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On September 25 2010 09:40 EnderCN wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2010 09:32 kmillz wrote:On September 24 2010 23:44 EnderCN wrote:On September 24 2010 23:35 oN_Silva wrote:
Oh I remember earlier, everyone was like "Oh Why the fuck does Zerg get the Changeling, They already have the best scouting possibilty ingame"
I ain't saying that changeling is anything near the answere (coz they suck lol) but I always woundered why people kept saying zerg is best scoutin...
Coz without sacrifize overlord there is Zero scout to neiter hag nor evil
Zerg has the best mid game scouting if you are including persistent scouting. They have the 2nd best early scouting as well having it better than Protoss does. What they have is the weakest in base scouting and that is something the changeling does help wiht a little bit. All of the scouting complaints are really complaints about how hard it is for Zerg to get counters out for different strats. Protoss can counter every early build with just gateway units, Zerg can pick the wrong path to go down and lose if they can't scout in base early enough. Zerg has the best mid game scouting? really? This is news to me, last I checked suiciding a ling at a ramp usually gives little to no information about what tech the opponent is going. Sacking a floating supply depot is a pretty expensive a way to get information, especially when you have to do it over and over again. I'd rather have scans or an observer any day. Not to mention that until I pay another 100/100 for speed that floating supply depot takes like a year to get to his base and usually is sniped before information is gained without this speed. You are only looking at half of what scouting is though. Holding towers, overlords, creep tumors are all scouting. Watch an IdrA game and by mid game he sees at least 50% of the map at all times. He almost always sees exactly what is coming way before it reaches him, high end Terran players largely play in the dark mid game outside of scans. That is why I said they have weak in base scouting, it is hard for them to scout what is inside a base. They can use overseers and changelings to do this as well as mutalisk. Observers are nice but they are incredibly easy to deny in base scouting with and Terran pretty much has vikings and scans and sensor towers. It is pretty close between Terran and Zerg. If all you are talking about is seeing specifically what is in someones base then yeah it goes Terran > Zerg > Protoss early game and Terran > Zerg = Protoss late game. When you add persistent scouting Zerg takes over though.
you could medivac drop an SCV across the map and spawn a supply depot and have exactly the same.
all those things you mentioned take a lot of time to develop, while a decent terran will just take your overlords out with a few vikings, or kill your creep spread with a simple scan (after which you need to take a queen all the way to where you killed the last few tumors to place a new one, something that usually isn't possible).
edit: a scan can reveal about 3-4 creep tumor centers, which is a lot of path.
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On September 25 2010 09:46 crw wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2010 09:40 EnderCN wrote:On September 25 2010 09:32 kmillz wrote:On September 24 2010 23:44 EnderCN wrote:On September 24 2010 23:35 oN_Silva wrote:
Oh I remember earlier, everyone was like "Oh Why the fuck does Zerg get the Changeling, They already have the best scouting possibilty ingame"
I ain't saying that changeling is anything near the answere (coz they suck lol) but I always woundered why people kept saying zerg is best scoutin...
Coz without sacrifize overlord there is Zero scout to neiter hag nor evil
Zerg has the best mid game scouting if you are including persistent scouting. They have the 2nd best early scouting as well having it better than Protoss does. What they have is the weakest in base scouting and that is something the changeling does help wiht a little bit. All of the scouting complaints are really complaints about how hard it is for Zerg to get counters out for different strats. Protoss can counter every early build with just gateway units, Zerg can pick the wrong path to go down and lose if they can't scout in base early enough. Zerg has the best mid game scouting? really? This is news to me, last I checked suiciding a ling at a ramp usually gives little to no information about what tech the opponent is going. Sacking a floating supply depot is a pretty expensive a way to get information, especially when you have to do it over and over again. I'd rather have scans or an observer any day. Not to mention that until I pay another 100/100 for speed that floating supply depot takes like a year to get to his base and usually is sniped before information is gained without this speed. You are only looking at half of what scouting is though. Holding towers, overlords, creep tumors are all scouting. Watch an IdrA game and by mid game he sees at least 50% of the map at all times. He almost always sees exactly what is coming way before it reaches him, high end Terran players largely play in the dark mid game outside of scans. That is why I said they have weak in base scouting, it is hard for them to scout what is inside a base. They can use overseers and changelings to do this as well as mutalisk. Observers are nice but they are incredibly easy to deny in base scouting with and Terran pretty much has vikings and scans and sensor towers. It is pretty close between Terran and Zerg. If all you are talking about is seeing specifically what is in someones base then yeah it goes Terran > Zerg > Protoss early game and Terran > Zerg = Protoss late game. When you add persistent scouting Zerg takes over though. you could medivac drop an SCV across the map and spawn a supply depot there map ctrl right there. your argument is stupid, in order to get overlords less
Actually you'r point is invalid because of the fact that Supply depots don't move and get speed upgrades. Sure you could plant one in an expo to see when the other player takes it but you can't fly it in the a base and see whats going on. For the record, I am Zerg.
