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United States7166 Posts
Wrote a detailed, long post and just as I was putting some final touches my computer crashed
For now I'll just say that despite having the same requirements/cost/name/long research length as SC1, it's NOTHING like SC1 Adrenal.
This would be much easier if I knew how to record a side-by-side comparison in a video, it would be instantly clear to everyone.
In fact in my first ladder game where I tried it, I couldn't even tell I had upgraded it, as my 'cracklings' beat on a building slowly I had to go check and make sure it was upgraded.
tested in a custom game, turns out that even when watching closely, you can barely notice the difference in attack speed increase.
Did a simple test:
Turns out that when 1 drone fights 1 zergling, in SC1, when the drone dies the zergling survives with 16 hp WITHOUT Adrenal, but with upgrade, he has 26 hp. But in SC2 the zergling will survive with 16 hp both without and with Adrenal upgrade. lol wtf? 
As of right now, it's clearly not even worth upgrading, even if you have a great economy and Hive. It's that bad.
In SC1, 'cracklings' was one of the defining aspects of zerg and was probably the most loved feature of the zerg. It's so sad to see it in this terrible state, it would be really awesome if they could return most/all of the speed increase while finding a way to balance it, with say perhaps returning Archons to their former Splash glory, just as one example.
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But hey, I should look at the bright side.
At least Savior can play SC2 and never worry about forgetting Adrenal ever again.
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I noticed this also and never went back to teching that, even with hive/great economy. I hope it eventually comes back, one of the few things I truly miss from BW.
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Interesting. I'd like to see this test done bigger though, like, how long it takes for 12 lings to kill nexus with and without the upgrade. How marginal is the difference?
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Taken from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=114249 third page
relative parts bolded
On March 02 2010 09:12 Mystlord wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2010 08:32 Yurebis wrote:
Is there any hard data that zerglings and zealots do in fact have the same dps in sc2 compared to sc1?
It seems to me zerglings attack a lot slower in sc2 even with adrenal upgrade, like 3.5 attacks per second when in sc1 it was like 5. Look at my previous post. Absolute DPS doesn't matter in this case, what matters is relative DPS, of which it's now 2:1 instead of 3:1. And since you brought up the Adrenal upgrade: SC1: Normal Zergling Cooldown - 8Normal Zealot Cooldown - 22 Adrenal Zergling Cooldown - 6Ratio w/o Adrenal - 2.75:1 Ratio w/ Adrenal - 3.6667 SC2: Normal Zergling Cooldown - .696Normal Zealot Cooldown - 1.2 Adrenal Zergling Cooldown - .587Ratio w/o Adrenal - 1.724:1 Ratio w/ Adrenal - 2.044 So yes, Zerglings suck relative balls against Zealots now. Your primary damage dealers should come from other sources. If you want hard DPS numbers, take the damage values for Zerglings and Zealot, divide them by the cooldowns I just gave you, and tada~. I reiterate that ling DPS decreases dramatically compared to Zealots since losing 1 ling is pretty big.
so SC1 was a 25% increased attack speed. SC2 is ~16%? doesn't the adrenal tooltip say 20%
maybe attack cooldown != attack speed...
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To not make as much of a difference to effect the amount of hp a drone survives with 1v1 does sound pretty ridiculous, definitely post on blizz forums it needs to be upped.
Completely agree with pretty much everything you said if your testing was right, it should be a defining aspect and should make zerglings much stronger. One of the coolest things about starcraft was how every single early game unit was still pivotal in late game (marines tvz, zerglings in all, zealots in all) and half of that was the upgrades they received (marines benefit hugely from attack upgrades, bassically increasing there original attack x1.5, same with zerglings and cracklings>>>>zerglings no comparison, zealot legs).
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United States47024 Posts
Nice find.
Not sure what Blizz did here. What's the point of preserving the HP/shield/damage numbers on Zealots/Zerglings if you're going to skew the upgrades and cooldowns differently?
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It's certainly better than nothing if you are gonna make zlings anyways.
