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hi there TL..
this is my first post here (even though i frequently visited tl for about 3 years now) and i dont really want to whine about races and balance and stuff but i have some issues considering zergplay in sc2, and i want to know other opinions on it.
its not exactly that i think zerg is underpowered in any way, its just that i dont really feel like i have much choices on how to play zerg in sc2. i mean there are several new units in sc2, and they all kinda changed the playing style of each of the races and creating a lot of ways to deal with your enemy. except for zerg. i mean i often feel like there isnt much to do with zerg except building up eco, massing up units, and either mass drop or simpy overrun my enemy. dunno, its just,.. i dont now.. boring? i loved playing zerg in sc1, i loved beeing sneaky with lurkers, or like completely changing the flow of a game with single units like defilers... and somehow i feel robbed of that things in sc2.
all other races have, at least in my opinion and especially in the early game, a lot more choices on how to harass the enemy. each race has invisible units, or units that can jump/walk over cliffs, rocks obstacles whatever which gives you quite some possibilities of harrasing or sneaking around the front of your enemy without dropping. zerg has none of those (at least until u get mutas/drop). i mean yea, there are the roaches,and yea, they can burrow which makes them invisible and yea they do regenerate fast as hell (even nerfed) while burrowed. but they cant dig their way through rocks/buildings/cliffs (why btw? doesnt seem really logic to me at least for rocks/buildings..  ) and more importantly cant even attack while beein invisible.
which brings me to another point... despite having strong air units i feel like zerg is incredibly worse off against invisible and air units early in the game compared to BW.. its not that hard to kill off an overseer (as it really wasnt a problem to target an overlord in sc1) but now they cost a shitload of ressources (at least if u have to frequently morph new ones) and have a lot more building time. same goes for air. zerg needs soooo much time to get out a decent number of hydras/muta/corruptors early in the game. i mean i lost at least 20 games just by a hidden starport and two or three voidrays coming early and mutilating my queens/tech/units without much effort. same goes for early viking/banshee harassment. 1 dt and no detection.. u lose... or at least are in BIG trouble. same with air/antiair.
anyway.. i didnt want to whine and i kinda got off my original topic. most of my complaints is probably anyway due to my bad micro/macro/scouting. 
lets get back to my point.. does anyone else feel like there are less choices on how to play zerg/harass your enemy with zerg in sc2 compared to sc1? or is it just me? and that zerg comes kinda short in variations of playing? (i repeat my self.. mass up units, overrun your enemy)
Or like kind of lack of game changing/ending units. i mean the new units are fun, but cant really do anything special to harass/annoy your enemy. a good example is the sentry.. i mean the hell? one or two of those can defend a ramp FOR AGES without having trouble and to ANY amount of groundunits early in the game. wtf can the new zerg units do?
and i dont really feel like there are many new units for zerg anyway. names changed, and some abilities did, but they dont really have new features that change the way of playing zerg much. i mean yea, there is the queen. i love the queen. but all the others..?
considering the usage of units in sc2 compared to sc1 and not considering much else:
zerglings - same.
hydra - higher in tech tree, stronger, but the usage is the same
roach - an armored, ground only hydra + regen/burrowed movement. but still.. what can u do with em? some nice burrow micro, yea... but the concept stays the same: mass up, overrun.. yawn.
banelings - considering the ways of usage they are the only really new unit for me. splashes, looks funny, does tons of damage and omg they suicide.. how i love them. kinda expensive though considering they only hit once and still not exactly new cuz of BWs infested terrans.. but well,, how often did u have a chance to get em in BW..
muta - same usage.
corruptor - very strong, but same usage as the good old devourer, except for the lack of scourges in sc2 and therefore the more need to build em
broodlords - insanely strong, the facelifted guardian.. way cooler looking but nothing really new in terms of usage.
infestor - the new caster unit.. fungal growth is fun, but considering the usage its nothing more than a good old plague. other casts are more or less useful in some situations. still the infestor has NOT that much of a game changing ability as the defiler. nowhere near.
ultra - more damage, more splash more ULTRA, but still nothing new in terms of usage. (and i'm not even going to talkabout it being relatively useless due to its "problems" to reach the target plus all those nice anti armor units of which pretty much rape the hell outta the ultras.)
well, and the other races have, like, a LOT more..?:
planetary fortress, marauders, reapers, the new ghost, vikings, thor etc...
sentry,colossus, immortal,blinking stalkers, shield, forcefield, warpgate tech, mothership etc...
to sum it up.. it feels to me that zerg comes kinda short in new abilities and/or different variations on how to play the race compared to toss and terran. i dont really feel like switching the race cuz i like zerg, but its still kinda boring to mass up a different unit composition and overrun my enemy right through the front door every single game. less sneak potential, less special abilities, no way to enter an enemy base except for an attack to the front(until u get air/drop) etc etc.. its kinda like BW stripped of lurkers/defilers, which where soooo important for different variations/styles in the gameplay. it feels like every race gained many new useful abilities, and zerg somehow lost more useful stuff than it gained. am i the only one who feels that way, or is it that im just not creative enough or simply a bad player. (which i definitly am.)
Opinions welcome!
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seems like they remove the aspects of what you like from zerg and keep the ones you really don't find good XD, bad luck man...
Naaa on topic, Browder said they will be working on zerg cause many ppl complain about the same as you are, they taking a look at zerg and may change it soon.
Nice first post welcome to TL.NET
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I actually like zerg more and more... the creep management is fantastic and provides a lot of cool tactical decisions. Infestors are crucial for my ZvT and ZvP matchups, I think fungal growth is far more powerful than people realise. Corruptors are underused in my play compared to viking and phoenix. However, the only reason I tech to hive is if I want to have broodlords. Ling/banes/roach/hydra/muta/infestor and creep/queen management is fun but could be spiced up with something additional on Hive tech.
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It's been said quite a bit already that Zerg is very limited in terms of playstyle options.
Zerg has been my favorite race for quite a while now back in SC1 and yeah, it just doesn't have the same versatility. Of course you can tech switch fast and build a lot of another unit, but like you said nothing remotely as cool as the lurker when it comes to promoting different playstyles.
I just hope they either add a unit or seriously rework one or more of infestors, roaches and maybe ultras.
And as someone pointed out, Hive tech is underwhelming except for broodlords which requires the greater spire taking about a year to upgrade.
Actually that's probably my biggest gripe with the Zerg right now, I never really want to get Hive unless I've already more or less won. Or outexpanded my opponent quite a bit.
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Where did you hear that browder was fixing to change zerg, checo? I have been following things pretty closely and I've heard nothing of the sort. If anything they seem to be pretty set on just tweaking stats at this point. A new unit, or even the inclusion of lurker, would surprise me greatly.
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totally agree with #1
i am afraid blizzard will wait for the first expansion to give zerg some new units...
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I don't want to wait for a expansion, how about we add new units for zerg now. They say they couldn't get people to use lurkers, I find that hard to believe.
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so it seems its not only me.. -.-
i dont know.. "mass up and overwhelm your foe" every single game is kind of boring.
maybe i should betray the swarm and switch races for a while.. :D
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I agree with OP. I am zerg player, but picking up new race cuz zerg is so boring. Part of the reason is that zerg has much less units than other races.
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Very nice first post! Being a rank 1-3 zerg Gold Player on the US server I agree with pretty much everything you said in the OP. There are many options that blizzard has to "spice up" zerg. Something I was thinking about that might be useful is making hydras be able to morph into lurkers at hive tech (no upgrade cause that would be too late of the game). This would obviously put lurkers back into play in starcraft and make hive tech more viable and less situational.
Edit: btw, have some confidence man you seem to put yourself down, naming the post n00b zerg blah blah... and calling yourself a bad player and such. What rank are you? If you are silver or lower I can help ya out with zerg if you are sersious and passionate about the game of sc2. If you are gold or plat I'm definately not qualified to train you. =P
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On April 19 2010 04:50 wbz0rn wrote:
i dont know.. "mass up and overwhelm your foe" every single game is kind of boring.
You mean what most see as the defining characteristic of zerg is boring? The word "zerg" has entered modern gaming slang to describe this very thing.
It sounds like you shouldn't play zerg :/
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On April 19 2010 05:00 feather6 wrote:
You mean what most see as the defining characteristic of zerg is boring? The word "zerg" has entered modern gaming slang to describe this very thing.
