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On August 10 2010 15:44 MythicalMage wrote:
I think that's balanced by being able to stockpile up to 19 larvae per hatchery. You killed my 200/200 army? Well I have another one within one production cycle.
The issue I'm talking about is when your not supply capped/blocked, if you miss the timing of spawn larva by say 3 seconds, you cannot recover those 3 seconds. If you are constantly missing spawn larva by 1-5 seconds, over the course of 6 minutes you would have lost 4 larva, people from diamond and platinum can miss these timings, but it becomes much more apparent with gold players and below if they are missing 10 seconds or more, losing 4 larva every 2 minutes. In your case the Zerg macro actually pulls ahead of the other races due to the ability to reinforce and recover from a 200v200 battle, but you still need to continue macroing and still try to get spawn larva right on cooldown
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On August 10 2010 15:41 Havenomind wrote:
Another issue with the queen is that you must use spawn larva right on cooldown, otherwise you lose time and missed opportunities later on. Protoss can chain cronoboost and terran can chain mule if you let your macro falter, but zerg cannot burn off excess energy this way. if you let your queen obtain enough energy you can't use spawn larva twice on a hatchery until the hatchery has spawned its first set, thus wasted time and energy. Sure you can power creep with the energy but you already lost some of your ability to macro because you weren't perfect.
there are other balance issues, but since your talking about macro abilities between races, zerg is much more punishing to those less skilled.
you get transfuse ? or was it just another ability that the qq zergs dont use.
watch madfrog double the use of his mutas cos he had bad macro. its pretty good value imo, since many zergs know how to micro their units into red but cbb to heal them.
not that im saying the race doesnt entirely suck. it does. i think zerg units arent cost effective in fighting T or P and really struggle to kill stuff. too many gas heavy critical upgrades and no easy answer to fight P/T unit mixes.
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On August 10 2010 15:16 IndecisivePenguin wrote:
However, Zerg is a race with plenty of options . . .
LOL. Yeah, sure.
Take a count of Terran units and all their abilities and bonuses and you will find Zerg has half the options mathematically. (Protoss is between.) Terrans can do just way too much stuff, especially in the early game, which is why all Zergs get pounded into the ground first 15 minutes of the game. And if you are lucky enough to play a noob, he will let you have a small economy. But mid game will suck anyway.
For now, Terran players are still noobs and don't know how to fully use Terran, so for now it is only awful. Soon enough, it will be down right impossible.
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I think the main issue of Zerg being "weak" is that their armies are not really spammable, but their units can't really go toe-to-toe with the other races. Zerg units are not supposed to be able to match up to Protoss and Terran units 1 on 1, but Zerg compensates by simply have more shit than Protoss and Terran. Just like in BW, Zerg units are weak individually, but very powerful in mass. Unfortunately, games often reach max extremely quickly such that Zerg's ability to produce more shit than the other races isn't as obvious/present.
I think an easy fix for Zerg would be to simply allow more of their units to be spammable. The roach nerf was probably the largest turning point of Zerg becoming "weaker." However, roaches pre-nerf were too powerful (imo) for a 1-supply unit. In short, Zerg was very badly designed in SC2; that's why they're "weak."
Unfortunately, ZvP is pretty balanced, probably the most balanced non-mirror matchup. Any changes to Zerg to compensate for it's "weakness" in ZvT would heavily impact ZvP (badly). This really makes it tough for anything to really be done, at least until the expansions with new units.
My 2 cents.
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On August 10 2010 16:08 Ryuu314 wrote:
Unfortunately, ZvP is pretty balanced, probably the most balanced non-mirror matchup. Any changes to Zerg to compensate for it's "weakness" in ZvT would heavily impact ZvP (badly). This really makes it tough for anything to really be done, at least until the expansions with new units.
Agreed. I love Blizzard but their balancing team had screwed up majorly and still has no idea what the hell it's doing.
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On August 10 2010 16:00 T0fuuu wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 15:41 Havenomind wrote:
Another issue with the queen is that you must use spawn larva right on cooldown, otherwise you lose time and missed opportunities later on. Protoss can chain cronoboost and terran can chain mule if you let your macro falter, but zerg cannot burn off excess energy this way. if you let your queen obtain enough energy you can't use spawn larva twice on a hatchery until the hatchery has spawned its first set, thus wasted time and energy. Sure you can power creep with the energy but you already lost some of your ability to macro because you weren't perfect.
there are other balance issues, but since your talking about macro abilities between races, zerg is much more punishing to those less skilled. you get transfuse ? or was it just another ability that the qq zergs dont use. watch madfrog double the use of his mutas cos he had bad macro. its pretty good value imo, since many zergs know how to micro their units into red but cbb to heal them. not that im saying the race doesnt entirely suck. it does. i think zerg units arent cost effective in fighting T or P and really struggle to kill stuff. too many gas heavy critical upgrades and no easy answer to fight P/T unit mixes.