I aint in beta so I kinda shouldn't talk about it but logic tells me that.
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Yeah this was starting to bug me. I wasn't sure if I was just too blind to notice but hosnestlyafter the upgrade I could not tell I had even upgraded.
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United States7166 Posts
On March 02 2010 19:13 Iplaythings wrote:
It's certainly better than nothing if you are gonna make zlings anyways.
I aint in beta so I kinda shouldn't talk about it but logic tells me that.
yeah if you saw it you would probably rather spend money on ANYTHING else
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You just can't judge from only a drone/zergling experiment. You should try on a nexus as mentioned before. I will do that when i will return home
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United States7166 Posts
yes but you can easily judge just from watching a zergling attack a building while the upgrade finishes.
if you saw you'd easily know no tests are necessary, im tempted to learn how to record videos just to show it
but yeah if nobody has by tomorrow i'll go do the better test
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Interesting. As a terran, lings seem to be pretty strong when they're used against me, but still, that doesn't mean the upgrade should be borderline useless. I'd really like to hear of more tests on other units/buildings.
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i noticed this too. one of the many current failures going on. hopefully someone is reading this at their HQ
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another retard wich bealive if its not the same as in sc 1 is not good....
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On March 02 2010 19:17 Zelniq wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2010 19:13 Iplaythings wrote:
It's certainly better than nothing if you are gonna make zlings anyways.
I aint in beta so I kinda shouldn't talk about it but logic tells me that. yeah if you saw it you would probably rather spend money on ANYTHING else
Well when I see the stats posted. Zerglings still seems useful for dropping in his main and killing a nexus / production facillities / tech building.
8/16 zerglings usually did just fine at that in BW.
I know I am defending it but I just really want it to have an use.
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I just did a test where I told a normal Zergling to kill a Hatchery and told an Adrenal Zergling to kill a Hatchery then compared the time to kill the Hatcheries for both Zerglings. The Adrenal Zergling killed the Hatchery almost 20% faster.
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I gotta agree that it's hard to notice the difference.
In sc1 it's soo easy to see whether lings have the upgrade or not just after seeing the ling attack something for 1 second.
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United States7166 Posts
yeah the tooltip says 20% increase. idont know the increase sc 1 zerglings did but it seems about 100% ish, i'll test it later
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I've only played a couple of games on a friend's computer, but this was actually something I noticed right away. The Adrenal Glands upgrade was at least less noticeable. I haven't done simple experiments or anything, but I remember feeling that the buildings should be destroyed faster. If you got a total crackling-surround on any building in Starcraft, it would die so fast, but in SC2, I felt like it was just a little faster than it would without adrenal glands. Maybe it's the zergling that's gotten slower, and in turn it makes the adrenal glands upgrade worse as well.
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United States47024 Posts
On March 02 2010 19:34 Scourge wrote:
another retard wich bealive if its not the same as in sc 1 is not good....
It's not even that. It's the fact that an upgrade that costs on the order of an attack upgrade should be at least as good as an attack upgrade, or it's never going to get used. Melee attack upgrades give you +20% damage on zerglings and affect all other melee units as well. This gives less than +20% damage on zerglings alone.
On March 02 2010 19:48 Zelniq wrote:
yeah the tooltip says 20% increase. idont know the increase sc 1 zerglings did but it seems about 100% ish, i'll test it later
Definitely not double attack rate. Look at the cooldown numbers listed by Mystlord--they go from cooldown 8 to cooldown 6, which is a 33% increase.
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Hey did you do know that a single crackling that costs 25 minerals does more damage per minute than a battlecruiser in BW?
Cracklings were as imba as fuck as harass units with defiler support especially ZvP where they are underused(I am talking about canon heavy defences for P, no reavers/hts and CC raids vT). I dont mind this at all. The cooldown in SC1 goes from 8 to 6 with crack upgrade.
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United States47024 Posts
On March 02 2010 20:03 samachking wrote:
Hey did you do know that a single crackling that costs 25 minerals does more damage per minute than a battlecruiser in BW?
