Update: I did add some more stats to calm some of you down. Furthermore im not gonna add the costs for the techpaths, it would make the thread even more confusing than it already is, because you can really argue what belongs to the tech path and what not (a lair is build in 99% of all games, as well as starports and robos)
Hi, i wanted to discuss with you the current state of nydus-/dropplay and the ability to perfom multiprong attacks and pressure from zerg. We saw the warpprism getting buffed in WoL, and a few weeks ago the medivacs got a buff in HotS. Blizzard wants to encourage multiprong attacks and dropplay in HotS. It just seems to me, like they forgot about zerg. Z is forced to defend in so many parts in the game without being able to put some pressure back on T/P. In the early - midgame you can use lingrunbys, burrowed roaches or even mutas which are quite strong. However, the later the game goes, the weaker will the lingrunbys get due to strong building placement, warp-in, sensor towers and cannons. Same for mutas, as soon as your opponent has a counter for them OR good ground upgrades they will be less and less effective. Roaches are way too supplyintensive to build them into a lategame army, so you cant afford building them (in a huge number) when it goes to the lategame.
Before we start a discussion or make suggestions, lets have a closer look at some stats compared to the other two races (not included: cost for techpaths):
Zerg Drop: Cost 100/100 + 200/200 = 300/300 Move speed: 1.88 Supply Cost: 0 Build Time: 25s Hit Points: 200 Overlord Cost: 100/0 (you need additional overlords when u go for drops, otherwise u get supply blocked heavily) Note: Overlords can also be used (especially with speed upgrade) for scouting, denying expansions and map control. Overlords do also grant supply (i cant believe that i have to write this here) Zerg Nydus: Cost 150/200 + 100/100 (20s buildtime) for every try to set a nydus Note: Cannot be cancled if gets spotted
Terran Drop: Cost 100/100 for each medivac Move speed: 2.5 Move speed with Ingnite Afterburner(Spell with duration and short cooldown): 4.25 Supply Cost: 2 Build Time: 42s (with reactor 2 can be made at once) Hit Points: 150 Note: Medivacs are a coreunit of the terran army, which is really important in all games where biounits are used, so the costs arent "just" for drops.
Protoss Warp Prism: Cost 200/0 Move speed: 2.5 Supply Cost: 2 Hit Points: 100 (+40 Shield) Move speed with Gravitic Drive (100/100): 3.38 Note: Warp Prisms are maybe not a core unit, but still quite important for pushing to reinforce and save/micro coreunits.
[My personal opinion: People make threads claiming zerg has no weapons - we should rather say Z has weapons, but theyre everything but effective. To invest so much in nydus/drops in midgame we are almost forced to allin or at least do a ton of damage, in the lategame we still have the problem that the movement speed is just 1.88 which really seems to be a bad joke for me, especially after T/P drops both received a speed buff. Furthermore, zerg was always considered as the "mobile race", which makes that issue even more a concern for me. Encouraging Z drop or nydus play wouldnt just buff zerg, it would make the game much more interesting and back and forth, for the players as well as the spectators. Any developement which goes away from the "get a deathball and steamroll" is good for the game itself in my opinion.]
Possible suggestions: - Buff the overlord speed gained by speedupgrade slightly - Lower the costs maybe a little bit (its okay if its expensive, because we dont have to build any dropships, we always have a lot of overlords which we can use) - Lower the costs of nydus drasticly or do a complete rework on it, nydus play was a fail since WoL. It never has been effective. Lowering the costs or just make it possible to cancle the nydus when u try to build one and it gets spotted would give Z great abilities to defend and pressure at the same time.
Blizzard initially said that they intended to implement in HotS a new type of Nydus Worm, do you know if they have changed their plans regarding this?
I think a big problem for zerg is the loading time of the Nydus Worm, it takes way too long. Therefore, you can rarely fall back from a Nydus attack with your army...
100% aggree with this thread. The overlord drops need to be alot cheaper so we can drop in the midgame and get similar harass possiblitities as the other races. Personally i love to drop and try to incorporate it as much as possible but i feel every time i got for it it is better not to since its so exspensive.