Really? >_> Transfusion most of the time is as useful as shield battery was in BW. The only time Zerg really needs Transfusion is very early in the game when the first push comes, but we will have rarely have enough Energy for it, and just a single transfusion won't help anything. And you really think healing 1 muta or 2 is gonna make a difference enough for it to be noticeable?
Transfusion is a skill that is more or less useless when it can be used. But could be very useful if it costed less energy and Larva Inject wouldn't be so important. During mid-game and so on, Zerg gets a lot of units, and healing a single one, will very very rarely do any difference.
Transfusion is mainly used in ZvZ match up if it goes to Mutas vs Mutas, and sometimes against air-harrass.
Any good player won't have enough energy for transfusion till mid-game anyways, but the point here also was that if you forget to larva inject, it hurts the Zerg alot. Especially in early game and if your getting pressured, missing one single larva inject and spell the doom for you, because otherwise you just can't keep up with the enemies forces. Terran? NP I'll just drop 3 mules. Protoss? NP ill just chrono boost all my gateways and shit.
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On August 10 2010 16:00 T0fuuu wrote:
you get transfuse ? or was it just another ability that the qq zergs dont use.
watch madfrog double the use of his mutas cos he had bad macro. its pretty good value imo, since many zergs know how to micro their units into red but cbb to heal them.
not that im saying the race doesnt entirely suck. it does. i think zerg units arent cost effective in fighting T or P and really struggle to kill stuff. too many gas heavy critical upgrades and no easy answer to fight P/T unit mixes.
Think about this, would you rather have a transfuse ready or 8 more zerglings?
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On August 10 2010 15:55 Havenomind wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 15:44 MythicalMage wrote:
I think that's balanced by being able to stockpile up to 19 larvae per hatchery. You killed my 200/200 army? Well I have another one within one production cycle. The issue I'm talking about is when your not supply capped/blocked, if you miss the timing of spawn larva by say 3 seconds, you cannot recover those 3 seconds. If you are constantly missing spawn larva by 1-5 seconds, over the course of 6 minutes you would have lost 4 larva, people from diamond and platinum can miss these timings, but it becomes much more apparent with gold players and below if they are missing 10 seconds or more, losing 4 larva every 2 minutes. In your case the Zerg macro actually pulls ahead of the other races due to the ability to reinforce and recover from a 200v200 battle, but you still need to continue macroing and still try to get spawn larva right on cooldown
Sure. But look at it in a comparison to Brood War for the sake of argument. You effectively get a free hatchery and a third for every time you get to inject. You can make anything with those larvae. Terrans get minerals. Also Terrans missing MULES, early game at least, literally breaks builds. If you stockpile energy, you have a very unsteady income, and it leads to bad macro over all. Sure it seems a tad harder for zergs, but it's a racial difference just like creep and so on.
EDIT: So terran is more accessible. As a low level player (Probably gold or so when I get around to doing placement on my main account, playing on a guest pass now), I'd MUCH rather the game be balanced for professional play than for low level play.
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On August 10 2010 15:05 MrMotionPicture wrote:
(Not a full blown balance discussion)
First off, I am not an excellent player by any means, but I just thought about this and would like some feedback on what people think. And as everyone has probably heard, there are fewer Zerg players at the top of the ranks. I am not saying that this is an indicator that they are a weaker race, but I thought of some contributing factors to that debate.
In the early stages of a game, Protoss can Chronoboost out more workers to improve their economy. Terran can utilize MULEs for more resources. What do Zerg have? They have the Queen, but extra larvae does not show an instant economy boost. Sure you can produce more Drones, but that takes away from your army composition.
And another thing I thought of that doesn't seem too significant, but I think it can play a slight roll in this. When you set a rally point for the Command Center/Nexus, the SCV/Probe pop out on the closest spot to the rally point (most of the time the minerals).
However, for Zerg, sometimes the larvae are positioned on the opposite side of the Hatchery, and thus the Drones have to travel a slightly longer distance to the minerals.
So I would just like to know what you guys think. Do these slight differences between Protoss/Terran and Zerg really help to the fact that they are "weaker" ?
How larva works is the strength of zerg. While you are attacking you can pump 50 units instantly potentially. Not saying you will, but having the ability to fight at 200/200 food and then reinforce very shortly from 150/200 back up to 200/200 is something the other races just don't have.
