Without upgrades, it can take 7 shots from a stalker, 5 shots from a marauder, 4 shots from a mobile tank, 2 shots from a siege tank, 10 ticks of the void ray's laser (starting from 0 charge), and three hits from an Ultralisk.
It is known mostly for Fungal Growth.
Fungal Growth costs 75 energy, which the Infestor can be upgraded to spawn with.
Fungal Growth deals 4.5 damage every 0.5 seconds for 4 seconds, dealing 36 total damage to all effected units. Armored units take 47 damage over 4 seconds. It has a range of 9, and a radius of 2, having a maximum effective range of 11.
Units effected by fungal growth cannot use any movement ability, including "move" "patrol" "attack" "blink" "charge" and "burrow".
Fungal growth prevents vikings and siege tanks from changing attack modes.
Fungal growth effects a carrier's interceptors, and PREVENTS THEM FROM ATTACKING
Fungal growth kills a patch of larvae in 1 shot.
Fungal growth prevents units from being loaded into a dropship of any type.
Fungal growth, rapidly reapplied to workers kills them in a short amount of time:
Drones: 5 seconds
SCVs: 5 seconds
Probes: 4.5 seconds
An entire mineral line can die in 5 seconds, but the infestors only need to live for 2 seconds after their first cast. It would take 2 infestors to kill the entire mineral line.
The second ability it is known for is:
Infested Terran costs 25 energy, and can be cast while burrowed. It summons the unit "Infested Terran". The Infested Terran has 50 health, and 9.3 DPS unupgraded. The Infested Terran moves at a speed of 0.94 off creep, and 1.22 speed on creep.
For comparison:
a base marine has 45 health and 7 DPS.
an upgraded marine has 55 health and 7 DPS.
An upgraded and stimmed marine has 45 (55-10=45) health and 10.5 DPS.
The averages of the maximum and minimum starting health and DPS of a marine is 50 health and 8.75 DPS, meaning on average, Infested Terrans are slightly stronger in combat.
A marine costs 1 food, 50 minerals, and has greatly higher mobility. An infested Terran costs no food, no money, and has less mobility.
In a fight with equal upgrades and the same amount of marines vs. Infested Terrans, Infested Terrans kill marines, even with combat shield and stimpack.
Infested Terrans commit suicide when their time runs out. They lift their rifles up, and they blow their brains out.
5 Infestors can make 40 Infested Terrans while burrowed. Assuming none of them die, that's 372 DPS for 30 seconds. That's a maximum of 11,160 damage, a little more than 11 gateways worth of damage. That's with 0 attack upgrades.
5 Infestors can make 40 Infested Terrans while burrowed. With +3 ranged attacks, that's 516 DPS for 30 seconds. That is a maximum total of 15,480 damage. More than enough to kill 4 Barracks, 4 attachments, 1 Command Center, and 152 supply of supply depots.
The final ability of the Infestor is:
This ability requires 100 energy, and must be researched before it can be used.
Neural Parasite can mind control any permanent unit in the game, with the single exception of the Ultralisk. This effect lasts 15 seconds. It is similar to the Orbital Command's "scan" abillity, in the sense that the inappropriate use of this ability is a waste of precious energy, however when used correctly, it is the difference between winning and losing.
You can neural parasite an enemy Zerg's larvae. The unit you construct will be yours.
You can neural parasite enemy workers to take over the enemy race. This is comparable to other taunts such as manner MULES and manner Nexuses.
Enemy transports which have units loaded may not be the target of Neural Parasite.
The Infestor is the pinnacle of Zerg spell casting. He has with him what is most probably the highest maximum potential damage output of any unit in the game. But what he has in offensive capability is not simply delivered unto any player who spawns him. His damage is entirely based on player skill. However, for all his power, he lacks the simple defensive capability of even a stalker.
What is your take on this unit? Is it too difficult to utilize because of its lack of defensive capability? Is its maximum offensive potential too great? Have any crazy stories or replays of the infestor being used in a game you played? Lets hear about it or see it.
A message from Mr. Infestor Bubblesworth: "Be civilized, don't just say 'OP' and leave. I am a highly intelligent being and I deserve to be treated with respect."
I don't think anyone above master level thinks they're hard to use. I mean, it's basic positioning and then F click F click F click. Pretty much like templars.
Anyway, I am a T and Z user and I see no problem with them. I just don't see what imbalances they create. Would I want them to be harder to use? Of course, I want the game to have more micro in general, for every race. The only race that has even slightly interesting micro, in my opinion, is Terran. And Terran could still use more.
I think all the spellcasters in the game are really powerful.
It's a unit with a lot of power, but is also accordingly extremely expensive and dies incredibly easy, making it difficult to manage successfully.
It also creates nice micro tensions between HT and Infestor and Ghost and Infestor - each other spellcaster can hard counter an Infestor, so I don't think there's any grounds to say they're OP. I think Ghosts and High Templar are equally powerful.
On August 25 2011 09:03 vOdToasT wrote: I don't think anyone above master level thinks they're hard to use. I mean, it's basic positioning and then F click F click F click. Pretty much like templars.
Anyway, I am a T and Z user and I see no problem with them. I just don't see what imbalances they create.
I agree, in a sense. Their ability scales with player skill, and thus they are only "imbalanced" when utilized by a greater player vs. a weaker player.
On August 25 2011 09:04 Stam wrote: Obligatory link to ITG discussion:
Infested terran is probably too strong a spell as is, if you sneak a couple infestors into a base an spam them while forces are out of position, you'll take down command centers. Dealing with them without AoE is pretty much impossible for protoss, and thrown into big engagements they can do absurd amounts of damage while soaking hits.
I have no issue with fungal growth or neural parasite though.
I feel like fungal is a little bit OP right now, whereas most zerg units are UP, so it kind of balances out, but I don't think in the correct way. Infested terrans seem a little OP right now, because of how hard eggs are to kill and how quickly they can be cast.
As a protoss, having 46 damage + lack of mobility kills any kind of play other than 'deathball' play. Because blink stalkers, etc. becomes rather un-viable.
Combined with lings, ultras, or broods, infestors get even better.
Personally I think that infestors should be nerfed a bit, but not before other z units are buffed.
I actually think its pretty balanced. But I don't think i will say anything more than that because after participating in a few balance discussion threads I don't think I can not rage over some of the comments people make :\
I think it'd also be relevant to mention the costs of the unit itself and corresponding upgrades.
It always makes me laugh when I watch a replay and the player obviously has the Infestors in the same control group as his roaches. XD
And I don't think they're any more OP than psi storms or cloak+nukes. I think they all sort of even out with the amount of damage cast, time to cast, and energy needed to cast.
Very well done OP, Infestors are my favorite unit in the game. Seeing incredible infestor play is awesome to watch and can be so much fun to execute. As for balance.....I really like where the infestor is at right now but then again, they are my favorite unit in the game. I think the power that FG has is necessary. If anything, I could see an energy cost increase to IT's being possible, I don't know though, its a very controversial topic.
On August 25 2011 09:09 Kevincible wrote: It's big too.. in comparison to protoss and terran spell caster equivalents such as ghost and HT, meaning AOE attacks are less effective.
I think this may have been done on purpose, to limit the extreme vs. armored splash damage of Siege Tanks against them. If they were as large as a templar, it would be all too easy to kill a dozen in one shot. It's really the only spellcaster who is supposed to go out on his own, and do his own thing, with the exception of Ghosts nuking bases. So it is necessary, I believe.
On August 25 2011 09:10 Rasun wrote: Very well done OP, Infestors are my favorite unit in the game. Seeing incredible infestor play is awesome to watch and can be so much fun to execute. As for balance.....I really like where the infestor is at right now but then again, they are my favorite unit in the game. I think the power that FG has is necessary. If anything, I could see an energy cost increase to IT's being possible, I don't know though, its a very controversial topic.
Good infestor play is what keeps me on the edge of my seat when I watch a tournament.
I think the infestor is pretty good as is, i think something could be done to make fungal more interesting. My only really problem is IT spams simply because whether its balanced or not its fucking stupid as fuck and this is from a Z that does it lol.
More weird stuff on infested terrans (just in case you didn't notice, i've had the game for months but only saw it a few days ago): they kill themselves when their time runs out. It's a really cool animation, they put their gun to their heads and shoot.
On August 25 2011 09:18 ChemBroTron wrote: OP, you forget in Neural Parasite: Weird Stuff --> you can neural a full medivac. All marines and stuff in it will die instantly.
This is so insane that I must test this for myself.
As with EMP, I think it's ridiculous that Funals can reveal cloaked units. I don't mind a Dark Templar being kept in place by a Fungal, but the fact that he is instantly revealed is annoying. Same thing with an Observer.
Beyond that I have no issues with the Infestor. At the moment, infested terran usage is still minimal. I have mostly only seen it when killing Vikings that have been fungalled. And although infested marines are better than Marines statistically, in reality medivacs make regular marines vastly more useful and powerful than infested marines.
Cool op, don't really feel like it tells us anything we don't already know about them though.
Definitely not op, but even as a zerg I feel like they shouldn't just freeze the units in place but reduce movement speed instead. I always just kinda found that to be less exciting as the player simply can't do anything once they're frozen.
Then again, before the patch zerg was pretty much desperate for whatever they could get, so maybe I should just leave well enough alone :x
On August 25 2011 09:18 ChemBroTron wrote: OP, you forget in Neural Parasite: Weird Stuff --> you can neural a full medivac. All marines and stuff in it will die instantly.
This is so insane that I must test this for myself.
On August 25 2011 09:18 ChemBroTron wrote: OP, you forget in Neural Parasite: Weird Stuff --> you can neural a full medivac. All marines and stuff in it will die instantly.
This is so insane that I must test this for myself.
On August 25 2011 09:18 ChemBroTron wrote: OP, you forget in Neural Parasite: Weird Stuff --> you can neural a full medivac. All marines and stuff in it will die instantly.
You can't parasite full medivac. It will not allow. to do that with error message, that medivac have somehting inside.
On August 25 2011 09:18 ChemBroTron wrote: OP, you forget in Neural Parasite: Weird Stuff --> you can neural a full medivac. All marines and stuff in it will die instantly.
This is so insane that I must test this for myself.
D: "Cannot do that while occupied"
Then they fixed it.
And OP needs to add that full transports cannot be neuraled~.
So overall the OP is about the infestor not having survivability...
The vibe I got is that the infestor needs more to survive... well you did forget burrow. Infestors can burrow without any additional upgrade other than burrow unlike the Roach, thats pretty significant.
Imo, as a GM since beta whos seen the ups and downs of Infestors, I think the Infestor by itself isn't entirely OP, but the combination of it + other units makes it OP. Any combo of infestor/ultra or infestor/brood is just too cost effective. you go from being zerg and having fewer units than say a Terran or Protoss, and coming out on top. its against what zerg is supposed to be, cost ineffective units with supreme #s. once the zerg has 12-14 infestors it becomes pretty ridiculous. EMP is a great counter, but a Zerg with good micro will simply spread his infestors and avoid losing too much mana. Add in the fact that you need snipes to take out broods, and possibly if the Zerg is a heavy queen user you need to be EMPing them too!
As a terran player, the reason why terrans and protoss players have difficulty against infestors because it is a unit that forces a response. You NEED to go templar/ghost vs infestors, or else it's an autoloss, which we didn't really have to do with old unit compositions. The only change I would make is to make neural a channeling spell so that emp/feedback would cancel the neural cause i think it's kinda dumb that you can emp an infestor that's neuraling and then it doesn't do shit.
On August 25 2011 09:08 MK4512 wrote: I feel like fungal is a little bit OP right now, whereas most zerg units are UP, so it kind of balances out, but I don't think in the correct way. Infested terrans seem a little OP right now, because of how hard eggs are to kill and how quickly they can be cast.
As a protoss, having 46 damage + lack of mobility kills any kind of play other than 'deathball' play. Because blink stalkers, etc. becomes rather un-viable.
Combined with lings, ultras, or broods, infestors get even better.
Personally I think that infestors should be nerfed a bit, but not before other z units are buffed.
Actually, deathablls get wrecked by fungal..so infestors simply make deathball play not that viable.
On August 25 2011 09:27 Joey Wheeler wrote: Technically marines are still cheaper than Infested Terrans.
A single Infestor, at the cost of 100/150, can produce 8 Infested Terrans on a single energy bar. Infested Terrans actually beat the crap out of Marines. But for arguments sake, lets say that each Infested Terran = 1 Marine. That's 400 minerals "worth" of units. In the hands of a skillful player, such as Destiny, that Infestor will not die. He will get 8 more. And then 8 more. And more if the game continues.
Without the infestor zerg would lose 60% on games in zvp like they were before. But once the patch came out and some testing now it has become standard in zvp and you don't need curropters untill broodlords.
On August 25 2011 09:18 ChemBroTron wrote: OP, you forget in Neural Parasite: Weird Stuff --> you can neural a full medivac. All marines and stuff in it will die instantly.
This is so insane that I must test this for myself.
D: "Cannot do that while occupied"
Then they fixed it.
And OP needs to add that full transports cannot be neuraled~.
not just "full". if the transport has even one unit in it, it cannot be neuraled.
+2 range buff to Neural to fight deathball play. Fungal changed to 30% slow so that harass play is viable in the mid-late game. Infested Terran gets 5 second cooldown. Colossus is removed from the game.
That's how I would do it, anyway. I fucking HATE the Colossus.
