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On April 19 2011 15:34 jhsu98 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 14:33 hitman133 wrote:On April 19 2011 14:27 jhsu98 wrote:On April 19 2011 14:14 dave333 wrote:
I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
I agree with this. Less mineral patches per base will help here. Bigger maps gave zerg the ability to react to early game pressure better, but also made it easier to avoid the midgame by turtling on the magic 3 bases and taking your 4th after you have the money matrix (deathball). Make the 4th base that sweet spot instead of 3 and things will work themselves out. more bases don't mean a shit. Zerg need more base so they can produce more, when both have the same amount of workers. Just like protoss have to build tons of gates and robot to produce. Please take your bases and maps control reward away. No one care. Really? Requiring more bases allows zerg to utilize their mobility and forces protoss not to be able to easily turtle on 3 bases to get their deathball.
What I wanna say is Zerg just sit there, take the whole map and do nothing, then think that they macro so hard and just deserve a win. When I watch IdrA play, he just a-move, never care about the army, look back to his base, inject larvae, bump units, then send them in waves after waves. Finally lost then QQ about balance.
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imo zerg's late game problem stems from their food distribution. A toss 200 ball from 3 base is really closer to a 130 food army. And a zerg's 200 swarm is more of a 120 army. Zerg by nature and style needs to throw away 3 or 4 units to take out one. But since zerg needs to drone up to be at that stage, and needs to saturate 2.5 bases of minerals and 4 base worth of gas, you're looking at something like 80 dones. And since you have a 200 population cap, well, the resulting army math is elementary.
I'd love to see blizzard experiment on the PTR server with .5 food drones, since the main limiter for zerg is larvae management and not minerals. I'd like to see 300 food available too, but maybe a 180 food toss ball would be really fucking scary
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i know i'm not a decent player, playing mostly FFA, but i like watching the pros.
When i am doing this, i often shake my head about many decisions the pros do regarding the very lategame. It seems they are too good to engage lategame armies that much, what is really standard way to play in FFA, also how to use those army tactically.
I wonder if anyone of the pros has ever seen what 200 supply worth of Mutalisks 3-3 do to a deathball army (Collossus/voidray/stalker) head to head, or to the protoss base - a basetrade is really onesided. Unless the Protoss has HTs/archons and tons of fully upgraded Stalker he has not the best chances to win any angagement.
I exclude hordes of pheonixes, which aren't that good agains a flood of Cracklings ... it looks like Corrupter against Stalker, except the Lings do it right and simply ignore the airunits.
I cant help, although i know FFA is nowhere near the Pro's level of play and kind a retarded, i still think u can learn a lot from it in terms of the very lategame unitcompositions and how to deal with them.
But maybe i am just an platinumnoob reaching the 400. FFA win with about 60% win and dont even meet the requirements to post any suggestion here - if so i am sorry about that.
mfg NM3
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People keep saying the 200 food Toss army is stronger than the 200 food Zerg army but this seems like an assumption to me. To me it is more like Zerg has problems getting the 200 food army that can beat the 200 food Toss army.
I am pretty sure I can come up with a mix of Zerg units that will beat any mix of Toss units at 200 food.
My prediction is that harassment style play while teching will become the way to fight Protoss deathballs.
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On April 19 2011 16:27 SweetenemY wrote:
i know i'm not a decent player, playing mostly FFA, but i like watching the pros.
When i am doing this, i often shake my head about many decisions the pros do regarding the very lategame. It seems they are too good to engage lategame armies that much, what is really standard way to play in FFA, also how to use those army tactically.
I wonder if anyone of the pros has ever seen what 200 supply worth of Mutalisks 3-3 do to a deathball army (Collossus/voidray/stalker) head to head, or to the protoss base - a basetrade is really onesided. Unless the Protoss has HTs/archons and tons of fully upgraded Stalker he has not the best chances to win any angagement.
I exclude hordes of pheonixes, which aren't that good agains a flood of Cracklings ... it looks like Corrupter against Stalker, except the Lings do it right and simply ignore the airunits.