I think the question shouldnt be is zerg drop play too weak but is it too expensive? which is 100% is.
On January 19 2013 20:14 Kaldi wrote: 100% aggree with this thread. The overlord drops need to be alot cheaper so we can drop in the midgame and get similar harass possiblitities as the other races. Personally i love to drop and try to incorporate it as much as possible but i feel every time i got for it it is better not to since its so exspensive.
I think the question shouldnt be is zerg drop play too weak but is it too expensive? which is 100% is.
I don't see it to be to expensive because drop play wrecks mech, with a muta follow up it looks absolutely insane. The problem with dropplay/nydus worm is the effectiveness it already has in some games which shouldn't be buffed in my opinion.
The problem is still that drop/nydusplay is considered rare and obscure since its very gas intensive + withthe new widowmine its not really an option vs mech, Its not about killing armies its about having more harass/multitask options mid/earlygame for zerg as currently dropping 300 gas on something like that isnt a good idea, they should remove the gas cost.
The problem is that multiprong pressure is viable to the other races WHILE increasing the effectiveness of the mainarmy. Zerg has to sink tons of gas, for that upgrades and the ability to keep up in terms of units in lategame.Thats the same with going mutas, or even drop into mutas. How will you ever afford 3-3 upgrades + a T3 army? You would need like 12 gases for that, which is more than unlikely to happen
Regards the nydus rework. Blizzard tends to forget what they say ;-) I just see the release getting closer and closer, so its very unlikely for me that they make big changes. They have or rather want to work on the finetuning before the release
If anyone's looking for a few examples of Nydus play in HoTS vs protoss husky recently a game between TLO and WhiteRa. I personally can't comment on if it's to weak or strong as I'm not playing HoTS.
On January 19 2013 20:14 Kaldi wrote: 100% aggree with this thread. The overlord drops need to be alot cheaper so we can drop in the midgame and get similar harass possiblitities as the other races. Personally i love to drop and try to incorporate it as much as possible but i feel every time i got for it it is better not to since its so exspensive.
I think the question shouldnt be is zerg drop play too weak but is it too expensive? which is 100% is.
Sure, sure Stephano 11 minute max with drops so that you get to drop 100ish army supply into Protoss' main while still having 60 Lings attacking everything else. That sounds pretty damn balanced, I mean Protoss can barely hold with Cannons and good forcefields, circumvent them for Balance's sake!
Honestly Zerg has always way better economy in mid game, getting drops wouldn't hurt that much, people just don't do it because they ... I have no clue. I mean, I hear IdrA saying that it is too big of an investment and you would lose ever single game doing it, meanwhile he looks at 40 Speedlings running against a Force Field and getting destroyed rather than pulling them back.
PLUS your "Dropships" are completely free of supply, no tech required AND you get them either way, it is not like Warp Prisms or Medivacs which cost a ton.
For 300-300 you get to drop as many units as you can afford. That is the cost of 3 Medivacs not counting the Starport or the Reactor. Or the Factory which is required for the Starport. A single Medivac is 450-300 counting in Starport and Factory.
A single Warp Prism costs 200 Minerals, if I were to get enough to drop my 40 supply army that would be 2000 Minerals and another 20 Supply.
Sure, Zerg drops are WAYYY too expensive. . . .
Fact of the matter is that neither Protoss nor Terran can possibly withstand an all-in without walling and having perfect positioning as well as some sort of static defense. Even then, it is often not enough.
Now add in close-to-free drops and no Zerg would ever feel the need to go into a macro game because no Protoss or Terran Player could ever hold any 2 or 3 base all-in.
____
Edit: Just took a look at OPs math. . . . Either change that or close this thread please.
