Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 583

as a matter of fact ZvT is favouring T in early and midgame as terran can win the game by just playing macro style and doing the regular attacks. Zerg can only with lucky full comittment all-ins and alot of luck not getting crushed by a few easy to obtain counter units like a few siege tanks or lucky mine hits or hellbars + maurauders

In the very late game and endgame it is favouring T too due to almost unbeatable mass ravens in the mix with other very strong units that are bio + mines + medivacs + planetaries + bc + tanks + thors that still allow the terran to split 2-3 medivacs full of units away from his army and do heavy damage drops while zerg needs his full army to battle the T main army. Static defense of zergs is nearly worthless too in the very endgame and just giving some time to react, not denying any terran drops or attacks.

In the late midgame early lategame once T3 of zerg has finnished the zerg has a narrow window where he can compete with with T units but only if terran has not switched yet to easy obtainable counter units like maurauder vs ultralisks or vikings vs broodlords. It is good that there is at least one unit in the game of zerg that is not countered by marines. Mines still do pretty decent vs ultras compared to their cost.


The imbalance mostly is due to a few issues that are:

1. Terran is usually fine with 4 gas the whole game, no need for any more gas. Just observe any TvZ bio game and see how terrans have 2k gas bank after 15-20 minutes with only gathering from 4 gas. Probably even 3 gas would be enaugh.
This makes gas becoming worthless for terran. Terran only has to look at minerals, a loss of gas doesnt hurt terran in 80-90% of cases at all. Thus a kill of a 100/100 cost unit turns into a 100/0 loss for terran.

2. Terran has not to commit anything to do his harrass and constant pressure. Unlinke banshees, oracles or mutalisks there is no extra fee for harrassing, he build the units that are best anyway and in any situation and also uses them for harrass.

3. Z mutalisks is a unit you basically don't want to have when playing against terran. Mutalisks suck vs everything T builds in direct battle, they die easily. Harrass is not possible vs terran bases that are protected by 2-3 turrets and a single widow mine. There is no time to use an overseer on every little harrass you would want to do with mutalisks on the terran base and mutalisks are easily defeated by 10-12 marines (one production cycle) + terran static defense even if you kill a the mine with an overseer that is potentially there. On the other hand you can't actually move mutalisks off the drop defense. Once you harrass bases of terran he might just drop your main with 2-3 dropships or even just attack you and you instantly have to fly back and have the disadvantage for sure from using your harrassment units for harrassing. Mutalisks are now just there for defending drops and no other reason. They have no actual benefit in the big fights. They are just being used cause you have them anyway for the drop defense. As zerg has no alternative to mutalisks for an effective drop defense, terran automatically pulls the zerg into the disadvantage in any game where the Z builds mutalisks. Z then gets anti drop advantage but in the battle the disadvantage due to the fact that mutalisks just die easily vs marine/medivac/mines.

4. Banelings were made to make up for this but due to the high costs banelings they allow the zerg to at best trade evenly with the terran. New mechanics like mines and medivac boost make them even turn worse than they should as it is easy to load in and fly away most of the marines while leaving maurauder + mines on the ground to kill enaugh banelings once the zergs engages into this kind of contain/attack.

5. Raven is way too strong in endgame TvZ and probably the new infestor of late WOL making endgame vs Raven impossible to play. This will be revealed once terran actually needs to use them in endgame. Right now its more like 90% of games are decided by bio+mine play.

6. There is nothing the zerg can force the terran into without doing all-ins. Terran basically has not to adapt at all to the zerg play style as zerg already has and has had to adapt to terran play style from minute 0 when the terran plans on building marines and mines. Therefore mech is not needed and alot of other things too. Its just bio + mine + drop play needed. If zerg could force the terran into mech the whole matchup could be rebalanced based on this.

This is an issue of bio+mine countering everything the zerg has. Swarmhosts, countered, mutalisks countered, roach/hydra countered (with a few tanks in the mix that is not any big adaption at all), ling/bane countered, infestors countered etc. In the opposite mech gets countered by too many zerg units e.g. roach/hydra, swarmhosts, ling/muta +x, broodlords, ultralisks. While hellbats were made to (at least I assume) to make mech more viable they are instead used in the bio + mine + drop compositions as a strong and cheap (another 0 gas unit for terran) tanking unit. Obviously game desing is much worse than it was e.g. in broodwar where marines forced zerg into lurkers, lurkers forced terran into tanks, tanks forced zerg into airunits, airunits forced terran marines/goliaths/wraiths and so on.

The big problem in ZvT is that you indeed can only die or trade even vs the terran in early and midgame. Every (well 80-90% roughly) engagement that could potentially put you ahead vs Terran requires a committment of the zergs that puts Z behind automatically if the terran does not die straight away from it, such as 25bane +lings vs planetary and other things where you just trade your units vs a few buildings and SCV and can't get away alive with it anymore. It has been shown in many games that damaging terrans eco does not put him behind at all when you trade in your units for his eco/buildings but you put the terran ahead instead.



So what zergs can do is defend and try to survive and let the terran do whatever he wants. Then you take advantage of his little mistakes nothing else. If he does none he is ahead. If you are able get some good engagements you are even. If you get like 5+ superior engagements against the terran army in a row you might win the game. If you are 1 engagement inferior you just lose the game right away (can't kill or repell all of the terran army when he pushes out or drops).

Or you play any all-in that can easily be defended against with the tools terran has once terrans recognize that they actually at least have to adapt to a zerg playing all-in. But sadly this adaption is so few that I have seen many terrans just dropping the zerg while he all-ins them and doing more damage with the drop while deflecting the Z all-in.


Still I think a few minor changed would help the whole situation:
- decrease baneling morph duration a little (10-15%)
- reduce OC hitpoints by 20-33% (to make up for its ability to lift off and fly away and being repaired and giving mules)
- reduce raven hitpoints (make them actually vulnerable)
- increase maurauder gas costs to 35
- decrease tank gas costs to 100 or 75
- increase protoss ground upgrades costs again to its old level
- increase bio gas upgrade costs so that 3-3 bio upgrades require a solid amount of gas, that the terran anyway has when playing bio.
- make the mine a 25/50 cost unit instead of 75/25 and reduce their build time a little, decrease mine splash radius a little or make armour more effective vs mine shots (like 2x damage reductoun from armor vs mines).