In Combination with Other Spells [list] [*]The Infestor's own Fungal Growth can keep (a part of) the hostile army down for more Infestors to get into range and to cast Neural Parasite more easily. [*]The Infestor is one of the the few units to be able to move while being Burrowed. Unlike the Roach, it can do so natively and does not require an extra upgrade. However, Infested Terran is the only spell available in that state. [*]You can't Fungal Growth a Neural Parasited unit but you can Neural Parasite Fungal Growthed units. The latter won't cure the Fungal Growth. [*]Neural Parasite on a Phoenix breaks the Graviton Beam. [*]You can Neural Parasite a Mothership. Doing so will make it Cloak your units and you can Recall your own units. [*]Hallucinations can be Neural Parasited - it won't dispel them. [*]Using/having Guardian Shield with a Neural Parasited Sentry will give +2 armor to your own units. Other
[*]Once the spell activates within a range of 9, there's an additional range of 5 in which the targeted unit can be operated. [*]It cannot be cast on a player's own units or allies. [*]Workers can be ordered to construct buildings of that respective race, which belong to the casting player upon completion (you will need multiple infestors to complete this considering the 15 second duration of control). Protoss probes only have to start the warp in order for the building to belong to the casting player [*]Affected units are subject to the player's upgrades [*]Casting Neural Parasite on a hostile Zerg's hatching eggs kills them instantly. [*]Casting Neural Parasite on a hostile Zerg's Larvae allows you to build units from their tech tree. [*]This will cost you resources, and when the Neural Parasite runs out, the unit will belong to your opponent. [*]You cannot cast Neural Parasite on a Transport with units, you can however Neural Parasite an empty Transport. [*]You cannot Load Neural Parasited units into a Transport (Overlord/Warp Prism/Medivac), nor pick them up with a Transport, even if both the unit to be Loaded and the Transport are Neural Parasited. [*]You can Neural Parasite a Corruptor or Overlord and instruct it to Morph (Broodlord/Overseer), this will cost you resources and the resulting unit will belong to the opponent. If he decides to cancel the cocoon, the resources will be lost. [*]You are able to Neural Parasite a Broodlord/Overseer Cocoon. Cancelling the Cocoon won't return funds to either player. [*]Casting Neural Parasite on a Baneling egg will cancel the morph (giving you an NPed Zergling). You cannot instruct two Neural Parasited Templars to Morph to an Archon. [*]If you Neural Parasite an Overseer, Sentry, Infestor or Raven, all the Changelings, Infested Terrans, Hallucinations, Point Defense Drones and Auto-Turrets you create will remain yours after the NP. [*]You cannot put Neural Parasited (Zerg) units in a Nydus Worm. [*]Neural Parasite breaks a chained command. [*]You can Neural Parasite other Infestors and use them to Neural Parasite other units (If the controlled Infestor knows Neural Parasite). The last unit Parasited will remain yours to control even after the original Infestor loses control. Useful way to drain your enemies energy only using one of your own.
Maybe it's a little strong, but I don't think so. More people just need to get ghosts/Hts to specifically counter it. It's a somewhat large unit(for a spellcaster) so it's pretty easy to target to do whatever you need to so that you can disable it.
I mean when people were started using ghosts way back when and protoss only wen colossi all you heard were T is op cries, granted they did change emp a little bit, but only the way it affects energy. When Toss started making HTs people cried about that as well, granted they took out kydrian amulet so that definitely kept it from being op, but it's still a very strong unit.
It's not like you can't counter this unit. Fungal doesn't last as long now so people can move away from it if they are hit by it, and hey if you get hit, bring something up to kill or emp/feedback the one that is probably going to recast.
I honestly have no way to fix it that I can think of that wouldn't ruin it completely so I guess I just have to defend how it is. I'd say nerf infested T's but seriously, nobody makes 40 of these like these guy said, you see a couple because they are so slow and easy to avoid. They are only a problem if, like DTs, get into your base and you don't have detection or anything to kill them with.
On August 25 2011 09:32 ReignFayth wrote: actually you have to play deathball style but you cant attack with it, you can harass a bit but you have to wait until zerg suicides all his shit
I personally feel that is a good way to play against them. Just play defensively, macro up, and let your superior army win the day in an easy at-home defense.
On August 25 2011 09:23 Strike_ wrote: You forgot to mention that the infestor is the only all-purpose core unit that zerg has
Well, how many all purpose units do we need? How many do other races have? If there are a lot of all purpose units in the game then doesn't that mean that what units you make doesn't matter, since they all can do everything? How do you even define "all purpose unit"?
I just hate the fact as a Protoss player that hates turtling, I...Well pretty much need to turtle against Infestors, I love moving around with blink stalkers and what not but I think it's pretty stupid to have a spell that just sticks the unit in place, I would love Fungal to just slow, but also cause slower attack speed (A buff for a nerf), something like that, I don't necessarily think it needs to be nerfed, just changed
On August 25 2011 09:27 Joey Wheeler wrote: Technically marines are still cheaper than Infested Terrans.
A single Infestor, at the cost of 100/150, can produce 8 Infested Terrans on a single energy bar. Infested Terrans actually beat the crap out of Marines. But for arguments sake, lets say that each Infested Terran = 1 Marine. That's 400 minerals "worth" of units. In the hands of a skillful player, such as Destiny, that Infestor will not die. He will get 8 more. And then 8 more. And more if the game continues.
Marines = permanent investment Infested Terran = very temporary investment
Marines = cost only minerals MULEs = bring in free minerals
Oh and Nestea truly showed how strong Infestors are against MVP. Oh wait, never mind.
The infestor balances the scales, much like Forcefield for Protoss. Zerg needs them to compete, because Fungal Growth is the only AoE damage Zerg has apart from Banelings, which aren't that useful against a deathball. Hopefully in HotS Zerg gets a T2 artillery unit that does splash and then Fungal can be reverted back to 8s duration without the extra damaged to armor, until then it should remain the way it is.
As a terran player, the reason why terrans and protoss players have difficulty against infestors because it is a unit that forces a response
Seriously? Whats wrong with that. Zerg dies if they don't respond properly to certain Terran and Protoss builds, I see no problem at all with requiring the other 2 races to respond properly against certain unit compositions. Thats StarCraft. It's not like Zerg are hard to scout.
On August 25 2011 09:27 Joey Wheeler wrote: Technically marines are still cheaper than Infested Terrans.
A single Infestor, at the cost of 100/150, can produce 8 Infested Terrans on a single energy bar. Infested Terrans actually beat the crap out of Marines. But for arguments sake, lets say that each Infested Terran = 1 Marine. That's 400 minerals "worth" of units. In the hands of a skillful player, such as Destiny, that Infestor will not die. He will get 8 more. And then 8 more. And more if the game continues.
Marines = permanent investment Infested Terran = very temporary investment
Marines = cost only minerals MULEs = bring in free minerals
Oh and Nestea truly showed how strong Infestors are against MVP. Oh wait, never mind.
Oh, you, you've gone and spoiled the surprise. Next in the series: Orbital Commands, MULES HOOOOOOOOOOOO,
On August 25 2011 09:38 Benzzro wrote: I just hate the fact as a Protoss player that hates turtling, I...Well pretty much need to turtle against Infestors, I love moving around with blink stalkers and what not but I think it's pretty stupid to have a spell that just sticks the unit in place, I would love Fungal to just slow, but also cause slower attack speed (A buff for a nerf), something like that, I don't necessarily think it needs to be nerfed, just changed
The infestor is the closest thing Zerg have to what you would call a 'tech advantage in ZvP'.
In TvP, if Terran goes for a marine marauder ghost ghost timing off 2 base, against a Protoss who goes fast colossus after expand, the Terran is screwed if his push fails. Right before the push, he scans, and sees spread out sentries and 1 colossus. He has 2 options: push and emp and hope to win. Or, he can retreat. If he retreats, Protoss hits a timing with 3 colossus with range and Terran is powerless to stop it. Basically, Terran has sacrificed tech to do a big powerful push, and even if there is no single unit lost or cut scv, he is in big big trouble if he cannot do damage. Protoss has a tech advantage.
Consider this from old school PvZ. Protoss does a 7 gate blink all in against Zerg. Protoss observer sees the army and sees a huge amount of roach ling ready to defend because the Zerg diligently scouted and realized an all in was coming. No matter for Protoss, he retreats, places down a third and makes a death ball. Zerg is left crippled by not making drones whilst preparing for an all in and cannot attack into cannons and sentries with anything. Protoss invested into an all in build, but could transition so easily out of it because there was no more tech which he needed in which to counter the zerg. Hydras? Blink stalkers. Mass lings? Ff and blink stalkers with cannon support. 200 roach push? Blink stalkers.
How about new school pvz? Protoss does the same risky all in, obs sees roach ling and decides to back off taking a third instead. Suddenly, zerg is down your throat with fungals and rips through your blink stalkers, ravaging your third and you leave the game. So what does Protoss do? Just all INS off 2 base. Infestors now dominate the mid game as long as Protoss doesn't keep up in tech. If anything, the infestor is now punishing Protoss players for not committing to their all in builds. If a Protoss 6 gates Terran and fails, Terran gets 4 medivacs and a moves towards the Protoss base. Zerg has that utility now with the infestor. Maybe we should say goodbye to warp gate timings. Who knows, there might be crazy Phoenix zealot multi pronged harassment with storm drops to abuse how slow infestors are.
Fungal growth is fine... It makes infestors awesome against groups of small units and prevents micro, which is annoying but not really overpowered.
Neural parasite is fine... It makes infestors good once large game-changing units are out, by turning these against the opponent.
Infested terrans are fine... They help a lot against air, and give infestors a very strong tool against buildings for a low cost.
Burrow move (and their good moving speed) is fine... It makes infestors able to survive better than most casters, and gives them more harrass options.
I have no problem with any of these particular skills being available to zerg. However, all these good abilities are on the same unit, and perhaps that makes them too versatile. Controlled correctly, they're incredibly cost-effective against almost everything and very difficult to counter.
infestor doesn't force a response, it forces a protoss to be all in if he ever decides to attack or just camp until 6 expand mothership 3 stargate 3 robos 24 gateways, templars, dts, colossus, voidrays, stalkers and sentries
and even doing that you're barely cost effective against a 2 unit composition
On August 25 2011 09:41 Micket wrote: The infestor is the closest thing Zerg have to what you would call a 'tech advantage in ZvP'.
In TvP, if Terran goes for a marine marauder ghost ghost timing off 2 base, against a Protoss who goes fast colossus after expand, the Terran is screwed if his push fails. Right before the push, he scans, and sees spread out sentries and 1 colossus. He has 2 options: push and emp and hope to win. Or, he can retreat. If he retreats, Protoss hits a timing with 3 colossus with range and Terran is powerless to stop it. Basically, Terran has sacrificed tech to do a big powerful push, and even if there is no single unit lost or cut scv, he is in big big trouble if he cannot do damage. Protoss has a tech advantage.
Consider this from old school PvZ. Protoss does a 7 gate blink all in against Zerg. Protoss observer sees the army and sees a huge amount of roach ling ready to defend because the Zerg diligently scouted and realized an all in was coming. No matter for Protoss, he retreats, places down a third and makes a death ball. Zerg is left crippled by not making drones whilst preparing for an all in and cannot attack into cannons and sentries with anything. Protoss invested into an all in build, but could transition so easily out of it because there was no more tech which he needed in which to counter the zerg. Hydras? Blink stalkers. Mass lings? Ff and blink stalkers with cannon support. 200 roach push? Blink stalkers.
How about new school pvz? Protoss does the same risky all in, obs sees roach ling and decides to back off taking a third instead. Suddenly, zerg is down your throat with fungals and rips through your blink stalkers, ravaging your third and you leave the game. So what does Protoss do? Just all INS off 2 base. Infestors now dominate the mid game as long as Protoss doesn't keep up in tech. If anything, the infestor is now punishing Protoss players for not committing to their all in builds. If a Protoss 6 gates Terran and fails, Terran gets 4 medivacs and a moves towards the Protoss base. Zerg has that utility now with the infestor. Maybe we should say goodbye to warp gate timings. Who knows, there might be crazy Phoenix zealot multi pronged harassment with storm drops to abuse how slow infestors are.
Wonderfully written op, very informative, I personally see Infestors as a completely balanced unit which in the right hands can be sick good and change battles/harass but in the wrong hands can be a huge waste of money and time (and I main T so its not a bias lol).
On August 25 2011 09:38 Zahki wrote: The infestor balances the scales, much like Forcefield for Protoss. Zerg needs them to compete, because Fungal Growth is the only AoE damage Zerg has apart from Banelings, which aren't that useful against a deathball. Hopefully in HotS Zerg gets a T2 artillery unit that does splash and then Fungal can be reverted back to 8s duration without the extra damaged to armor, until then it should remain the way it is.
As a terran player, the reason why terrans and protoss players have difficulty against infestors because it is a unit that forces a response
Seriously? Whats wrong with that. Zerg dies if they don't respond properly to certain Terran and Protoss builds, I see no problem at all with requiring the other 2 races to respond properly against certain unit compositions. Thats StarCraft. It's not like Zerg are hard to scout.
Baneling drops are very strong against deathballs, and even stronger if they can get Fungal support. Moreover, it allows for an extremely dangerous form of harass from Zerg that forces Protoss to stay on the defensive and can instantly win games if not responded to correctly.
In my opinion, the infestor is an overpowered unit when used correctly or in numbers. This comes from a Protoss player's perspective. Infestors make pressuring a Zerg much harder because they force you to go all in with fungal. At the same time, the Zerg race requires continual pressure against it, because keeping the Zerg from droning or getting 10+ infestors is essential as Protoss. The fact that Zergs can already "outmacro" a Protoss is already powerful enough. Having a unit like an infestor (which has an upgrade for starting energy that HTs no longer have) is simply too much for a Protoss "death ball" (an archaic term now in PvZ) to deal with.
I think both fungal and infested Terran are too powerful and have made PvZ a match up for the Zerg player to win or lose, rather than a competition.
On August 25 2011 09:36 Tomfour wrote: Maybe it's a little strong, but I don't think so. More people just need to get ghosts/Hts to specifically counter it. It's a somewhat large unit(for a spellcaster) so it's pretty easy to target to do whatever you need to so that you can disable it.
I mean when people were started using ghosts way back when and protoss only wen colossi all you heard were T is op cries, granted they did change emp a little bit, but only the way it affects energy. When Toss started making HTs people cried about that as well, granted they took out kydrian amulet so that definitely kept it from being op, but it's still a very strong unit.
It's not like you can't counter this unit. Fungal doesn't last as long now so people can move away from it if they are hit by it, and hey if you get hit, bring something up to kill or emp/feedback the one that is probably going to recast.
I honestly have no way to fix it that I can think of that wouldn't ruin it completely so I guess I just have to defend how it is. I'd say nerf infested T's but seriously, nobody makes 40 of these like these guy said, you see a couple because they are so slow and easy to avoid. They are only a problem if, like DTs, get into your base and you don't have detection or anything to kill them with.
Lol honestly, your post just sounds like you've never really played at a high level, you make it sound asif Zerg will only have 2-3 infestors or something when infact they can have around 7-8 quite early on since they just need to spend minerals for lings and spines to defend the early game (At least against Protoss). Once there's 10 +, it's not as simpl as 'feedback' an infestors, Protoss is such a gas heavy race, we don't have 8+ HTs sitting around for feedback, if you get your army caught, chances are it's pretty much dead.
You also say people don't make 40 infested Terrans, and well...That's just wrong.
As my post before says, I think it just needs to get changed, not really nerfed (Maybe a bit). As a Protoss player I still think there needs to be more time before nerfing it. I've gone double stargate phoenix play with chargelots and it worked quite well, I still think there's a few unit comps to explore before nerfing it.
