The question in any RTS should be "what should I build". As said in 3), the "Fungal-Infestor" can absolutly be countered by building certain compositions and therefore, if I wasn't for the incredible power of mass IT, mass Infestor and with it mass fungal shouldn't be too much of an issue, unless you neglect adjusting your strategy.
5) As always, it greatly depends on the enviroment. If I put fungal in a game with a ton of "dispel"-spells... would you still believe that fungal is bad design?
With all of those above points, I want to show that AoE root+DoT can be a good thing in an RTS game. Is the Infestor right now an issue in WoL? I certainly think so! Is "the problem" fungal's design? Not really. It's that you can have too much fungal-energy available strategywise due to a too versatile Infestor (compared to its counters) and that the reaction time after spotting Infestors is too little, even if you do all those good tricks proplayers use, like blink a stalker ahead, stim a few units ahead. 1) Other games have other general settings and Fungal would not be so terrible in BW, but since we have SC2 with its autoclumped tight formations and huge numbers of units Fungal IS a problem and too strong. 2) Why is it untrue? What else is there to block retreat? Even Forcefield isnt that bad at the end of a fight, because you have to put the Forcefield further than the unit to be blocked. So what else is there? 3) Fungal isnt good against "something" ... its good against EVERYTHING (except for Siege Tanks maybe, but they are locked in place already) and thats a difference. 4) You dont have to fungal the whole army to affect/limit the microing capability of an army. All you have to do is fungal a key clump in a tight spot and you can divide the enemys army in half ... just as wtih Forcefield. The argument of "you should build the counter composition" is a hollow one, because there isnt any composition which is that easy to play for Terran or Protoss in the game ... 5) Starcraft is NOT a game where dispel spells should be an option. That only works in games like WoW or LoL. ---- Fungal is broken, because the whole package of the Infestor is broken. Just looking at the Spellcasters in BW you can see that they mostly had only one very useful spell and some semi-useful ones in addition to that, but the Infestor has the "micro blocking Fungal" and the "focus all your power on one point of time Infested Terran" spell. The combination of these is what makes it bad and if Infestors only had Fungal (and maybe abduct instead of Infested Terran) no one would build 20 Infestors. Sadly Blizzard doesnt realize this ... 2) If you try to retreat from zerglings, all of your slow units will get surrounded and killed. In fact, thors can't retreat from anything because of their movement speed. Movement speed differences between units also blocks retreats, that doesn't mean it is bad. Consider protoss gateway units, there is a reason P cannot move out against Z in the early stages of the game: zerglings. Nothing you send out will survive. Namely, sentries will all die, but P cannot fight Z without sentires. Zerlings are the reason for the stale early PvZ game, should they be removed from the game as well? 3) Fungal is definitely not good against everything, for example tanks, thors, collosi, immortals, BCs. However, the infestor is good against everything. Without IT, infestors are garbage against all of those units. The problem is that whatever units are good against fugnal, are terrible against IT (and neural, but that isn't used as often). It is IT that prevents units that should counter the infestor to now be counted by the infestor. 4) Fungal is not the reason there is no counter-composition, it is the fact that IT counters anything that is suppose to be good against infestors. Basically the same point I was trying to make with (3). The problem isn't that there is no good composition against fungal, the problem is that there is no good composition against infestors because they have fungal and IT. It's the IT that makes the infestor way too versatile, and therefore no good counter-composition exists. 5) His point is, if dispell exists in SC2, then fungal isn't too strong. There is no reason that fungal is obviously poorly designed spell. I think a lot of people are forgetting the pre-queenpatch infestors. Usually zerg would have a muta-bling-ling army with a few supporting infestors. They would use the infestors to try to lock down a group of marines to have a favorable engagement. Fungals were exciting, because zerg would have a few chances at it, and they needed the fungal to get a good opening to attack. Back when only a few infestors were made to supplement an army, fungal was an exciting spell. The problem is, when zerg can cast 50 fungals in a fight, it doesn't matter if he misses or not, he just casts 10 more and hopes one of those lands. That is the problem. Everyone is saying storm is exciting, but image if protoss had IT on HT. That protoss had 40 HT as their ultimate composition. Then storms are not exciting at all. Oh, the ghosts sniped off 6 HT? Well doesn't matter now the other 34 HT are coming forward to storm you anyway. Storm would appear to be as broken as fungal appears to be right now.
2. see above
3. Colossi, Immortals, BCs are immune to Fungal now? The whole point of the spells OPness is the lockdown and not the damage.
