The Infestor: An Honest Discussion - Page 17

Since release there has been significant nerfs to both protoss and terran's early game. For example: supply before barracks, reaper nerfs, now 5 more seconds on barracks, bunker nerfs, stim nerf. Toss has had forge build time nerf, zealot build time nerf, warp gate research nerf, pylon nerf (this does affect forge expands imo). Even some significant mid/late game nerfs, blue flame, thors, and for toss several voidray nerfs, templar energy upgrade, mothership nerf (which is now getting a buff but it's almost an irrelevant unit anyway). At the same time zerg has had a lot of buffs, roach, fungal affecting blink, completely freezing units instead of slowing, damage bonus vs armored, huge dps increase, and now they are getting an ultralisk and overseer buff.

I'm really concerned that zerg may end up with an upgrade, economy, army, and mobility advantage at every stage of the game after the 7 minute mark. Meaning Terrans + Protoss will not have the ability to do enough damage to keep zerg in check at any stage.

I don't feel the immortal and prism buff, while helpful, is going to turn protoss around in it's pathetic statistics the last few months. If I'm not mistaken protoss has had the worst statistics in tournaments and holding places in GM since the start of this year. Considering it's the most played race, that is pretty damn bad. As for terran, I think limiting the amount of powerful builds that can simply win the game in 12 minutes is good, but I'm always hesitant to agree with any nerf to a races core units or core production. I definitely think terran needs some help in the late game, seems like the weakest race after 3 bases to me.

For zerg I'd like to see fungal tuned down a bit, it fills every role right now. Zergs are going roach infestor in every matchup and doing damn good with it. I say tune down the infestor, IMO they shouldn't be born with so many abilities, some should require research (fungal,infested, and burrow move all for free) and buff hydras or corruptors. So zerg actually has to make an anti air unit to counter air units. As it is now, zergs doesn't even need them because fungal or infested terrans provide all the anti air they need as well as infestors provide detection, aoe dmg, anti-micro, anti massive unit and harass. If you removed nydus, contamination, corruption, hydras, and changelings from the game most zergs wouldn't even notice. lol.

BTW If I've forgotten anything or misrepresented any facts please feel free to correct me in a non-douche baggy manner. My memory is far from perfect.

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Completely agree, man. As strange as it seems, I think Zerg is the most powerful race right now. I also agree with the Terran buffs you presented, althought I play Protoss.

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I agree as well. Definitely late game it's the case once economy gets cooking. Terran and Toss usually get their wins within first 10-15 min after that it's unlikely and about to get more unlikely the way they will get ultras out on a tech switch..

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"original OP says zerg gets "lots" of buffs and then names roach and infestor which is two.... so two is a lot? zerg has also gotten major nerfs, ones that stick out to me are roach food nerf and armor nerf. queen speed as well as spine/spore burrow time are all small nerfs that made a noticeable impact. corruptors no longer being able to "goop" was also a very important nerf but it was OP before i suppose. plus the number of buffs/nerfs a race gets is not really relevant to how strong it is anyways.

as the game gets longer, Terran is the strongest due to orbitals, planetaries, and medvac drops. orbitals give mules which requires less scvs and frees up more supply for army. planetaries + turrets enable expos to be defended w/o units and frees up more supply for "main" army. medvac drops (and maybe even nukes) are the most cost effective and supply effective harass options which also indirectly allows for more supply for the "main" army. granted this may be due to the relative weakness of the "final" Terran army. however, if T adds in ravens (pdd is so good in large battles, HSM can be good late game too which allows for energy buildup), and maybe 2-3 battlecruisers, i think the late game Terran army composition can be pretty formidable.

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And now my rebuttal good sir,

Your counting all the infestor buffs as 1 buff, fungal growth alone got 4 buffs, stopping blink/siege/viking liftoff, freezing units not slowing, dps doubled, and bonus for armored. At the same time the units that counter them got nerfed, Ht's and Ghosts. Roaches got range and the nerfs you mentioned are from beta,(you forgot roach regeneration was no research also) I am talking about release. But if you wanna go beta, warp research got nearly doubled, immortal build time got nerfed, range increase for immortals got removed (I think that was in beta), mothership build time nerf, sentry got 2 dmg nerf, and I'm sure Ive forgotten some. But imo the beta changes are irrelevant anyway because all of the races had ridiculous stuff in beta, but since you brought them up I thought I'd point out toss still got nerfed hard in beta. Also didn't spores recently get a root time buff recently? Ultras also got a buff that no spell other than dmg affects them and they break down FF's.

