Patch 12 - Changes and Discussion - Page 69

On May 14 2010 21:03 Sephy69 wrote:

i don't think roaches were ever unique, they were just the zerg's new "zealot" high hp tank / high damage but with range. when i first started playing i found it pretty retarded how much hp they had and the amount that they cost to make. i don't know how this will play in the long run, but if something goes wrong, i'd like to see some minor changes to other low tier units

On May 14 2010 23:48 DalaiLameR wrote:
Dear Blizzard

I'm playing your games almost exclusively since Starcraft1 back in 1997 with great joy and a bit obsession;) . I have to say, i love what you have done with Starcraft:Broodwar. It became by far the most competitive and balanced game there ever was and probably ever will be. Thus my feelings for Starcraft2 ranged between excitement and scepticism. But all my doubts disappeared when i first played the starcraft2 beta. I just loved the game from the first moment and have been playing it alot.

At the moment i am rated around 1900+ in platinum. I also played Broodwar and Warcraft3 (being a former german champion at wc3) at a very competitive level, so I’m really into esports for a long time and have seen alot of patches. But nearly no patch every irritated me that much as the latest one.

Normally i dont commentate or react on the whining about patchnotes, i simply think that players have to adapt to new strategies and counters except for relying on their convenience of their old ones. It is beta for gods sake!

But i think this patch points into a completly wrong direction. I will focus on the roach-nerf first and try to explain, why it is so fatal for zerg and the zerg gameplay.

First of all: Zergs are supposed to be „the swarm“. Their whole identity is about pure masses of small cheap units that can overwhelm enemy forces. Quantity over quality!

Now, what you have done in Sc2 is putting the Hydralisk tier2 (making him a very strong unit costing 2 Supply instead of 1 in BW) and replacing him in the early game with the roach.
But since the early stages of the beta, i was never sure, whats his intended role in the zerg army. It obviously was ridiculously powerful and made ZvZ a pain in the ***. Ist ability to tank due to his high armor and high HP/supply-relation made him the perfect tank for nearly any zergarmy in any stage of the game. Due to his upgrades it transitioned well from tier1 to tier2 to tier3 always being the backbone of the zerg army and still being it due tot he really bad ultralisk. It simply was (except for his lack of antiair) the complete package! The best tank, the best damage dealer and the best utility unit zerg had. His role was NEVER really defined.

Now after serveral HUGE and some understandable nerfes, his role in the zerg army is still completley in the shadow (or should i say fog of war?). You lowered its armor, which is completly reasonable due tot he fact that ZvZ was only a roachfest without any other opportunities. You nerfed the burrowupgrade, u nerfed its speed while burrowed, you nerfed his regeneration rate while being burrowed and made him not regenerate a bit faster than any other zerg unit while unburrowed. Some of these nerfes were reasonable some of them were not. Now, to use the roach properly and with all his gimmicks, the zerg player have to fully commit himself to the roachstrategy. It simply costs so much time and gas to research all his upgrades, that every other techtree is sooo far behind, that it really isnt useful anymore. I think, thats one of the main reasons why you see nearly no unitdiversity in a zergarmy the whole game long. You just cant support this many techtrees (plus the really really hard counters to mutas with the ridiculous thor and new phoenix).

Now you say that the roachnerf was made because of the lategame (Thanks alot for sharing your thoughts with us, i really appreciate this alot!). Now, first of all: i cant remeber ANY fight i’ve directly won with a 200 zerg army against a 200 protoss or terran army EVER. And thats ok, zerg arent supposed to win against the „balls“. As Zerg you try to make your opponent lose as much of his army as humanly/zergly possible and just reproduce your 200 army alot faster. I am completly fine with that. Another thing is: you mentioned that even with the right counters (i think of marauders and immortals?) toss and terran still would have lost the 200fight. Again: I have never won against a massmarauderterran or a massimmortaltoss with a heavyroach army. (P.S: the massmarauderarmy is extremly hard to counter for any zergplayer since zerg has no +dmg to armored and zerg has no real counter to mass upgraded marauders in the lategame).

Ok, now lets take a look at the zerglategame: As a Zerg you face a terranarmy consisting of some tanks, 2 Thors (since the demolish any mutaliskforce zerg has) and A LOT of marauders and medivacs (not that many marines sind they die to fast to banelings and there is no realy air-threat due to the muta vs thor situation). You need units that take the enemy fire so that zerglings and hydralisk can deal enough dmg to reduce the opponents forces and infestors can mindcontroll or fungalgrowth the terran army. There is simply no other zerg unit that can provide this and even roaches die incredible fast tot he mass marauders. Dont even think about using ultralisks since this highend unit is gets hardcountered by the marauder (a tier1 unit btw). Against Protoss you will face psistorm and colossi which both DESTROY zergling/hydra armies … and once again the ultralisk is pretty useless due to his vulnerabilty to stalker/immortals. I simply dont see the imbalance of roaches in the lategame since you have no other tanking units and no darkswarm ..^^
The key point is now the lategame but the early and midgame which is allready really really hard for zerg to come out undamaged. My assumption ist hat the roachnerf effects the zergs early and midgame WAY more and in a devastation way than it changes the lategame. Zealots in medium numbers (5-6) simply destroy zerglings it’s not even funny. So your only choice are roaches which are supposed to counter zealots pretty well i think. The fact is: they dont if they are not creep and not speedupgraded. Even dealing with a single 10gate zealotrush which is constantly chronoboosted and some additional probes, it is nearly impossible to hold any kind of expansion while ONLY producing lings out of your hatch. And even if you manage to hold it, the protoss player is in very convincing economic lead and can easily tech to the 4/5warpgatepush or if you opt to go roaches 3gate/robo. Now with 2supply roaches this allready hard earlygame got even worse. Especially in the early game every single supply counts, as larvae and money is really low. This nerf hurts the Zerg early- and midgame ALOT more than the lategame.