4. Oh really? Just try and "counter" Infestors with Bansees or Mutalisks or Void Rays then. Its not worth it because Fungal LOCKS THE UNIT IN PLACE and Infested Terrans shoot them down, but without being locked down these air units could actually micro away from the Infested Terrans ... having dealt enough damage in wasting energy of the Infestor.
5. see above ... counterspells are a terrible idea for a strategy game (just as rock-paper-scissors is)... period! This isnt an RPG!
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Im happy enough with how blizzard are trying to fix all the issues people are reporting to them, and it is good trying out all sorts of new comps etc in beta, still along road ahead, but i hope it will be ready for march<3
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Show nested quote +On December 28 2012 00:47 convention wrote:On December 27 2012 23:59 Rabiator wrote:On December 27 2012 23:22 Big J wrote:
So Destructicon, I am one of those guys with a broken neural synapse somewhere.
I'm gonna make a few points in defense of fungal's design here, so I hope you read this and think about it before judging my medical condition again.
1) many games (RTS or non-RTS) work with root/silence/control-decreasing spells. And I haven't seen people claim that e.g. Dota is a bad game because you are forced into doing nothing after someone has applied such an effect to you. If we stay with the example of Dota, what is the counter to such stun spells? Avoiding to get into range of them and only getting into range when you are prepared to take losses. In short: countermoves that are applied before it is being casted.
2) It is absolutely untrue that fungal decreases the ability to retreat, more than other things. A popular unit composition in Starcraft is "Terran-Mech". Well, I haven't heard of that Mech army that could "just retreat" against MMM, roach(/hydra), zerglings, Ultralisks, chargelots, blinkstalkers etc. Or similarily, WoL Hydralisks. If you bring them to the party you must be prepared to let them die. Or anytime you fight zerglings with anything slower than hellions. Hell, just play Protoss against MMM and see how well you can retreat with your high Tier tech units that all get outrun by stimmed bio.
You even explicitely mention that you cannot retreat against Muta/Ling/Bling - yet you can optimize the loss. Well, how is that different from Infestors? The only difference is what I'm saying all along: the time for that optimization process is lower, because of the difference between melee attacks and 8range fungal. So all that is needed is to adjust the Infestor/opponent relationship in ways, that you have more time and you will get a similar dynamic as against Muta/ling/bling.
3) Fungal, like any spell/attack/unit is meant to be good against something. Terrans like you love to bring up how you cannot reactively "run out of a fungal". Well, you choose the wrong units to combat Infestors, so you either mix those units with something else or you are just strategically outplayed - which in a strategy game should be the main factor deciding about win or loss. It really has been shown, that you absolutely can afford to mix in tanks/ghosts/HTs/Colossi - counters to the "Fungal - Infestor" - or build compositions that include more beefy units like Thors/BC/Archons - units that don't care as much about getting fungaled.
4) A fungal only "decreases the micro" (after being applied) of some units and only for 4seconds. To do that to your whole army and do it repeatedly, I have to have many Infestors (and you have to make many mistakes). The core component of each strategy game is that if I play a certain strategy, you should try to counteract that strategy. In this case, if I have many Infestors, the first question should not be "how do I beat them with what I have". The question in any RTS should be "what should I build". As said in 3), the "Fungal-Infestor" can absolutly be countered by building certain compositions and therefore, if I wasn't for the incredible power of mass IT, mass Infestor and with it mass fungal shouldn't be too much of an issue, unless you neglect adjusting your strategy.
5) As always, it greatly depends on the enviroment. If I put fungal in a game with a ton of "dispel"-spells... would you still believe that fungal is bad design?