I cant help, although i know FFA is nowhere near the Pro's level of play and kind a retarded, i still think u can learn a lot from it in terms of the very lategame unitcompositions and how to deal with them.
But maybe i am just an platinumnoob reaching the 400. FFA win with about 60% win and dont even meet the requirements to post any suggestion here - if so i am sorry about that.
mfg NM3
Sadly these FFA situations you describe simply don't happen in 1v1 games. Yes, 200/200 of 3/3 Mutalisks is pretty strong against void ray/collosus armies, but you just can't get that situation. Building up that army gives your opponent a giant timing window in which he can just go fucking kill you, as Day9 so eloquently put it, and since you're only against a single opponent he will simply adapt to what you make. Void ray/collosus is designed to wreck a ground-based Zerg army, so unless your opponent is playing completely blindly (unusual in pro-level games, especially when Protoss has observers) he'll just not make that deathball. If you're putting all your money into mutalisks and air upgrades, the Protoss can make a few templars and absolutely demolish you with storms, plus when your mutalisk flock is still small a few well-microed phoenixes can kill every single one. Generally if every single progamer in the world does or doesn't do something they tend to have a reason for that.
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On April 19 2011 16:59 AzureD wrote:
People keep saying the 200 food Toss army is stronger than the 200 food Zerg army but this seems like an assumption to me. To me it is more like Zerg has problems getting the 200 food army that can beat the 200 food Toss army.
I am pretty sure I can come up with a mix of Zerg units that will beat any mix of Toss units at 200 food.
My prediction is that harassment style play while teching will become the way to fight Protoss deathballs.
LMAO, im guessing you play toss, when you figure out the unstoppable 200 food zerg army, pls promise me, you'll make a post and solve all our zerg troubles.
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Zerg was always underpowered since release, especially with the maps. I thought it was stupid how many people could have thought otherwise, and still do.
Zerg got just two buffs since release, not fixing the major issues that have existed since beta (aside from over-nerfing) the roach supply problem in beta.
I think the comparison of how people are saying zerg is OP to how protoss is OP is terrible. There are pretty huge differences in the scenarios, and as far as I know while many people may have been complaining about zerg, I think this was large just due to one or two big tournament wins like the GSL and not for proper reasons.
GSL is a tournament. Tournaments have large factors of luck involved, let alone the luck that already exists in match games. Just because a zerg wins a tournament doesn't mean they are overpowered.
As far as I know, since release zerg have been the winners of (or even in the top 4 of) tournaments proportionally less than the other two races, which is a statical sign of a problem, as opposed to QQ about a zerg who happens to win a major tournament.
I also want to point out that balance/imbalance in games exists in more than one way, and that both are important:
• There is win/loss (outcome) imbalance
• There is play-style or play-options-diversity imbalance
You can have a race that can win 50% of their games statistically vs a bunch of other races, but they have only 5 units and no special abilities, while you can have another race that has 20 units and 25 special abilities, and still have the same win rate (or obviously even possible to have a 35% win rate only).
I'd argue that not only is zerg underpowered, but that they are also not fun enough or micro intensive enough due to the lack of units and lack of abilities, let alone the lack of VIABLE units and VIABLE abilities.
I know heart of the swarm is coming, but I still think it's ridiculous. I think Blizzard should have spent more work on the alpha/beta dealing with balancing, so that they don't have leave critical tweaking for the next expansion.
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something not really conventional which i think should at least be considered is zerg tossing away all their mineral drones when they are maxed with a few k saved..this could open up 60 more supply for units while still mining on max gas to reinforce after it dies.. true you only get 1 attack and 1 reinforce..but you never really know...an extra 60 supply engaging when its not a mistake could skew the results more so then people think due to concept of critical mass
theorycrafting dun dun dun
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by the way, the "modern deathball" is just about the only way to beat the final protoss mission in the campaign on brutal, and I've been asking people why they aren't using that composition since release pretty much
there's a big difference between that (something that lies in wait to be figured out) and the brief zerg dominance a while back (a strat that emerged with a recent patch change and was easily beat when figured out)
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In my opinion there are a few core problems with ZvP:
1. Having 4 bases as zerg against 3 bases as protoss isn't much of an economic advantage, so once protoss is mining his third, there really isn't much of an economic advantage for zerg to speak of.