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On August 10 2010 15:34 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Zerg units are just not cost efficient since Protoss and Terran all have hard counters to Zerg units. The whole point of Zerg was to have weak, cost efficient units that can overwhelm the opponent, but now you have the same number of units, except your units die 10x as fast as his.
Well put. It feels as though it's easier to hardcounter a zerg army than a terran or protoss one.
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On August 10 2010 16:25 MythicalMage wrote:
Sure. But look at it in a comparison to Brood War for the sake of argument. You effectively get a free hatchery and a third for every time you get to inject. You can make anything with those larvae. Terrans get minerals. Also Terrans missing MULES, early game at least, literally breaks builds. If you stockpile energy, you have a very unsteady income, and it leads to bad macro over all. Sure it seems a tad harder for zergs, but it's a racial difference just like creep and so on.
EDIT: So terran is more accessible. As a low level player (Probably gold or so when I get around to doing placement on my main account, playing on a guest pass now), I'd MUCH rather the game be balanced for professional play than for low level play.
Comparing Brood war and SC2 does not work in this situation, sure zerg gets essentially a free hatchery and a third, but terran mules make up the difference. In Broodwar, zerg didn't have spawn larva just as terran didn't have mule.
comparing capabilities of both races, terran mule allows for between 5-7 more marines per usage with no decrease in build time while spawn larva allows for 8 more zerglings with a decrease in build time by way of simultaneous build. looking at it this way you would think it is roughly balanced only if macro is utilized near perfectly.
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On August 10 2010 15:16 IndecisivePenguin wrote:
Slight differences like these do not significantly contribute to a weakness in the Zerg race. It's actually a very characteristic quality of the Zerg race. StarCraft was never designed to be three races that play exactly the same with different skins. Each race has its own cons; it is up to the player to overcome these cons and to take advantage of those of the enemy.
Zerg is a more difficult race to play at lower levels, I think most can agree with that. Larva management plays a huge role, and Zerg is possibly the most mechanically demanding race out of the three. However, Zerg is a race with plenty of options and significantly greater mobility than that of the other races. StarCraft 2 is still in a very young state. Although we have discovered what we believe to be very solid, universal strategies, this may not even be the case a few months from now. The game will evolve, and the dominance will shift.
plenty of options? oh really? tell me those options, please. oh, and against terran. would love to hear these "options"
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In my opinion the reason why zerg is weak is because they in reality aren't a very mobile race anymore. SC2 took the mobility of the zerg race and contained it in the creep. And its virtually impossible to have creep everywhere until the mid game. When you need to effectively surround all those tanks in a wide open space you have to have creep covering like 3/4 of the map to effectively get your units in place. For example.
Marine/Marauder/Seige Tank move speed 2.25
Hydralisk/Roach (no speed upgrade) move speed 2.25 (off creep)
Roach speed with upgrade 3.
Speedling speed 4.7
Hellion speed 4.25 range 6 lol
I dont think the protoss are any slower than the terran so i wont go thru the trouble of researching their speed.
The only zerg units that have the speed to effectively abuse mobility are mutalisk only because they fly and zerglings. In fact. the terran army is more mobile than the zerg because they can stim or jump into their medvacs and fly where ever they want, while zerg drop tech takes significantly longer.
Well I'm gonna quit before I start sounding like a whiny zerg player. :p I mean, being the underdog is fun sometimes. :p
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On August 10 2010 15:41 Havenomind wrote:
Another issue with the queen is that you must use spawn larva right on cooldown, otherwise you lose time and missed opportunities later on. Protoss can chain cronoboost and terran can chain mule if you let your macro falter, but zerg cannot burn off excess energy this way. if you let your queen obtain enough energy you can't use spawn larva twice on a hatchery until the hatchery has spawned its first set, thus wasted time and energy. Sure you can power creep with the energy but you already lost some of your ability to macro because you weren't perfect.
there are other balance issues, but since your talking about macro abilities between races, zerg is much more punishing to those less skilled.
A point that dosen't get mentioned are while terran and protoss can stockpile energy and use it all at ones, zerg can stockpile resources and larvae and use it all at ones.
Especially at "lower levels" when a zerg notices oh shit i have 2000 minerals and 1500 gas well just select all your hatcherys (normally 2 or 3) press S, V a couple of times and hold down R or H or whatever untill everything is spent. Down to 0 resources in a second. The other races cant do that.
PS. I'm a zerg in gold that does this in almost every match.
EDIT: If you have trouble with too few larva as zerg and doesnt have high enough APM to spawn larva at the exact time build more hatcheries = more larva.