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On September 25 2010 09:40 EnderCN wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2010 09:32 kmillz wrote:On September 24 2010 23:44 EnderCN wrote:On September 24 2010 23:35 oN_Silva wrote:
Oh I remember earlier, everyone was like "Oh Why the fuck does Zerg get the Changeling, They already have the best scouting possibilty ingame"
I ain't saying that changeling is anything near the answere (coz they suck lol) but I always woundered why people kept saying zerg is best scoutin...
Coz without sacrifize overlord there is Zero scout to neiter hag nor evil
Zerg has the best mid game scouting if you are including persistent scouting. They have the 2nd best early scouting as well having it better than Protoss does. What they have is the weakest in base scouting and that is something the changeling does help wiht a little bit. All of the scouting complaints are really complaints about how hard it is for Zerg to get counters out for different strats. Protoss can counter every early build with just gateway units, Zerg can pick the wrong path to go down and lose if they can't scout in base early enough. Zerg has the best mid game scouting? really? This is news to me, last I checked suiciding a ling at a ramp usually gives little to no information about what tech the opponent is going. Sacking a floating supply depot is a pretty expensive a way to get information, especially when you have to do it over and over again. I'd rather have scans or an observer any day. Not to mention that until I pay another 100/100 for speed that floating supply depot takes like a year to get to his base and usually is sniped before information is gained without this speed. You are only looking at half of what scouting is though. Holding towers, overlords, creep tumors are all scouting. Watch an IdrA game and by mid game he sees at least 50% of the map at all times. He almost always sees exactly what is coming way before it reaches him, high end Terran players largely play in the dark mid game outside of scans. That is why I said they have weak in base scouting, it is hard for them to scout what is inside a base. They can use overseers and changelings to do this as well as mutalisk. Observers are nice but they are incredibly easy to deny in base scouting with and Terran pretty much has vikings and scans and sensor towers. It is pretty close between Terran and Zerg. If all you are talking about is seeing specifically what is in someones base then yeah it goes Terran > Zerg > Protoss early game and Terran > Zerg = Protoss late game. When you add persistent scouting Zerg takes over though. None of that changes my point though. If roach+hydra were a viable combo mid game Zerg wouldn't really NEED in base scouting just like Protoss doesn't. It would be nice but not needed. The fact that their main army units just aren't strong enough is severely limiting.
Seeing half the map is only useful if you also know what the opponent is making. Seeing a big ball of units halfway to your base that hard counters your army merely gives you a little advance warning that your are about to lose. However I do agree that the hard counters are a big part of the problem. T1 units doing 200%-300% damage to core armor types is poor design.
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On September 25 2010 04:15 Apolo wrote:
A way to adress Zerg lategame could be related with their total supply. 200/200 Zerg is the inferior. Even though zerg can replenish units quickly, i find it insuficient. Besides, units need to be low supply if we are to expect them to be a swarm. The zergling is probably the only unit that fits the Zerg swarmish feel with their 0.5 supply per unit. Either that or increase Zerg's supply to 225 or so.
i think zerg late game is fine, its their early game that suffers
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On September 25 2010 08:07 lambnrice wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2010 08:02 oxxo wrote:On September 25 2010 06:02 Fa1nT wrote:
Because using 5 different zerg units means we have to research 10-15 different expensive upgrades for speed, range, energy, attack, defense, ect?
Just like every other race? Face it. Many zerg are sitting on 1-2 unit types while Terran and Protoss players are not. It's hard to feel sorry for the Zerg players that only do hydra/roach or ling/muta while T go MMM/tank/raven or P goes zealot/stalker/sentry/HT/collosus etc. etc. Well T and P only need a few different unit producing structures to make that nice composition. Zerg meanwhile needs to sac a drone/larva every time we want a different unit. Plus it takes twice as long to get the right unit comp. For example when we scout and see that we need roaches. We must do two things: Build a roach warren and then build roaches. Terran when they see that they need marauders only need to do one thing: Build mauraders. They already have barracks. Nothing is out of the way for them. Barrack Factory and Starport are just 3 buildings that contain the majority of the units that they need, ghost and BC are pretty auxiliary and not imperative to any unit composition. Tech labs are inexpensive and build fast without a worker and can be swapped. Lift and land easily fixes the need for a tech lab.