With all of those above points, I want to show that AoE root+DoT can be a good thing in an RTS game. Is the Infestor right now an issue in WoL? I certainly think so! Is "the problem" fungal's design? Not really. It's that you can have too much fungal-energy available strategywise due to a too versatile Infestor (compared to its counters) and that the reaction time after spotting Infestors is too little, even if you do all those good tricks proplayers use, like blink a stalker ahead, stim a few units ahead. 1) Other games have other general settings and Fungal would not be so terrible in BW, but since we have SC2 with its autoclumped tight formations and huge numbers of units Fungal IS a problem and too strong. 2) Why is it untrue? What else is there to block retreat? Even Forcefield isnt that bad at the end of a fight, because you have to put the Forcefield further than the unit to be blocked. So what else is there? 3) Fungal isnt good against "something" ... its good against EVERYTHING (except for Siege Tanks maybe, but they are locked in place already) and thats a difference. 4) You dont have to fungal the whole army to affect/limit the microing capability of an army. All you have to do is fungal a key clump in a tight spot and you can divide the enemys army in half ... just as wtih Forcefield. The argument of "you should build the counter composition" is a hollow one, because there isnt any composition which is that easy to play for Terran or Protoss in the game ... 5) Starcraft is NOT a game where dispel spells should be an option. That only works in games like WoW or LoL. ---- Fungal is broken, because the whole package of the Infestor is broken. Just looking at the Spellcasters in BW you can see that they mostly had only one very useful spell and some semi-useful ones in addition to that, but the Infestor has the "micro blocking Fungal" and the "focus all your power on one point of time Infested Terran" spell. The combination of these is what makes it bad and if Infestors only had Fungal (and maybe abduct instead of Infested Terran) no one would build 20 Infestors. Sadly Blizzard doesnt realize this ... 2) If you try to retreat from zerglings, all of your slow units will get surrounded and killed. In fact, thors can't retreat from anything because of their movement speed. Movement speed differences between units also blocks retreats, that doesn't mean it is bad. Consider protoss gateway units, there is a reason P cannot move out against Z in the early stages of the game: zerglings. Nothing you send out will survive. Namely, sentries will all die, but P cannot fight Z without sentires. Zerlings are the reason for the stale early PvZ game, should they be removed from the game as well? 3) Fungal is definitely not good against everything, for example tanks, thors, collosi, immortals, BCs. However, the infestor is good against everything. Without IT, infestors are garbage against all of those units. The problem is that whatever units are good against fugnal, are terrible against IT (and neural, but that isn't used as often). It is IT that prevents units that should counter the infestor to now be counted by the infestor. 4) Fungal is not the reason there is no counter-composition, it is the fact that IT counters anything that is suppose to be good against infestors. Basically the same point I was trying to make with (3). The problem isn't that there is no good composition against fungal, the problem is that there is no good composition against infestors because they have fungal and IT. It's the IT that makes the infestor way too versatile, and therefore no good counter-composition exists. 5) His point is, if dispell exists in SC2, then fungal isn't too strong. There is no reason that fungal is obviously poorly designed spell. I think a lot of people are forgetting the pre-queenpatch infestors. Usually zerg would have a muta-bling-ling army with a few supporting infestors. They would use the infestors to try to lock down a group of marines to have a favorable engagement. Fungals were exciting, because zerg would have a few chances at it, and they needed the fungal to get a good opening to attack. Back when only a few infestors were made to supplement an army, fungal was an exciting spell. The problem is, when zerg can cast 50 fungals in a fight, it doesn't matter if he misses or not, he just casts 10 more and hopes one of those lands. That is the problem. Everyone is saying storm is exciting, but image if protoss had IT on HT. That protoss had 40 HT as their ultimate composition. Then storms are not exciting at all. Oh, the ghosts sniped off 6 HT? Well doesn't matter now the other 34 HT are coming forward to storm you anyway. Storm would appear to be as broken as fungal appears to be right now. 2. see above 3. Colossi, Immortals, BCs are immune to Fungal now? The whole point of the spells OPness is the lockdown and not the damage. 4. Oh really? Just try and "counter" Infestors with Bansees or Mutalisks or Void Rays then. Its not worth it because Fungal LOCKS THE UNIT IN PLACE and Infested Terrans shoot them down, but without being locked down these air units could actually micro away from the Infested Terrans ... having dealt enough damage in wasting energy of the Infestor. 5. see above ... counterspells are a terrible idea for a strategy game (just as rock-paper-scissors is)... period! This isnt an RPG!
2) Yes, fungal prevents your units from retreating by forcing them to fight. But so do ling surrounds. You can't retreat if you are surrounded. Ling surrounds prevent micro as well. A ling surround is way harder to do than casting fungal, but the original point of BigJ was that it should be easier to not get hit by fungal. He states that he wanted it to be a projectile with lower range from a slower infestor. That makes it harder to land a fungal, just like it is hard to do a ling surround. In both cases, you cannot micro anymore.
3) They aren't immune, but if you want to try to kill my collosi/thor/tank/immortal/BC army with only fungals, I will win that fight every single time. Fungal is awful against those units. Yes, it immobilizes them, but look at the units you just listed, they aren't very mobile to begin with! Locking down a thor is meaningless, it already moves at snail pace.