It's a good amount of power to have in the zerg arsenal, but it's too much utility in a single unit. I won't try to say how, but some of it's utility should be moved to other units in the zerg lineup. Additionally there should probably be lower tech units that somehow act as a soft counter to fungal growth's AoE - the same way that marauders and roaches (esp burrow) can just ignore light levels of storming, and zealots are chuffier vs EMP. Making it, say, an 85% snare rather than a full root might be one idea.
On August 25 2011 09:27 Joey Wheeler wrote: Technically marines are still cheaper than Infested Terrans.
A single Infestor, at the cost of 100/150, can produce 8 Infested Terrans on a single energy bar. Infested Terrans actually beat the crap out of Marines. But for arguments sake, lets say that each Infested Terran = 1 Marine. That's 400 minerals "worth" of units. In the hands of a skillful player, such as Destiny, that Infestor will not die. He will get 8 more. And then 8 more. And more if the game continues.
You have to remember that the units being attacked can just walk away, which is why infested are only used in mineral lines if it isn't safe to unburrow and fungal. And, as you said, they kill each other after 30s. Seeing as how energy regeneration is 0.5625 every second (Liquipedia), then that means that it takes almost six minutes to regenerate that energy. And that's uninterrupted.
Not to mention that if a HT gets to a full infestor, it can be killed instantly.
As for fungal, you can get off a maximum of two per infestor, and that takes 4 and a half minutes to regen (assuming you did the fungal when at 150 mana). And as for its nine range, against a late-game deathball, getting within range of the colossi is rather difficult, and parasite has the same range. They are also squishyer (not a word, I know) than a real water balloon filled with soldiers infected by an alien virus, mind-controlling parasites, and murderous fungi spores.
I think infestors are balanced out. They serve as a counter to play styles, rather than specific units, as all spell casters do. Regardless of rage against them, they have a job, and they perform it well. And, as the OP said, they are only really effective in the hands of an experienced player. Hate the man, not his tools.
I think fungal should be changed to slow instead of stun but should last for a longer duration. Also, zerg has no counter to infestor like T or P does so it makes zvz pretty lame. It gets owned by the other 2 spell casters so id say its balanced but its still kind of a lame unit since you cant micro after getting fungaled.
I like where neural parasite is at right now. People were saying before that it doesn't last long enough. I think its pretty good tho, maybe add 3 sec but im fine with it as it is.
Infested terran...idk i just dont like the spell except when its used in cute way like making a wall or surrounding a group of units so they cant get out. It can be used in a fun way in small numbers but when u spam like 30 of them its kind of stupid tbh.
tl;dr I think its balanced but not as fun to use or enjoyable to watch as it could be.
On August 25 2011 09:38 Benzzro wrote: I just hate the fact as a Protoss player that hates turtling, I...Well pretty much need to turtle against Infestors, I love moving around with blink stalkers and what not but I think it's pretty stupid to have a spell that just sticks the unit in place, I would love Fungal to just slow, but also cause slower attack speed (A buff for a nerf), something like that, I don't necessarily think it needs to be nerfed, just changed
woh u mean if u spread out marines then infestors fungal is really bad and then marines just roll them? O_O and if u afraid of infestors fungaling ur mineral line put 1-2 cannons near the edge of ur mineral patch or on the ledge or turret and 4 marines in a bunker thats really not that much to expend to save a mineral line
On August 25 2011 09:13 seoulsun wrote: u do know that without infestors zerg were pretty shit
this was blizzard attempt to fix a broken race
I think so too. Infestor is definitely the best caster in the game, but it just seems like it's necessary in every match-up to combat mid/late-game armies.
On August 25 2011 09:08 MK4512 wrote: I feel like fungal is a little bit OP right now, whereas most zerg units are UP, so it kind of balances out, but I don't think in the correct way. Infested terrans seem a little OP right now, because of how hard eggs are to kill and how quickly they can be cast.
As a protoss, having 46 damage + lack of mobility kills any kind of play other than 'deathball' play. Because blink stalkers, etc. becomes rather un-viable.
Combined with lings, ultras, or broods, infestors get even better.
Personally I think that infestors should be nerfed a bit, but not before other z units are buffed.
Actually, deathablls get wrecked by fungal..so infestors simply make deathball play not that viable.
In comparison to a blink stalker or air army, they do exceedingly well
On August 25 2011 09:48 Limenade wrote: woh u mean if u spread out marines then infestors fungal is really bad and then marines just roll them? O_O and if u afraid of infestors fungaling ur mineral line put 1-2 cannons near the edge of ur mineral patch or on the ledge or turret and 4 marines in a bunker thats really not that much to expend to save a mineral line
I dunno what to say I never use Infestors cause they are not easy to use and off set mineral alot cause of there high gas requirement and I pretty much only all in zvz
Destiny makes infestors look OP, but I think some detection and overlord sniping (to stop drops) can help stop them from completely annihilating you all over the map. Other than that, I think it's all about sniping the right units (in this case, infestors) and spreading out your army so that you don't lose everything to fungals. The kind of stuff that is tough to do in the heat of battle unless you're really good at micro, and separates the pros from the children. So infestors are tough for most of us to deal with in the big engagements, but it should only encourage us to work on micro-ing.
By the way, I've got to compliment how well the OP was written. Well done
Infestor is Zerg's only good unit. Zerg just has no counter for most of Protoss higher tier units, especially given how prohibitively expensive hive tech is (Zerg will max before Hive, and then somehow how to free up enough supply to remax on better units, have the time to do so - and an ultra takes over a minute - and stay alive, while having the money to do so).
I wouldn't mind infestors being slightly nerfed, but then FB needs to be nerfed against infestors as well. It's just too harsh for Zerg that their one good unit is immediately wrecked by just a few HT.
It's also crucial to note that FG needs to be chained, meaning that a single FG on an entire army isn't worth losing all your infestors to 5 HT for.
It's Zerg HT. We are vulnerable when trying to get them, but once they pop you'll die if you don't counter it.
I think a lot of Protoss are struggling against infestors because they aren't really approaching it correctly. Stalker/Colossi with simple HT support rapes infestor based comps, even Vr/colossi with HT does as well. Gimmicky builds are what die to infestors though.
i think that making fungal growth a little more like ensnare might help a lot of the problems. seriously removing micro and dealing damage when zerg already typically have the faster units makes it extremely difficult to combat correctly
On August 25 2011 09:10 whoopingchow wrote: I think it'd also be relevant to mention the costs of the unit itself and corresponding upgrades.
It always makes me laugh when I watch a replay and the player obviously has the Infestors in the same control group as his roaches. XD
And I don't think they're any more OP than psi storms or cloak+nukes. I think they all sort of even out with the amount of damage cast, time to cast, and energy needed to cast.
Wait wait, Nukes OP? 0:
Infested Terran may be too strong against Protoss. Fungal Growth may be too strong against Terran. But leaving it the way it is right now is probably the best decision.
the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
On August 25 2011 09:48 Limenade wrote: woh u mean if u spread out marines then infestors fungal is really bad and then marines just roll them? O_O and if u afraid of infestors fungaling ur mineral line put 1-2 cannons near the edge of ur mineral patch or on the ledge or turret and 4 marines in a bunker thats really not that much to expend to save a mineral line
And how should one respond to them sneaking near your base and spawning mass infested Terran and destroying your Nexus?
Really good OP, I think more balance discussions should put in as much effort. Having said that, yes Infestors are overpowered, but the cool thing is, so are HT and ghosts. Spellcasters are really powerful, as they should be, but because of their high tech costs/skill requirement, they all balance out in the end.
I feel as if the power of fungal growth makes people forget about infested terran though...until you end up laughing after the game about how fast you lost your base to half a dozen infestors lol ><
On August 25 2011 09:52 Belial88 wrote: Infestor is Zerg's only good unit. Zerg just has no counter for most of Protoss higher tier units, especially given how prohibitively expensive hive tech is (Zerg will max before Hive, and then somehow how to free up enough supply to remax on better units, have the time to do so - and an ultra takes over a minute - and stay alive, while having the money to do so).
I wouldn't mind infestors being slightly nerfed, but then FB needs to be nerfed against infestors as well. It's just too harsh for Zerg that their one good unit is immediately wrecked by just a few HT.
It's also crucial to note that FG needs to be chained, meaning that a single FG on an entire army isn't worth losing all your infestors to 5 HT for.
It's Zerg HT. We are vulnerable when trying to get them, but once they pop you'll die if you don't counter it.
I think a lot of Protoss are struggling against infestors because they aren't really approaching it correctly. Stalker/Colossi with simple HT support rapes infestor based comps, even Vr/colossi with HT does as well. Gimmicky builds are what die to infestors though.
stalker/colossi/HT still doesn't do all that well vs infestors/roaches/broodlords
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
I think eventually Terran will start putting turrets near the front chokes of their bases. Protoss players who don't have 9001 observers already make me cry.
The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
On August 25 2011 09:07 Whitewing wrote: Infested terran is probably too strong a spell as is, if you sneak a couple infestors into a base an spam them while forces are out of position, you'll take down command centers. Dealing with them without AoE is pretty much impossible for protoss, and thrown into big engagements they can do absurd amounts of damage while soaking hits.
I have no issue with fungal growth or neural parasite though.
... That's like saying DT's sneaking into zerg's base and killing a hatchery = too strong
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
?? Split your units and use detection/snipes/feedback?
On August 25 2011 09:48 Limenade wrote: woh u mean if u spread out marines then infestors fungal is really bad and then marines just roll them? O_O and if u afraid of infestors fungaling ur mineral line put 1-2 cannons near the edge of ur mineral patch or on the ledge or turret and 4 marines in a bunker thats really not that much to expend to save a mineral line
And how should one respond to them sneaking near your base and spawning mass infested Terran and destroying your Nexus?
Psionic Storm kills them in their eggs. So I guess I'd say one HT.
On August 25 2011 09:07 Whitewing wrote: Infested terran is probably too strong a spell as is, if you sneak a couple infestors into a base an spam them while forces are out of position, you'll take down command centers. Dealing with them without AoE is pretty much impossible for protoss, and thrown into big engagements they can do absurd amounts of damage while soaking hits.
I have no issue with fungal growth or neural parasite though.
... That's like saying DT's sneaking into zerg's base and killing a hatchery = too strong
The only thing that bothers me with fungal growth is that it cant hit friendly units, makes it almost too user friendly. Meanwhile storm and emp can fuck you up if you just toss them around. Maybe pros know to handle these things but I have accidently emped my own orbital while chasing some annoying dts
I am a zerg player in 1v1s. Just felt I had to point that out before someone yells "terran tears!"
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
No way? Bullshit. Feedback win, EMP win. I don't like this defeatist attitude at all. Every time someone bm's in a match about infestors I just tell him what his contemporaries do. Get caster units as well.
I have no problem with any of the spells. I do have a problem with them being all bundled up in one little neat package. The unit is much too versatile. As a protoss let me quickly run through my options in mid/late game vs zerg:
blink stalker- infestor fungal now makes blinking impossible pheonix/voids- fungal in place and throw some extremely high dps marines to clean up. DT- revealed by fungal Colossus- neural'd Archon- neural'd HT- alright here is the only option, it doesn't help that fungal is an AOE spell that has extra range on feedback because of it.
On August 25 2011 09:59 tymt wrote: The only thing that bothers me with fungal growth is that it cant hit friendly units, makes it almost too user friendly. Meanwhile storm and emp can fuck you up if you just toss them around. Maybe pros know to handle these things but I have accidently emped my own orbital while chasing some annoying dts
I am a zerg player in 1v1s. Just felt I had to point that out before someone yells "terran tears!"
On August 25 2011 09:59 tymt wrote: The only thing that bothers me with fungal growth is that it cant hit friendly units, makes it almost too user friendly. Meanwhile storm and emp can fuck you up if you just toss them around. Maybe pros know to handle these things but I have accidently emped my own orbital while chasing some annoying dts
I am a zerg player in 1v1s. Just felt I had to point that out before someone yells "terran tears!"
this is a good point lol, why the hell do fungal not friendly fire?
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
You can't spread your units out? Sentries are spread against ghosts, why can't people do the same against fungals? Of course doing that wouldn't overcome any part of fungal..right?
Also OP you forgot to mention that infested terrans take time to spawn rendering them much less effective than what is implied.
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
This was an absolutely fantastic post, it really opened my eyes to just how amazing the Infestor really is. I hope Blizzard lets players try and figure out its various uses and counters before they nerf it.
On August 25 2011 09:07 Whitewing wrote: Infested terran is probably too strong a spell as is, if you sneak a couple infestors into a base an spam them while forces are out of position, you'll take down command centers. Dealing with them without AoE is pretty much impossible for protoss, and thrown into big engagements they can do absurd amounts of damage while soaking hits.
I have no issue with fungal growth or neural parasite though.
... That's like saying DT's sneaking into zerg's base and killing a hatchery = too strong
Not quite, DT's have very low hit points and can be dealt with reasonably easily if you can detect them. Once the infested terrans are out, unless you get back quickly with a lot of AoE damage, you're losing a CC/hatch/nexus. Plus, DT's can't hang out at the ramp and fungal troops trying to run back up the ramp in order to save that CC/hatch/nexus. DT's are also a joke in engagements, infested terrans actually are very good when thrown in during straight up fights.
Infestors are the best two food in the game, and they were the best two food in the game back when Zerg players refused to use them and Protoss players insisted that Zerg players should use them. There's a damn good reason ZvZ decays into Infestor wars.
However, Hydralisks are awful. Move some of the love from the Infestor to the Hydra, please?
On August 25 2011 09:59 tymt wrote: The only thing that bothers me with fungal growth is that it cant hit friendly units, makes it almost too user friendly. Meanwhile storm and emp can fuck you up if you just toss them around. Maybe pros know to handle these things but I have accidently emped my own orbital while chasing some annoying dts
I am a zerg player in 1v1s. Just felt I had to point that out before someone yells "terran tears!"
this is a good point lol, why the hell do fungal not friendly fire?
Imagine dealing with zerglings if storm didnt hit your own units
I don't think they are imbalanced, against Terran at least. Have never played Protoss. I think Zerg needs a spellcaster to deal with groups of marines quickly where tanks are covering them from banelings, lings etc.
Infestors have a big reward for creative use, like 2 infestors bombing an expansion or main with infested terrans, or fungalling a load of workers. I like that.
Only thing I don't really like is that you can't load fungalled units into medivacs.
As Terran, tank's range deals with them well enough and can delay until ghosts are out so I have no issue with them. Mass infestor play does not worry me too much as long as I can produce ghosts.
Scariest thing about them is the harass potential, imo. But not a lot of Zergs seem willing to send 2 of them off and micro them elsewhere, sitting in a Protoss mindset
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
?? Split your units and use detection/snipes/feedback?
