On April 27 2011 09:45 TheTenthDoc wrote: Are ghosts really a good answer to infestors? I am leery to try them considering how they guzzle gas and greatly delay the tech/upgrades you need to deal with the zerg army, especially if they decide to tech. Even if you get off an EMP, the infestors may still have energy to Fungal remaining thanks to the recent EMP nerf.
As for trying to snipe, can't they just fungal your ghosts and kill them off with you maybe getting one infestor kill?
I know, this sounds like I wouldn't use ghosts in TvP either, but the thing is templars are slower, EMP does useful damage to the zerg army with one shot unlike snipe which has to be manually targeted and thus struggles to hit fast Z units in a battle, and sending in ghosts solo versus Protoss isn't as much of a one-way trip. Also, HT come out very late so your tech is finished, while Infestors are a T2 unit; that makes the gas cost a bigger issue since it means cutting your tanks or upgrades a lot.
I'm honestly wondering what I'm missing here because of how many people say "go ghost." I haven't seen very many high level (Grandmaster) players respond with ghosts either.
1. You can double-EMP 2. to kill a ghost with fungal it would take 3 fungals, or sometimes possibly 4 if they overlapped too much, and ~11 seconds. 3. The skills snipe, and EMP have 10 range, fungal (and NP) have 9 range
While some people have mentioned ghosts to counter infestors, many people (including the same people) have also mentioned siege tanks. The range and damage of siege tanks combined with infestor's low health makes them excellent at dealing with infestors. The key is the use of the tanks; factors like positioning, detection, attention, and manual targeting are all important factors in using siege tanks to their best power vs infestor compositions.
Infestors are not good at neural parasiting siege tanks, due to infestor's low health, and comparatively short range. The same issue arises with infested egg bombing, except detection needs to be around. Tanks are even a problem for zerg to use fungal growth, because as long as tanks are protecting the more vulnerable units, the only way zerg will get fungals off is by making a dedicated attack (or by sacrificing a bunch of units).
You don't just fungal the ghosts, that would be foolish. You fungal then kill them with your other units, like zerglings after immobilization. If the ghosts are in the ball itself, so you can't do that, you should probably have your fungals off already. I actually prefer tanks to deal with them myself, I was just curious why so many people say "Terran will build more ghosts versus Zerg" when I've never seen anyone do it in a high level setting.
On April 27 2011 10:24 tdt wrote: I love ppl saying HT's are answer. No they are not. Zerg is not running around with pure infestor, no he has fast lings way in front of them and to get your HT in range of infestor he is killed off by lings before getting it off. Ghost at least has cloaking but HT's are slow as molasses only have same range as infestor and if you're in back of army where HT's should be infestors can still fungel whole army due to area attack and HT still can't reach. IMO nerf should constitute a range nerf for all infestor spells. That's all.
Infestor still has No dodge strom with lockdown better than FF Born with mana to do it with upgrade Born with Burrow & movement Can kick out a squad of Marines Can take over your best and expensive units from Thors to Motherships Faster than HT or Ghost
Just ridiculous.
Yeah, its just a shame all of our other units are useless as a pile of dog shit.
the 4 second stun does pretty much nothing. I wish that fungal stuns 8 seconds, except dealing damage only in the first 4 seconds
This would be a major nerf to FG, because right now if you have the energy, you can chain FG and be dealing constant dps in addition to the immobilization. If the damage stopped after 4 seconds but the immobilization persisted, you couldn't keep up the dps indefinitely by chaining FGs.
Yes you could, because when you use a new fungal it overrides the existing one. That's why when you attack marines, you use a fungal on them, then use the second one only 2 seconds later, not 4 seconds.
Listen end game toss is not 2 collosus 10 stalkers and 5 sentries. ZvP is hard because P has this huge ball of stalkers with collosus at the back. A few sentries to prevent zerglings from running up and its really hard to engage such an army. Therefore, its not a specific army composition that allows you to beat P as a zerg. You must get an economic advantage, do constant harass and then finally using infestor unit mixes you might have a chance now. The matchup is still very hard.
I've started to learn how to play against infestors TvZ (Masters) after a bunch of really brutal losses and don't feel as if I have too many serious complaints about it.
Honestly, spacing units and having good tank set up in TvZ is already important with banelings so you should be already somewhat prepared for infestor play. I also have been adding a raven or turrets to my push to deal with burrowed infestors. Moving while burrowed is such a wicked ability, it can really be a pain in the ass to deal with.
I think my one annoyance is that they come out with the ability already researched and it only costs 75 energy. 2-3 quick infestors with lings can be devastating if you aren't on your toes. I did a quick cloak banshee build today and he was able to completely shut it down with his first 4 infestors even though I had the two split up. I was however able to pick off two of them so all was not lost (so squishy).
I really haven't played around with ghosts much as I still feel that proper tank use is the way to go (although I plan on trying cloaked ghosts next time).
EDIT: I think people complaining about the power of infestors + BL have let Zerg get too powerful in the earlier stages and they probably just deserve to lose it :/
Infestors locking stuff completely in place is dumb just like forcefield, conc shells, blue flame hellions, and phoenix lift are dumb. They are all abilities that need to be seriously tweaked.
I am a high masters zerg player and I don't think infestors are overpowered or even all that good right now. They are great against noobs who ball up marines/stalkers, they can let mutas/lings actually beat a stalker ball, they can punish a T who puts their marines too far forward with a stim, but if you are losing to MASS infestors (>3-5) you need to evaluate your positioning (or as P, your unit/tech choices.)