4) Ok, so you list units that are horrible against infestors as the reason you can't counter infestors? Those units clearly are not the counter-composition. If you want to counter infestors (that hypothetically did not have IT), then you would not build banshees and phoenix and void rays, because infestors counter those units. What you do build, are BCs, tanks, thors, collosi, and so on. That's like saying immortals can't be countered, just try "countering" immortals with stalkers.
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1. The typical dumb answer ... obviously with "forced spreading" the micro comes from CLUMPING IT ... just watch or play BW since you clearly havent.
2. The retreating units are slower, BUT if you choose to retreat you can retreat ALL YOUR UNITS and Fungal slices off a small part of it to be eaten piece by piece. If you werent able to do that Zergs might not want to pursue. Fungal can also lock part of your defensive force of Marines in place to be killed by friendly Siege Tank fire and if they werent locked down they could be out of range of that fire. The whole "anti-movement concept" is a terrible idea ... just as Forcefield is ... and the only acceptable version of such a spell is Stasis from BW, where the affected units were immune to damage while they were affected.
3. Well there isnt any point in trying to rescue your Thor with a Medivac since it will be dealt with easily through the use of Fungals.
4. The game isnt for pros with super fast reflexes only, but also for "Joe Bronzelague". Could YOU do what you praise Polt for doing? I wouldnt think so.
5. The point is that effects like Fungal last only a few seconds AND Starcraft is a game with FEW units per race and equally FEW spells per race ... and wasting one of them on a "counterspell" is dumb.
1) What is "force spreading" ? When you have to use your keyboard to queue orders, do you call it a "force keyboard use" ?
Of course clumping does "force" micro. I will agree with you about clumping as a new mechanic not present in BW, but whatever ? Is that the point ? Is it to say that "BW was better" ?
Clearly clumping creates really fun situation : in fact the moves i admire the most are...split (and immo micro).
2) Well imunity to damage is against the principle of the game ! (irony) Indeed, spells can only concern direct damage to units ! Oh no ? Other things are possible ?
For the retreat thing : even if you are not fungaled, depending on the place of battle, you will mostly not be able to save your "slow" units. This is the "tank vs Broodlord" example : if you have tanks vs Broodlords, you're going to have a bad time.
Marines are stuck ? Well, yes they are : but as i told you, you have to think before to engage and be sure you have means and the plan to win the fight. If you don't at the point where you have groups of marines fungaled, well, you quite made a wrong decision in engaging.
EMP is exactly the same concept : what you do after your army is EMPed ? Nothing. You must retreat. Do you say EMP forces the retreat ? No because there are ways to mitigate it : scout, spread (pre-split), HT, observer. I've lost as a protoss versus a single EMP because i was all clumped up and bad at sniping ghosts. That's it.
3)you can still repair a fungaled thor with SCVs/mules, micro its firing when fungaled, or having it backed by units a bit behind so that after the fungal, those could step forward to make its death glorious and...not that cost-effective.
4) Problem is the balance must be done for pros, and there is sadly no other way with it. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be pros.
What you can in fact say is that blizzard could balance differently for every league, but after two seconds, you realise it would be ultra complex, discouraging progress, etc. Stupid.
5) Yeah, that's why counterspells are IMO not necessary and too complexe to add, IF a solution can be found by simpler means.
EDIT : post above, Convention's 3rd point is better than mine.
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In any case, infestor is a stupid shitty unit that semi ruins the game. With the root as the main anti-micro/dumb-in-rts reason.
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I can't believe Convention and Glorfindel21 posted what they posted. Thors and BC's as counters to the infestor? Infestors also have neural parasite. But even if they do not, BC's also clump and can thus take damage. And, with IT + root, BC's die easily.
There really is not much theoretical point in fungaling thors (although I see Z do that all the time anyway, because it's extra damage and a root, and no-one will be able to have another army of thors before your energy replenishes) but IT are good for burst damage to focus thors (may-be not without upgrades once the game gets lengthy, but see below) and NP is great against thors.
And we should remember that it's not realistic that a zerg has only infestor. They also have lings (good against both Thor and counters versus BC), broods and corruptors. If you root the thors closest to the broods, broodlords outrange them (9.5 v 9). And you can definitely cannot get all your thors into range. So, actually, infestors are great against a Thor-based composition.
Corruptors are great against BC, but could die to vikings and ravens added. But fungal is great against those. And then there's the ultra remax (Ryung game).