You cannot compare getting cost of a single Medivac to the Cost of Overlord drops. A single Medivac also requires a Starport, which also requires a Factory, factor those in and you get yourself pretty much the same price as Zerg drops. 450-300 to be precise. Now you got ONE Medivac against ALL Overlords. Seems like Zerg drops aren't quite as expensive, now are they? Also Medivacs cost supply and Overlords grant supply. so it is more like 485-300 to 300-300 (cost of a quarter of a Supply Depot and 10 minerals worth of mining time lost)
2 Medivacs, Starport and Factory are way more expensive (Mineral and Gas-wise) than getting Overlord drops and speed Upgrade. And now Terran has the potential to drop a force that can do significant damage if you react too slow. Zerg on the other hand has the possibility to drop his entire army and all the Queens, then spread creep like a mad man in the Opponent's base.
True, Warp Prisms function differently and you can warp in a ton of units from a single one (that costs, counting the Robo 300-100) But you sacrifice the possibility to retreat with most of your Units, so you are FORCED to do damage or you are guaranteed to get pretty far behind.
The way you look at it is ridiculously far away from reality. No wonder it looks expensive, the math could hardly be any more biased.
Lowering the costs for Overlord drop would be a good idea I guess. I also feel that it is too hard to sneak in the upgrade in a "standard" macro game since ti costs so much money in the midgame and isn't that usefull later on. This is why it is only exclusively used in special scenarios. Actually we only see it used in ZvT vs mech.
On the other hand, I don't feel like we're going to see multipronged drop harrasment by Zerg even if drop and Overlord speed were really cheap. The question is: why units are you gonna harass with? Roaches take up too much supply and Lings don't do enough damage to be worth it. Baneling drops can easily be countered by simply puilling the drones. Then they're useless. It's not like with bio drops where you can at least still snipe tech buildings. You need to make a lot of units to make drop work which in turn slows down your entire tech path and late game transition, and it requires you to do damage to not fall behind too much.
On the whole I don't relly think Zerg needs to have too many harrassment potential. It's just doesn't fit too much in the design of the race. Zerg is good at expanding quickly, gaining map control, macroing like crazy and defending all of its bases against harassment. It's not that harrassing on your own has to play too much of a role in that.
since overlords are free dropships ( their real purpose being supply) they don't deserve to be as good as prisms or medivacs. maybe they could use some slight buffing anyway, dont know
but the nydus. it's a nightmare imo.
building time concern: since it's very slow, easily scouted and easy to kill, you need to open your nyduses far from danger - this is lame and not so useful. As a base to base transport system, it is too expensive and inefficient;
Loading time: getting stuff in and out of the network, especially lings, takes forever. in comparison to P/T drops, p usually goes with just one prism, unloading 4 cycles of zealot/sentry/ht and then warping in another round. T has at the most 8 cycles to drop if only dropping marines, which doesnt change with the amount of medivacs. In that time z gets out 4-8 lings. That is fucking awful. the nydus network is a nice and zergy way of playing "drop" so it really needs some attention imo. first out, let it deploy 4 supply per cycle, not 1 unit.
On January 19 2013 21:47 Phantom_Sky wrote: seems that TLO replied to this post with the game from Katowice - Drop is fine
Sorry but, are you serious..? Just because there is one pro player which likes to use ability XY doesnt mean that it is fine in general. If he thinks drops are fine he can post here and explain his opinion. For sure there are some builds which use nydus/drops. Still, almost every game with P or T is with Warpprism/Drop harass, compare it to how many games you see where Z does nydus or drops, that is in no relation at all.
Personally I do not think that there is any problem with drops, since every overlord you get for supply can be used for drops so lowering the cost can just open up absurd timings.
The nydus I think should be reworked and so it could be used as an defensively to a greater extent. It should unload 6 food at the time,same cooldown as before. That way it can unload low supply units ,e.g., zerglings, faster and still unload ultras at same speed. You could compensate this with the requirement that it must be placed on creep, and last but not least remove that sound effect. If a protoss player warps in a pylon in my main I do not get a telling card when it is finished.