It sounds like you shouldn't play zerg :/
its not like i have a problem with mass+overpower. i just would have loved to have like more choices than one, like every other race? =)
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zerg is really the race in sc2 where massing one unit usually never works well at all.
also nice sig lmao
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On April 19 2010 05:00 feather6 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 04:50 wbz0rn wrote:
i dont know.. "mass up and overwhelm your foe" every single game is kind of boring.
You mean what most see as the defining characteristic of zerg is boring? The word "zerg" has entered modern gaming slang to describe this very thing. It sounds like you shouldn't play zerg :/
Loltroll. Nobody's saying zerg shouldn't zerg. What people are saying here is they should have some options that make them a little less one-dimensional.
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On April 19 2010 05:00 feather6 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 04:50 wbz0rn wrote:
i dont know.. "mass up and overwhelm your foe" every single game is kind of boring.
You mean what most see as the defining characteristic of zerg is boring? The word "zerg" has entered modern gaming slang to describe this very thing. It sounds like you shouldn't play zerg :/
Disagree.
The ability to mass produce later on is great, but the other races aren't that far behind, if at all.
Money is generally the limiting resource, and sometimes larvae.
Zerg should be a dynamic and adaptable race - it is to an extent with larvae but the unit choices they have are not exactly the most exciting. The marauder, reaper and ghost are all very unique units and they are all tier 1. Stalkers can blink and sentries have some "sick" (read: op) abilities. Compare this to the roach and the baneling (they are sweet, dont get me wrong).
The hydra is awesome but as a tier 2 unit... it fits the same role as the marine and the stalker sentry already so zerg is playing catchup. Mutas are effective at harass, but do they compare to cloaked banshees? Corruptors have their use but I'd rather have vikings and broodlords are sweet.
But what compares to the HT, the Raven? The siege tank and colossus? The races should be different but they should all have dynamic/situational tools.
So basically, diversify zerg with a new unit and a new caster and buff the shit out of the infestor (plague does 300 damage over a larger area, fungal does 36 in a game where damage is much higher). Revamp protoss air as well because thats a steaming pile too.
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I agree with OP.
I'm thinking of either going back to terran or switching to protoss after the patch if it doesn't do anything to help zerg's playstyle diversity.
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Agreed, I mean, I don't have the beta yet (sadly) so I'm not speaking through first hand experience. But I have always loved the zerg, something about them has always just been fun with me. And as much as I can't wait to get my hands on the new stuff, I definitely am going to miss my lurkers and overlords with detection.
Do ya'll suppose they made the detection for overlords a higher tech because it seemed unbalanced from BW? The only way I could see that would be because every other race has to tech up for any type of detection unit/structure. And I gotta ask, can anyone tell me what the use of the changelings are? I haven't seen anyone use them competitively yet so I'm a little curious
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muta - stronger, but same usage.
lolwut? in what ways are they stronger?
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On April 19 2010 05:26 Jack_Acer75 wrote:And I gotta ask, can anyone tell me what the use of the changelings are? I haven't seen anyone use them competitively yet so I'm a little curious
overseers can produce em infinitly for energy and they are used to scout. they change their form to either marine/berserker/ling (first enemy race to contact with) and u can hide em among enemy units to scout their army movement(via "track movement" of certain enemy unit) or the base.
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I agree with wbz0rn that Zerg feels somewhat limiting and boring. This has nothing to do with balance; there just don't seem to be as many new and interesting options for zerg. Infestors are a lot of fun with neural parasite and fungal growth, but other than that, everything feels about the same as sc:bw with the queen management added in. Hopefully lurkers will be added in an expansion pack.
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On April 19 2010 05:00 feather6 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 04:50 wbz0rn wrote:
i dont know.. "mass up and overwhelm your foe" every single game is kind of boring.
You mean what most see as the defining characteristic of zerg is boring? The word "zerg" has entered modern gaming slang to describe this very thing. It sounds like you shouldn't play zerg :/
if you look at the matchups in BW, there are very few times where zerg actually just "mass up some units and attack".
in ZvT you almost always get mutas for map control and then transition into defiler/lurker play, which are arguably the most tactical units in the game and rely not on massing but great positioning/micro. Eventually you can get 4 or 5 bases and finally just mass up a bunch of ultraling but even then you need great defiler/scourge micro to win (unless you're really far ahead).
In ZvZ it was always super low-econ muta/ling/scourge and required INSANE micro and multitasking. Yes you do mass up lings for a bit but micro is so hard that it was still very fun (unlike mass roach wars in SC2 ZvZ, although my friend masterasia has told me it's all about banelings now....not sure if there is such thing as baneling micro yet lol)
ZvP is pretty much the only matchup where zerg can truly just "mass up a shitload of units and attack-move", but that's really just 1 sort of style, and still required a shitload of good micro in storm dodging/templar sniping/lurker position/flanking. The other big style is playing super defensively with lurker/sunk/spore defense and taking 4 bases and THEN massing up ultraling (not to mention lurker contains were really fun/interesting as well). There were also tons of awesome low-eco semicheesy strats involving fast lurkers/mutas.
I think that the main problems with Zerg are A) the removal of (viable) muta stacking/micro, B) the replacement of hte lurker with the baneling, and C) the new dynamics of massing hydra/roach in SC2 compared to massing hydras in SC1.
With the removal of proper muta stacking and micro, zerg harass is a lot less interesting. Muta harass is no long really harass. Basically you just kill teh Terran unless they get thors really fast, which completely make mutas obsolete. Muta harass is sorta broken vs Protoss compared to how it worked in BW. In BW if you made mutas vs protoss, there would be this awesome micro battle between muta/scourge vs sairs. Now it's just "attack mineral line and then leave while his sentries/stalkers get there". There's just no real finesse to it any more.
I really like the baneling and I think it's the single best new unit to zerg in SC2 (out of the 3 new units LOL). Unfortunately blizzard has decided that it overlaps with lurkers too much and so I guess they cut the lurkers because they favor the new unit. Maybe we just need to wait and see if the baneling isnt being used to it's full potential, but I just dont think it's nearly as versatile as the lurker. The lurker allowed for SO MANY different playstyles and strategies, and was the ultimate map control unit. As much as I like banelings, they just dont match up. Maybe if dark swarm was given back to Zerg they would be more useful, but from what I understand they are just completely useless after the 1st 10 minutes vs P or T.
The biggest problem with Zerg now though is how hydraroach is so different from hydras in SC1. In BW, hydras were cheap, massable, and had low HP and a pretty decent DPS. Theyre weakness was in how strongly countered tehy were to AoE attacks such as storm, scarabs, and siege tanks/spidermines. In SC2 the roach was added which is a slow unit with insane amount of HP for the same cost as BW hydra, and Hydras were buffed in DPS. Mass hydra was still sort of fun to use in BW because there was a real skill involved in templar/sniping and then dancing your hydras around to dodge storms. in SC2 you just sorta sit there and take it. Roaches are so slow and have so much HP that there's no point in dodging storms, and the duration of storm is so fast that it's really almost impossible to storm dodge with hydras very well at all.
Dont even get me started on how much hive tech zerg sucks gameplay wise.
In theory yes zerg should be the "mass a bunch of shit and attack" but ultimately Zerg in BW were NOT like that 90% of the time and required more finesse than any of the other races. SC2 Zerg is a complete failure compared to BW Zerg.
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I mean they removed the 3 most fun aspects of BW in lurkers, muta micro (although this is probably not a design choice but rather just impossible to implement with the engine), and defilers. What do we get instead? banelings that are half as useful as lurkers, roaches which NOBODY likes, queens which are cool I guess but sorta boring, and infestors which are just a shitty dark archon that is only useful because all it's spells are free.
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On April 19 2010 05:31 wbz0rn wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 05:26 Jack_Acer75 wrote:And I gotta ask, can anyone tell me what the use of the changelings are? I haven't seen anyone use them competitively yet so I'm a little curious overseers can produce em infinitly for energy and they are used to scout. they change their form to either marine or a berserker(first enemy race to contact with) and u can hide em among enemy units to scout their army movement(via "track movement" of certain enemy unit) or the base.
So someone would actually have to notice "hey, I didn't tell my unit to do that? Like they won't pop up on the mini map as an enemy unit?