2. When does zerg (safely) get siege units that are similar in function and power to colossi/tanks? Around ~20 minutes into the game, when protoss already has three fully saturated bases. What is the unit with the highest range before that? A unit with range 5 (6 with an upgrade) that melts to colossi standing behind wallins. Besides that, a range 4 unit that barely manages to hit units behind a gateway/forcefield. Protoss can afford to make a small high tech army that would not survive in an open field battle, but can fend off most zerg attacks while turtling with wallins and forcefields.
3. Map design. How easy would it be for protoss to defend his expansions if there were no terrain restrictions (chokes, cliffs) and you could surround the expansion from every angle? Lings/roaches would rape that expansion and the sentry/colossus based army defending it.
A maxed zerg army is not supply efficient and pretty fragile, zerg can not safely punish turtling players until very late in the game when protoss is already close to maxed anyway, and it does not really have an economic advantage over protoss (or terran) after just three bases.
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On April 19 2011 15:42 hitman133 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 15:34 jhsu98 wrote:On April 19 2011 14:33 hitman133 wrote:On April 19 2011 14:27 jhsu98 wrote:On April 19 2011 14:14 dave333 wrote:
I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
I agree with this. Less mineral patches per base will help here. Bigger maps gave zerg the ability to react to early game pressure better, but also made it easier to avoid the midgame by turtling on the magic 3 bases and taking your 4th after you have the money matrix (deathball). Make the 4th base that sweet spot instead of 3 and things will work themselves out. more bases don't mean a shit. Zerg need more base so they can produce more, when both have the same amount of workers. Just like protoss have to build tons of gates and robot to produce. Please take your bases and maps control reward away. No one care. Really? Requiring more bases allows zerg to utilize their mobility and forces protoss not to be able to easily turtle on 3 bases to get their deathball. What I wanna say is Zerg just sit there, take the whole map and do nothing, then think that they macro so hard and just deserve a win. When I watch IdrA play, he just a-move, never care about the army, look back to his base, inject larvae, bump units, then send them in waves after waves. Finally lost then QQ about balance.
The whole issue is that it's very easy for a protoss to defend 3 bases so zerg doesn't have any real options other than to just sit and macro. Look @ game 2 of mondragon vs cruncher where mondragon harasses and "does stuff" the entire fight and what happens? Cruncher can defend (he didn't even do a good job of it) and still amass his mini deathball. If the Protoss has to spread out, it gives the zerg the opportunity to harass.
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On April 19 2011 17:05 Ezekyle wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 16:27 SweetenemY wrote:
i know i'm not a decent player, playing mostly FFA, but i like watching the pros.
When i am doing this, i often shake my head about many decisions the pros do regarding the very lategame. It seems they are too good to engage lategame armies that much, what is really standard way to play in FFA, also how to use those army tactically.
I wonder if anyone of the pros has ever seen what 200 supply worth of Mutalisks 3-3 do to a deathball army (Collossus/voidray/stalker) head to head, or to the protoss base - a basetrade is really onesided. Unless the Protoss has HTs/archons and tons of fully upgraded Stalker he has not the best chances to win any angagement.
I exclude hordes of pheonixes, which aren't that good agains a flood of Cracklings ... it looks like Corrupter against Stalker, except the Lings do it right and simply ignore the airunits.
I cant help, although i know FFA is nowhere near the Pro's level of play and kind a retarded, i still think u can learn a lot from it in terms of the very lategame unitcompositions and how to deal with them.