Feedback, yes. It's so easy and quick it can go down while the Protoss player is macroing and the Zerg player is microing his Infestors. Snipe, it's kinda even with Fungal. It has a longer range, but seriously, how long are you ever in exactly 10 range of an Infestor? You don't get that much time until he closes in or moves away, and with 12 Infestors the 2 that you kill won't be horribly missed. Two fungals and a large pack of zerglings would tear up any bioball/ghost push.
I'd still argue that the two units, the Infestor and the Ghost are equal, but in different ways.
the Infestor is more about targeting a large pack of units. The Ghost (in TvZ) is more about targeting that one special unit. They do their different jobs equally well.
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
You can't spread your units out? Sentries are spread against ghosts, why can't people do the same against fungals? Of course doing that wouldn't overcome any part of fungal..right?
Also OP you forgot to mention that infested terrans take time to spawn rendering them much less effective than what is implied.
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
Two words. Dark Templar
lol. dt is the worst possible comparison. useless in an actual battle, only thing it can do is snipe bases/workers. infestors can do that AND be the most important unit in an actual battle. also killing 5 dts is easier than killing 35 infested terrans. the most important thing is that you get infestors anyway because it's used in an actual fight. a byproduct is that it can tear down a base at will.
now if a dt could also fungal then we'd be talking
As already stated before, i don't consider the Infestor to be OP, but any BLord/Ling/Ultra- Infestor compositin. I admit, it's easier to FB an Infestor instead of a ghost, since they cannot simply cloak snipe/EMP you, but still, I struggle hard agaisnt FG. The reason is quite simple. Stunned Stalker suck against Ultras, BLings or Lings, stunned Zealot suck aswell. One or two well placed FG nullify any Toss movement, which actually is the only thing making Toss units so deadly. The way i would sole this Problem: remove the rooting ability of FG. Units should still suffer the full amount of damage, but they should be able to somehow defend themselves (not only by attacking).
Infested terrans don't win vs marines you can micro marines to avoid being by shot by all the infested terrans, you cant do the same with infested terrans.
It is similar to the Orbital Command's "scan" ability, in the sense that the inappropriate use of this ability is a waste of precious energy, however when used correctly, it is the difference between winning and losing.
You cant compare 50 energy on a CC to 100 energy on an Infestor, one is game changing the other is definitely not except in the case of early DT's in TvP, or a cloaked banshee opening in TvT.
He has with him what is most probably the highest maximum potential damage output of any unit in the game.
Stupid statement, every unit has an infinite maximum potential damage output if it is kept alive.
Infestor anti both air and ground so well. Kill workers with 1.5 FGs, infested Terran kill build with their insane dps. NP destroyed mech and massive units. Funny how it has energy upgrade. So Over all it's the best unit of the game.
Infestors are far too good. With perfect control the only viable counter are ghosts. Everything else is out ranged by fungals 9 plus aoe.
Even neural is a massively OP spell. You should not give a 2 supply unit essentially a 1 shot kill ability unless it is really difficult to cast or effectively defendable with micro. This is especially problematic versus protoss, a faction that has no combat unit costing less than 2 supply. The spell is supply effective even if you were using it on zealots!
On August 25 2011 09:59 tymt wrote: The only thing that bothers me with fungal growth is that it cant hit friendly units, makes it almost too user friendly. Meanwhile storm and emp can fuck you up if you just toss them around. Maybe pros know to handle these things but I have accidently emped my own orbital while chasing some annoying dts
I am a zerg player in 1v1s. Just felt I had to point that out before someone yells "terran tears!"
this is a good point lol, why the hell do fungal not friendly fire?
Because the function before the buff was too keep targets still so that Z-Armys who consist mainly of Melee or low-range Units can't be kited into oblivion. Making it friendly-fire would have completly countered its own purpose.
I guees that's still the main point why it doesn't friendly fire. Additionally EMP friendly fire really isn't that dangerous to Terran Units themselves (if you aren't stupid enough to EMP all your own ghosts ;D) and neither is Storm to Toss Units who have across the board pretty high hp values (even in the very seldom PvP Lategame you see Templars really only used for Archons).
Regarding the topic: They are completly fine in ZvT, nobody cares about ZvZ and Toss annihilated Z Lategame before the infestor buffs. As soon as toss gets up to 4 bases they rolled Z and are (though very dependant of the game up to this point) still debatably favored in those situations.
Were Infestors the wrong unit to buff and they should have gone some of mostly useless Z-Units like Hydras Corruptors or Ultras - sure. But Blizzard seldomly admits mistakes and I don't think it would be right to reset Infestors to their old state without some form of compensation.
I personally feel infestors (for their cost) are overpowered, but not that zerg is. If at all possible, I would love to see changes that made units like Hydras and Ultras a bit stronger so that there is more variety and strategy involved, while nerfing infestors a bit.
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
You can't spread your units out? Sentries are spread against ghosts, why can't people do the same against fungals? Of course doing that wouldn't overcome any part of fungal..right?
Also OP you forgot to mention that infested terrans take time to spawn rendering them much less effective than what is implied.
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
Two words. Dark Templar
lol. dt is the worst possible comparison. useless in an actual battle, only thing it can do is snipe bases/workers. infestors can do that AND be the most important unit in an actual battle. also killing 5 dts is easier than killing 35 infested terrans. the most important thing is that you get infestors anyway because it's used in an actual fight. a byproduct is that it can tear down a base at will.
now if a dt could also fungal then we'd be talking
I see you didn't watch MC vs Idra when MC had a DT hitting each hydra once to maximize DPS. Also killing 35 infested terrans takes 1 storm if they are clumped up. All of your argument is situational. Why don't you have cannons at your expos to stop infested terrans? What stops mutas from wrecking you then? By your logic mutalisks are equally as imbalanced because they help in army fights and can take out bases!
The comparison was based on what you said. A unit that kills bases effectively. By comparing to the DT I pointed out how easy it is to stop them from killing bases.
On August 25 2011 10:05 AidanS wrote: Infestors are far too good. With perfect control the only viable counter are ghosts. Everything else is out ranged by fungals 9 plus aoe.
Even neural is a massively OP spell. You should not give a 2 supply unit essentially a 1 shot kill ability unless it is really difficult to cast or effectively defendable with micro. This is especially problematic versus protoss, a faction that has no combat unit costing less than 2 supply. The spell is supply effective even if you were using it on zealots!
On August 25 2011 10:04 Mojar wrote: Infested terrans don't win vs marines you can micro marines to avoid being by shot by all the infested terrans, you cant do the same with infested terrans.
It is similar to the Orbital Command's "scan" ability, in the sense that the inappropriate use of this ability is a waste of precious energy, however when used correctly, it is the difference between winning and losing.
You cant compare 50 energy on a CC to 100 energy on an Infestor, one is game changing the other is definitely not except in the case of early DT's in TvP, or a cloaked banshee opening in TvT.
He has with him what is most probably the highest maximum potential damage output of any unit in the game.
Stupid statement, every unit has an infinite maximum potential damage output if it is kept alive.
You obviously don't understand spell casters. They were built from the ground up to be the units that make the game skill-based. Potential isn't calculated by saying "over an infinite time length", because over an infinite time length, even you will learn how to understand something like logic.
In a 10 minute period, a marine won't accomplish a tenth of an Infestor in good hands. Even if that marine is constantly attacking.
Also as soon as zergs get a good unit protoss starts complaining about how they can't use something because of infestors. BUT WAIT ZERG CAN'T USE HYDRAS AGAINST COLOSSUS! lol it's just funny how that happens. As well terrans gotta remember as soon as you get 10 medivac's you don't die to fungal growth at all and even the zerg players start to giggle at the sight of it.
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
You can't spread your units out? Sentries are spread against ghosts, why can't people do the same against fungals? Of course doing that wouldn't overcome any part of fungal..right?
Also OP you forgot to mention that infested terrans take time to spawn rendering them much less effective than what is implied.
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
Two words. Dark Templar
lol. dt is the worst possible comparison. useless in an actual battle, only thing it can do is snipe bases/workers. infestors can do that AND be the most important unit in an actual battle. also killing 5 dts is easier than killing 35 infested terrans. the most important thing is that you get infestors anyway because it's used in an actual fight. a byproduct is that it can tear down a base at will.
now if a dt could also fungal then we'd be talking
I see you didn't watch MC vs Idra when MC had a DT hitting each hydra once to maximize DPS. Also killing 35 infested terrans takes 1 storm if they are clumped up. All of your argument is situational. Why don't you have cannons at your expos to stop infested terrans? What stops mutas from wrecking you then? By your logic mutalisks are equally as imbalanced because they help in army fights and can take out bases!
The comparison was based on what you said. A unit that kills bases effectively. By comparing to the DT I pointed out how easy it is to stop them from killing bases.
cannons don't stop infested terran unless you have 10 cannons around each nexus
hmmm, when you say IF lose to regular marines, is completely false, if all the eggs hatch immediatly than yes, but you forgot the spawn time, a bunch of eggs being casted around marines will die instantly in equal numbers, from the marines, also the ability to run away and micro against them makes them worthless against things like marines
ghosts arent even that good against infestors because if their size. While being great against HT's i swear it seems like every emp i use only hits 1-2 infestors max, when they have 8 it feels pretty much like theres nothing I can do
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
You can't spread your units out? Sentries are spread against ghosts, why can't people do the same against fungals? Of course doing that wouldn't overcome any part of fungal..right?
Also OP you forgot to mention that infested terrans take time to spawn rendering them much less effective than what is implied.
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
Two words. Dark Templar
lol. dt is the worst possible comparison. useless in an actual battle, only thing it can do is snipe bases/workers. infestors can do that AND be the most important unit in an actual battle. also killing 5 dts is easier than killing 35 infested terrans. the most important thing is that you get infestors anyway because it's used in an actual fight. a byproduct is that it can tear down a base at will.
now if a dt could also fungal then we'd be talking
I see you didn't watch MC vs Idra when MC had a DT hitting each hydra once to maximize DPS. Also killing 35 infested terrans takes 1 storm if they are clumped up. All of your argument is situational. Why don't you have cannons at your expos to stop infested terrans? What stops mutas from wrecking you then? By your logic mutalisks are equally as imbalanced because they help in army fights and can take out bases!
The comparison was based on what you said. A unit that kills bases effectively. By comparing to the DT I pointed out how easy it is to stop them from killing bases.
cannons absolutely don't stop infested terrans from killing a nexus. also that mc vs idra game was a poor game by idra, letting his 1 overseer get sniped iirc. mutas can wreck you, but you can see them coming, which is the same reason why doing drops isn't imbalanced. with infestors, you won't see them coming until they are right outside your base, unless you have like 10 observers everywhere, i don't see how you can defend your fourth or fifth against burrowed infestors.
On August 25 2011 10:09 Sadist wrote: ghosts arent even that good against infestors because if their size. While being great against HT's i swear it seems like every emp i use only hits 1-2 infestors max, when they have 8 it feels pretty much like theres nothing I can do
On August 25 2011 10:08 IceSC wrote: Also as soon as zergs get a good unit protoss starts complaining about how they can't use something because of infestors. BUT WAIT ZERG CAN'T USE HYDRAS AGAINST COLOSSUS! lol it's just funny how that happens. As well terrans gotta remember as soon as you get 10 medivac's you don't die to fungal growth at all and even the zerg players start to giggle at the sight of it.
completely agree, there are so many preventative measures terran/toss can take to combat the infestors but there are absolutely none that zergs and even terrans (i think) can do to counter protoss late game, why arent aspects of the protoss deathball nerfed?
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
You can't spread your units out? Sentries are spread against ghosts, why can't people do the same against fungals? Of course doing that wouldn't overcome any part of fungal..right?
Also OP you forgot to mention that infested terrans take time to spawn rendering them much less effective than what is implied.
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
Two words. Dark Templar
lol. dt is the worst possible comparison. useless in an actual battle, only thing it can do is snipe bases/workers. infestors can do that AND be the most important unit in an actual battle. also killing 5 dts is easier than killing 35 infested terrans. the most important thing is that you get infestors anyway because it's used in an actual fight. a byproduct is that it can tear down a base at will.
now if a dt could also fungal then we'd be talking
I see you didn't watch MC vs Idra when MC had a DT hitting each hydra once to maximize DPS. Also killing 35 infested terrans takes 1 storm if they are clumped up. All of your argument is situational. Why don't you have cannons at your expos to stop infested terrans? What stops mutas from wrecking you then? By your logic mutalisks are equally as imbalanced because they help in army fights and can take out bases!
The comparison was based on what you said. A unit that kills bases effectively. By comparing to the DT I pointed out how easy it is to stop them from killing bases.
cannons don't stop infested terran unless you have 10 cannons around each nexus
10 cannons is a blatant lie. Maybe if I'm sending in 6-7 infestors which is an investment worthy of taking an expansion (see marauder drops). The normal 4 infestors that are used can be stopped easily with well placed cannons, much fewer than 10 at that.
On August 25 2011 10:09 Sadist wrote: ghosts arent even that good against infestors because if their size. While being great against HT's i swear it seems like every emp i use only hits 1-2 infestors max, when they have 8 it feels pretty much like theres nothing I can do
How many times have we gone over this man... you need to EMP an area with multiple ghosts, not just hope that 1 EMP hits all infestors. Also, cloaking a few ghosts and getting EMPs off works pretty well. We can practice it this weekend if you want.
On August 25 2011 10:04 Mojar wrote: Infested terrans don't win vs marines you can micro marines to avoid being by shot by all the infested terrans, you cant do the same with infested terrans.
It is similar to the Orbital Command's "scan" ability, in the sense that the inappropriate use of this ability is a waste of precious energy, however when used correctly, it is the difference between winning and losing.
You cant compare 50 energy on a CC to 100 energy on an Infestor, one is game changing the other is definitely not except in the case of early DT's in TvP, or a cloaked banshee opening in TvT.
He has with him what is most probably the highest maximum potential damage output of any unit in the game.
Stupid statement, every unit has an infinite maximum potential damage output if it is kept alive.
You obviously don't understand spell casters. They were built from the ground up to be the units that make the game skill-based. Potential isn't calculated by saying "over an infinite time length", because over an infinite time length, even you will learn how to understand something like logic.
In a 10 minute period, a marine won't accomplish a tenth of an Infestor in good hands. Even if that marine is constantly attacking.
Actually that's the definition of potential. But Im not arguing that a marine is as good as an infestor obviously. I was pointing out that it was a silly way to state the amount of damage an infestor is capable of.