Yeah the Zerg tech tree is more expensive (Z:1450/1050 VS T:1050 575 [1-1-1]) but you get with that quick production of all those unit types as needed which is pretty cool as demonstrated by Cool in GSL today when he puked out many Ultras asap. The price pretty much even once you raise that to 8 production buildings which you'll probably be sitting on at 2 base play. Its not like Terran or Toss can go "OH SNAP I NEED IMMORTALS / THORS" and puke out 5. I'm pretty sure the other races unites come with strings attached (i.e. research) before they become uber; Zealot legs, Blink, Stim, Shield, Conc nades, Infernal Preigniter, Extended thermal lance etc.
Yeah Terran and Toss hit their later tech quicker and easier, but when Zerg tech it can churn it out in sustained numbers, Toss can warp in gateway units anywhere with a pylon and frontloads unit production so overall balance is much more complicated than "my tech tree is so expensive".
Didn't really agree with Idras post, it was many words but didn't really offer much in the way of ideas and mostly amounted to "Everything Terran has is too strong, and stops my fast expand, Toss can stop my fast expand too easily". Yeah it was nice he expained the tank change didn't impact ZvT much, but everyone knew that anyway, yeah the pylon cannon contain is strong, thats not that new.
T1 overlord speed and/or overseer keeping Contaminate / changling T2 would be reasonable though and probably help the scouting problems and help VS cloaked unit rushes.
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On September 25 2010 09:40 EnderCN wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2010 09:32 kmillz wrote:On September 24 2010 23:44 EnderCN wrote:On September 24 2010 23:35 oN_Silva wrote:
Oh I remember earlier, everyone was like "Oh Why the fuck does Zerg get the Changeling, They already have the best scouting possibilty ingame"
I ain't saying that changeling is anything near the answere (coz they suck lol) but I always woundered why people kept saying zerg is best scoutin...
Coz without sacrifize overlord there is Zero scout to neiter hag nor evil
Zerg has the best mid game scouting if you are including persistent scouting. They have the 2nd best early scouting as well having it better than Protoss does. What they have is the weakest in base scouting and that is something the changeling does help wiht a little bit. All of the scouting complaints are really complaints about how hard it is for Zerg to get counters out for different strats. Protoss can counter every early build with just gateway units, Zerg can pick the wrong path to go down and lose if they can't scout in base early enough. Zerg has the best mid game scouting? really? This is news to me, last I checked suiciding a ling at a ramp usually gives little to no information about what tech the opponent is going. Sacking a floating supply depot is a pretty expensive a way to get information, especially when you have to do it over and over again. I'd rather have scans or an observer any day. Not to mention that until I pay another 100/100 for speed that floating supply depot takes like a year to get to his base and usually is sniped before information is gained without this speed. You are only looking at half of what scouting is though. Holding towers, overlords, creep tumors are all scouting. Watch an IdrA game and by mid game he sees at least 50% of the map at all times. He almost always sees exactly what is coming way before it reaches him, high end Terran players largely play in the dark mid game outside of scans. That is why I said they have weak in base scouting, it is hard for them to scout what is inside a base. They can use overseers and changelings to do this as well as mutalisk. Observers are nice but they are incredibly easy to deny in base scouting with and Terran pretty much has vikings and scans and sensor towers. It is pretty close between Terran and Zerg. If all you are talking about is seeing specifically what is in someones base then yeah it goes Terran > Zerg > Protoss early game and Terran > Zerg = Protoss late game. When you add persistent scouting Zerg takes over though. None of that changes my point though. If roach+hydra were a viable combo mid game Zerg wouldn't really NEED in base scouting just like Protoss doesn't. It would be nice but not needed. The fact that their main army units just aren't strong enough is severely limiting.
This is IdrA's quote.
All other terran aggression, hellions, hellion drops, banshees, bio allins, tank allins, thor allins, remains mostly untouched. The balance problems in early game ZvT come down to the fact that terran is simply stronger and much more diverse early on, zerg has to rely on hard counters to have any chance to survive, but cant scout in time to implement them.
Even he states the difficulty of zerg scouting. Now obviously having overlords for sight around the map is a plus, but ultimately sensor towers do the same thing. I do agree with most scouting complaints are mainly about the early game scouting to see what tech path to counter. But this is the most crucial and unforgiving part.
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On September 25 2010 04:02 virusGoatfish wrote:
I love IdrA but I wish he would stop complaining.
Ya. He is very good but sometimes the mass complaining (raging) can get old. He does have valid points. I just wish he wouldnt insult players that beat him with terran. Makes him look childish.