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On April 19 2010 05:49 Jack_Acer75 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 05:31 wbz0rn wrote:On April 19 2010 05:26 Jack_Acer75 wrote:And I gotta ask, can anyone tell me what the use of the changelings are? I haven't seen anyone use them competitively yet so I'm a little curious overseers can produce em infinitly for energy and they are used to scout. they change their form to either marine or a berserker(first enemy race to contact with) and u can hide em among enemy units to scout their army movement(via "track movement" of certain enemy unit) or the base. So someone would actually have to notice "hey, I didn't tell my unit to do that? Like they won't pop up on the mini map as an enemy unit?
yea, It's not that hard to notice really and they all have like 1HP so they die to anything that hits them.
I really hate the idea of changelings but honestly it works pretty good since you have make overseers anyway and it's their only spell, there's no reason NOT to make changlings. especially since zerg requires such little multitasking now lol
it's just a free way to scout enemy positions and stuff without risking an overlord or saccing a ling (with the possibility of scouting way more than either of those could otherwise)
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i agree with the OP completely. it just seems zergs really dont have many options. they also have no real defensive units that can push back and hold off entire armies like lurkers did in BW. toss still have storm and terran still have tanks to push back armies or for defensive measures. zerg has nothing and all you really can do is just out mass the opposing player.
basically it just feels like zerg is naked and is a mostly offensive race compared to BW. infestors are good and game changing in certain match ups. i can fungal growth a M&M&M composition or a stalker+zealot+immortal composition and maybe neural parasite any collousus that are around and completely turn the battle in my favor, but it just doesn't feel the same.
ultras is another problem... i very rarely manage to get ultras in my matchups mainly because immortals and marauders/thors rape the HELL out of them. srsly, in one of the games i played i had atleast 5 ultras ready mixed in with my roach/hydra composition and they just disintegrated in like 5 seconds to the immortals and stalkers. another problem they have is that they are TO BIG. these maps are much much smaller then sc1 maps it seems and they just can move around nicely in such a small area especially when u already have a sizable ground army as it is... i mean it is almost near impossible for me to get a good surround with a ultras because there just plain to big for these maps -_-
zerg (to me anyway) just feels like they lack alot in the defense department. i think the changes they should make is first of all bring lurkers back (obviously) or a similar unit to a lurker and change hydras supply from 2 to 1. there should be no reason why hydras cost 2 supply. they also need to bring back hydra speed upgrade (there slower then roaches which is ANNOYING when ur playing on maps with huge distances. always have to wait a little while for hydras to catch up even on creep highways.) they also need to fix the adrenal upgrade for zerlings. for w/e reason the difference is not noticeable at all. in BW it was very noticeable and u can see the results in real time but in sc2 i barely notice any change. maybe it has to do with graphics idk. but sc2 cracklings just dont seem like sc1 cracklings.
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On April 19 2010 05:30 kei-clone wrote:lolwut? in what ways are they stronger?
considering their stats they're not stronger. but they feel stronger to me.. for example against stalkers etc..(compared to goons in BW). edited the post anyway.
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It's rather obvious that zerg is limited now. Anyway, what is blizzard thinking? They are giving us intro about zerg - "We were hiding, we were waiting and we EVOLVED" my ass. Zergs EVOLVED? where?
Let's start from the beginning.
1.Zerglings. O, those are actually units that evolved in sc2! They can morph into banelings now. Good.
2. Overlord. Wow.. Overlords went deaf or what? They lost their detector, instead of that they can now sh....produce creep- well it is okay, since there is pretty cheap Overseer to get.
3. Hydra forgot how to move fast( no upgrade available - probably because they were hiding too long and didn't move at all, like pigs on a farm. ). Hydras forgot that they are made on tier1, and they also forgot how to morph into a lurker, w00t? Q_Q
4. Roach - new unit... No idea where did the zergs get it from ( probably some normal roaches from human colonies feeded with zerg creep - and tada! zerg roach). It's actually the best new zerg unit in sc2 ;o
5. Mutalisk - stayed the same, if i don't mention the fact that it forgot how to morph again.
6. Corruptor - oh.. devoruers are now made instantly , without morphin them from mutalisks? well, not bad... but how can it morph into Blood Lord instead of mutalisk? lol :| WTB mutalisk morphing into blood lord.
7.Ultralisk - super huge now, not many changes , not counting splash attack and ability to burrow( lol). But in sc2 rather useless because of many units having bonuses vs "Big" "armored" "biological" targets, so won't do as zerg tanks anymore.
8. Infestor - ... so , instead of Queen (sc1) and defiler we get this , um? Not bad, but comparing them to previous casters it's not an evolution at all... Q_Q
9. Queen - changed so it can spawn larva and make creep. Not bad change too, but they should nerf spawn larvae thing to spawn only 3 larvae not 4.
10. Infested terran - they are obviously not the same, but it's actually ok, since they are at least available, not like in sc1 :D
11. Brood Lord - again, good change for guardian, but why the hell is it morphed from Corruptor ?Q_Q
12. Nydus - yeah, at last it can be used. But not in many games, or not vs really good players.
After looking at what i wrote, it seems to me that zergs actually de evolved... They got used to safe life while hiding themselves and forgot how to kick ass out of other races in the galaxy. I hope the Overmind is going to fix that soon( it means before 2nd part of sc2 t_T)
Sum up(What zergs lacks most in sc2):
-Good caster unit (other races benefit like HELL from smart casting mode, but zergs do not )
-Some kind of good unit for tier3 , or ability to make brood lords from muta, instead of corruptors.
-Any mass damage unit? I know, we have ultral, but hey, don't even compare it to Collosi, thor or even Siege tanks....
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thanks for all your opinions btw. 
i kinda feared to get flamed out of the forum in an instant.
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I am posting here not since long ago, but who the hell you think ppl here are? Hungry trolls waiting for new prey to flame? :D
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On April 19 2010 05:42 Ideas wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 05:00 feather6 wrote:On April 19 2010 04:50 wbz0rn wrote:
i dont know.. "mass up and overwhelm your foe" every single game is kind of boring.
You mean what most see as the defining characteristic of zerg is boring? The word "zerg" has entered modern gaming slang to describe this very thing. It sounds like you shouldn't play zerg :/ if you look at the matchups in BW, there are very few times where zerg actually just "mass up some units and attack". in ZvT you almost always get mutas for map control and then transition into defiler/lurker play, which are arguably the most tactical units in the game and rely not on massing but great positioning/micro. Eventually you can get 4 or 5 bases and finally just mass up a bunch of ultraling but even then you need great defiler/scourge micro to win (unless you're really far ahead). In ZvZ it was always super low-econ muta/ling/scourge and required INSANE micro and multitasking. Yes you do mass up lings for a bit but micro is so hard that it was still very fun (unlike mass roach wars in SC2 ZvZ, although my friend masterasia has told me it's all about banelings now....not sure if there is such thing as baneling micro yet lol) ZvP is pretty much the only matchup where zerg can truly just "mass up a shitload of units and attack-move", but that's really just 1 sort of style, and still required a shitload of good micro in storm dodging/templar sniping/lurker position/flanking. The other big style is playing super defensively with lurker/sunk/spore defense and taking 4 bases and THEN massing up ultraling (not to mention lurker contains were really fun/interesting as well). There were also tons of awesome low-eco semicheesy strats involving fast lurkers/mutas. I think that the main problems with Zerg are A) the removal of (viable) muta stacking/micro, B) the replacement of hte lurker with the baneling, and C) the new dynamics of massing hydra/roach in SC2 compared to massing hydras in SC1. With the removal of proper muta stacking and micro, zerg harass is a lot less interesting. Muta harass is no long really harass. Basically you just kill teh Terran unless they get thors really fast, which completely make mutas obsolete. Muta harass is sorta broken vs Protoss compared to how it worked in BW. In BW if you made mutas vs protoss, there would be this awesome micro battle between muta/scourge vs sairs. Now it's just "attack mineral line and then leave while his sentries/stalkers get there". There's just no real finesse to it any more. I really like the baneling and I think it's the single best new unit to zerg in SC2 (out of the 3 new units LOL). Unfortunately blizzard has decided that it overlaps with lurkers too much and so I guess they cut the lurkers because they favor the new unit. Maybe we just need to wait and see if the baneling isnt being used to it's full potential, but I just dont think it's nearly as versatile as the lurker. The lurker allowed for SO MANY different playstyles and strategies, and was the ultimate map control unit. As much as I like banelings, they just dont match up. Maybe if dark swarm was given back to Zerg they would be more useful, but from what I understand they are just completely useless after the 1st 10 minutes vs P or T. The biggest problem with Zerg now though is how hydraroach is so different from hydras in SC1. In BW, hydras were cheap, massable, and had low HP and a pretty decent DPS. Theyre weakness was in how strongly countered tehy were to AoE attacks such as storm, scarabs, and siege tanks/spidermines. In SC2 the roach was added which is a slow unit with insane amount of HP for the same cost as BW hydra, and Hydras were buffed in DPS. Mass hydra was still sort of fun to use in BW because there was a real skill involved in templar/sniping and then dancing your hydras around to dodge storms. in SC2 you just sorta sit there and take it. Roaches are so slow and have so much HP that there's no point in dodging storms, and the duration of storm is so fast that it's really almost impossible to storm dodge with hydras very well at all. Dont even get me started on how much hive tech zerg sucks gameplay wise. In theory yes zerg should be the "mass a bunch of shit and attack" but ultimately Zerg in BW were NOT like that 90% of the time and required more finesse than any of the other races. SC2 Zerg is a complete failure compared to BW Zerg.