On January 19 2013 22:13 Elldar wrote: The nydus I think should be reworked and so it could be used as an defensively to a greater extent. It should unload 6 food at the time,same cooldown as before. That way it can unload low supply units ,e.g., zerglings, faster and still unload ultras at same speed. You could compensate this with the requirement that it must be placed on creep, and last but not least remove that sound effect. If a protoss player warps in a pylon in my main I do not get a telling card when it is finished.
I personally would love the nydus being used defensively, it would add a create dynamic to the game and it would compensate the harass-buffs the other races got. Still there would be an issue with the costs i think
This kind of logic is not viable in starcraft. Its 3 different races and very different sorts of dropplay, There is a ton of difference between medivac marine drops, warp prism 4 x sentry drops and the zerg massive 40x baneling in your supply (overlords who are also "dropships".
Also would you really seriously argue that zerg has weak mobility? Because that is what drops are. Dropplay is usually counterattacks, mobility etc. etc.
Different race. Different stats. Different playstyle.
Ovi speed should be a standard upgrade, Zergs really hurting themself by only researching it for drop and giving it away so easy. That being said Slow drops work in some situation. On the other I get Speed regularly and fake drops. But the advantage of Overlords are that they are no supply and you have them anyway making it the cheapest mass drop ability available and the cost can't be reduced, it is pretty nice that you can research drop and speed at hatch though if you have a lair. I don't think there can be anything made different without breaking the midgame.
Nydus on the other hand. I think they should cut the price by a fair chunk on the Network. If it is to strong they should move it to hydra den to make it slower (or increase the cost of the Worm) We basically have 2 Nydus buildings atm. Network that needs creep has more hp and builds longer. This also creates the Worm for offensive use. Imo it is really no problem to reduce the unload time on the Network. That would allow to make use of it in a defensive manner. And it would not make the Worm stronger.
But I think people should still be punished for just right-clicking a nydus and not entering in the correct order. (just right clicking it will stuff it with lings units that shouldn't leave it first on the other side hehe) So I am a bit against this unloads 6 supply at a time.
Nydus can be used not only for drops, but also as very good reinforcment base for your Queens and Swarm Hosts in middle game. Just spawn Nydus at enemy Xel'naga tower, spread creep and send Locusts to 2nd or 3rd base, at same time adding more swarm hosts via Nydus.
Zerg Drop: Cost 100/100 + 200/200 = 300/300 Move speed: 1.88 Zerg Nydus: Cost 150/200 + 100/100 (20s buildtime) for every try to set a nydus
Terran Drop: Cost 100/100 for each medivac Move speed: 2.5 Move speed with Ingnite Afterburner: 4.25 Note: Medivacs are a coreunit of the terran army, which is really important in all games where biounits are used, so the costs arent "just" for drops.
Protoss Warp Prism: Cost 200/0 Move speed: 2.5 Move speed with Gravitic Drive (100/100): 3.38 Note: Warp Prisms are maybe not a core unit, but still quite important for pushing to reinforce and save/micro coreunits.
Lets actually be unbiased here.
Zerg Drop: Cost 100/100 + 200/200 = 300/300 Move speed: 1.88 Note: For 300 / 300 Zerg is able to transform all their supply into dropships. Every further dropship costs half of what a Warpprism costs. Overlords are a coreunit of the Zerg army - giving zerg one expensive dropships, but many cheap ones.
Zerg Nydus: Cost 150/200 + 100/100 (20s buildtime) for every try to set a nydus Note: Nydus canals are a Warp mechanic. They let you instantly reeinforce from one side of the map to the other side. This is, in theory multiple times stronger than any drop mechanic.
Im not saying its perfect the way it is, but zerg also has upsides
Nydus play isn't too weak neither are overlord drops it's just undiscovered and unstandard such simple things I don't understand why they aren't done with Nyduses, maybe it'll become standard in a long time like (Queens? against mech in brood war)
if you placed a Nydus at each base and rallied into it you could essentially use it as a reinforcing point in engagements kind of light a proxy pylon but not if you know what I mean, instead we prefer to have reinforcements run all over the map Using it to transfer drones and other things like that
EPT