Dropping hydralisk to 1.5 tier I think would give the zerg a little more variety. Obviously there would have to be stat changes to them but getting some sort of main stream aa would round them out a bit
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When talking about how good or bad a race is at scouting, I think you also need to talk about how much a race needs to scout as well.
As a defensive and proactive race, Terran doesn't need to scout vs Zerg as much as the Zerg needs to scout the Terran. Their wall-offs deter most ground attacks, good depot placement stops Nydus hijinks, Sensor Towers deter drops and in a pinch, scans can be used to kill Burrowed units that might have somehow made their way in. And that's fine. It's the sheer number of aggressive tactics that they can employ even though they are meant to be the best defensive race that is the problem.
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Tank nerf means tanks won't melt roaches like they did before. Reaper means an easier early game for zerg.
Its a step forward, and tbh its to early to be making drastic changes to "fix" balancing. A year from now the game will be completely different, if you buff zerg now a year from now they could be the favored race.
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On September 25 2010 11:43 ibreakurface wrote:
Tank nerf means tanks won't melt roaches like they did before. Reaper means an easier early game for zerg.
Its a step forward, and tbh its to early to be making drastic changes to "fix" balancing. A year from now the game will be completely different, if you buff zerg now a year from now they could be the favored race.
you do realize that tanks do exactly the same damage against roaches post patch?
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On September 25 2010 11:43 ibreakurface wrote:
Tank nerf means tanks won't melt roaches like they did before. Reaper means an easier early game for zerg.
Its a step forward, and tbh its to early to be making drastic changes to "fix" balancing. A year from now the game will be completely different, if you buff zerg now a year from now they could be the favored race.
tanks do the same damage vs armored units, but against light they nerfed it -15 damage, which is not TOO significant when the Terran has a lot of tanks, but early on I guess it it can help fend off some small pushes.
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On September 25 2010 09:30 Umpteen wrote:
Idra obviously makes some excellent points, and others in this thread have filled in the gaps. The interplay between Terran and Zerg forces is just awful. What do I mean?
Well, to put things in context, Terran can unlock all their tech, bar ghosts and battlecruisers, within 185 seconds of starting their first barracks, for (if memory serves) 650m/350g. That's marines, marauders, reapers, hellions, tanks, thors, medivacs, vikings, banshees and ravens. Even if he manages to scout, a Zerg player can only confidently identify mass bio; beyond that trying to divine a Terran's strategy ahead of time from the contents of his base is a guessing-game. Personally, I find it much easier to divine a Terran's strategy from the contents of my base, because that's where his army is. But I digress.
So Terran has a fuck-ton of strategic options. Cool. I don't object to that, so let's not treat that as the problem. It's just context.
Now drop a Zerg opponent into that context. Zerg's slower, costlier tech-tree (yes, I'm aware of the associated advantages, but they only really kick in much later) in conjunction with very robust unit counters and the Terran's ability to turtle, together mean that the onus is upon Zerg to correctly anticipate and prepare to repel initial aggression. Fail, and the game is over. That's already quite harsh, because it's always that way around
The real problems begin when you think about what happens if the Zerg succeeds.
If a Terran army absolutely crushes a Zerg army, having sacrificed economy to do so, he can press on and win, or at least inflict substantial economic damage. But if the Zerg inflicts an early, crushing defeat, he's screwed. He's behind economically, just as the Terran would have been, but he can't end the game, and he probably can't even inflict economic damage.
It doesn't end there, though. Every Zerg response to early aggression hands his Terran opponent another clear-cut chance to win with a fairly modest investment. Force speedlings, and a handful of hellions will snap the game in Terran's favour. Force roaches with reapers, and marauders (mass produced with the same tech buildings) swiftly trump them. Delay lair and inhibit queen production with constant harass, and banshees deliver the coup de grace. Force lair and a similar trick can be employed with different units against an inadequate Zerg army. At any stage it's very, very hard for the Terran player to overreach himself on units or economy and lose the game. Terran dominance has come about, primarily, not through the discovery of specific OP strategies but through the dawning realisation of just how devastatingly easy it is to fake out, surprise or anticipate a Zerg opponent.
In my opinion, Zerg just needs to be made less reliant on specialist, hard-countered units in the early game. In BW, all three races had solid, accessible general-purpose core units or unit combos to stabilise the matchups: marines, hydras and zealots/dragoons. In SC2, only Zerg lacks such a catch-all early game unit combo - something they can defend and/or win with - and surprise surprise, they're the race struggling the most.
Very nice write up.