The main point of what I was saying wasn't merely about the buffs or nerfs. I was merely pointing out how protoss and terran has had their early game signifigantly weakened over the last year but zerg has not. Which is when you need to slow them down, the earlier the better. I'm concerned how the pace of the game has shifted to zergs favor in the early, mid and late game in so many categories. They have a huge mobility advantage, and creep gives them free vision of huge areas, they can out produce and remax much faster, and having an econ advantage as soon as they take their natural. But infestors alone give them a huge tech advantage as well.

A big part of this is due to the fact that infestors counter everything (at least for protoss but almost every terran unit as well) It basically counters every protoss tech path, it stops charge and blink, it detects DT's (and infestors are actually much scarier worker harass units than dt's) IMO fungal > psi storm in terms of dps and the fact that fungal can't be dodged or micro'd out of in any way,(it's like a FF surround and psi storm put together). Once the first fungal lands they can keep fungaling till everything dies, and the dmg is stack-able unlike storm. It counters air play with fungal and infested terrans, and neural parasite and fungal deal with colossus and immortals very well. It is not always possible to hit them with feedback either. Because usually infestors are at the back of the zerg army, which means the HT's must be at the front of the toss army to be in range for feedback. Ht's die really fast and fungal kills them just as good as anything else, when their are 50 roaches in front of the infestors the Ht's evaporate in a second. It takes vastly greater control IMO to deal with the infestors than it does to deal with the ht's. Even with better control it is still sometimes impossible because protoss simply can't have enough gas to produce the amount of HT's and have time for them to charge energy needed to feedback so many infestors. Unless the protoss is ahead in economy for some reason.

Think about the gas costs of protoss's tech and army just to deal with the roaches (sentries 100gas each, twilight 100gas, templar archives 200 gas, storm 200 gas, robo 100 gas, warp 50 gas, blink 150 gas, colossus 200 gas, robo support 200 gas, colossus range 200 gas, immortals 100 gas.obs 75 gas) Obviously, protoss isn't going to get all of these but, they will need some combination of them just to not get run over by roaches that cost 25 gas each and cost 0 gas to tech to. Zerg can get lair, roach speed and infestors out for a total of 300 gas (100 gas for lair, 100 gas for roach speed, 100 gas for infestation pit). Thats the gas equivalent to warp 1 stalker and 2 sentries. Think about that for a minute. I realize they are different races but should the race that automatically gets the better economy and production get tech that is so much cheaper and counters so many things? Infestors just do way too many things too well and roach infestor takes way too much to deal with imo.

In some ways this is the same problem with terran, while mules do provide them with tons of late game minerals, the terran late game units and tech are very gas heavy, and take forever to produce and if they trade armies with them, they will die before they can reproduce as powerful an army as compared to protoss or zerg. Also, terrans upgrades are split up much more, air, bio, mech. So when they transition into late game units they are behind on upgrades.

/end balance whine

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its lazy of me to jus point out one thing in ur long response (which im sure has many good points) but im going to stick with the stuff related to my own original response. if ur talking about buffs since release im not sure what buff u mean by fungal freezing instead of slowing. when did fungal ever only slow in release, was that in alpha or something? spores got a root buff AFTER getting a root nerf and its still overall slower than it was b4. u call ultras smashing down FF a buff to zerg? are u joking? all massive can do that...

ur wrong if u think zergs only have been buffed and not nerfed. all races have gotten their fair share. more zerg nerfs: broodlord armor, broodlord speed, slight dps and HP nerf on hydra (maybe beta?)

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Absolutely zerg has been nerfed since release. But their early game hasn't had any nerf that is close to comparing to warp gate +20 seconds, zealot build time, forge build time, or terrans barracks after supply, barracks +5 build time. bunker nerf. (the earliest of these is the forge change which I think was 8 months ago, and roaches got a range buff around the same time) These things greatly affect everything that happens after them. It would be the equivalent to nerfing spawning pool build time, larva inject, lings themselves, spine crawlers, evoulution chamber, I'm sure any zerg can see all the domino affects this would have.

They've made it harder to safely expand vs zerg, harder to pressure zerg, and harder to defend zerg all ins. This has made zerg much better off in the early game, and infestors essentially give them a free ride into the late game where the zerg race really shines. What I'm trying to say in a nutshell is I believe the changes to Terran and Protoss early game in patches and the buffs to infestors are actually just shifting the imbalances, not eliminating them.

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Isn't that the point of Zerg? It's the race you should be afraid to venture outside your ramp against in the early game.

And for the record, Zerg all-ins are still relatively weak and far fewer in number than the other races. You can't possibly think 20 ling all-in or 7RR even compares to terran 1/1/1 or the old toss 4WG. Zerg hasn't had that strong of an all-in since beta.

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Here's a few zerg all ins/rushes that are very hard to scout and stop, one is vs huk and one is vs tt1.

These should change your mind.