PLEASE post this on the bnet forum as well if you haven't already done so. It's such a constructive post and points out some major flaws in zerg.
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On April 19 2010 06:50 bendez wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 05:42 Ideas wrote:On April 19 2010 05:00 feather6 wrote:On April 19 2010 04:50 wbz0rn wrote:
i dont know.. "mass up and overwhelm your foe" every single game is kind of boring.
You mean what most see as the defining characteristic of zerg is boring? The word "zerg" has entered modern gaming slang to describe this very thing. It sounds like you shouldn't play zerg :/ if you look at the matchups in BW, there are very few times where zerg actually just "mass up some units and attack". in ZvT you almost always get mutas for map control and then transition into defiler/lurker play, which are arguably the most tactical units in the game and rely not on massing but great positioning/micro. Eventually you can get 4 or 5 bases and finally just mass up a bunch of ultraling but even then you need great defiler/scourge micro to win (unless you're really far ahead). In ZvZ it was always super low-econ muta/ling/scourge and required INSANE micro and multitasking. Yes you do mass up lings for a bit but micro is so hard that it was still very fun (unlike mass roach wars in SC2 ZvZ, although my friend masterasia has told me it's all about banelings now....not sure if there is such thing as baneling micro yet lol) ZvP is pretty much the only matchup where zerg can truly just "mass up a shitload of units and attack-move", but that's really just 1 sort of style, and still required a shitload of good micro in storm dodging/templar sniping/lurker position/flanking. The other big style is playing super defensively with lurker/sunk/spore defense and taking 4 bases and THEN massing up ultraling (not to mention lurker contains were really fun/interesting as well). There were also tons of awesome low-eco semicheesy strats involving fast lurkers/mutas. I think that the main problems with Zerg are A) the removal of (viable) muta stacking/micro, B) the replacement of hte lurker with the baneling, and C) the new dynamics of massing hydra/roach in SC2 compared to massing hydras in SC1. With the removal of proper muta stacking and micro, zerg harass is a lot less interesting. Muta harass is no long really harass. Basically you just kill teh Terran unless they get thors really fast, which completely make mutas obsolete. Muta harass is sorta broken vs Protoss compared to how it worked in BW. In BW if you made mutas vs protoss, there would be this awesome micro battle between muta/scourge vs sairs. Now it's just "attack mineral line and then leave while his sentries/stalkers get there". There's just no real finesse to it any more. I really like the baneling and I think it's the single best new unit to zerg in SC2 (out of the 3 new units LOL). Unfortunately blizzard has decided that it overlaps with lurkers too much and so I guess they cut the lurkers because they favor the new unit. Maybe we just need to wait and see if the baneling isnt being used to it's full potential, but I just dont think it's nearly as versatile as the lurker. The lurker allowed for SO MANY different playstyles and strategies, and was the ultimate map control unit. As much as I like banelings, they just dont match up. Maybe if dark swarm was given back to Zerg they would be more useful, but from what I understand they are just completely useless after the 1st 10 minutes vs P or T. The biggest problem with Zerg now though is how hydraroach is so different from hydras in SC1. In BW, hydras were cheap, massable, and had low HP and a pretty decent DPS. Theyre weakness was in how strongly countered tehy were to AoE attacks such as storm, scarabs, and siege tanks/spidermines. In SC2 the roach was added which is a slow unit with insane amount of HP for the same cost as BW hydra, and Hydras were buffed in DPS. Mass hydra was still sort of fun to use in BW because there was a real skill involved in templar/sniping and then dancing your hydras around to dodge storms. in SC2 you just sorta sit there and take it. Roaches are so slow and have so much HP that there's no point in dodging storms, and the duration of storm is so fast that it's really almost impossible to storm dodge with hydras very well at all. Dont even get me started on how much hive tech zerg sucks gameplay wise. In theory yes zerg should be the "mass a bunch of shit and attack" but ultimately Zerg in BW were NOT like that 90% of the time and required more finesse than any of the other races. SC2 Zerg is a complete failure compared to BW Zerg. PLEASE post this on the bnet forum as well if you haven't already done so. It's such a constructive post and points out some major flaws in zerg.
from what I understand, isn't it more likely to get read on TL than bnet forums? lol. every thread on bnet is total garbage for the most part. I cant imagine blizzard takes anything said there very seriously.
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On April 19 2010 05:42 Ideas wrote:
....
In theory yes zerg should be the "mass a bunch of shit and attack" but ultimately Zerg in BW were NOT like that 90% of the time and required more finesse than any of the other races. SC2 Zerg is a complete failure compared to BW Zerg.
i totally agree.
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I agree that zerg is relatively limited and "boring" compared to the other races right now, particularly in the early game. However, I imagine this will change after we have TWO expansion packs, so I'm not too worried, though it may be a long wait. Remember SC1 didn't have lurkers either until the expansion.
Part of me thinks that bliz held back some units on purpose so they would have things to "add" in the expansion.
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On April 19 2010 06:58 dhardisty wrote:
I agree that zerg is relatively limited and "boring" compared to the other races right now, particularly in the early game. However, I imagine this will change after we have TWO expansion packs, so I'm not too worried, though it may be a long wait. Remember SC1 didn't have lurkers either until the expansion.
Part of me thinks that bliz held back some units on purpose so they would have things to "add" in the expansion.
this is bullshit though. As consumers we shouldnt put up with this shit. Zerg should be as complete as the other 2 races at launch of the 1st game. Not to mention that if each expansion adds the same amount to each race, zerg will still always be behind.
The game should be as complete as possible at launch and then blizzard adds new units after months and months of metagame development reveals holes in each race's arsenal. It's bullshit that zerg has 5x more holes than the other 2 races.
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On April 19 2010 06:58 dhardisty wrote:
Remember SC1 didn't have lurkers either until the expansion.
Remember, that terrans didn't have medics, and protoss didn't have corsairs until the expansion. Now, compare it to sc2. What would happen to zerg, if terran would get medics first, and zerg wouldn't get lurkers? I will tell you : absolute rape.
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I've been playing Zerg lately and although I am not a good player games always seem to repeat, fast expand, mass econ and then depending on what the enemy is doing mass either roach/hydra or muta/ling. I haven't had the chance to get tier 3 units unless I'm crushing my opponent, if I try to tech to tier 3 it's only because my enemy is going colossus or thor.
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i definitely think some things could be added to z, 1. Banelings should be able to roll down cliffs 2. I'd like to see some better detections, maybe a unit (maybe infestors) that can detect anything on the ground while its burrowed (it can feel tremors like spider mines used to) 3. give hatcheries some kind of buff maybe anti air like a spore attack or something, hatcheries feel a little week compared to nexus and cc! the queen is great but can be picked off and it has to be built, yet cc and the nexus seem like they are harder to kill than hatcheries and you cant disable there abilities by killing a queen (and nexus has shields and timewarp, cc has scan,mule, death turrets, can lift off with scvs and terran has building upgrades for armor and toss can upgrade shield. Or maybe the queen just needs a stronger anti air attack. In any case I feel like these are just fine tunings and you may have more sweeping changes in mind.
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Big problems I'm seeing with zerg are;
1) Lack of a AoE-range attack unit
2) Infestor is a poor replacement of the defiler, poor damage output, and lost its consume + dark swarm ability.