On August 25 2011 10:09 Slago wrote: hmmm, when you say IF lose to regular marines, is completely false, if all the eggs hatch immediatly than yes, but you forgot the spawn time, a bunch of eggs being casted around marines will die instantly in equal numbers, from the marines, also the ability to run away and micro against them makes them worthless against things like marines
The statement "Infested Terrans kill Marines in equal numbers" is correct. Every "counter" is completely situational. If I were to throw 30 ITs around a Terran Orbital Command, and he responded with exactly 30 Marines, those marines would die if they were targeted down.
On August 25 2011 10:04 Mojar wrote: Infested terrans don't win vs marines you can micro marines to avoid being by shot by all the infested terrans, you cant do the same with infested terrans.
It is similar to the Orbital Command's "scan" ability, in the sense that the inappropriate use of this ability is a waste of precious energy, however when used correctly, it is the difference between winning and losing.
You cant compare 50 energy on a CC to 100 energy on an Infestor, one is game changing the other is definitely not except in the case of early DT's in TvP, or a cloaked banshee opening in TvT.
He has with him what is most probably the highest maximum potential damage output of any unit in the game.
Stupid statement, every unit has an infinite maximum potential damage output if it is kept alive.
You obviously don't understand spell casters. They were built from the ground up to be the units that make the game skill-based. Potential isn't calculated by saying "over an infinite time length", because over an infinite time length, even you will learn how to understand something like logic.
In a 10 minute period, a marine won't accomplish a tenth of an Infestor in good hands. Even if that marine is constantly attacking.
Actually that's the definition of potential. But Im not arguing that a marine is as good as infestor obviously. I was pointing out that it was a silly way to state the amount of damage an infestor is capable of.
Show me the everlasting Starcraft game, and I'll admit you're correct. If the game doesn't last forever, you're wrong. This is rational potential, not imaginary potential.
On August 25 2011 10:09 Sadist wrote: ghosts arent even that good against infestors because if their size. While being great against HT's i swear it seems like every emp i use only hits 1-2 infestors max, when they have 8 it feels pretty much like theres nothing I can do
How many times have we gone over this man... you need to EMP an area with multiple ghosts, not just hope that 1 EMP hits all infestors. Also, cloaking a few ghosts and getting EMPs off works pretty well. We can practice it this weekend if you want.
Not sure if people know this already - but phoenix's Graviton beam removes the effect of Neural parasite.
Pretty useful if you have a few phoenixes and infestors neural your collos/archons .. you can just lift the Infestors up which ends the neural parasite. Quite handy in situations.
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
You can't spread your units out? Sentries are spread against ghosts, why can't people do the same against fungals? Of course doing that wouldn't overcome any part of fungal..right?
Also OP you forgot to mention that infested terrans take time to spawn rendering them much less effective than what is implied.
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
Two words. Dark Templar
lol. dt is the worst possible comparison. useless in an actual battle, only thing it can do is snipe bases/workers. infestors can do that AND be the most important unit in an actual battle. also killing 5 dts is easier than killing 35 infested terrans. the most important thing is that you get infestors anyway because it's used in an actual fight. a byproduct is that it can tear down a base at will.
now if a dt could also fungal then we'd be talking
I see you didn't watch MC vs Idra when MC had a DT hitting each hydra once to maximize DPS. Also killing 35 infested terrans takes 1 storm if they are clumped up. All of your argument is situational. Why don't you have cannons at your expos to stop infested terrans? What stops mutas from wrecking you then? By your logic mutalisks are equally as imbalanced because they help in army fights and can take out bases!
The comparison was based on what you said. A unit that kills bases effectively. By comparing to the DT I pointed out how easy it is to stop them from killing bases.
cannons don't stop infested terran unless you have 10 cannons around each nexus
10 cannons is a blatant lie. Maybe if I'm sending in 6-7 infestors which is an investment worthy of taking an expansion (see marauder drops). The normal 4 infestors that are used can be stopped easily with well placed cannons, much fewer than 10 at that.
Infestors have too much utility for too little of an investment. Infested terrans are essentially free expansion deniers. Neural parasite in combination with fungal growth means that Protoss has no reason or incentive to build colossi, carriers, or a mothership, as these will all be taken and used against them. Fungal growth itself does guaranteed damage (storm is easily dodged in comparison) and prevents ANY micro at all of the units under its effect. That alone should be addressed.
People tell Protoss players that they need to get templar tech - but we can't support templar realistically on two bases - we need a third (which, oh yeah, keeps getting denied because that's what zergs do). Feedback might stop a few infestors, but in reality you catch maybe an infestor or two, but because the range on feedback is terrible, it ends up not behaving as the counter it should be.
I just find it absurd that people will stand by a unit that removes strategy from a real time strategy game. I'd like to see it removed from the game, and give Zerg units a better late game composition instead to compensate.
On August 25 2011 09:07 Whitewing wrote: Infested terran is probably too strong a spell as is, if you sneak a couple infestors into a base an spam them while forces are out of position, you'll take down command centers. Dealing with them without AoE is pretty much impossible for protoss, and thrown into big engagements they can do absurd amounts of damage while soaking hits.
I have no issue with fungal growth or neural parasite though.
... That's like saying DT's sneaking into zerg's base and killing a hatchery = too strong
if DTs could cast storm
I'd def think it's too strong
DT's can also morph into a pretty good unit called an Archon.. just saying.
Or you can drop 2 DT's and 2 HT's and it will function similarly to 4 infestors.
And yes, I know they don't function completely the same given different scenarios. Just making the point that not all units are the same. Can Infestors be permanently cloaked and go around 1-shotting workers? No. Imagine an Infestor that can fungal+attack/1shot workers while burowed and a DT that can cloak/1shot workers + have the ability to storm everything. Both would be "OP".
On August 25 2011 09:55 NATO wrote: The problem with infestors (other than simply being too good) is that there is no way for the opponent to use their skill to reduce/overcome the spells of the infestors. Bascially it's all up to if the zerg player is good enough to get the spell off - once that happens there is nothing to do.
Even storms can be dodged to some degree.
You can't spread your units out? Sentries are spread against ghosts, why can't people do the same against fungals? Of course doing that wouldn't overcome any part of fungal..right?
Also OP you forgot to mention that infested terrans take time to spawn rendering them much less effective than what is implied.
On August 25 2011 09:52 akalarry wrote: the only thing i dont like about infestors is how easily they can take out a base. the main problem is burrow movement. it's ridiculously hard to see them coming unless you have a random turret, cannon, or overseer far away from your base scouts it.
Two words. Dark Templar
lol. dt is the worst possible comparison. useless in an actual battle, only thing it can do is snipe bases/workers. infestors can do that AND be the most important unit in an actual battle. also killing 5 dts is easier than killing 35 infested terrans. the most important thing is that you get infestors anyway because it's used in an actual fight. a byproduct is that it can tear down a base at will.
now if a dt could also fungal then we'd be talking
I see you didn't watch MC vs Idra when MC had a DT hitting each hydra once to maximize DPS. Also killing 35 infested terrans takes 1 storm if they are clumped up. All of your argument is situational. Why don't you have cannons at your expos to stop infested terrans? What stops mutas from wrecking you then? By your logic mutalisks are equally as imbalanced because they help in army fights and can take out bases!
The comparison was based on what you said. A unit that kills bases effectively. By comparing to the DT I pointed out how easy it is to stop them from killing bases.
cannons don't stop infested terran unless you have 10 cannons around each nexus
10 cannons is a blatant lie. Maybe if I'm sending in 6-7 infestors which is an investment worthy of taking an expansion (see marauder drops). The normal 4 infestors that are used can be stopped easily with well placed cannons, much fewer than 10 at that.
clearly u havent played pvz against abusers
I have but I also know you're someone who is quite biased in their opinion of infestors so to prevent any derail this will have to end here.
I think it'd be nice if you had to research fungal, and maybe change it so it lasts say 6 seconds (so it actually "holds," 4 seconds is nothing in blizzard time) with (slightly) lower DPS for the entire duration.
While admittedly infestors have a higher potential of usefulness over HT's and ghosts, protoss and terran's respective casters completely shut down infestors when used correctly. Also the defensive capability of the infestor is virtually non existent save for borrow.
Furthermore, any sort of infestor play can go to shit rather quickly, as we've all seen. The OP is true, Infestors have the highest potential for melting face in the zerg arsenal, and arguably in the game, they're far from overpowered. In my opinion.
Nerf Infested Terrans. Increase the energy requirement or lower the dps. AND Buff Zerglings and lower Roach supply. Zerg is way too fragile in the early game and way too cost-ineffective. OR Add some sort of "siege" unit. It's not an offensive but a defensive siege, something that fulfilled the role of Lurker.
We're going to see something similar to "lurker" in HOTS but I believe that Option #1 is easier to implement.
P.S. I'm a zerg player. No shit there's going to be bias.
On August 25 2011 09:07 Whitewing wrote: Infested terran is probably too strong a spell as is, if you sneak a couple infestors into a base an spam them while forces are out of position, you'll take down command centers. Dealing with them without AoE is pretty much impossible for protoss, and thrown into big engagements they can do absurd amounts of damage while soaking hits.
I have no issue with fungal growth or neural parasite though.
... That's like saying DT's sneaking into zerg's base and killing a hatchery = too strong
if DTs could cast storm
I'd def think it's too strong
DT's can also morph into a pretty good unit called an Archon.. just saying.
Or you can drop 2 DT's and 2 HT's and it will function similarly to 4 infestors.
And yes, I know they don't function completely the same given different scenarios. Just making the point that not all units are the same. Can Infestors be permanently cloaked and go around 1-shotting workers? No. Imagine an Infestor that can fungal+attack/1shot workers while burowed and a DT that can cloak/1shot workers + have the ability to storm everything. Both would be "OP".
as previously mentionned, infestors are a lot more versatile than DTs you can't compare both, at all, you don't see anyone sitting there with 20 DTs and cannons until they tech to carriers
On August 25 2011 10:12 CAPSLOCKED wrote: It only feels right that spell-casters have the potential to change games like they do. However, personally, I feel the investment should be higher ;P
Remove +Energy Upgrade and require Fungal to be researched, do the same for EMP, and repeat again for Feedback.
that would be rather silly if you consider that both ghost and infestors have long build times
On August 25 2011 10:18 StaplerPhone wrote: I think it'd be nice if you had to research fungal, and maybe change it so it lasts say 6 seconds (so it actually "holds," 4 seconds is nothing in blizzard time) with (slightly) lower DPS for the entire duration.
No, most of the time as zerg you will need to have fungal out right away. We can have fungal growth resarchable IF pathogen glands don't need to be reserched and infestors start enough energy to cast FG right away.
As a Zerg player, I think fungal growth is a little bit overpowered. However, I think with the state of Zerg it is actually necessary for the infestor to be so strong because before the change, us Zergies were manhandled for about a year lol.
So, why do I think fungal growth is too strong?
Well, simply put, it does a shit load of damage and prevents movement. It is a support spell and a DPS spell put together, which happens pretty rarely in any game because it becomes a spell that you just spam and kill shit with in seconds. If it stays the way it is I think the energy cost should be raised, but even then I don't think that is a very good solution to the problems Zerg has had, but more like another quick fix.
Why do I think fungal growth NEEDS to be as strong as it is?
Zerg doesn't have a unit like a Colossus, Siege Tank, or even High Templar (storm), that can effectively zone areas other then the Infestor. I think Blizzard intended banelings to do this job, but with FF, Siege tanks, and Marines with stim, banelings just don't cut it. This is also the reason you hear so many people calling for the Lurker in HotS. Infestors and their insanely strong fungal growth spell, and to some extent the infested terrans as well, fill the role of an AoE unit that can control space, which is a very important role to be filled.
Without a sufficient space controlling unit, Zerg was abused so hard because they could only engage in certain areas of the map (really big ass open areas) to have a hope of winning a fight. However, the maps as well as other tools Protoss and Terran have (forcefield, slow tank pushes, sensor towers, etc.) make it really easy for Protoss and Terran to force engagements in positions that are unwinnable for a Zerg player without an AoE dps unit.
So basically, I feel like the Infestor as a unit is indeed overpowered, but Zerg as a whole is not.
The Infestor is overpowered because it has amazing versatility and utility, as it can effectively control space, deal huge amounts of damage, and harass. Essentially the only thing it does not do well is take damage like a "tank" unit would.
Zerg is not overpowered because it NEEDS a unit to control space for the reasons I mentioned earlier, and I also feel like it needs better midgame anti air. Hydras and Corruptors both have pretty glaring flaws that seem to out weigh their strengths. Hydras are too damn slow and die practically instantly to Colossus and Siege Tanks, and Corruptors have fairly low damage output and are useless once they finally kill whatever you made them to kill (usually Colossu). Sure they have corruption, but that does not nearly make them worth their cost, in terms of both resources and supply, in a battle where there is not a lot of air from the opponent. Also, Mutalisks can fill this role in ZvT (not so much in ZvP), but they are not very good at fighting head on and really rely on being mobile, which makes them more situation and not the Zerg go-to anti air unit.
Edit: Regarding the patch notes, I feel they definitely look like TEST changes, but it looks like they are heading in the right direction. I approve of them =)
As an unbiased Terran player I don't think that the infester is imbalanced without going deeper into that analyze. I do feel that it adds much to the dynamics of the game and increases the skill cap of the game. Like it can be very deadly if you get caught with your units in a clumped up ball which is something that you should be purnished for during - thus it makes the game more intense. It's also a unit that might allow you to make a comeback when you have fallen behind, and it's also very excellent at harassment. It's basically a very powerful (potentially) and versatile unit. Looking at it by itself then it's just a very well designed unit, imo. I do feel that since fungel holds units in place, unlike storm, it should possibly be a medium/fast missile attack instead of how it is now, though. Blizzard might want to give this some more thoughts at this time.
On August 25 2011 09:07 Whitewing wrote: Infested terran is probably too strong a spell as is, if you sneak a couple infestors into a base an spam them while forces are out of position, you'll take down command centers. Dealing with them without AoE is pretty much impossible for protoss, and thrown into big engagements they can do absurd amounts of damage while soaking hits.
I have no issue with fungal growth or neural parasite though.
... That's like saying DT's sneaking into zerg's base and killing a hatchery = too strong
if DTs could cast storm
I'd def think it's too strong
DT's can also morph into a pretty good unit called an Archon.. just saying.
Or you can drop 2 DT's and 2 HT's and it will function similarly to 4 infestors.