Cracklings were as imba as fuck as harass units with defiler support especially ZvP where they are underused(I am talking about canon heavy defences for P, no reavers/hts and CC raids vT). I dont mind this at all. The cooldown in SC1 goes from 8 to 6 with crack upgrade.
Look at the numbers listed in the 4th post, the relative damage of Zerglings has already dropped significantly.
This isn't an issue of Zerglings' power in the game. It's an issue of 1) stylistically the upgrade should feel like it makes a difference and 2) an upgrade that costs 200/200 should be able to compete with attack upgrades for utility (as every attack upgrade costs less or equal), and right now, adrenal glands doesn't do that.
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I think you have to account for both attack cooldown and animation length in milliseconds.
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On March 02 2010 20:00 TheYango wrote:
Definitely not double attack rate. Look at the cooldown numbers listed by Mystlord--they go from cooldown 8 to cooldown 6, which is a 33% increase.
As compared to SC2 where it instead gets you a 18.5% increase. So basically it's only half as good.
Using even more math, you can compare this to the melee weapons upgrade. The first upgrade grants you 20% more damage, then 17%, and lastly 14%. This means that it's better to have a zergling that's 1-0 with the adrenal upgrade, than to have a zergling that's 2-0 without it (although it's extremely marginal, in 100 hits the crackling does 1020 damage vs 1001).
I feel like statistically the adrenal gland upgrade is comparable to the weapon upgrades. I imagine the feel would be the same, in SC1 you can't tell right away that one army has an upgrade advantage of the other until the battle is over, when you see how many remaining forces are left.
And i don't have the beta, these are just my 2 cents.
edit: i meant in 100 seconds, not hits btw
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United States47024 Posts
On March 02 2010 20:23 Pergamon wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2010 20:00 TheYango wrote:
Definitely not double attack rate. Look at the cooldown numbers listed by Mystlord--they go from cooldown 8 to cooldown 6, which is a 33% increase. As compared to SC2 where it instead gets you a 18.5% increase. So basically it's only half as good. Using even more math, you can compare this to the melee weapons upgrade. The first upgrade grants you 20% more damage, then 17%, and lastly 14%. This means that it's better to have a zergling that's 1-0 with the adrenal upgrade, than to have a zergling that's 2-0 without it (although it's extremely marginal, in 100 hits the crackling does 1020 damage vs 1001). I feel like statistically the adrenal gland upgrade is comparable to the weapon upgrades. I imagine the feel would be the same, in SC1 you can't tell right away that one army has an upgrade advantage of the other until the battle is over, when you see how many remaining forces are left. And i don't have the beta, these are just my 2 cents.
There are two considerations, though:
1) All attack upgrades except +3 cost less than adrenal glands (100/100, 150/150, and 200/200). This means that even looking at just zerglings, attack +1 far outstrips adrenal glands in cost-effectiveness, attack +2 beats is by a bit, and attack +3 is less cost-effective.
2) Attack upgrades affect all melee units while adrenal glands affects only zerglings. By the time you have attack +3, you will have ultralisks, and given how their attacks now cleave, they will dish out a sizeable portion of your damage.
Combining these 2, it's hard to make an argument for adrenal glands being worth the comparative cost to attack upgrades at ANY stage of the game.
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On March 02 2010 20:03 samachking wrote:
Hey did you do know that a single crackling that costs 25 minerals does more damage per minute than a battlecruiser in BW? How is this at all relevant? Zerglings are a mere 35 hitpoint critter, non-flying, faster than my neighbour's cat on uppers. Battlecruisers are...(spoiler alert) none of the above. All the related questions are probably not fit to judging whether Adrenal Glands are a good upgrade for Zerglings:
Does a single crackling output more damage per minute than a battlecruiser in SC2? Irrelevant.
Can a single crackling kill a battlecruiser fast enough? Irrelevant.
Can a single battlecruiser kill its cost's worth in zerglings fast enough? Irrelevant.
Because the game is more than the sum of plain rock-paper-scissors dilemmas.