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Another thing that might be contributing to this feeling of imbalance of the game in tvz among zerg players like myself is due to the lackthereof ability to punish the terran for not scouting. This also has to do with zerg not having as many options in terms of tech. Back in the good old days of brood war terran had to consistently rely on scouting information from comsat to at least somewhat react to what the zerg was doing. In brood war after the lair finished the zerg player had a choice of getting mutalisks out or getting lurkers out first. Terran players would be punished immensely if they didn't gather this information. This allowed for the zerg to abuse the terran's lack of intel. Terran players back in BW didn't mind this so much because there was only 2 choices terran players could go: lurkers or mutalisks, and also terran players had many different tools in their bag of tricks to combat this.
Now I feel as if the situation has been reversed. Zerg must react to what the terran does. Now I don't mind this at all. I actually prefer to be the one doing the reacting, but what makes this situation so painful for zerg players is that terran, in addition to being the ones you have to react to, also have more tricks than you. Roaches, banelings, zerglings, and mutalisks are all zerg has to work with in midgame. All of which are countered by a good mech ball. There's just no way to solidly react to it! Also, another reason why tvz seems so imba for the zerg player is because even though the terran player has been harassing your economy the entire game, there seems to be no way to get back at him for it and punish his mistakes. I mean even tech switches are often done because the terran's army is hardcountering yours. There's no way to abuse terran's lack of intel whereas there's SOOOO many ways he can abuse yours.
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On August 10 2010 17:29 Zerksys wrote:
Another thing that might be contributing to this feeling of imbalance of the game in tvz among zerg players like myself is due to the lackthereof ability to punish the terran for not scouting. This also has to do with zerg not having as many options in terms of tech. Back in the good old days of brood war terran had to consistently rely on scouting information from comsat to at least somewhat react to what the zerg was doing. In brood war after the lair finished the zerg player had a choice of getting mutalisks out or getting lurkers out first. Terran players would be punished immensely if they didn't gather this information. This allowed for the zerg to abuse the terran's lack of intel. Terran players back in BW didn't mind this so much because there was only 2 choices terran players could go: lurkers or mutalisks, and also terran players had many different tools in their bag of tricks to combat this.
Now I feel as if the situation has been reversed. Zerg must react to what the terran does. Now I don't mind this at all. I actually prefer to be the one doing the reacting, but what makes this situation so painful for zerg players is that terran, in addition to being the ones you have to react to, also have more tricks than you. Roaches, banelings, zerglings, and mutalisks are all zerg has to work with in midgame. All of which are countered by a good mech ball. There's just no way to solidly react to it! Also, another reason why tvz seems so imba for the zerg player is because even though the terran player has been harassing your economy the entire game, there seems to be no way to get back at him for it and punish his mistakes. I mean even tech switches are often done because the terran's army is hardcountering yours. There's no way to abuse terran's lack of intel whereas there's SOOOO many ways he can abuse yours.
It's the same shit sandwich dude. Flash doesn't even have to attack and armies just crumble to mech. Same goes for a bunch of other terran that have good tank line.
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On August 10 2010 17:37 Baarn wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 17:29 Zerksys wrote:
Another thing that might be contributing to this feeling of imbalance of the game in tvz among zerg players like myself is due to the lackthereof ability to punish the terran for not scouting. This also has to do with zerg not having as many options in terms of tech. Back in the good old days of brood war terran had to consistently rely on scouting information from comsat to at least somewhat react to what the zerg was doing. In brood war after the lair finished the zerg player had a choice of getting mutalisks out or getting lurkers out first. Terran players would be punished immensely if they didn't gather this information. This allowed for the zerg to abuse the terran's lack of intel. Terran players back in BW didn't mind this so much because there was only 2 choices terran players could go: lurkers or mutalisks, and also terran players had many different tools in their bag of tricks to combat this.
Now I feel as if the situation has been reversed. Zerg must react to what the terran does. Now I don't mind this at all. I actually prefer to be the one doing the reacting, but what makes this situation so painful for zerg players is that terran, in addition to being the ones you have to react to, also have more tricks than you. Roaches, banelings, zerglings, and mutalisks are all zerg has to work with in midgame. All of which are countered by a good mech ball. There's just no way to solidly react to it! Also, another reason why tvz seems so imba for the zerg player is because even though the terran player has been harassing your economy the entire game, there seems to be no way to get back at him for it and punish his mistakes. I mean even tech switches are often done because the terran's army is hardcountering yours. There's no way to abuse terran's lack of intel whereas there's SOOOO many ways he can abuse yours. It's the same shit sandwich dude. Flash doesn't even have to attack and armies just crumble to mech. Same goes for a bunch of other terran that have good tank line.