And yes, I know they don't function completely the same given different scenarios. Just making the point that not all units are the same. Can Infestors be permanently cloaked and go around 1-shotting workers? No. Imagine an Infestor that can fungal+attack/1shot workers while burowed and a DT that can cloak/1shot workers + have the ability to storm everything. Both would be "OP".
as previously mentionned, infestors are a lot more versatile than DTs you can't compare both, at all, you don't see anyone sitting there with 20 DTs and cannons until they tech to carriers
Not arguing that they have more utility. Just saying that you stated the fact that a cluster of them sneaking into a base and taking it down, and the tone of it just made it sound like you thought that was too good. I could have misinterpreted and you meant to say that and everything else they could do made them too versatile. Versatility wasn't something I was arguing. I was just saying that a pack of infestors sneaking into a base and killing the CC/Nexus/Hatch doesn't make infestors "too strong" by any means.
On August 25 2011 09:59 tymt wrote: The only thing that bothers me with fungal growth is that it cant hit friendly units, makes it almost too user friendly. Meanwhile storm and emp can fuck you up if you just toss them around. Maybe pros know to handle these things but I have accidently emped my own orbital while chasing some annoying dts
I am a zerg player in 1v1s. Just felt I had to point that out before someone yells "terran tears!"
wow you can emp an orbital? mind blown
Ya I remember awhile back actually a few people thinking that if you were to use thors vs protoss EMPing them might actually be a good thing to do in order to prevent feedback. It never did pan out because that was almost right before they removed the energy (before bringing it back) and thors havnt reallly picked up since then.
i think the infestor is fine as it is. its the only caster zerg has other then the queen and yes it has potential but is so easy 2 snipe off i think people just need 2 learn how 2 play against them better learn 2 split up units instead of making balls.
How can anyone complain about 4 infestors being able to kill a 4th... The equivalent gas for ovie speed, drop tech, infestor energy and 4 infestors probably means mutas probably could of done it as well.
heh my problem with the infestor is pretty much only one, its perfect against every unit, except two.
Its aoe outranges and stuns units so it can basically kill any low hp units for free if the range its range is below 10. It can control any high hp unit for free if its range is below 9. And it can summon tanking units that zerg typical use upgrades making them even deal pretty nice damage on 3/3.
So while the other 2 races spell casters that have the same purpose have similar spells. I think the infestor has the 2 strongest ones. Of course they are more fragile and stuff, but damn they are fast. (even after the speed nerf ). The spells are to strong for the range they have. The problem is if they are smaller, you have the raven. Seeker missile has a range of 6. In other words the raven will die if any ground to air unit is present (well except the archon), when using the seeker missile. (and it will probably not even hit). even worse. Casters around ? neural has a 3 range advantage, just like feedback. So its rather impossible to use the seeker missile if the opponent is awake. (plus it still is 125 energy) Now imagine the infestor with a range of 6 ^.^ .
So imo the casters ranges are all a bit off, especially the seeker missile. I understand their reasoning of the ranges, but it makes casters a bit to strong (or the air ones to weak). I mean zerg was nothing without defiler in bw as well, but you needed other units as well. And the defiler couldn't beat every unit without receiving damage, like the infestor can. (only storm or emp can hit them really, well and tanks and colossi that is heh, every other unit can't reach them, and i thought plague was the worst spell ever).
Of course their aoe does little damage, but the problem is the zerg can use a damn lot of infestors, and doesn't really need alot of fight supply.
I guess the infestor spells will soon see some tweaking again, not all but one will probably be nerfed, maybe the zerg summons (having upgrades ^.^ )
Anyway i would hope for a range upgrade for the seeker missile or a energy reduce. (so you don't have a big slow super expensive flying baneling only)
But i actually quiet like the casters, they can defeat their counterparts within milliseconds, destroy armies within 5 seconds, wipe workerlines (you only need 2 storms afterall). That makes it ultra hard to fight against them and head on fights are hopeless. And i guess it will take alot of time till people will find out what to do against those beasts.
But hey if you ran a toss army in bw in a giant bulk into the terran and he threw an emp right into your blob, it took 2 seconds and the army was vaporized (otherwise maybe 6 :3 and a few would have made it through the minefield). (but making a deathball in bw was pretty hard xD while in sc2 its a bit different)
So yay for the hyperdimensional imbalanced spellcasters. (i will never be able to handle them right, but its nice to know that no one can it till now)
On August 25 2011 10:34 FeyFey wrote: Anyway i would hope for a range upgrade for the seeker missile or a energy reduce. (so you don't have a big slow super expensive flying baneling only)
Will you settle for faster missiles? Missiles as fast as Stalkers? Missiles faster than workers?
I think Zergs are only now unlocking the potential of the infestor. I think they were underutilised for a long time, and what's happened is a metagame shift where they've been used more and more.
I think the same thing needs to happen with the other spellcasters as well. Certainly Templar are and have been used, but their full applications are probably as yet undiscovered, and I feel with Ghosts and Ravens this is especially true, people are only now even beginning to unlock the power of Ghosts.
Infestors are strong, but they have very viable counters to greatly hinder their effectiveness.
Saying 4 Infestors can "take out a 4th" is a little silly, since 8 stimmed marauders or 4 DTs can quite easily do the same thing. You just need to be prepared for stuff like that.
On August 25 2011 10:38 Perseverance wrote: If infestors get nerfed Zerg will need a buff. You'll have to buff hydras and possibly another unit to 'fix' zerg.
ZERG -Infestor --Fungal Growth damage changed from 36 (+30% armored) to 30 (40 vs Armored). -Overseer --Morph cost decreased from 50/100 to 50/50. --Contaminate energy cost increased from 75 to 125. -Ultralisk --Build time decreased from 70 to 55.
:D will that do?
On August 25 2011 10:41 Subversion wrote: I think Zergs are only now unlocking the potential of the infestor. I think they were underutilised for a long time, and what's happened is a metagame shift where they've been used more and more.
I think the same thing needs to happen with the other spellcasters as well. Certainly Templar are and have been used, but their full applications are probably as yet undiscovered, and I feel with Ghosts and Ravens this is especially true, people are only now even beginning to unlock the power of Ghosts.
Infestors are strong, but they have very viable counters to greatly hinder their effectiveness.
Saying 4 Infestors can "take out a 4th" is a little silly, since 8 stimmed marauders or 4 DTs can quite easily do the same thing. You just need to be prepared for stuff like that.
Could not agree more. I feel like people need to play really weird and funky until they discover stuff. It's the unusual player, a player who utilizes tactics which are special in nature, who usually discovers the next best thing. They should try to use their respective spell casters in new ways, even if it costs some ladder games, it could be the biggest breakthrough for their race yet.
On August 25 2011 10:38 Perseverance wrote: If infestors get nerfed Zerg will need a buff. You'll have to buff hydras and possibly another unit to 'fix' zerg.
ZERG -Infestor --Fungal Growth damage changed from 36 (+30% armored) to 30 (40 vs Armored). -Overseer --Morph cost decreased from 50/100 to 50/50. --Contaminate energy cost increased from 75 to 125. -Ultralisk --Build time decreased from 70 to 55.
As a zerg player I know Infestors are OP. The reality of the situation is that infestors were buffed to compensate for how shit zerg is at almost everything else.
It always seemed like a bandaid solution for a chainsaw wound to me.
On August 25 2011 10:38 Perseverance wrote: If infestors get nerfed Zerg will need a buff. You'll have to buff hydras and possibly another unit to 'fix' zerg.
ZERG -Infestor --Fungal Growth damage changed from 36 (+30% armored) to 30 (40 vs Armored). -Overseer --Morph cost decreased from 50/100 to 50/50. --Contaminate energy cost increased from 75 to 125. -Ultralisk --Build time decreased from 70 to 55.
:D will that do?
I'm Zerg, and I love the new patch.
As a Terran, I know it hurts me, but I know it will make the game a lot more interesting, from both a player and spectator perspective.
If I could nerf the infestor I would change the lock-down part of the spell to the ensnare effect from the starcraft 1 queen. I feel like the "broken" aspect of the infestor is that once something is fungeled, it's as good as dead if enough infestors are around. This isn't the case with storms, as units are free to run from it; although to be fair, I shouldn't be making any comparison to the other casters as they are all very different. An emp is a missile, it makes sense that it is a one shot thing. A psi storm is, well idk, it's like a freaking storm of pain, and storms do damage over time. A fungus just seeeems like it would slow, rather than completely stop.
ptr is nerfing damage a tad, but I feel like it's the wrong change to make. Step in the right direction at least.
On August 25 2011 11:04 phiinix wrote: If I could nerf the infestor I would change the lock-down part of the spell to the ensnare effect from the starcraft 1 queen. I feel like the "broken" aspect of the infestor is that once something is fungeled, it's as good as dead if enough infestors are around. This isn't the case with storms, as units are free to run from it; although to be fair, I shouldn't be making any comparison to the other casters as they are all very different. An emp is a missile, it makes sense that it is a one shot thing. A psi storm is, well idk, it's like a freaking storm of pain, and storms do damage over time. A fungus just seeeems like it would slow, rather than completely stop.
ptr is nerfing damage a tad, but I feel like it's the wrong change to make. Step in the right direction at least.
To my understanding, it will take one more fungal to kill stalkers, marauders, vikings, and a few other units.
It is more of a nerf for mass infestors. A few Infestors with a much smaller investment wont see much change.
On August 25 2011 10:38 Perseverance wrote: If infestors get nerfed Zerg will need a buff. You'll have to buff hydras and possibly another unit to 'fix' zerg.
ZERG -Infestor --Fungal Growth damage changed from 36 (+30% armored) to 30 (40 vs Armored). -Overseer --Morph cost decreased from 50/100 to 50/50. --Contaminate energy cost increased from 75 to 125. -Ultralisk --Build time decreased from 70 to 55.
:D will that do?
I'm Zerg, and I love the new patch.
As a Terran, I know it hurts me, but I know it will make the game a lot more interesting, from both a player and spectator perspective.
It doesn't really hurt you as a Terran at all, unless you're going pure mech PvT. Upgraded hellions will still 2 shot zerglings, so there's no change there. In TvT hellions aren't going to be as dominant as they used to be, but this applies to your opponent as well so you are not disadvantaged.
They're nerfing infestors, dude. You should be happy.
Once I played a Zerg friend and panned my camera to an empty mineral line at the natural. I now never forget to build turrets at chokes and near mineral lines to detect burrowed Infestors.
On August 25 2011 11:38 adiga wrote: I fear the day that zergs start utilizing infestors properly. max zerg amry + shit loads of infested terrans is my nightmares lately.
:| you're not supposed to say that where Zerg players can read it.
OMG YES! I would trade infestor nerf for ultra build decrease! The reason why zergs mass infestors is not just because they are powerful but also bc they build faster than bl and ultras.
Infestors can be pretty ridiculous but it's pretty necessary to have in Zerg's arsenal considering the lack of diversity available. But still, their harassment potential is not as great as a hellion's and high templars are pretty amazing as well.
On August 25 2011 12:17 IcedBacon wrote: Infestors can be pretty ridiculous but it's pretty necessary to have in Zerg's arsenal considering the lack of diversity available. But still, their harassment potential is not as great as a hellion's and high templars are pretty amazing as well.
It'll be interesting to see how HotS effects this. With another unit they can fill another niche role, and perhaps remove some utility from the Infestor.
I could agree that infestor's are very strong. I'm not sure I could say they are 'too' strong, just as I don't think people could say Zerg race itself are 'too' strong. This unit is very versatile, possibly the most versatile unit in the game, but then again the zerg race doesn't really have a lot of units, and on the other end of the extreme we have a few units that are thought to be pretty weak to the point of uselessness. You made good points though , and the pictures are a good touch.
I suppose fungal is the equivalent annoyance for me as a Protoss player as forcefields are for a zerg. Still think the rooting in place + stop abilties + damage is too much for one spell.
I just think the unit is far, far, too much of a counter to everything that a Protoss can realistically put out in a composition. Not sure how they are against Terran. If I hear "oh make HT" as a suggestion to counter heavy infestor play one more time I'm going to freak. You cannot have anywhere near equivalent numbers of HT to Infestors because the zerg can survive the early game with pretty much solely mineral dumping on lings and crawlers
We'll see how the metagame shifts, and props to those who have popularised the use of this great unit. Iroaches
Looking forward to HoTS a lot, I'm not confident it'll happen but I really hope the races are tweaked to reflect their 'identity' more.
On August 25 2011 09:13 seoulsun wrote: u do know that without infestors zerg were pretty shit
this was blizzard attempt to fix a broken race
Well they've had infestors for the past year man... Sure the buff was pretty big, but not THAT huge after all. They still killed marines and workers in the same way before if I recall correctly. Just that you had to wait a couple of seconds, but hey - they can't move, can they? Imo the energy buff is a bit much, when they removed it from protoss while it wasn't even that complained about afaik. People were moaning about collosi at the time, so they nerf the other alternative -_- Remove the energy buff and it'll atleast make them slightly less volatile in the game in the sence of 'either you have them and you're winning - or you don't and you're probably about to lose'
Edit. Also zergs had lots of success even when they were at their low point. Broken my ass.
Infestors are fun to watch, and buffing them certainly made the game more valuable as an e-sport, but it does not make it fun to play against them, and it did imbalance the game by a large ammount.
Zergs can do fine against terran with muta ling bling, bane roach, and TvP was zerg favored even before the buff.
Whilst I think that each individual role of the infestor (stopping/slowing pushes, attacking, harassing, controlling space) are all only slightly imbalanced, when you look at the unit as a whole, I feel that it fills too many roles. It should either be a harass unit, a space controlling unit, an attacking unit, or a defending unit, and it should definitely not be all of the above.
Look at the ghost, ghosts have very limited harass potential (can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds), ghosts can't really control space except for nuke, which costs 100/100 and is very unreliable and slow, ghosts don't do great in a straight up fight compared to the ammount of other bio you could make in that ammount of rax time.
HTs kinda fill the same roles as templar, and can be made into archons.
sidenote: Hts require 2 emps to clean their energy, and than another 2 to remove sheilds from the archons, is that so balanced?
Anyways, I think with 3 fungals to kill marines before stim, 2 after stim is balanced for straight up fights, and 35 energy for infested terrans. The movement speed needs to be reduced to that of ghosts or slightly slower, same speed as ghosts on creep, and burrow needs to slow them down a ton. that would limit their role to be smaller so that zergs can't effectively spamm mass infestors, and be able to defend, pressure, control the map, all without any other tech, and the fact that infestors stack means that this is a bit overpowered. The efficiency of infestors and the ease of retention is also a bit of a problem, both ghosts and templars are super hard to retain and retrain, but with lings on the feild having burrow, fast burrow speed, and super long range on all their abilities makes them practically unkillable for terran, at least toss have blink.