On topic, I think the AG upgrade is a bit weak, at the moment. I'm also confident Blizzard will see this and adjust accordingly. If it's needed, that is.
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United States7166 Posts
well I do feel silly thinking it was 100%, and maybe if you really have extra resources with a great economy it's still worth getting after upgrading melee attack if lings are still part of your plan, but still does not seem worth Hive nor 200/200 with a long upgrade time, for only 1 unit
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On March 02 2010 20:34 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2010 20:23 Pergamon wrote:On March 02 2010 20:00 TheYango wrote:
Definitely not double attack rate. Look at the cooldown numbers listed by Mystlord--they go from cooldown 8 to cooldown 6, which is a 33% increase. As compared to SC2 where it instead gets you a 18.5% increase. So basically it's only half as good. Using even more math, you can compare this to the melee weapons upgrade. The first upgrade grants you 20% more damage, then 17%, and lastly 14%. This means that it's better to have a zergling that's 1-0 with the adrenal upgrade, than to have a zergling that's 2-0 without it (although it's extremely marginal, in 100 hits the crackling does 1020 damage vs 1001). I feel like statistically the adrenal gland upgrade is comparable to the weapon upgrades. I imagine the feel would be the same, in SC1 you can't tell right away that one army has an upgrade advantage of the other until the battle is over, when you see how many remaining forces are left. And i don't have the beta, these are just my 2 cents. There are two considerations, though: 1) All attack upgrades except +3 cost less than adrenal glands (100/100, 150/150, and 200/200). This means that even looking at just zerglings, attack +1 far outstrips adrenal glands in cost-effectiveness, attack +2 beats is by a bit, and attack +3 is less cost-effective. 2) Attack upgrades affect all melee units while adrenal glands affects only zerglings. By the time you have attack +3, you will have ultralisks, and given how their attacks now cleave, they will dish out a sizeable portion of your damage. Combining these 2, it's hard to make an argument for adrenal glands being worth the comparative cost to attack upgrades at ANY stage of the game.
I see your point. I feel it's just hard to accept the fact that you'd rather build AN ultralisk more instead giving half your army a slight boost...
What would be the necessary change to make adrenal glands more viable? Would it be enough just to move the upgrade to tier 1 and acts as an early +2, or does the cooldown simply have to get decreased?
I'd like to see some tests done army vs army, like, how many zealots survive x number zerglings with and without the adrenal upgrade. Will there be any difference if you instead threw AN ultralisk more into the mix?
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wow as a zerg player i sure would appreciate if someone made a thread about it in the official blizz forum to make sure blizz sees it :o
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United States7166 Posts
sadly it doesnt seem like posting on official blizz forums, at least for NA SC2 beta forums, would be anything close to 'making sure Blizz sees it'
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On March 02 2010 19:06 caution.slip wrote:Taken from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=114249 third page relative parts bolded Show nested quote +On March 02 2010 09:12 Mystlord wrote:On March 02 2010 08:32 Yurebis wrote:
Is there any hard data that zerglings and zealots do in fact have the same dps in sc2 compared to sc1?
It seems to me zerglings attack a lot slower in sc2 even with adrenal upgrade, like 3.5 attacks per second when in sc1 it was like 5. Look at my previous post. Absolute DPS doesn't matter in this case, what matters is relative DPS, of which it's now 2:1 instead of 3:1. And since you brought up the Adrenal upgrade: SC1: Normal Zergling Cooldown - 8Normal Zealot Cooldown - 22 Adrenal Zergling Cooldown - 6Ratio w/o Adrenal - 2.75:1 Ratio w/ Adrenal - 3.6667 SC2: Normal Zergling Cooldown - .696Normal Zealot Cooldown - 1.2 Adrenal Zergling Cooldown - .587Ratio w/o Adrenal - 1.724:1 Ratio w/ Adrenal - 2.044 So yes, Zerglings suck relative balls against Zealots now. Your primary damage dealers should come from other sources. If you want hard DPS numbers, take the damage values for Zerglings and Zealot, divide them by the cooldowns I just gave you, and tada~. I reiterate that ling DPS decreases dramatically compared to Zealots since losing 1 ling is pretty big. so SC1 was a 25% increased attack speed. SC2 is ~16%? doesn't the adrenal tooltip say 20% maybe attack cooldown != attack speed...