Not really IMO. If we're talking about brood war here I find that if I can keep knowledge of my tech hidden from the terran player or force him to use too many scans then I can usually surprise him and do a lot of damage. That was the point of my post. In bw a mechball was a lot more vulnerable to mutalisks and scourge than in sc2 seeing as goliaths are really immobile and valks could be sniped using scourge. At the very least even if you don't do too much damage to terran mech balls you could keep him in his base long enough for those lurkers to come out depending on the success of ur muta micro and the pressure he feels from it. I just don't feel that there is any way to abuse terran's lack of intel in sc2. I played a 40 minute match with a terran just today where he scanned me once only to see if I had a spire. Other than that he was perfectly fine with just not scouting. I wanted to find a way to abuse this but there is really no way to abuse terran's lack of intel in the midgame because that mech ball is so all purpose that terran players can keep getting the same army compositions every single game without the need to scout and be ok. Yet the same time zerg has to constantly scout terran's army composition AND in addition we lack the ability to cheaply do so (changling doesn't count it relies on luck that your opponent doesn't spot it). That's the point I was trying to make in my previous post when i referenced bw. Maybe if the overseer had parasite from bw instead of changlings, keeping track of terran army comps would be easier.
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On August 10 2010 15:16 IndecisivePenguin wrote:
Slight differences like these do not significantly contribute to a weakness in the Zerg race. It's actually a very characteristic quality of the Zerg race. StarCraft was never designed to be three races that play exactly the same with different skins. Each race has its own cons; it is up to the player to overcome these cons and to take advantage of those of the enemy.
Zerg is a more difficult race to play at lower levels, I think most can agree with that. Larva management plays a huge role, and Zerg is possibly the most mechanically demanding race out of the three. However, Zerg is a race with plenty of options and significantly greater mobility than that of the other races. StarCraft 2 is still in a very young state. Although we have discovered what we believe to be very solid, universal strategies, this may not even be the case a few months from now. The game will evolve, and the dominance will shift.
Zerg definately is the most difficult race to play at lower levels, but it's also the most difficult at high levels.
top 100 1v1 - http://sc2ranks.com/stats/all/1/100
Or you can use the article that was put up last night on the official Starcraft 2 website - http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/426266#blog -of the top 200, and notice how Zerg has not even 20% of the top 200 (only 37/200 are Zerg). Or the fact that only 2 of the top 10 (and 3 of the top 20) are Zerg.
Now, I wont go as far as to say they are "too weak", but they are definately the hardest to play. Hard enough that they should be buffed somehow? That's for Blizzard to decide.
With that said, it's most likely to do with ZvT. I dont know a single Zerg player that does not agree that ZvT is by far the most difficult match to win against a skilled player. Either ZvZ and ZvP are far too easy, or ZvT is far too hard. I'm willing to bet on ZvT being far too hard out of the two, due to the many ways and timings that Terrans can exploit Zerg with much less effort, and the metagame being reliant on if Zerg is able to avoid them on a consistent enough basis to win.
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I'm really beginning to believe that the problems with Zerg are due to the almost undisputed fact that it's the most difficult race to play. It takes nearly superhuman multitasking to use spawn larvae out of 4 bases and to be active with creep tumors, unit production, map control, scouting, and micromanagement all at the same time.
I'll throw out this scenario: Imagine you're a terran player microing hellions. Now imagine that Orbital Commands have a maximum energy of 50, and you need to drop a MULE as soon as it hits 50. Of course, looking back at your base will mean you'll likely lose all your hellions, but if you don't you'll fall behind. IMHO this is what it feels like to be a Zerg; it's not exactly an imbalance, but it's a massive annoyance that can easily lose you a game.
I may be crying over spilt milk here, but I honestly think that just making spawn larvae autocast would remove about 93% of Zerg tears over things like unstoppable unit compositions, 2 supply roaches, few ways to deal with early pressure, and just about everything else we complain about.
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The fact that terran is nearly immune to scouting makes zerg really weak against them without severely sacrificing copious amounts of resources or incorporating multiple suicide overlords into their builds. With the addition to losing minerals scouting, The timing pushes they must defend are also very hard to defend against and require pristine macro/timing/larvae management and most importantly positioning and micro. It's unreal how much zerg is required to do versus terran just to get on even footing in the midgame. It's hard. 500 point zerg, 800 point terran, and zerg was supposedly my main race. Re deeek kuu louzz
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