3) Overseer's? Really? The crap why do my detectors have to cost x2 as terran AND protoss?
4) Lack of an early AA unit (IE HYDRA TEIR 1)
5)Roach is just a changed hydra. It can only attack ground, but has a fast Regen rate.... underground??
6) Why is it that the main arsenal of the zerg force is located at lair tech?? Its where the bulk of the upgrades for units are and the main part of army composition is at.
Of course... All these problems and more will be fixed day 3 of starcraft 2 when the REAL pro mod is released ^^
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If i remember correctly there where some charts with player/race distribution shown at TL a few weeks ago, which was amazingly even. i wont be surprised if that will change if things stay as they are now and more and more players eventually switch races.. as i said before, i dont really think its imbalanced/unfair.. i just think the zerg gameplay tends to get boring after a while, due to its lack of options/actions, and it seems i'm not quite alone with it..
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The detection for Z involves a lot of micro imo, much more than before and much more than other races. The overseer doesn't add that much, too as any half fool can notice a suspicious tier 1 unit among his army.
Every MU pretty much demands roach/hydra as all races can deal quite easily with mutas. Theyre not that much of a harass as they used to be, and as a threat.. they only win you games if you were already ahead.
Hive doesn't add anything except broodlords. A unit that most people call OP despite it is zerg's only option to deal with the more advanced units of the other races. Ultralisks require lots of upgrades to become really deadly, but unfortunately have a lot of issues with 'getting to the target' and broodlords filling in the same purpose, but doing it better. Cracklings are more like placebolings in SC2, despite their improved pathing. Infestors are all nice and stuff, but it aches me that our only spellcaster has a spell that is about controlling the opponents units, how does that make Z unique at all?
There are so many options to make Z more interesting, and I'm baffled that after all this brainstorming they came up with this. I was cheerful at the start, but gradually became pessimistic with the available options. It all comes down to cheesy/rush tactics or fast econ and overpower by outproducing the opponent. An idea for making Z more interesting is, for example, making them more involved with terramorphing such as the creep already does, but adding more options that involve the creep.
Hopefully the mod of sc2 adds a lot of great options. The sad part (imo) is that it may well be possible that a mod may become more interesting to play than the original sc2 multiplayer...
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On April 19 2010 05:42 Ideas wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 05:00 feather6 wrote:On April 19 2010 04:50 wbz0rn wrote:
i dont know.. "mass up and overwhelm your foe" every single game is kind of boring.
You mean what most see as the defining characteristic of zerg is boring? The word "zerg" has entered modern gaming slang to describe this very thing. It sounds like you shouldn't play zerg :/ if you look at the matchups in BW, there are very few times where zerg actually just "mass up some units and attack". in ZvT you almost always get mutas for map control and then transition into defiler/lurker play, which are arguably the most tactical units in the game and rely not on massing but great positioning/micro. Eventually you can get 4 or 5 bases and finally just mass up a bunch of ultraling but even then you need great defiler/scourge micro to win (unless you're really far ahead). In ZvZ it was always super low-econ muta/ling/scourge and required INSANE micro and multitasking. Yes you do mass up lings for a bit but micro is so hard that it was still very fun (unlike mass roach wars in SC2 ZvZ, although my friend masterasia has told me it's all about banelings now....not sure if there is such thing as baneling micro yet lol) ZvP is pretty much the only matchup where zerg can truly just "mass up a shitload of units and attack-move", but that's really just 1 sort of style, and still required a shitload of good micro in storm dodging/templar sniping/lurker position/flanking. The other big style is playing super defensively with lurker/sunk/spore defense and taking 4 bases and THEN massing up ultraling (not to mention lurker contains were really fun/interesting as well). There were also tons of awesome low-eco semicheesy strats involving fast lurkers/mutas. I think that the main problems with Zerg are A) the removal of (viable) muta stacking/micro, B) the replacement of hte lurker with the baneling, and C) the new dynamics of massing hydra/roach in SC2 compared to massing hydras in SC1. With the removal of proper muta stacking and micro, zerg harass is a lot less interesting. Muta harass is no long really harass. Basically you just kill teh Terran unless they get thors really fast, which completely make mutas obsolete. Muta harass is sorta broken vs Protoss compared to how it worked in BW. In BW if you made mutas vs protoss, there would be this awesome micro battle between muta/scourge vs sairs. Now it's just "attack mineral line and then leave while his sentries/stalkers get there". There's just no real finesse to it any more. I really like the baneling and I think it's the single best new unit to zerg in SC2 (out of the 3 new units LOL). Unfortunately blizzard has decided that it overlaps with lurkers too much and so I guess they cut the lurkers because they favor the new unit. Maybe we just need to wait and see if the baneling isnt being used to it's full potential, but I just dont think it's nearly as versatile as the lurker. The lurker allowed for SO MANY different playstyles and strategies, and was the ultimate map control unit. As much as I like banelings, they just dont match up. Maybe if dark swarm was given back to Zerg they would be more useful, but from what I understand they are just completely useless after the 1st 10 minutes vs P or T. The biggest problem with Zerg now though is how hydraroach is so different from hydras in SC1. In BW, hydras were cheap, massable, and had low HP and a pretty decent DPS. Theyre weakness was in how strongly countered tehy were to AoE attacks such as storm, scarabs, and siege tanks/spidermines. In SC2 the roach was added which is a slow unit with insane amount of HP for the same cost as BW hydra, and Hydras were buffed in DPS. Mass hydra was still sort of fun to use in BW because there was a real skill involved in templar/sniping and then dancing your hydras around to dodge storms. in SC2 you just sorta sit there and take it. Roaches are so slow and have so much HP that there's no point in dodging storms, and the duration of storm is so fast that it's really almost impossible to storm dodge with hydras very well at all. Dont even get me started on how much hive tech zerg sucks gameplay wise. In theory yes zerg should be the "mass a bunch of shit and attack" but ultimately Zerg in BW were NOT like that 90% of the time and required more finesse than any of the other races. SC2 Zerg is a complete failure compared to BW Zerg.
Just giving some love to this amazing post
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Great post I also hope blizzard will re look zerg and give it something new
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Hey sry I don't have time atm to explain but yes I really feel Z is extremely limited at certain points in the game as well as to what they can build and harass with. Z seems extremely disadvantaged in the early game as the hellions / reapers just zip around and rape your drones while the Z units do very low damage especially to the hellions. A few hellions can absolutely decimate your drone count early on while waiting for roaches or hydras to pop out. The only chance Z has at this point is to get lucky with a massive amount of speed lings or with a few queens somehow cornering them. This is especially true in smaller maps like Steppes of War as can be seen by the game with Machine vs Cathonluck in the triple strike tournament tonight where the early T harass effectively ended the game.
I find it fairly odd Z has not been given anything in which to early harass with besides lings which are so easily blocked or even massacred by workers if they get that far while Z can so easily be destroyed early game by it. Even early muta harass is almost never seen as it is so easily detected and destroyed since they buffed ever unit that kills them and made spire take forever and extremely risky to get.
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I think from this thread clearly the problem goes far deeper than just spawn larva.
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Zerg really just has no creativity behind them. It's a lot easier to imagine cool, shiny, fancy-ass space ships and robots who's operations and mechanics can be explained by "it's psi-power duh," or pay fan service to the legion of fat nerds who still love transformers and giant mechas.
Zerg hasn't evolved. They haven't gotten stronger, or more powerful. A lot of the Zerg changes in SC2 seem rather counter-productive, or incredibly retarded. Infested Terran spawning from little eggs the Infestors puke out, where they are in full marine armor and carry a gauss rifle? Makes no sense, and the unit itself is incredibly underwhelming. It's a de-evolution of the powerful BW Infested Terran.
The only capacity in which Zerg has "evolved" in is their ability to poo everywhere. And the varieties of poo. But that's really it. Pooing out Creep Tumours, creep, Changelings, or little diarrhea trails when crawling across the map. Like really. Come on.
Zerglings have sacrificed their lethality for auto-surround. The thing I liked in BW was how Tier 1 units for all races were viable throughout the entire game. Ling terrorism doesn't really work vs T anymore; PF can frag 3 lings at a time, and with an army of SCV's repairing, it's just a waste. Warp Gates provide instant reinforcement to anywhere there's pylon power which pretty much mitigates crackling squads targetting Protoss expansions. That, and their reduced attack speed bonus from adrenal (20% instead of the what, 33% of BW?) and the fact that more units start with +1 armor really make them an unappealing unit. I still mass them, but that's because I love them and I'd break their scrappy little hearts if I didn't.