It's 33.(3)% attack speed increase in SC1(25% cooldown, but the number of attacks in the same time period increase by 33.(3)%) and just 18.57% in SC2(if the values given are correct).
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On March 02 2010 21:00 lololol wrote:
It's 33.(3)% attack speed increase in SC1(25% cooldown, but the number of attacks in the same time period increase by 33.(3)%) and just 18.57% in SC2(if the values given are correct).
Math to the rescue! Almost 50% slower compared to SC1. I can imagine you can feel the impact of that one.
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On March 02 2010 20:58 Zelniq wrote:
sadly it doesnt seem like posting on official blizz forums, at least for NA SC2 beta forums, would be anything close to 'making sure Blizz sees it'
How can you know that? Im pretty sure they will at least read. Better than nothing.
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Don't forget that Terran has 1-3 armor on most buildings as well, rendering crackling drops in Terran's base kinda useless.
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I think the Adrenal glands should
(a) depending on circumstances, be more worthwhile to get than an attack upgrade, and
(b) make zerglings look as if they're on crack.
Currently it doesn't do either. Here is an overview of damage per second multiplier compared to an unupgraded zergling; columns show # attack upgrades (0 - 3), second row shows the effect of the adrenal gland upgrade.
zergling vs unarmored opponents
1.00 1.17 1.33 1.50
1.19 1.38 1.58 1.78
The adrenal upgrade is slightly more helpful than the third attack upgrade. However, not only does the attack upgrade apply to more units as mentioned before. It is even worse: vs armored units, the attack upgrades are relatively more effective. For example, against a unit with 2 armor, the effect of the third attack upgrade is 20%, the same as the effect of the first attack upgrade against a unit with 0 armor. I give the above table again for attacking units with one and two armor, respectively:
zergling vs opponents with armor 1
1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75
1.19 1.48 1.78 2.07
You see that in this case the second attack upgrade is not only cheaper than the adrenal glands, but it is also slightly more effective.
zergling vs opponents with armor 2
1.00 1.33 1.67 2.00
1.19 1.58 1.98 2.37
And in this case, even the last attack upgrade is slightly more efficient than the adrenal glands, even without considering the ultralisks.
So if you think that you might be attacking armored units or buildings, and/or that you might be getting ultras, you're probably better off getting attack 3 than the adrenal glands. It may still be worthwhile getting the adrenal glands if (a) you are making lots of zerglings, (b) your evo chamber is already upgrading or you already have all attack upgrades and (c) you have resources to spare. But it's a sucky upgrade.
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It really feels like Blizzard just doesn't want to alienate people who didn't play BW, cause I'm sure that there are a lot of players who might go "wtf, this upgrade makes these units attack sooo fast and they only cost 50 minerals, that's imba!".
You know..
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So they chose to make DPS a linear function of unit cost? Obviously exaggerating, but it's kind of shallow if ultras are both meat shields and damage dealers... And zerglings almost useless (especially since they are weaker against Zealots in SC2).
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Mystlord
United States10264 Posts
Oh ok I feared that my post got ignored in the other thread, but my faith in the SC2 forum has been restored.
Anyway, longs are definitely not the primary damage dealers of an army anymore. They're essentially cannon fodder now considering how fast they fall compared to SC. They need something to make more than that I feel.
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Zerglings take less space now though, which is a big deal. If you can fit twice as many zerglings to attack a target then attacking a bit slower than sc1 doesn't matter as much.
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I guess they need to fix this, but they should also either reduce speed of zerglings or do something about the fact that you can't run away with a peon early game, there's no way to keep scouting if opponent makes only 2 zerglings lol
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The point, and the problem, is that zerglings pretty much become obsolete by end game.