Edit: pressed "post" accidentally:
The whole point is, what are you arguing Glorfindel21 and Convention? That fungals are fine? That infestors are fine? Terrans just aren't building the right counters? What is your substantial point?
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I can't believe Convention and Glorfindel21 posted what they posted. Thors and BC's as counters to the infestor? Infestors also have neural parasite. But even if they do not, BC's also clump and can thus take damage. And, with IT + root, BC's die easily.
As I said, i don't consider infestor as a unit, i consider the effects of fungal. I simply want to adress the following problem : is the rooting of units a problem in design for fungal ?
There really is not much theoretical point in fungaling thors (although I see Z do that all the time anyway, because it's extra damage and a root, and no-one will be able to have another army of thors before your energy replenishes) but IT are good for burst damage to focus thors (may-be not without upgrades once the game gets lengthy, but see below) and NP is great against thors.
I also thinks that IT burst is a problem, but this was not the topic.
And we should remember that it's not realistic that a zerg has only infestor. They also have lings (good against both Thor and counters versus BC), broods and corruptors. If you root the thors closest to the broods, broodlords outrange them (9.5 v 9). And you can definitely cannot get all your thors into range. So, actually, infestors are great against a Thor-based composition.
I don't like examples because they are all made up. But i'm force to use them, and when i do, i try to describe the most general situation.
I could say that terran has 10 vikings that kill the BL/corru and that festors have no energy anymore after all this thor fungaling.
The whole point is, what are you arguing Glorfindel21 and Convention? That fungals are fine? That infestors are fine? Terrans just aren't building the right counters? What is your substantial point?
My point is that infestor in the actual state of the game is too strong, maybe even in HOTS.
1/If it's fungal the problem, numbers can be changed (what Blizzard does, making speed of fungal not infinite, so not instant; reducing AOE; reducing damage)
2/if it's IT the problem, for the burst issue, nerf normal damage and let upgrades work (i don't like the "no upgrade" IT since it's logical that upgrades works for all units, prior the fact that IT are not really zerg units [you can imagine they aim better with zerg bio researches :p])
3/if infestor is the problem, change HP, speed out and on creep and vision. I don't think changing the burrow ability would be clever, and i don't think that changing burrow speed would be usefull : the key is that you don't see it in your base or under your tank, not that it goes to fast under it.
I believe that Blizzard took the first option, and logically decided to begin with the more subtle change : speed/range of the cast. The softer the change (change DPS of the spell would be instinctively huger, enormous !), the better.
We can't decide if it's good or not : experience does it, not theory. So let them test it.
Concerning ITs, i'm not sure. The real problem with IT is how much they can swift the fate of a battle in a single late-game burst with 3/3. I think they might have been to soft with this one, i would have reduced basic dps to 6/7 from 8, keeping upgrades.
EDIT : about the counter-for-terran thing.
There are two ways to think about it :
-you either nerf infestor
-or buff both terran and toss against it
As you can see, the second solution is far more complex and possibly exposes the balance to more problems. So i think it's always better to look at the unit in question first.
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TY Glorfindel21, that made it much more clear.
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On December 27 2012 06:24 Plansix wrote:
I am all for people being forced to split up their units, but the problem with fungle is that any units caught by the first fungle can and will likely die. The zerg has the ability to endlessly layer on fungle so the root never ends and there is nothing the opponent can do about it. Any unit, no matter what the cost, can be endlessly rooted and will be unable to retreat.
This wouldn’t be bad if infestors functioned like HTs or Ghosts, who typically die after casting their one spell. But in the current meta game, infestors are able to lock down the opposing army and survive almost any engagement when Broodlords are involved.
Fungle has a place in the game, but not with a full 4 second root that be reapplied before it expires. If the ability had a 1 second root and did the exact same damage, it would likely be better for everyone.
I have a hard time believing that a 1 second root with the same damage would be better, unless you just mean more powerful and 1 dimensional to be "better".
Remember, fungal was seen really poorly back when it was an 8 second root that did the exact same damage (well, more or less the same). Increasing the dps of the spell would make it great for dealing damage to the point that ITs wouldn't even be needed.That being said, this could maybe have some sort of promise where the damage isn't applied until the end of the 1 second root. That means that the only way to chain fungal units would be to fungal them perfectly every second. If you fungal again early it doesn't tick and damage the units but if you fungal late they have a chance to get away/split/etc.
Even keeping it as a 4 second root that only deals it's damage at the end of the 4 seconds has some promise. If it did this it would make chain fungals a lot more difficult to pull off.
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EPT