Terran has SO many ways to pressure you in the early stages of the game. And you have to play safe against every single one of them. The fast reaper/bunkerrush is still an issue that should be nerfed a bit. Hellions are also great harassing units (esp. with igniterupgrade), both completly owning lings without speedupgrade. Now you have 3 options to deal with this:

a) Making alot of spincecrawlers which got also nerfed (static defence)
b) Making alot of queens (more or less static defence)
c) Making roaches which were the only units you can move out of your base in a later stage of the game

As mentioned above the roachnerf costst you not only more minerals, but also delaying your tech, which is enormous since you are facing thordrops or banshees very soon. Even prepatch it was incredibly hard for zerg to play save against every single harassoption terran (and toss) has, on some maps like incineration zone and kulas ravine nearly impossible. Nerfing the roach doesnt help a bit there, but limiting our options to purely static defence.

So, how can we improve the current state the roach is in atm. First of all, you, blizzard should really think about its role in the zergarmy! Should it be a damage dealer? Should it be a tank? Or should it be an utiltyunit? Secound: IMMETIATLY give the roach back ist 1supply!!!!! A zerg tier1 unit should not cost 2 supply just due to the fact that it is zerg we are speaking of, not Protoss!
You have several options to define the role oft he roach as a zerg unit. Please be consequent and give him ist place an role in the zergarmy! If you want him as tank, increase his armor/hp? and lower his dmg! If you want him has DD lower his HP and give him more attackrange and make him better hit-n-run controllable! If you want him as utility unit, lower his dmg and/or his HP and buff his upgrades and make them cheaper! Just please define his role and consider that it is „the swarm“ we are talking about!

Another thing i want to mention is the lack of zergs „cool abilities“ as dustin browder would say. Protoss have earlygame sentries which is an amazing unit with alot of cool (perhaps overpowered) spells. Stalkers get blink, Zeals get charge and immortals simply have a kickass armor. Terrans have the reaper who can jump up and off cliffs, owning light armored melee units and buildings left and right, the marauder who has concussive shells which allow you to kite and enemy army to literally the end oft he world. Vikings can transform and banshees have a cool cloaking ability. Zerg units have not nearly that variaty or cool abilities that other races have, which also result in a often metioned „lack of diversity“ in the zerg army.

Zerglings got speed, which is a great ability but nothing really cool. Roaches got burrowed move and regen which both got nerfed pretty hard and costs an incredible amount of gas and time to research. Hydralisk have NOTHING at all (being the backbone of zergarmies) .. and the corrupter still got the most useless spell in the game. That all makes Zerg the macro-oriented roach-heavy and low-diversity race it currently is. Sad but true

On May 14 2010 21:36 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Sunkensssssssss.

I think Blizzard just wants to see different units than just roach at 200/200 but my ZvT is far from understanding enough about a 200/200 battle. Maybe infestor hydra should work fine? The game is so young it's really hard to say anything about balance. For example if you put Korean Zergs into the European tournaments they would probably be winning most of them.

It's really hard to say where skill ends and imbalance begins, and even harder to know what sort of learning curves are attached to the races. People think that all the races should be equally easy to master - thus being equally good at any moment from now until 10 years into the future. That is just not the case. The races are so vastly different I doubt much can be said about learning curve at this point. It could be that a race that loses a lot early on becomes stronger with practice than the others, and the other way around.

I'm a protoss and i have to admit that he is right. Roaches are countered by Marauders and Forcefield so badly, that Zerg really has a problem with roaches. I dont like a zerg with T1.5 2-food cost units neither. Think about it...

Tomorrow is the first star league event, lets hope we see some zerg matchups and we decide after it.

On May 15 2010 00:31 Bluerain wrote:
are u implying that if the korean Zs win in euro tourneys its due to racial imbalance? i guess the bottom line is that do u think roaches being such low food count has been the result of many of ur losses where u think u couldnt do anything against it and that it was imbalanced. right nowi think a 200 food army from protoss/zerg can end up going either way depending on positioning. sometimes the 200 food protoss might lose more often than not cus they tend to overload of probes being limited to only 2-3 bases

On May 15 2010 00:32 Lollersauce wrote:
Zerg is just slowly turning into a defensive race with less and less harass/pressure options.. Meh. Basically it's "survive until you can outmacro".

"just make more queens to to prevent air cheese"
"just throw down some spine crawlers"
woohoo static D fest...

I don't like being pigeonholed into this style of play, SC1 allowed for more options opening wise.

More defensive, less "swarm" units with all the 2+ food BS... basically Zerg is just an alien version of Terran now, except packing a lot less punch in the early and early-mid game.

On May 15 2010 00:31 Bluerain wrote:


are u implying that if the korean Zs win in euro tourneys its due to racial imbalance? i guess the bottom line is that do u think roaches being such low food count has been the result of many of ur losses where u think u couldnt do anything against it and that it was imbalanced. right nowi think a 200 food army from protoss/zerg can end up going either way depending on positioning. sometimes the 200 food protoss might lose more often than not cus they tend to overload of probes being limited to only 2-3 bases

On May 15 2010 00:55 ooni wrote:
But conversely, Terran has given opportunity to harass, harass and harass.

On May 15 2010 01:01 Clow wrote:


Pretty much what my feelings are. Very nice post :D

Blizzard said there are more changes for the zerg and that's why they nerfed roaches... Let's see what they have for us.

For now, let's play protoss.