/ Signed
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I agree with half of what he says. I am a toss player and I believe that zerg is too weak. I have a 90% win streak against zerg. I disagree that Terran is stronger early game and toss is stronger later game. I think what zerg needs is diversity. They have the least diversity out of all of the race, in addition, zerg is more APM intensive giving Terran and Toss a natural advantage. I am currently trying to learn zerg and I lose most of my games even if I severely damage there economy early on and destroy most of there army. For terran and toss, it is easy to stay ahead when you win a intensive battle, but it is much more difficult for zerg. There units has less HP and dies easier. It is generally accepted that a max zerg will lose to a max toss or terrain.
Only multa-ling or roaches are stable and effective builds for zerg. Zergling rush is soo effective due to the last patch against toss.
I wish that they would give zerg a early game spellcaster (terran has ghost and toss has sentry, they gave zerg a Queen which isn't very useful in battle.)
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Zerg has the best mid game scouting? really? This is news to me, last I checked suiciding a ling at a ramp usually gives little to no information about what tech the opponent is going. Sacking a floating supply depot is a pretty expensive a way to get information, especially when you have to do it over and over again. I'd rather have scans or an observer any day. Not to mention that until I pay another 100/100 for speed that floating supply depot takes like a year to get to his base and usually is sniped before information is gained without this speed.
Zerg midgame scouting is fine, remember, Observers force you into a very rigid tech path. Zerg just has to get lair up and they can have a relatively fast scout thats hard to deny quite easily for a 50/100 cost. As opposed to P, who is forced to early robo. In terms of detection, Overseers are very reliable while scans are not, and become a hassle midgame until you can get air.
Zerg early game scouting is the issue. I won't deny that. But I could agree with zerg midgame scouting, that +overspeed map control, you have no issues with scouting.
Its surviving those early game pushes with zero info that we need some help on.
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Zerg has very good scouting options. Zerglings/Overlords for the map, Speed Overlords or Overseers for the bases. (And then Mutalisks or Corrupters later.)
Overlord Speed is cheap (100/100) and researches quickly (60 time). If that's too slow for you, an Overseer is cheap (50/100) and morphs really quickly (17 time). Lair is available ~as quickly as Factory + Addon, if Terran performs a flying swap - the other races don't get in-base scouting any faster than you. (Well, unless Terran decides to floating a building, or scan. Dammit, Terran.)
Unfortunately, the maps are very small and everything walls Zerglings now --> Zerg early-game sucks --> Zerg can't afford to expand and get a quick lair. It's not Zerg's aerial scouting that's bad or delayed - it's actually very good. But Zerglings and Sunkens are significantly weaker than in BW, compared to the other races' early options, forcing Zerg to delay the Lair and rely on Queens.
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it is unfortunate but I have to agree with Idra. Not much that it makes sense since he said it. but that it pretty much is spot on with how I, and many other people felt. I really do question the mindset of Blizzard when they decided on those changes. I find it hard to believe that they would be so narrow minded in realizing what nerfing Protoss would do if nearly nothing is done to Terran. I would find it difficult to believe that people are unknowing of the sheer damage and ability of terran to push early game with Marauders, that it makes stalkers in a bad position. And what is the counter for Marauders, which was even noted in the challenge mode? Zealots, which have now been nerfed while Marauders were not touched. So one of the more difficulties and annoyances of PvT was worsened.
They did nearly nothing to help the Zerg out. They buffed a unit which is very late game and requires at least 3 bases to pull off. While being reluctant in addressing the entirely middle section of the game. The weaknesses and annoyances with the infestors. Which have now been fixed, preventing them from casting anything while burrowed. Which to a degree, made them far more useful then before.
It just makes me frustrated, these are things that should have been addressed pre-release. Since beta gave Blizzard the ability to patch quite quickly, and not keep us waiting on a patch that was barely any different from the status report (which was already lacking in changes).
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After near 300 games today someone massed hydras against me
man they srsly need some buff huh ?
near every unit kills them =X
slow, few hp, bad damage ....
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I honestly came here to flame IdrA... But I actually agree with what he says.
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im not sure about all this "overpowered/underpowered" i agree that races are better at certain things than other races, for example i love zergs ability to just summon an army out of thin air pretty much, im thinking the reason lots of people are struggling with zerg against other races is that maybe people arnt using enough hatches?
a few people ive been watching seem well able to support 3 hatch off 2 base, maybe if people stop limiting themselves to one hatch per base things might seem a little easier for zerg.
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On September 25 2010 13:16 CrimsonPhoenix wrote:
I honestly came here to flame IdrA... But I actually agree with what he says.
Same... Was expecting his usual rage, but what he says is generally correct. But it is hard to balance a game where the issues showing up are constantly changing.
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EPT