But maybe i am just an platinumnoob reaching the 400. FFA win with about 60% win and dont even meet the requirements to post any suggestion here - if so i am sorry about that.
mfg NM3 Sadly these FFA situations you describe simply don't happen in 1v1 games. Yes, 200/200 of 3/3 Mutalisks is pretty strong against void ray/collosus armies, but you just can't get that situation. Building up that army gives your opponent a giant timing window in which he can just go fucking kill you, as Day9 so eloquently put it, and since you're only against a single opponent he will simply adapt to what you make. Void ray/collosus is designed to wreck a ground-based Zerg army, so unless your opponent is playing completely blindly (unusual in pro-level games, especially when Protoss has observers) he'll just not make that deathball. If you're putting all your money into mutalisks and air upgrades, the Protoss can make a few templars and absolutely demolish you with storms, plus when your mutalisk flock is still small a few well-microed phoenixes can kill every single one. Generally if every single progamer in the world does or doesn't do something they tend to have a reason for that.
Yea thats right.
but i dont say "go straight massmutas" ^^ (as it was only an example for underused lategameoptions)
For this idea we usually see no archives at the Protoss, while he is pounding wave after wave of those roach/Hy/Corrupters into the ground, because he kinda needs to finally put out some pressure, before adding those or more robotics/stargates.
The Zerg, despite having a spire and airupgrades already for those corrupters and almost always a Hive, refuses to SUDDENLY build a mass of muta/ling (sniping the colloxxen) and feast on all the rest of the dead ball. The Zerg might be happy loosing all the mutas in the process, when he can take out all collossi and voidrays, so he can freely jump between techs as the Protoss struggles to adept to the new thread with HTs/more stargates, just to face roach/Hy/corrupter again.
I just think that Z-Pros simply dont use what i think is the strength of the Zerg: hardcore techswitch on the fly instread of ramming the roaches head against those balls over and over again. Even if they kill everything, that can be hit by those corrupters and see that the Protoss is reinforcing only stalkers to instantly kill the Zerg, those always try to get enough roaches/Hys instead of crackling/muta
Don't you agree, that its way easier for a Zerg to switch tech due to the fact everything is build out of the Hatch, contrary to the Protoss who needs thousand of unitproducing structures to compete in the speed and flexibity of a Zerg?
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Make 10-12 infestors. Mondragon said it already but he said he knew it too late. I guess infestorplay is gonna swarm in soon and the problems of the deathball are solved. gg.
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On April 19 2011 19:35 Flummie wrote:
Make 10-12 infestors. Mondragon said it already but he said he knew it too late. I guess infestorplay is gonna swarm in soon and the problems of the deathball are solved. gg.
You really think no Zergs have tried using more infestors? Heck, Idra massed up quite some infestors in some of his MLG games in ZvP. But it's just not a solid counter.
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No buff is needed. A lot of zergs are switching their styles, with fairly good results.
Mouzmorrow using ling bling drops against forge fast expand builds,
Mondragon, dropping roaches everywhere,
GGnaugrim dropping your main while assaulting and cancelling your third,
Spanishiwa taking out rootMinigun in a bo7 with his own special style,
Hell, even Idra has been experimenting with infestors vs Huk at MLG with good results.
Zerg had a too passive mentality for too long, wich protoss exploited well. But soon it will turn around.
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No, it was a tremendous buff to zerg in ZvT. Some people (correctly) predicted it would also be a huge, if not bigger buff to Protoss.
Just as frequently however I'm seeing a rapid increase in zerg that don't take advantage of the fact that these are macro maps. Instead, they take the huge maps, looking at Tal'darim specifically here, and get a Trollface grin on their face and say, "Hey, there's no ramp, and he can't scout me in time..." and they immediately all in, be it a fast pool or an all in roach rush.
A lot of Zerg seem to be suffering from the Terran syndrome of extremities.
They think it's either ALL roaches, or ALL hydras or ALL mutas, or ALL in, or ALL macro.
They don't think of pressure, mixed unit types, or even tech switches any more. They don't think of pumping units to do some damage, and then droning, and then keeping up the pressure in much the same way as the ridonculous marine pressure style against Protoss.
The same thing goes for drops. They don't drop, snipe, and leave, they drop and suicide, baneling drop, or doom drop.