Banelings are pretty much the only new Zerg unit that I like. Their one of the only few Zerg units that allow me more creativity in my play. Baneling drops, burrowed Baneling traps, All-in Baneling busts, and watching Banelings melt groups of Marines make me yearn for the BW days of Lurker spines raping columns of MM. I just wish Banelings were a research instead of a separate building. I think that would add a little more decision making in the early game, possibly making it a little more dynamic. What do you research first, ling speed or baneling evolution?
I fucking hate Roaches. I try my best to minimize the amount of Roaches I produce, because I just don't want to use them out of principle. From the beginning I never liked their unit concept or their "role" in the Zerg army. Plus, I hate that fucking name. Roach. How disgusting.
Hydralisks have become a better bread 'n butter unit. More versatile, and unconstrained from their explosive attack type from BW, but they're fucking slow. Hydra dancing isn't something you see all that much in SC2. When hydras engage, it's just a line of shooters, until either they die, or their targets die. It's sad really. And how the fuck is it an evolutionary step, not being able to evolve into Lurkers?
Speaking of Lurkers, I loved lurkers. I loved them. They were machines of infantry death. And so creative! GETTING RID OF LURKERS FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Mutalisks aren't as dynamic as their BW counterparts. They can't stack and the micro options are much more limited. Their bounce AI has been improved and that's probably their only bonus. That, and their ability to abuse terrible Protoss AA but that's a toss problem, not a muta one. Muta should also evolve into both Corruptors and Broodlords.
They brought in Corruptors and took out Scourge? Really? I mean. Fuck. The only reason I really get these fuckers is to get Broodlords, but that's rare. I don't even need to get out of Lair to win a game. Corruptors are an inflexible, expensive counter to air. I hate them.
Infestors are a terrible concept for a spell caster. If Zerg has to settle for one spell caster, why can't it be awesome? Infestors are just an organic Reaver that leaves a little diarrhea shit trail wherever they crawl to, much like my dog dragging his ass across the carpet when he has worms or something (no I don't actually have a dog, but fuck that carpet dragging). Fungal Growth is interesting, but it's lack luster in comparison to other racial AOE spells, and Neural Parasite is not creative, or "zergy" in anyway. Last but not least, Infested Terran, but I already ranted about that above.
Ultralisks are fat and useless now, Broodlords are kinda cool, and I hate Overseers. If Overlords starting with detection was a problem, then make Overlord detection a 3rd research available at Lair.
Totally lost track with this rant, but these are my thoughts and opinions on SC2 Zerg. Absolutely terrible.
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i agree with you wbz0m, I think zerg still have some things to iron out.
My problem isnt so much with them being boring though, more of the options we have when using zerg is limited.
Early game, we have ling or roach, dont even have an anti air unit (like Toss and Terran do), which basically means if we want to fast expand, we also have to tech to lair and get a den or a spire right away to protect ourselves against anti air early on. OR, we could mass spore colonies and hope your enemy is stupid enough to stay in range long enough to die by them (which usually wont happen lol). Even if we want to stay in tier 1 for various reasons, we will have to worry about air, which means theres little possibility of staying in tier 1 for very long and lasting, unlike in BW, which I could stay in tier 1 if I felt like it, and still had a chance.
Mid game, we have similar units, but the caster I feel doesnt make a big enough of a difference. I dont consider the queen a caster (defensive maybe, but she's too valuable to die, so she's basically used like an SC1 Hero in the campaign mode to me)
Late game is ok, I would prefer one more option as theres not much to do there as it is, but I really like the new ultras, and broodlords seem strong as well.
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This is a really interesting discussion.
I've only played Terran vs Players... but I can totally see what you're talking about with Zerg. I never really visualized what it would be like to play them, but the options do seem limited to me.
The addition of some quick-techable harass (other that fast lings) that is comparable to muta-stacking would really help. IDK if I'd look forward to playing against it as Terran, but a few adjustments to Zerg would certainly help raise the dynamic level of the game quite a bit.
Of course keep them macro heavy, just give 'em a few better tech choices and few more target end game compositions.
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The problem with Zerg is that Blizz only added two new units (Roach-Baneling) while removing Lurker-Scourge (which was much more interesting-zergish-gamechanging than Roach-Baneling).
On top of that they rebuilt(ruined) a lot of the other units abilities; for example Defiler got a new name and lot less game changing abilities, from devour-playgUH-dark swarm to infested terran-fungus-neural parasite. And from the queen they removed ensnare-spawn broodling-that vision spell and took away her wings and ability to infest terran command centers, into a macro mechanic tool like the mule.
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i've been a loyal zerg user for a long time, and unfortunately i have similar problems with the swarm. but my realization came differently. I played all the races, and realized, wow blizzard really put a lot of thought and creativity into protoss and terran play, they are obviously fans of those races. most of the innovation and awesomeness comes from terran and toss. colossus? warpgates? ravens? reapers?
zerg has some awesome units and concepts too, but overall isn't as dynamic and adaptive as the other races. the nydus network is great and i think it's ripe for innovation, but that's it? terrans can have many different styles of play, zerg has 1, mass expand, spread creep and attack. and wtf is up with zerg casters, oops i mean caster. corrupter doesnt count, oh and i remember watching a funny replay where hdstarcraft went corrupters for anti air against banshees, and LOL they couldnt even catch them. that's some pretty fail anti air. and why did they change the muta morph to t3 air? now if you switch mutas against terran, he gets a thor and your mutas become useless, can't morph to broodlings. wah.
. infestor is pretty good for a t2 caster, but give us an awesome t3 caster like the raven or mothership (not as awesome but still epic). zerg is pretty lackluster which is pretty lame. i love the zerg but blizz really should inject the same innovation and creative awesomeness that they did in terran and toss.
to sum it up, zerg is limited in play style and that makes me cry.
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On April 19 2010 04:12 checo wrote:
Naaa on topic, Browder said they will be working on zerg cause many ppl complain about the same as you are, they taking a look at zerg and may change it soon.
When did Browder say that? I've been reading every interview I can get my hands on and don't recall him saying anything of the sort.
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While I'll agree that zerg is limited in terms of tech choices, I would have to argue that zerg is not boring to play. You're forgetting the fact that in addition to the units, zerg also has buildings that allow for greater variety in play. I speak of course of the nydus canal which is a really cool function IMO. Even though high leveled players have been known to build buildings over their entire mains to give them vision to prevent nydus worm defeats, Toward the mid game this opens up a huge variety of mobility options. As for the units here's how I see it. Mutas, zerglings, and hydras are the only 3 units that retain a similar function to the original.
1. The roach... oh man I think you're really underestimating that moving burrow technique. I mean take like 4 roaches and burrow them past your opponents defenses and kill a ton of workers. Is that not essentially the same as a reaper going up a hill and killing a bunch of drones? I mean it's slower but whatever works.
2. The infestor.... man I completely disagree with you on this. A couple of good fungal growths can change an entire battle. Mind you that units clump a lot better in this game than in the previous. This abilit is so good especially in tvz. With 3 infesters you could probably litterally fungal growth an entire army. Mind you all that time while they're fungal growthed THEY ARE NOT ATTACKING. Of course it's not as game changing as a deflier, but what did you expect. Infesters are there to swing the battle back in the favor of zerg by just a tiny bit. Also have you taken a look at the other two spells? You could pull some crazy stuff using those.
3. Corrupters... These are not exactly like devorers. Corrupters are different in the sense that they can defend against air without the need for support units. Devs in scbw needed damage doing units because the acid spores gave a max of +9 damage to air. Corrupters just do a ton of damage by themselves.
4. Ultralisks... you seem to like banelings a lot. Let me tell you. Imagine an that every time an ultralisk attacks that's like a baneling blast. That's quite seriously what it's like nowadays. Also, the fact that they're much more bulky gives you opportunities for sick surrounds.
5. The queen... try experimenting with those creep tumors. They're better than you think they are. There are tons of advantages to creep in this game.