Edit: A solution to the problem in TvZ could be some way to make our tanks mobile, e.g. some sort of mine.
sidenote v2: I haven't played or watched too much bw, but I think that zergs should use baneling mines like lurkers on ramps and other chokes, it's pretty much the same effect, right? I think that once zergs realize this they'll find that they can rely on them similary, and then utilize that space control to great effect and cut corners in other areas. people saying zerg is a weak race are just wrong, banelings, mutas, lings, roaches, all very very powerful units, lings beat marines without medivacs cost per cost, and can be produced for much cheaper than rax units.
I always thought Fungal should be more like Ensnare from BW except it deals dmg.
I wonder how it would effect the power of the Infestor if units could slowly move while hit by fungal. I'm talking like a slow, slow crawl. Maybe enough that if a group of marines are hit, if you micro them quick enough you could split them or spread them a bit so the next fungal wont hit all of them and you can minimize the damage. Or if an air unit is hit, it can possibly get away if its far enough from a cliff.
This would add more micro if anything. It should still stop spells like blink from being used but depending how much it slowed units it might be a pretty big nerf.
I've been thinking for a while now that Infested Terran is actually really good, but it's been overshadowed by Fungal Growth since the beginning. Moving and casting an entire army to harass with while burrowed is really strong.
On August 25 2011 09:13 seoulsun wrote: u do know that without infestors zerg were pretty shit
this was blizzard attempt to fix a broken race
Well they've had infestors for the past year man... Sure the buff was pretty big, but not THAT huge after all. They still killed marines and workers in the same way before if I recall correctly. Just that you had to wait a couple of seconds, but hey - they can't move, can they? Imo the energy buff is a bit much, when they removed it from protoss while it wasn't even that complained about afaik. People were moaning about collosi at the time, so they nerf the other alternative -_- Remove the energy buff and it'll atleast make them slightly less volatile in the game in the sence of 'either you have them and you're winning - or you don't and you're probably about to lose'
Edit. Also zergs had lots of success even when they were at their low point. Broken my ass.
Medivacs could outheal a lot of the damage before the buff, so I disagree, the buff was pretty big.
On the other hand, infested terran as a spell is very underused and is absurdly strong, they had that before.
I have to agree with a lot of the posts in here. (Also I'm Zerg)
The infestor is INCREDIBLY strong. I'm not going to lie. ZvZ is centered around that one unit. It has a ton of options when used with burrow/drops and like the OP says it has an amazing maximum damage output. It's hard to use though, and you need other units to support it.
Is it OP? Yeah, maybe. It's fricken powerful. But you know, it has to be. What would be the ultralisk without fungal growth? Even more useless than it really is. Broodlords and Corruptors could be easily dealt with using only marines and vikings, and tanks if lings are around. Anything in the mid to late game relies ENTIRELY on the infestors simply because Zerg lacks any other strong army composition. Ghosts and Templars are really good too, but they aren't absolutely necessary. The terrible Ultralisk and Banelings are the only true AoE damaging unit in the zerg arsenal. The banelings in late game wouldn't hit shit if it wasn't for the infestors...we wouldn't be able to deal with mech or the protoss death ball ect ect ect.
TL;DR, ya the infestor might be OP but since the rest of zerg would be so terrible without it nerfing it would mean balancing a lot of other stuff....
On August 25 2011 13:18 CatNzHat wrote: Infestors are fun to watch, and buffing them certainly made the game more valuable as an e-sport, but it does not make it fun to play against them, and it did imbalance the game by a large ammount.
Zergs can do fine against terran with muta ling bling, bane roach, and TvP was zerg favored even before the buff.
Whilst I think that each individual role of the infestor (stopping/slowing pushes, attacking, harassing, controlling space) are all only slightly imbalanced, when you look at the unit as a whole, I feel that it fills too many roles. It should either be a harass unit, a space controlling unit, an attacking unit, or a defending unit, and it should definitely not be all of the above.
Look at the ghost, ghosts have very limited harass potential (can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds), ghosts can't really control space except for nuke, which costs 100/100 and is very unreliable and slow, ghosts don't do great in a straight up fight compared to the ammount of other bio you could make in that ammount of rax time.
HTs kinda fill the same roles as templar, and can be made into archons.
sidenote: Hts require 2 emps to clean their energy, and than another 2 to remove sheilds from the archons, is that so balanced?
Anyways, I think with 3 fungals to kill marines before stim, 2 after stim is balanced for straight up fights, and 35 energy for infested terrans. The movement speed needs to be reduced to that of ghosts or slightly slower, same speed as ghosts on creep, and burrow needs to slow them down a ton. that would limit their role to be smaller so that zergs can't effectively spamm mass infestors, and be able to defend, pressure, control the map, all without any other tech, and the fact that infestors stack means that this is a bit overpowered. The efficiency of infestors and the ease of retention is also a bit of a problem, both ghosts and templars are super hard to retain and retrain, but with lings on the feild having burrow, fast burrow speed, and super long range on all their abilities makes them practically unkillable for terran, at least toss have blink.
Edit: A solution to the problem in TvZ could be some way to make our tanks mobile, e.g. some sort of mine.
sidenote v2: I haven't played or watched too much bw, but I think that zergs should use baneling mines like lurkers on ramps and other chokes, it's pretty much the same effect, right? I think that once zergs realize this they'll find that they can rely on them similary, and then utilize that space control to great effect and cut corners in other areas. people saying zerg is a weak race are just wrong, banelings, mutas, lings, roaches, all very very powerful units, lings beat marines without medivacs cost per cost, and can be produced for much cheaper than rax units.
Well to be fair, terran have hellions, banshees, drops and reapers as their harass units. This is overall the most terran biased post I have read in a very long time.
Zergs are using baneling mines, some more than others, and of course not everyone. But it is used and it does not have the same effect as lurkers. Lurkers can still hold their own if there is detection, burrowed banelings can not. I'm not trying to point out that zerg is a weaker race, but you make it sound as if zerg is unbeatable as terran, even without infestors.
ok as far as im concerned the only thing that they need to do to fix this amtchup is make templar way more available if fucking infestor is a tier 2 untis make fucking templar a tier 2 unit isntead of a tier 3 units that takes fucking forever to get and upgrade storm dts would be op as hell though if they were tier 2 so i dont mind that they are tier 3 just not templar.
what would templar do for the protoss?
storm its fucking great yo feedback destroys infestor energy and with it being more available we can get it faster
i want my tier 2 spellcasters that can rape
heres the thing templar are slow and weak but the infestors has a fucking storm that can make you not move? heres the thing make it like fucking plague this is bullshit when im sitting there and all this fucking time im thinking how the hell is this fair when my army cant move and yours can this is bullshit for a tier 2 spellcaster
here is some fixes make fungal growth like plague which im cool with i can still move my units. make the infestor cost more gas making it harder to mass
make the infestor tier 3 instead of tier 2 effectively evening the playing field with how slowly you get templar and zergs actually have to control their armys
I wonder what people would say if High templar could summon Stalkers for 25 energy, cloak, dominate, force field and still had storm. That's what imbafestor is. Quite frankly I'm just glad Koreans don't use them so much or games would just suck, they are the primary reason I stopped watching destiny. Hurpa drupa 2 base 44 done, 6 infestors snipe natural expo or whole army GG. But I guess Destiny is just better than Bomber.
Infestors power is questionable, but without it, Zerg is way too weak. I think the real issue here is that Zerg's early and mid game units are just too weak and easily dealt with by their opponents equivalent.
Terran can tech very quickly while still creating low cost, extremely effective units.
Protoss tech is slower, however, their early game units are powerful and are very cost efficient
Zerg tech is very slow, and their early game units are all throw away units. Lings never survive a battle, and roaches can result in too much delayed tech and resource dump. It's hard to figure out how many Roaches you'll need to survive, so it starts damaging your economy and tech situation. Infestor mid game basically alleviates all of those concerns, but there also isn't any pressure on the opposing races to attack, and that's where Infestors really shine. In the defensive position, Infestors are much more effective, but when on the offensive, dealing with a turtled opponent often results in failed attacks.
Look at broodwar(I know it's a completely different game), Zerglings were far more effective, and because of Hydras being T1.5, Zerg didn't need to rely on a powerful T2 unit to survive. In SC2, Zerg has no offensive/defensive unit that can deal with air until Lair tech. I think the entire tech tree of Zerg needs to be reanalyzed and shifted so that things like the Infestor can be properly balanced.
Conclusion: I think the biggest flaw to the Zerg, and the tech tree, was the switch of the Roach and Hydra. If those two units could be changed and reworked to fit the proper position in tech, Zerg wouldn't have such an abusive reliance on a unit like the Infestor.
In theory, they are really good. But, korean zerg has shown that good zerg only uses it for support, rarely any infestors for harassment. I don't think I have seen any infested terran in any of the GSL matches
ling/banelings/muta is still the best choice against a terran siege tank marine push ling, roache agression preventing a protoss third or quick tech to broodlords with roache+hyrdas is still the popular choice for zerg against the protoss deathball
Infestors scare the crap out of any Terran player, especially with the long ranged fungals and neural parasite on the mech. I recommend it against any type of play from the Terran players, and it is a very effective counter to mass blink stalker, mass phoenix, voidray phoenix and colossus builds for Protoss.
It's probably the best spellcaster in the whole game, and I'm surprised that some ultra-high level Zerg players don't use them enough.
On August 25 2011 13:18 CatNzHat wrote: Infestors are fun to watch, and buffing them certainly made the game more valuable as an e-sport, but it does not make it fun to play against them, and it did imbalance the game by a large ammount.
Zergs can do fine against terran with muta ling bling, bane roach, and TvP was zerg favored even before the buff.
Whilst I think that each individual role of the infestor (stopping/slowing pushes, attacking, harassing, controlling space) are all only slightly imbalanced, when you look at the unit as a whole, I feel that it fills too many roles. It should either be a harass unit, a space controlling unit, an attacking unit, or a defending unit, and it should definitely not be all of the above.
Look at the ghost, ghosts have very limited harass potential (can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds), ghosts can't really control space except for nuke, which costs 100/100 and is very unreliable and slow, ghosts don't do great in a straight up fight compared to the ammount of other bio you could make in that ammount of rax time.
HTs kinda fill the same roles as templar, and can be made into archons.
sidenote: Hts require 2 emps to clean their energy, and than another 2 to remove sheilds from the archons, is that so balanced?
Anyways, I think with 3 fungals to kill marines before stim, 2 after stim is balanced for straight up fights, and 35 energy for infested terrans. The movement speed needs to be reduced to that of ghosts or slightly slower, same speed as ghosts on creep, and burrow needs to slow them down a ton. that would limit their role to be smaller so that zergs can't effectively spamm mass infestors, and be able to defend, pressure, control the map, all without any other tech, and the fact that infestors stack means that this is a bit overpowered. The efficiency of infestors and the ease of retention is also a bit of a problem, both ghosts and templars are super hard to retain and retrain, but with lings on the feild having burrow, fast burrow speed, and super long range on all their abilities makes them practically unkillable for terran, at least toss have blink.
Edit: A solution to the problem in TvZ could be some way to make our tanks mobile, e.g. some sort of mine.
sidenote v2: I haven't played or watched too much bw, but I think that zergs should use baneling mines like lurkers on ramps and other chokes, it's pretty much the same effect, right? I think that once zergs realize this they'll find that they can rely on them similary, and then utilize that space control to great effect and cut corners in other areas. people saying zerg is a weak race are just wrong, banelings, mutas, lings, roaches, all very very powerful units, lings beat marines without medivacs cost per cost, and can be produced for much cheaper than rax units.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not so I'm just going to say that these are all god awful ideas. 3 fungals to kill marines? Mobile tanks? Investor has long range?
On August 25 2011 13:18 CatNzHat wrote: Infestors are fun to watch, and buffing them certainly made the game more valuable as an e-sport, but it does not make it fun to play against them, and it did imbalance the game by a large ammount.
Zergs can do fine against terran with muta ling bling, bane roach, and TvP was zerg favored even before the buff.
Whilst I think that each individual role of the infestor (stopping/slowing pushes, attacking, harassing, controlling space) are all only slightly imbalanced, when you look at the unit as a whole, I feel that it fills too many roles. It should either be a harass unit, a space controlling unit, an attacking unit, or a defending unit, and it should definitely not be all of the above.
Look at the ghost, ghosts have very limited harass potential (can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds), ghosts can't really control space except for nuke, which costs 100/100 and is very unreliable and slow, ghosts don't do great in a straight up fight compared to the ammount of other bio you could make in that ammount of rax time.
HTs kinda fill the same roles as templar, and can be made into archons.
sidenote: Hts require 2 emps to clean their energy, and than another 2 to remove sheilds from the archons, is that so balanced?
Anyways, I think with 3 fungals to kill marines before stim, 2 after stim is balanced for straight up fights, and 35 energy for infested terrans. The movement speed needs to be reduced to that of ghosts or slightly slower, same speed as ghosts on creep, and burrow needs to slow them down a ton. that would limit their role to be smaller so that zergs can't effectively spamm mass infestors, and be able to defend, pressure, control the map, all without any other tech, and the fact that infestors stack means that this is a bit overpowered. The efficiency of infestors and the ease of retention is also a bit of a problem, both ghosts and templars are super hard to retain and retrain, but with lings on the feild having burrow, fast burrow speed, and super long range on all their abilities makes them practically unkillable for terran, at least toss have blink.
Edit: A solution to the problem in TvZ could be some way to make our tanks mobile, e.g. some sort of mine.
sidenote v2: I haven't played or watched too much bw, but I think that zergs should use baneling mines like lurkers on ramps and other chokes, it's pretty much the same effect, right? I think that once zergs realize this they'll find that they can rely on them similary, and then utilize that space control to great effect and cut corners in other areas. people saying zerg is a weak race are just wrong, banelings, mutas, lings, roaches, all very very powerful units, lings beat marines without medivacs cost per cost, and can be produced for much cheaper than rax units.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not so I'm just going to say that these are all god awful ideas. 3 fungals to kill marines? Mobile tanks? Investor has long range?
He has to be trolling. He said Ghosts don't have harass potential, which they clearly do. He said they can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds, no, no, they can't, they can kill 40 workers instantly. It's called a Nuke. Yes it takes time, but with a 2 pronged attack, a decent player can still be caught off guard. And ghosts are amazing in straight up fights, they're very strong.
On August 25 2011 14:04 ETisME wrote: In theory, they are really good. But, korean zerg has shown that good zerg only uses it for support, rarely any infestors for harassment. I don't think I have seen any infested terran in any of the GSL matches
ling/banelings/muta is still the best choice against a terran siege tank marine push ling, roache agression preventing a protoss third or quick tech to broodlords with roache+hyrdas is still the popular choice for zerg against the protoss deathball
Yeah, it's really amazing Koreans haven't caught on to the Destiny style. They are not stupid tho. They must have a pact not to do it unless in case of extreme emergency in order not to get hit with nerf bat. Snipping expos at 10-11 min mark is just awesome ad Destiny does it like every other time I see him play.