Won't be cherry for long. In 1-2 months you'll see mass infestors dominating tournaments like Zerg are experiencing in ladder.
we'll see, but somehow I doubt it. strats are always most powerful when first created (or first made possible by a patch). after the roach buff, everyone bitched for a while about Zerg being OP, but everyone can deal with Roaches now. Zerg have barely explored the Infestor--which means Toss haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to really trying to prepare counterstrats. Once they do, we'll see how "OP" "mass infestor" strats are.
One thing I'd like to see more of is Phoenix play vs. Infestors. Right now, FG is weaker against Phoenixes than its ever been--it does more DPS but no more damage (and the damage was never that high vs. light), and holds them in place only for a short time. Phoenixes are fast/manueverable enough that if you control them well (i.e. don't put them in one control group and a-move them towards the infestor), it should be all but impossible for the Zerg to catch more than one Phoenix with an FG. And once you're close enough, you graviton beam them, and take the Infestor out of the fight for a very decent chunk of time while the Phoenixes can happily shoot away.
They are great against noobs who ball up marines/stalkers,
Yes, but you know what, it's a freaking hard to get your army well splitted against Inf when you do attack, only in defense - yes. The problem is that being T you should be 3 times better and faster in micro to be at even roles with zerg, who almost always A-move. Infestors require no micro skill, good marines splitting (especially when attacking) is almost art. I would say not the Infestors themselves are the problem, but their management simplicity, contrary to bio management. Rooting should be replaced with 50% speed decrease - that's would be way more entertaining. And FG, by itself, should not be able to kill, just down HP to 1. Infestors at now areTerminators, at defense and offence, very good all-purpose unit for its price.
On April 27 2011 05:46 Derez wrote: The current problem with infestors is that the damage buff was intended to deal with the P 'deathball', and help 'fix' the ZvP matchup. Simple fact is that it didn't, as even now infestors haven't really made it onto the field in ZvP. Most ZvP's are still heavily roach/hydra based, and in that sense the change failed (as motivated by blizzard).
The infestor change has however had a profound impact on ZvT, which wasn't its intended purpose. Infestors now absolutely rape marine/medivac play, due to the DPS of fungal growth being doubled. This while infestors were perfectly viable (and to be honest, more interesting with the 8 sec root) before the change versus marine heavy play.
Blizzard didn't achieve the goal they set out with ('fix' ZvP), but has created (in my opinion) a less interesting ZvT matchup. I believe the damage increase vs armored is fine, but I also believe that the amount of damage dealt over 4 seconds is too high, as opposed to the original 8 secs.
I liked the idea of the infestor change for ZvP, but I'm not sure I agree with the outcome of it.
Not to mention that ghosts are an imperfect counter vs infestors (especially compared to HT's), and you're generally way better off getting more tanks.
The Infester change was targeting the ZvZ mu. It changed vT and vP a bit but was mainly for ZvZ, which it did change.
They are great against noobs who ball up marines/stalkers,
Yes, but you know what, it's a freaking hard to get your army well spitted against Inf when you do attack, only in defense - yes. The problem is that being T you should be 3 times better and faster in micro to be at even roles with zerg, who almost always A-move. Infestors require no micro skill, good marines splitting (especially when attacking) is almost art. I would say not the Infestors themselves are the problem, but their management simplicity, contrary to bio management. Rooting should be replaced with 50% speed decrease - that's would be way more entertaining. And FG, by itself, should not be able to kill, just down HP to 1. Infestors at now areTerminators, at defense and offence, very good all-purpose unit for its price.
It's hard to micro infestors my friend, when they are getting 50 damage siege shells any time they are in range to fungal. If they are not in range, the terran is being too greedy and speedy with their pushing
Almost always, even pro zergs, will LOSE all their infestors when they attack. People rag on them a lot for this, but the fact is, marines stim back into siege tank lines, and since you spent so much on infestors instead of banes, you HAVE to a-move your infestors into the siege lines or you will never hit the marines. If fungals do not hit at least some, you simply lose because you have no splash damage.
In all of those battles the protoss just got outnumbered by quite a margain. Let's wait till we get REAL proof from tournaments and not make up our own shall we.
I don't know why there's a debate about this. Yes, infestors are really good, but so are colossus and marines and siege tanks. Everyone's so fast to want to swing the nerf bat around that it's ridiculous. If this were brood war, there's no way we'd see things like swarm, irradiate, or reavers stick around (it's not fair, 1 defiler can hold an entire expansion!) People just need to accept things for what they are. Sure, now zerg has a pretty powerful aoe tool that controls space reasonably well, but what do people think seige tanks and colossus are? If we continue the current trend of nerfing everything that's powerful, this game is going to turn into 3 races having an hour long battle because no one can kill anyone else.
So no, I don't think infestors need a change. A zerg needs to pay close attention of where he places his units in relation to colossus or seige tanks, so why shouldn't a terran/protoss have to be mindful of the infestor instead of just having free reign once it's aoe unit is out?
On TvZ discussion... I think it's a little early to go and jump to conclusions, but I do have to say that Ghosts as a solution to Infestors is one of those things that seems to be fine on paper but in practice the infestor tends to have the tools to avoid being emp/sniped, namely burrowed movement. The Lurker might not exist, but burrowed infestors in TvZ give you some serious map control, heck they can even provoke turrets or the almost useless TvZ raven.
Ive always Found (Me being a Protoss player) in PvZ, that A gateway army is completely powers when infestors are present, (Without a massive amount of Micro) completely cutting out our gateway tech for fighting (Minus Feedback from HT's) I find that Microing my Collosi to pick-off the infestors is less then optimal for my Army. I think the only thing that needs to be done to fix infestors is to remove the move debuff of infestors. The Damage is okay, but in terms of storm the root is way more powerful then the extra damage. Not to mention with the Removal of KA, Infestors seem quite a bit more powerful then they should be.
EPT