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What if the infestor got the "dark swarm" ability :D?? I think it would change ZvP (Collosus play)
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On April 19 2010 18:31 Zerksys wrote:
While I'll agree that zerg is limited in terms of tech choices, I would have to argue that zerg is not boring to play. You're forgetting the fact that in addition to the units, zerg also has buildings that allow for greater variety in play. I speak of course of the nydus canal which is a really cool function IMO. Even though high leveled players have been known to build buildings over their entire mains to give them vision to prevent nydus worm defeats, Toward the mid game this opens up a huge variety of mobility options. As for the units here's how I see it. Mutas, zerglings, and hydras are the only 3 units that retain a similar function to the original.
1. The roach... oh man I think you're really underestimating that moving burrow technique. I mean take like 4 roaches and burrow them past your opponents defenses and kill a ton of workers. Is that not essentially the same as a reaper going up a hill and killing a bunch of drones? I mean it's slower but whatever works.
2. The infestor.... man I completely disagree with you on this. A couple of good fungal growths can change an entire battle. Mind you that units clump a lot better in this game than in the previous. This abilit is so good especially in tvz. With 3 infesters you could probably litterally fungal growth an entire army. Mind you all that time while they're fungal growthed THEY ARE NOT ATTACKING. Of course it's not as game changing as a deflier, but what did you expect. Infesters are there to swing the battle back in the favor of zerg by just a tiny bit. Also have you taken a look at the other two spells? You could pull some crazy stuff using those.
3. Corrupters... These are not exactly like devorers. Corrupters are different in the sense that they can defend against air without the need for support units. Devs in scbw needed damage doing units because the acid spores gave a max of +9 damage to air. Corrupters just do a ton of damage by themselves.
4. Ultralisks... you seem to like banelings a lot. Let me tell you. Imagine an that every time an ultralisk attacks that's like a baneling blast. That's quite seriously what it's like nowadays. Also, the fact that they're much more bulky gives you opportunities for sick surrounds.
5. The queen... try experimenting with those creep tumors. They're better than you think they are. There are tons of advantages to creep in this game.
1. Doesn't work against anyone with sense enough to get detectors, wich means that it doesn't work at a highter level of play.
2. Infestors in their current form is a coin toss, most of the times they will be out of range or get sniped in seconds.
3. Corruptors are to slow or has a to short range atm, I have never felt the need to get a Corruptor without the goal to asap morph it to a BL. Hydras and Mutas works just aswell against anything but mass capital ships.
4. Ultras are a joke atm, give me one reason to get it over Brood Lords.
5. Creep Tumors+OL vomit is standard for any Zerg player that has gotten out of Silver.
TLDR: Your points are well reviewed by the community and the general concensus is that beyond paper it doesn't work and I agree with the community.
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Hi all, long time reader but first time-poster as well.
I agree with almost everything that has been said in this thread about Zerg dynamism, or lack thereof, in SC2. Just wanted to throw my hat in as well. Let me preface by saying, like many of the other posts in this thread, none of these are balance complaints. I just don't like some things about the way Zerg plays.
First, zerg tier 1 sucks. Zerglings are way less effective than they used to be (not even worth building late-game?! How did this happen?!), and though banelings are really really neat, they're seeming like one trick ponies to me right now. At least where the metagame is at currently, they don't even come close to approaching the versatility of T and P units at the same tech level, and forget about comparing them to tier 1 hydras or tier 2 lurkers in SC1. And, unlike any of these other units, they don't last into the later stages of the game, either.
The tier 1 unit which does last a little while is the Roach, and though the burrow mechanic built into their design might see more use as time goes on (and I'd be the first to admit it, if this turns out to be amazing), let's be honest about what we have seen the vast majority of the time so far from roaches: a beefy, short-ranged(!!!), and slow-moving mass of them. With the speed upgrade but off creep, they micro slightly better than the SC2 Hydra, which means they are horrible to micro. And they're the most easily-countered units in the game. They're for massing up and running right through your opponent, praying he doesn't have his counter yet, in the most boring fashion possible, because they have 145 hp and cost next to nothing. Did SC1 have a single unit like this? A single one? What the hell? I ABSOLUTELY HATE THESE THINGS.
Hydras are pretty close to fine right now, though I don't know why Zerg are only allowed all these slow-moving ground units all of the sudden. Lings are still quick but they're garbage...
Infestor: stupid looking, stupid, stupid unit. The defiler unit portrait looked like death itself, and the unit on the screen looked like it could climb up your pant-leg, inject a tiny amount of venom, and leave you crippled, writhing in agony, and soon dead. Altogether creepy. The infestor looks like something from Yuri's Revenge. Aesthetics aside, the beauty of the defiler gameplay-wise was the way the unit, spawning at tier 3, synergized with the existing Zerg army. This was particularly the case with Dark Swarm, in combination with zerg's incredible melee units. But Plague functioned similarly; suddenly that huge mass of M&M isn't so resistant to your massed lings, and his science vessel cloud is looking a lot more vulnerable to a muta or two. Neural parasite and spawn infested terran, as they are now, barring totally unforeseeable metagame developments, will never be this kind of gameplay element. Ever. Fungal growth might, but I kind of doubt it. Ensnare used to combo so nicely with zerglings and lurkers (though we still didn't see it very often at pro level  ), so it might work well with banelings...but this spell will never be as useful as swarm.
In regards to ultralisks, their role in SC1 was basically game-stopping; with the right combination of lings and ultralisks (so, enough ultralisks as you had gas and as many zerglings as you could muster otherwise), your opponent either needed air or a comparably sized army, PLUS really excellent micro to dance around mass dark swarm, in order to survive. Getting ultras was almost always a good idea resource-wise if you could manage the tech. Sadly, they've made this game a lot more hard-counter heavy, so even though hydras are still roughly countered by the right thing (mass AoE of any kind) and not the wrong thing (unit X), ultras are countered by specific tier 1 units. I don't think I have to elaborate anymore; everyone knows this is stupid. Ultras should completely dominate the game if you get them (more so than Brood Lords imo), and right now they don't. I think in general hard-counters detract from the game, because they deemphasize the importance of good economy and good micro, which were the very things which made SC1 such a deep game. In Starcraft 1 there was no such thing as "countering" mech or SK Terran, or the Protoss ball. You just had to play better and beat it. Goliaths didn't counter air so well because they got a flat +20 bonus to whatever they were shooting at; they countered air because their range was huge (I know their damage was still high against big units, but they were great against mutas as well- massive range was what made goliaths lethal). Range difference and other differences of this type (AoE vs non-AoE attack, relative unit speed, fire while moving vs. stationary fire, low dmg vs high armor or vice-versa) create dynamic relationships between units. +20 dmg creates stupid relationship between units. Sadly, I don't think Blizz is going to do much about this.
Overlord detection - one of the cool things which separated Zerg in terms of racial identity from T and P was the overwhelming amount of detection they had. Detection in starcraft is an amazing mechanic (compare it to cloaking in the C&C series...joke), since in practice being invisible also means being invulnerable. Having detection is strategically valuable, sometimes essential - and Zerg had buckets of it, without even trying! Yet the game was still balanced. Now all the races are roughly on the same level in this regard, which, at the very least, is more boring (key to SC1 brilliance = racial diversity + racial balance). Not to say that racial diversity and balance can't be achieved in other ways, and I'll have more on that later, but this is at least a disappointing change. Overseers are cool units and I don't really mind getting them, but again, overlord detection was one of the cool things about playing Zerg- and everyone knows it wasn't unbeatable, either. lol@Bisubuild.
Finally, a lot of people who disagree with what Zerg players are saying here are going to bring up creep, and that's fine, because I think what Blizzard has done with creep is downright awesome. It affects every unit I have talked about here, it totally matches Zerg racial identity, and the idea has a tremendous amount of promise. It's also pretty clear that Blizzard has designed this into the game as one of the principle dynamics in zerg gameplay. This is much different from SC1, where creep was more or less a side-note, serving only to prevent zergs from morphing buildings anywhere on the map, in contrast to P and T. The new creep mechanic is much deeper, and makes the contrast to P and T much more pronounced (warping units in with pylons/warp-gates has done the same thing to spice up toss, while Terran buildings are more versatile than ever...planetary fortress...add-ons which work for more than kind of production building...sinking supply depots...man, SC2 is the coolest game around!!). But the creep seems also to be a much bigger factor than these other gameplay elements, and I can imagine Blizzard has so far justified zerg's comparative lack of unit diversity because they get this extra, hugely influential "unit." The problem is, I don't see creep management as capable of replacing the relative usefulness (I think fun factor has a lot to do with how "useful" a unit seems) and synergy-potential (this is one of the best ways to extract fun from an RTS - when units interact with each other in interesting, gainful ways) of SC1 zerg units, from a gameplay/fun perspective. It is useful, and it synergizes with your ground units- but overall, it's slow and undynamic. It will win you many, many fights, but not in very dramatic fashion, like dark swarm or a key lurker might. Right now, Zerg just kind of needs creep, just like Terran and Protoss need their base-building paradigms.