On August 25 2011 13:18 CatNzHat wrote: Infestors are fun to watch, and buffing them certainly made the game more valuable as an e-sport, but it does not make it fun to play against them, and it did imbalance the game by a large ammount.
Zergs can do fine against terran with muta ling bling, bane roach, and TvP was zerg favored even before the buff.
Whilst I think that each individual role of the infestor (stopping/slowing pushes, attacking, harassing, controlling space) are all only slightly imbalanced, when you look at the unit as a whole, I feel that it fills too many roles. It should either be a harass unit, a space controlling unit, an attacking unit, or a defending unit, and it should definitely not be all of the above.
Look at the ghost, ghosts have very limited harass potential (can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds), ghosts can't really control space except for nuke, which costs 100/100 and is very unreliable and slow, ghosts don't do great in a straight up fight compared to the ammount of other bio you could make in that ammount of rax time.
HTs kinda fill the same roles as templar, and can be made into archons.
sidenote: Hts require 2 emps to clean their energy, and than another 2 to remove sheilds from the archons, is that so balanced?
Anyways, I think with 3 fungals to kill marines before stim, 2 after stim is balanced for straight up fights, and 35 energy for infested terrans. The movement speed needs to be reduced to that of ghosts or slightly slower, same speed as ghosts on creep, and burrow needs to slow them down a ton. that would limit their role to be smaller so that zergs can't effectively spamm mass infestors, and be able to defend, pressure, control the map, all without any other tech, and the fact that infestors stack means that this is a bit overpowered. The efficiency of infestors and the ease of retention is also a bit of a problem, both ghosts and templars are super hard to retain and retrain, but with lings on the feild having burrow, fast burrow speed, and super long range on all their abilities makes them practically unkillable for terran, at least toss have blink.
Edit: A solution to the problem in TvZ could be some way to make our tanks mobile, e.g. some sort of mine.
sidenote v2: I haven't played or watched too much bw, but I think that zergs should use baneling mines like lurkers on ramps and other chokes, it's pretty much the same effect, right? I think that once zergs realize this they'll find that they can rely on them similary, and then utilize that space control to great effect and cut corners in other areas. people saying zerg is a weak race are just wrong, banelings, mutas, lings, roaches, all very very powerful units, lings beat marines without medivacs cost per cost, and can be produced for much cheaper than rax units.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not so I'm just going to say that these are all god awful ideas. 3 fungals to kill marines? Mobile tanks? Investor has long range?
He has to be trolling. He said Ghosts don't have harass potential, which they clearly do. He said they can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds, no, no, they can't, they can kill 40 workers instantly. It's called a Nuke. Yes it takes time, but with a 2 pronged attack, a decent player can still be caught off guard. And ghosts are amazing in straight up fights, they're very strong.
You could drop ghosts and use snipe also. tQInkarnate did it against coLCatZ and it was pretty damn cool to watch. The game starts at 19:40 into the video.
On August 25 2011 14:04 ETisME wrote: In theory, they are really good. But, korean zerg has shown that good zerg only uses it for support, rarely any infestors for harassment. I don't think I have seen any infested terran in any of the GSL matches
ling/banelings/muta is still the best choice against a terran siege tank marine push ling, roache agression preventing a protoss third or quick tech to broodlords with roache+hyrdas is still the popular choice for zerg against the protoss deathball
Yeah, it's really amazing Koreans haven't caught on to the Destiny style. They are not stupid tho. They must have a pact not to do it unless in case of extreme emergency in order not to get hit with nerf bat. Snipping expos at 10-11 min mark is just awesome ad Destiny does it like every other time I see him play.
I believe that destiny said it himself that he cannot opt for a quick 3rd for this style or he will get rolled and that's a big disadvantage for this style. I think for Koreans, they are preferring muta because a good marine split can neglect fungal easily unless you are only going ling and all gas to infestor.
it is really good against a protoss but not so much against a marine tank terran imo.
AOE Attack Fungal - HP Nuke AOE Attack Fungal - Few Second Stun AOE Attack Fungal - Reveal Invisible Units Summon Infested Terran - Only 25 Energy Summon Infested Terran - 9 DPS Unit Summon Infested Terran - Able to use from burrowed position Attachment Neural Parasite - Takes Control of 6+ Food unit, etc... Attachment Neural Parasite - Able to attack, build, & use opposing unit skills Attachment Neural Parasite - Range of what, 14?
You would think this unit should cost 300/300 for what you can do with it.
On August 25 2011 14:04 ETisME wrote: In theory, they are really good. But, korean zerg has shown that good zerg only uses it for support, rarely any infestors for harassment. I don't think I have seen any infested terran in any of the GSL matches
ling/banelings/muta is still the best choice against a terran siege tank marine push ling, roache agression preventing a protoss third or quick tech to broodlords with roache+hyrdas is still the popular choice for zerg against the protoss deathball
Yeah, it's really amazing Koreans haven't caught on to the Destiny style. They are not stupid tho. They must have a pact not to do it unless in case of extreme emergency in order not to get hit with nerf bat. Snipping expos at 10-11 min mark is just awesome ad Destiny does it like every other time I see him play.
I believe that destiny said it himself that he cannot opt for a quick 3rd for this style or he will get rolled and that's a big disadvantage for this style. I think for Koreans, they are preferring muta because a good marine split can neglect fungal easily unless you are only going ling and all gas to infestor.
it is really good against a protoss but not so much against a marine tank terran imo.
But marine splitting rapes baneling even harder, I remember there was a video around showing this crazy marine micro obliterating baneling. The only time they become useful is when you catch people in a flanking position. On another note, fungal stops a terrans ability to micro out of bad positions and you only need to catch that group ONCE for half a second and a group of 10 marines die instantly. There is no "Oh shit, Baneling coming, split!" Once it happens, you lose.
I think it makes a marines weaker to infestor as opposed to muta/ling/bling at least in most situations. I should say muta/ling/bling has a higher potential overall for damage if you catch a terran offguard, but an infestor does way more consistent damage and is overall way more versatile.
The main difference after the infestor buff is located in their role. Before, they were used to hold an army still while roaches/banelings did the rest of the job. Now you can basically kill small/medium sized groups only using fungal. And considering that it HOLDS those units in place it is really really easy to get another fungal 2-3 seconds later in the fray. Out of all the casters, infestors are probably the easiest to play with.
Also, no defensive capabilities? What about fungal+run/burrow? Or the fact that you can send cheap zerglings to sacrifice themselves?
On August 25 2011 14:59 Nizzy wrote: AOE Attack Fungal - HP Nuke AOE Attack Fungal - Few Second Stun AOE Attack Fungal - Reveal Invisible Units Summon Infested Terran - Only 25 Energy Summon Infested Terran - 9 DPS Unit Summon Infested Terran - Able to use from burrowed position Attachment Neural Parasite - Takes Control of 6+ Food unit, etc... Attachment Neural Parasite - Able to attack, build, & use opposing unit skills Attachment Neural Parasite - Range of what, 14?
You would think this unit should cost 300/300 for what you can do with it.
Unreal IMO.
You forgot the part about them being noticeable lumps of wet paper with only 90 hp.
Or the part about infested terrans lasting for only 30 secs and being slow as hell
Or that Neural costs 100 energy, has to be researched, the infestor can't move, and it only lasts 15 seconds...
On August 25 2011 13:18 CatNzHat wrote: Infestors are fun to watch, and buffing them certainly made the game more valuable as an e-sport, but it does not make it fun to play against them, and it did imbalance the game by a large ammount.
Zergs can do fine against terran with muta ling bling, bane roach, and TvP was zerg favored even before the buff.
Whilst I think that each individual role of the infestor (stopping/slowing pushes, attacking, harassing, controlling space) are all only slightly imbalanced, when you look at the unit as a whole, I feel that it fills too many roles. It should either be a harass unit, a space controlling unit, an attacking unit, or a defending unit, and it should definitely not be all of the above.
Look at the ghost, ghosts have very limited harass potential (can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds), ghosts can't really control space except for nuke, which costs 100/100 and is very unreliable and slow, ghosts don't do great in a straight up fight compared to the ammount of other bio you could make in that ammount of rax time.
HTs kinda fill the same roles as templar, and can be made into archons.
sidenote: Hts require 2 emps to clean their energy, and than another 2 to remove sheilds from the archons, is that so balanced?
Anyways, I think with 3 fungals to kill marines before stim, 2 after stim is balanced for straight up fights, and 35 energy for infested terrans. The movement speed needs to be reduced to that of ghosts or slightly slower, same speed as ghosts on creep, and burrow needs to slow them down a ton. that would limit their role to be smaller so that zergs can't effectively spamm mass infestors, and be able to defend, pressure, control the map, all without any other tech, and the fact that infestors stack means that this is a bit overpowered. The efficiency of infestors and the ease of retention is also a bit of a problem, both ghosts and templars are super hard to retain and retrain, but with lings on the feild having burrow, fast burrow speed, and super long range on all their abilities makes them practically unkillable for terran, at least toss have blink.
Edit: A solution to the problem in TvZ could be some way to make our tanks mobile, e.g. some sort of mine.
sidenote v2: I haven't played or watched too much bw, but I think that zergs should use baneling mines like lurkers on ramps and other chokes, it's pretty much the same effect, right? I think that once zergs realize this they'll find that they can rely on them similary, and then utilize that space control to great effect and cut corners in other areas. people saying zerg is a weak race are just wrong, banelings, mutas, lings, roaches, all very very powerful units, lings beat marines without medivacs cost per cost, and can be produced for much cheaper than rax units.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not so I'm just going to say that these are all god awful ideas. 3 fungals to kill marines? Mobile tanks? Investor has long range?
He has to be trolling. He said Ghosts don't have harass potential, which they clearly do. He said they can't kill 40 workers in 7 seconds, no, no, they can't, they can kill 40 workers instantly. It's called a Nuke. Yes it takes time, but with a 2 pronged attack, a decent player can still be caught off guard. And ghosts are amazing in straight up fights, they're very strong.
You could drop ghosts and use snipe also. tQInkarnate did it against coLCatZ and it was pretty damn cool to watch. The game starts at 19:40 into the video.
On August 25 2011 14:59 Nizzy wrote: AOE Attack Fungal - HP Nuke AOE Attack Fungal - Few Second Stun AOE Attack Fungal - Reveal Invisible Units Summon Infested Terran - Only 25 Energy Summon Infested Terran - 9 DPS Unit Summon Infested Terran - Able to use from burrowed position Attachment Neural Parasite - Takes Control of 6+ Food unit, etc... Attachment Neural Parasite - Able to attack, build, & use opposing unit skills Attachment Neural Parasite - Range of what, 14?
You would think this unit should cost 300/300 for what you can do with it.
Unreal IMO.
NP range 9. Takes control of the unit for few seconds before that units revenges himself by killing the stupid 90hp infestor who though he was cool.
The infestor needs to be changed, but not in damage, it just needs a slowing rather than a freezing effect. It impedes micro rather than just taking it away that way and it could give some way of getting a dropship or a viking out of the clutches of a fungal and it adds more timings to the spell ( you can't just wait for the end of the spell to recast it again, you might have to recast it halfway to make sure you hit the units, sacrificing less damage to more damage overall ).
If you change the infestors damage output, you will unneccesarily make it a crap unit without adressing the true issue.
The same is true in a lesser extent to forcefield. Instead of making it invincible, you should have a way to deal with forcefields rather than Tier 3 units. If the protoss units are weaker because of it, buff them a little. This should encourage protoss to not go 12 sentry 3 zealot in the early game and just straight up die when zerglings slip in and surround them.
Infestor is very, very strong, currently. It may be TOO Strong.
On the other hand, Infestors are the only VIABLE T2 we have for a straight up fight, Mutalisk don't fight well and Hydralisk... well, you know what. Corruptors are lame as shit, they don't count either.
If you want to nerf Fungal bigtime, a buff to Hydralisk is required. If not, Zerg is going to go 3 base hatch tech into hive tech, failing pretty much always in the 5 minute window.
Also, you get your Diehard gamechanging spellcaster at T1,5, with warp-in. Please put some effort in your post...
Wow, never knew that infested marines commit suicide! :o Anyways, yes they do have great dps, but as far as I understand, that is the basis of the 4 infestor hit squad.
On August 25 2011 14:04 ETisME wrote: In theory, they are really good. But, korean zerg has shown that good zerg only uses it for support, rarely any infestors for harassment. I don't think I have seen any infested terran in any of the GSL matches
ling/banelings/muta is still the best choice against a terran siege tank marine push ling, roache agression preventing a protoss third or quick tech to broodlords with roache+hyrdas is still the popular choice for zerg against the protoss deathball
Yeah, it's really amazing Koreans haven't caught on to the Destiny style. They are not stupid tho. They must have a pact not to do it unless in case of extreme emergency in order not to get hit with nerf bat. Snipping expos at 10-11 min mark is just awesome ad Destiny does it like every other time I see him play.
I believe that destiny said it himself that he cannot opt for a quick 3rd for this style or he will get rolled and that's a big disadvantage for this style. I think for Koreans, they are preferring muta because a good marine split can neglect fungal easily unless you are only going ling and all gas to infestor.
it is really good against a protoss but not so much against a marine tank terran imo.
...Shouldn't get infestors because marine splits are too good against them?
At least you have the chance to counter their micro with your micro and force mistakes.
Which is not really true of muta/bane vs good marine/tank play as the marine count climbs.
the problem i have with it is that it seems like lings can protect a zerg player that knows their timings in pvz until they get the infestor. and then the protosses higher tech can be rolled if it's hts, since most of your units could be destroyed by banes. If it's colli tech it seems like they can slow them down until they have an army more than capable of responding to your "deathball"
if you play the macro game then they should be ahead since the only tech they've had to go for is infestors and lings. i like to use warp prisms, which works to keep the zerg moving around and spread out, i fear what would happen if WP were common tho. I guess we could spend more time to figure out if theres actually an imbalance... but looks like next patch is going to nerf them anyways.
On August 25 2011 15:58 ToastieNL wrote: Zerg POV:
Infestor is very, very strong, currently. It may be TOO Strong.
On the other hand, Infestors are the only VIABLE T2 we have for a straight up fight, Mutalisk don't fight well and Hydralisk... well, you know what. Corruptors are lame as shit, they don't count either.
If you want to nerf Fungal bigtime, a buff to Hydralisk is required. If not, