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I think I'm walking a fine line here on not making threads to discuss balance and not making threads to suggest changes to the game, so apologies to mods in advance if I stray from the correct path.
My purpose with this thread is to try to understand comments like the following which are around fairly often and to get a better understanding of the Infestor since the 1.3 changes.
There seems to be quite a consensus that the current Infestor needs changing and that it may be too powerful, a view that is especially prevalent on the B.net forums but which seems far from limited to them. People often quote IdrA's MLG interview from the 21st of March (here) in support of the maybe OP case, which went as follows:
Idra: It's going to be a massive change for Zerg. I think Infestors are going to be overpowered against Protoss now, and it's going to completely change ZvZ as it'll nullify Roaches beyond timing attacks. ZvT might not change too much, simply because Mutas are so good and it might not be worth the gas to get Infestors before the lategame. But Fungal is going to be ridiculously good now.
I should add I'm unsure if IdrA has given an opinion since testing them.
Edit: Throughout the thread it has been claimed that since release IdrA has stated they're not too good, so I'm adding this in for clarification that I'm not saying this is IdrA's position on the subject now. The quote is simply added as it tends to come up in the discussion from people who claim that Infestors are too strong and I didn't want to (for lack of a better word) hide any evidence usually put forward to support the too strong argument.
In short, according to posts in this thread - on State of the Game and elsewhere IdrA has stated they're not as good as originally thought.
My question then is do the majority of people still feel that Fungal Growth needs tweaking after the time it's been in play, and if so why, and how?
I also wanted to lay out why I find suggestions they do need nerfing wrong in case there are people who feel it should be changed.
The first argument, and most common is it's simply too powerful,dealing 36-47 damage over 4 seconds.
To put that in to perspective it's a 100/150 lair tech unit requiring it's own structure and 75 energy as well as a 50 second morph time, that can't kill a marine or a zergling. Of course 150 energy can over 5-6 seconds but can that really be argued to be too strong or game breaking? Another way of looking at it is the Fungal Growth is slightly less DPS than a stimmed marine, albeit with a 2 radius aoe, which again doesn't seem unreasonable when compared with the likes of Siege Tanks, Colossi, High Templar, Nukes, Stimmed Bio or even Planetary Fortress'.
Second is the 4 second freeze in place, which when coupled with the first point has led people to argue it's too strong. 4 seconds of 36-47 damage and no possible way to move out of the way to avoid the next 36-47 indefinitely pending Infestor energy.
Without again going in to the DPS value of the unit, units that are stuck are still able to fight (unlike units fleeing a storm), they're still able to be defended by other units, and the only time Infestors are able to completely kill something is if a unit or a group of units are completely by themselves, unsupported and the Zerg player has literally hundreds of energy and the time needed to kill them.
Further an Infestor is only useful so long as it's not dead and it has energy, and given it's 90hp and 0 armour armoured status isn't the most common thing in the game.
It can also be argued that the freezing units in place means that the Zerg has 4 seconds in which they're able to swarm units that were in the radius of 2 and within range of Infestors. I find it difficult to see this as a problem, it basically means that Zerg has some way to enter combat without just dying, some way to control the battlefield in the same way as Forcefield and Storm, and to a slightly lesser extent Siege Tanks.
In addition to all of the above points, Infestors are only at their most effective when the enemy is completely balled up, and whilst it can be argued that a moving is common and thus so are balls, and that Protoss in general and Marines are at their most powerful when tightly clustered I don't understand any argument here which is in essence "why should a non Zerg player have to think about the positioning of their units before a fight".
Finally with the Infestor buff coinciding with the removal of the Khaydarin Amulet, many argue that morph in Fungal should also be removed if Warp in Storms were too powerful. Especially since it is at times argued that since a unit can leave Storm it never deals it's maximum damage.
To first address the KA/Pathogen Glands point a HT could be warped in, in 5 seconds anywhere on the map that a pylon or Warp Prism could be placed, which left very little time for response before massive devastation to either mineral lines and was almost immediately available to defend counter attacks or any form of harass. The Infestor on the other hand may only spawn at a Hatchery, which is far easier to see. Whilst burrowed Infestors may be able to harass in a way that HT are no longer able to, preparing for harass, particularly cloaked harass, is something that Zerg has had to contend with since release and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone facing a Zerg to have to put a moment of thought in to defending their bases or scouting an army composition.
If a Protoss now wants a storm they have to wait 5 seconds for the warp in and around 43 seconds for the energy to build up, so around 48 seconds from deciding they need it (after researched over 110 seconds admittedly) where as the morph in time for an Infestor with Fungal ready takes 50 seconds (after the prior 80 seconds of research).
To address the second HT/Infestor comparison point (moving out of Storms) even here I think people arguing that Infestors are the stronger unit are wrong. Storm deals 80 damage over 4 seconds while Fungal deals ~40 damage over 4 seconds. So in other words, any longer than 2 seconds from seeing the storm, reacting to it and the units leaving the area, is more health damage than Fungal deals.
Fungal can of course be placed on the same units again but equally Storm is very often immediately cast again just in the new location and with Forcefields can become almost impossible to escape from also.
In addition to the health damage though, units moving from a Storm are not attacking back, where units stuck in a Fungal are able to. And even at a professional level it's unusual to see a player able to only select the units effected by the storm and then move away from it so that results in an even greater loss of damage output and any positional advantage.
There are no doubt arguments I've missed, but my point is I can't see anywhere that the Infestor is broken and yet it's one of the most common complaints I hear about Zerg on any site. Since 1.3 there has been an increase in Infestor play I believe but it's hardly been game breaking, more it just feels like Zerg players have a new option. To an extent it even makes Hive tech more viable as Infestation Pit's can actually be built for Infestor play now instead of merely as a stepping stone. So to repeat my earlier question, do the majority of people still feel that Fungal Growth needs tweaking after the time it's been in play, and if so why, and how?
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IdrA said in the latest state of the game that he thought they were good but not as good as one would think.
I personally don't think enough time has passed to determine how good they are now from looking at vods and replays, every Zerg I've seen have absolutely terrible Infestor control compared to Jaedongs Defiler control which is the best benchmark I think.
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I think they are very good, but we need to give it muuuuuch more time before we can really understand how they will effect all the matchups.
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In regards to your HT point: Getting enough sentries AND HT to control your opponent's army is fairly difficult to do given the high gas cost. With Storm, you can run out and kill the High Templar fairly easily, whereas vs. Infestors you're stuck in place until either your opponent runs out of energy or decides to retreat (or, destroys everything you have). I still think Fungal, if used correctly, is stronger than storm.
Like you say, I'm not sure it's « broken ». It'll definitely change the way the game works, and if you ask me, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
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for one who had bad micro and had to stand against plague, i'm pretty fine with fungal.
At least for now, i don't see this as a game-breaking spell, as a Terran at least.
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Infestor are not that good. I've tried it again and again in ZvP, they can't do shit if you don't have the good unit composition with them. In ZvT they are great (really great), but I think terran needs to play a bit more tank heavy in order to adjust to infestorz.
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There's some things I don't like when people compare the energy and blah blah. First of all, the HT moves as slow as a snail, infestors are rather fast and they can burrow. Therefor i'd say it's arguably easier to survive with them. The second point that no one seems to mention is that you actually have to research storm. It's 200 gas, and it takes ages, but every zerg/terran player who compares the two seems to ignore that storm has to be researched, and the CD of warpgates past the first HT you morph in.
Edit: Not saying infestors or ghosts are op just for the reccord, i'm just still really pissed about the KA removal, and no one seems to take those factors into account.
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I read everything and your opinion is biased toward zerg as mine is toward terran...
I'm not even good enough to make valid arguments but the fact that you can't dodge it the second time is really punishing at my level (diamond LOL) because of the way stuff clump together.
the problem is, it isn't good enough against protoss and imo it's too strong against terran.
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I'm pretty sure the comment from IdrA is way outdated, he has stated many times since that he thinks that they are good, but not good enough.
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Infestors were changed to address ZvP, but the changes ended up having the greatest effect in ZvT.
I think infestors should do part of their damage directly to protoss armor, ignoring shields. Like half dmg to armor, half on shields.
And revert them back to their old damage and stun duration.
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We should never state x unit is OP. Seriously guys, go to your search button and search Marauders and you will find so many threads telling you they are so OP (from just few months ago might want to add). Now days if someone says Marauder is OP people just laugh at you then point out how noob you are.
Let us wait and see how us players deal with infestors.
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My biggest problem with the new Infestors is that.... Zerg can - if he has eyes - just skip Overseers and fungal your (cloaked) Banshee. And it'll uncloak for the time being fungal'd.
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People were already using Infestors in ZvZ, where Hydra vs. Infestor was a personal choice (though slightly in favor of the Hydra), they are JUST experimenting with Infestor in ZvP and the ZvT matchup wasn't changed significantly (whatever Terrans are saying, Fungal kills Marines just as efficiently energywise as before the patch). Some players already used heavy Infestor play in ZvT before the patch, it was just undiscovered ground.
It's new and fancy, but currently not in anyway overpowered IMO. Opening Infestor in ZvT/ZvP has significant weaknesses; drops are very hard to deal with, no way to harass like with Mutas, open for 6Gate without LOTS (Losira style) spines, etc. Lategame, they are really nice though, but by that time there will be Colossus, Tanks, Ghosts, Templar, etc. on the field which are just as, if not more, efficient in killing lots of stuff.
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Powerful infestors is good. Makes for interesting games. Infestors are like giant sacks of meat that are easy to kill but can dish out huge damage. Getting only fungal off of an infestor is still not cost effective, you have to keep them alive to kill another day.
In fact, the counters for infestors arn't even being used by terran/toss, ghost and high templar effectively. Basically infestors force this more interesting caster dynamic that was present in sc1 but has so far been on the sidelines in sc2. Maybe we'll even see ravens cast seeker missles on infestors clumps to keep infestor numbers in check.
I don't know about you but I think they should make infestors as powerful as possible so even if there is a direct counter to them you still get them. SV is the defiler counter in SC1, but you still get defilers right....
TLDR: If infestors are too powerful for the currnet metagame thats a good thing. Marine/tank and Collosus/stalker are boring ass compositions and I look forward to the day that we have this marin/tank/ghost/raven TvZ and stalker/zealot/high templar in PvZ.
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No, infestors aren't too strong. They really aren't hard to snipe when u split bio or just pull 4 rauders and 2 shot them. Or emp. Or have good tank placement. Bio can heal/mech can repair/toss shields regenerate.
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so far nobody has been dominating tournaments etc. with any kind of infestor abuse, so I don't see how it could be considered OP if it isn't producing any wins...
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I play terran, and I don't feel fungal is too strong, I think it's right where it needs to be.
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I personally like infestors as they are now, and the change of root time is also very welcome, since it is very easy for people to cheese zerg IMO.
I still feel that something is missing for zerg, but i am yet to figure out what.
I currently like the way the game is played out, but for the issue with the complete race of protoss.
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Yeah as has been stated, I'd rather go up against endless fungals than the incredible plague + lurker/etc micro that was dominating BW for a while. The fact that you cannot move until infestors out of energy or units are dead is annoying, but it just forces you to change your play by scouting ahead and separating key units etc
One key thing to note about ZvT infestor play, is that the terran's hard counter to infestors, Ghosts, must snipe 3 times instead of 2, to counteract the +1 regen infestors have.... Thats 75 energy to kill one unit, might as well EMP, except you only take 100 energy and infestor lives to fungal another day. I really want blizz to address this, I am having problems using ghosts to counter infestors, expecially since cloaked ghosts get insta fungaled by a good zerg who sees the graphical flicker.
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On April 26 2011 21:49 Ewerstorm wrote:
There's some things I don't like when people compare the energy and blah blah. First of all, the HT moves as slow as a snail, infestors are rather fast and they can burrow. Therefor i'd say it's arguably easier to survive with them. The second point that no one seems to mention is that you actually have to research storm. It's 200 gas, and it takes ages, but every zerg/terran player who compares the two seems to ignore that storm has to be researched, and the CD of warpgates past the first HT you morph in.
Infestors are only really fast on creep (which, I'll grant, is hopefully a notable portion of the map by the point in the game where you use them.)
HTs are definitely more expensive to tech to - Archives cost more than pit, and storm costs a bit more than pathogen glands to research. 3 boosts on the archives (seems reasonable), though, and its down to the same time as pathogen, and if you warped in templar when your archives finished, theyll have a full storm and on their way to a second when psi storm finishes.
So yes, those arguments are often glossed over, but HTs are by no means terrible. I'm still not sure that I like what the KA nerf accomplished, but that's neither here nor there.
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EPT