Perhaps one method to solve all of these issues lies in the above paragraph. I propose reducing the benefits of creep, but scale unit performance up accordingly**. Since the creep mechanic doesn't really cost resources, high levels of play will still see zergs covering the place in creep- they'll just have cooler and better units fighting on it.
Hmm. That is a whole lot. I'll end there. Hope you guys like my ideas!
**There are lots of ideas on how to make zerg units better, but I don't think it's as important as reworking relative importance of creep vs. units in general. If I have to give an opinion though (at the end of this massive post containing all my opinions), unit change could be accomplished by either altering some of the existing units (I think the list above contains a lot of candidates for revision...but my knee-jerk vote is for increasing zerg ground unit speed in general, on and off creep), and/or adding a new one, especially either a new caster (3 new spells to work with!) or, as someone else has already suggested, a defensive specialist/map-control unit in the style of the lurker.
Thanks for reading. It's now 6:44 in the morning. Good night.
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On April 19 2010 18:31 Zerksys wrote:
1. The roach... oh man I think you're really underestimating that moving burrow technique. I mean take like 4 roaches and burrow them past your opponents defenses and kill a ton of workers. Is that not essentially the same as a reaper going up a hill and killing a bunch of drones? I mean it's slower but whatever works.
2. The infestor.... Also have you taken a look at the other two spells? You could pull some crazy stuff using those.
4. Ultralisks... you seem to like banelings a lot. Let me tell you. Imagine an that every time an ultralisk attacks that's like a baneling blast. That's quite seriously what it's like nowadays. Also, the fact that they're much more bulky gives you opportunities for sick surrounds.
I cant really agree with you here.
1. I dont know where you play but it almost NEVER works. I mean if it does, then it doenst because they are awesome in any way, its just my sign that my enemy is a complete idiot. To be precise i stopped upgrading borrowed movement lately against toss/terran. You know why? Lets stick to your example and take your four burowed roaches and move up to the enemy base... now your enemy is terran, what do you expect at their base entrance..? a right a wall in.. ah right.. cant burrow through it.. to bad.. oh and lets imagine your enemy is a toss, what do you expect at their main entrance? a right.. a blocked ramp/slope and yea, a cannon which has.. right.. detection.. which renders my four roaches completely useless again. IN WHAT WAY DOES THAT EVEN COMPARE TO BLINK/REAPERS/COLOSSUS? I dont get you..
2. Youre right the infestor has other abilities.. but come on.. how often do u use them. the dark archon in BW had awesome abilities too and wasnt exactly used that often. like i said a hundred times now.. i dont think they are weak.. its just that u dont have much choices on how to harass/attack your enemy. yea, with a massive fungus growth i can wipe out an army faster than with my massed up units alone and attack the enemys main after cleaning out their army,.. But is still didnt do anything different than massing up a bunch of units and attack the front of my enemy,. now reinforced with fungal growth. changes the battle, but not the gameplay.
4. Youre right.. ultras are awesome. But they are really expensive, really easy to target, really fat, and certainly have problems dying before they even reach their target cuz of all those anti armored units around. i do not build em that often, but when i do, lets say only a maximum of 50% of my ultras even reach their targets. forcefields, my own units in the way, slopes, smaller map areas.. anyway.. its still not anything new gameplay wise. its mass up/attack front and thats the main issue..
The point is.. every zerg unit has only a few options:
ling - mass up, attack front/expansion whatever
roach - see above. could be sneaky, but almost never works (at least in my games) leading to mass up/attack front again.
hydra - slow, mass up, attack front/expansion/whatever
muta - harass a bit, enemy reacts, completely useless afterwards
corruptor - slow, strong, but not quite useful until they are clustered with a bunch of broodlords or your enemy stupid enough to let their colossus be unguarded.
broodlord - t3, very strong, very slow, but it takes ages to get them.
infestor - see above
ultra - see above
to sum it up, when i win games, i often feel like it wasnt me who won the game, but my enemy who lost it cuz he was stupid enough to let me enter his base. when u play zerg, you only have a few choices of harrassing and it doenst even care which units u use and those are:
-Attack front/main/expansion
-Drop
-Nydus (which seems relatively useless after they nerfed it)
-Air Units (useless till t3)
It just does not leave many ways to harass/damage your enemy, especially in the early game.. and yea, there are destructible rocks, and you have many maps where u can enter your enemies base through a second entrance, but that is not exactly something useful only for zerg, its the same for all three races. Zerg cant even contain very well due to a lack of ranged/splashed damage unit until t3.
and besides, its not only attacking... zerg lacks defenses early on as well.. if youre a toss, all u have to do is lock down a chokepoint/ramp with some units berserker, sentry, cannon and you are basically safe against zerg until they get air. i mean u can tech all u want and do all u want, cuz u do not really have to worry about a zerg sniping your drones, etc etc..
zerg cant even lock themselves in that good early on, cuz everytime i spend 100min on a spinecrawler its actually 150min + the lack of a mining drone. and they dont even help u when your enemy decides to go air.. or use some of their abilities and just run across a cliff/blink and leaving your static defenses utterly useless as well (oh yea, they can move..right right.. anyway).
well, i dont want to whine about balances and stuff, all i am saying is, since zerg has so few ways to damage their opponent, especially early on, i'm blaming my enemies stupidity for my wins, and not myself,... cuz everytime i overrun my enemy im thinking he's an idiot for letting me do this, since he should have known from the very beginning that i would do exactly that. all he has to scout is which mass of units is going to overrun him, and react accordingly. cant really say i know what a a toss/terran is doing early on.. a wait, thats because there are so much more choices.. -.-
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On April 19 2010 18:39 G4MR wrote:
What if the infestor got the "dark swarm" ability :D?? I think it would change ZvP (Collosus play)
if i remember correctly u had a poll on that issue.. and i dont think its the right idea to bring swam back. game dynamics changed a lot and are not exactly comparable to BW. someone mentioned that in your poll as well, and i dont think its the best way to invent new units and give em old abilities back. we need new stuff, not old stuff on new units. sc2 was never ever planned to be BW with a facelift and new graphics. even though i still feel zerg comes short in new stuff in general compared to toss/terra. you want bw abilities and gameplay..? then play bw,..
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On April 19 2010 22:48 wbz0rn wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 18:39 G4MR wrote:
What if the infestor got the "dark swarm" ability :D?? I think it would change ZvP (Collosus play) if i remember correctly u had a poll on that issue.. and i dont think its the right idea to bring swam back. game dynamics changed a lot and are not exactly comparable to BW. someone mentioned that in your poll as well, and i dont think its the best way to invent new units and give em old abilities back. we need new stuff, not old stuff on new units. sc2 was never ever planned to be BW with a facelift and new graphics. even though i still feel zerg comes short in new stuff in general compared to toss/terra. you want bw abilities and gameplay..? then play bw,..
maybe they dont need dark swarm but they definitely need a spell to compliment melee units in the late game, because ultras/lings/banelings are pretty awful past a certain point.
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well written post, and I completely agree, I've been writing posts like this one on the blizzard suggestion forum for a while now. I have also been hearing an overwhelmingly similar thing from pretty much any zerg who has played 300+ games.
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On April 19 2010 22:48 wbz0rn wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 18:39 G4MR wrote:
What if the infestor got the "dark swarm" ability :D?? I think it would change ZvP (Collosus play) if i remember correctly u had a poll on that issue.. and i dont think its the right idea to bring swam back. game dynamics changed a lot and are not exactly comparable to BW. someone mentioned that in your poll as well, and i dont think its the best way to invent new units and give em old abilities back. we need new stuff, not old stuff on new units. sc2 was never ever planned to be BW with a facelift and new graphics. even though i still feel zerg comes short in new stuff in general compared to toss/terra. you want bw abilities and gameplay..? then play bw,..
Yeah I made it after I posted that post. If I remember correctly.
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EPT