There's no moderation in Zerg play, and if you invest so much into an extreme attack you can't bounce away from it, and more importantly, one need only devote to an extreme defense. There's as much value to force someone to overcommit to a defense when you're not devoting much more beyond a poke as there is to actually doing "straight" damage.
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On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote:
Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy.
Well if you were right no patch changes would have been necessary since the start of beta because your statement could be applied anytime not just now. The truth is "imbalances" are of different nature. OP did a good job showing imba can get fixed with metagame but he didnt look into the nature of those "imbalances" which is very different.
On April 19 2011 19:51 Anomandaris wrote:
No buff is needed. A lot of zergs are switching their styles, with fairly good results.
Mouzmorrow using ling bling drops against forge fast expand builds,
Mondragon, dropping roaches everywhere,
GGnaugrim dropping your main while assaulting and cancelling your third,
Spanishiwa taking out rootMinigun in a bo7 with his own special style,
Hell, even Idra has been experimenting with infestors vs Huk at MLG with good results.
Zerg had a too passive mentality for too long, wich protoss exploited well. But soon it will turn around.
Clearly zergs can win zvp, but it doesnt prove it is balanced. I remember Idra and Artosis discussing pvt. Point was made that maybe early game advantage for tvp and lategame advantage for pvt is ok as it evens it out. As much as I dont like Idra he made a very good counter argument: it is very bad actually as one race will be desperately trying to survive early game with a mindset to get to the late gate for a free win, all stages should provide even possibilities for races in a balanced game. This is what is wrong with zvp. Lategame strength of protoss deathball pushes the zergs to finish the game in mid-stage. Yes, zergs can win, but it doesnt make lategame zvp more balanced.
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Guys, dont worry, this game will almoust surely eventually get fixed
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i actually disagree - i dont see zergplayers using their biggest advantage: their flexebility - due to their kind of macro (hatches build any kind of fighter), they could easily throw one wave of roach/Hy/corrupter at the protoss, followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
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Thanks OP. I've been meaning for a while to make a TL-post about this.
Zerg has a metagame problem, and imo not a "unit problem". I don't think the Zerg army as a whole needs buffing. Starcraft is actually completely impossible to balance perfectly by just tweaking units like this, but it is possible to balance Starcraft by altering the metagame. The Starcraft metagame, when balanced, works a bit like Poker, where a weak hand can win over a strong one, by using mindgames and risky play.
The cause of the "metagame disease" in Zerg after the beta nerfs, is that:
1) the risk involved in each Zerg option is too high
2) the destruction potential of each option is too low
3) the amount of options are too few.
4) scouting disadvantage - your opponent knows more about you - ie mindgames are more difficult.
In fact, 3) - the amount of options ("option count") is crucial here - each viable option will strengthen all the other options.
Like OP says, from time to time, new options arise - making Zerg look good for a short while. Each time this happens, people conclude that Zerg isn't underpowered anyway, and we should stop discussing it ("Tyler syndrome"). As the novelty effect of these new builds fades out, people in stead blame losses of Zerg players at mistakes ("doing it wrong").
Some typical symptoms of a weak metagame, that we can observe in Zerg, are:
- forced to defensive, predictable, "cheap-skate" play
- short-lived waves of "breakthroughs" where the race seems to work just fine or where individual players do very well.
- small margins of failure.
- consistently faced with aggressive, greedy, hard to punish play
- builds and timing pushes against the race are potentially game-ending.
- experimental playstyle is punished; see Fruitdealer, Moon, TLO.
The "Tyler approach" of encouraging Zergs to practice in stead of whining, is nice and dandy (especially if you, like Tyler, don't play Zerg) - but the huge problem right now, regardless of whether you play Zerg or not, is the lack of Starcraft 2 entertainment value in a 2-race game, and the lack of entertainment value of watching a bound and gagged Zerg playstyle when a Zerg game happens.
PS: I'm not going to go into the lack of micromanagement refinement potential of Zerg, as this is another discussion, and this effect will get stronger over time.
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EPT