Part of SC's accomplishments was keeping most t1 units useful all game long.
Hopefully they get tweaked in some way shape or form.
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Well it does if they are killed twice as quickly because of splash. And if they can't even get close thanks to force field...
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United States12240 Posts
On March 02 2010 21:00 lololol wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2010 19:06 caution.slip wrote:Taken from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=114249 third page relative parts bolded On March 02 2010 09:12 Mystlord wrote:On March 02 2010 08:32 Yurebis wrote:
Is there any hard data that zerglings and zealots do in fact have the same dps in sc2 compared to sc1?
It seems to me zerglings attack a lot slower in sc2 even with adrenal upgrade, like 3.5 attacks per second when in sc1 it was like 5. Look at my previous post. Absolute DPS doesn't matter in this case, what matters is relative DPS, of which it's now 2:1 instead of 3:1. And since you brought up the Adrenal upgrade: SC1: Normal Zergling Cooldown - 8Normal Zealot Cooldown - 22 Adrenal Zergling Cooldown - 6Ratio w/o Adrenal - 2.75:1 Ratio w/ Adrenal - 3.6667 SC2: Normal Zergling Cooldown - .696Normal Zealot Cooldown - 1.2 Adrenal Zergling Cooldown - .587Ratio w/o Adrenal - 1.724:1 Ratio w/ Adrenal - 2.044 So yes, Zerglings suck relative balls against Zealots now. Your primary damage dealers should come from other sources. If you want hard DPS numbers, take the damage values for Zerglings and Zealot, divide them by the cooldowns I just gave you, and tada~. I reiterate that ling DPS decreases dramatically compared to Zealots since losing 1 ling is pretty big. so SC1 was a 25% increased attack speed. SC2 is ~16%? doesn't the adrenal tooltip say 20% maybe attack cooldown != attack speed... It's 33.(3)% attack speed increase in SC1(25% cooldown, but the number of attacks in the same time period increase by 33.(3)%) and just 18.57% in SC2(if the values given are correct).
That's right. Personally, though, I always found Adrenal to be an extremely overpowered upgrade. The difference in ling damage output is extremely noticeable and completely transforms lings from being annoying and elusive pests to miniature killing machines, all from one upgrade that doesn't even take much time to research. I think it needed a nerf, and is probably going to be in a better position overall in SC2, particularly in light of what Klockan said regarding the improved pathing.
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noo blizzard stop ruining my race
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Why do people assume this is something that needs fixing? With auto surround+mass unit selection. If lings attacked the same as in SC1 they may just beat everything on the ground. If Adrenal not worth the 200/200 investment early anymore thats fine. Just get your plus 3 attack ups, and then Adrenal last. Just because your not geting the upgrades in the same order as BW does not mean its wrong lol.
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Cracklings are my fav unit, i do not see me playing zerg without cracklings : /
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As some people already pointed out, being able to fit more Zerglings into a small space ALSO means they get owned harder by all types of splash damage. Not that awesome if you actually think about it past the OMG IMBA LINGS OMG knee jerk stuff being thrown around here.
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Zerglings are already more obsolete now than ever. A lot of things in SC2 have way more armor than they did in the first game. Terran buildings have an armour upgrade of what, plus 2? Immortals and collosus get +2 per armour/shield upgrade if I'm not mistaken. Some units like roach start with 2 armour. It used to be that lings with crack could be relied upon to kill most things, but now that's no longer the case. They need adrenal more than ever to remain viable late game.
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On March 03 2010 04:29 onmach wrote:
Zerglings are already more obsolete now than ever.
This is so wrong. Discounting mirrors (don't watch them much), most zerg players are making zerglings all throughout every match. Lots more than roaches.
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I completely agree that Adrenal is garbage currently. Not only does it cost 200/200, but it also requires Hive tech (so it's not fair comparing it to a level 2 weapons upgrade)! It was the upgrade that made zerglings viable at hive tech in BW, it should at least somewhat retain that essence in SC2.
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EPT
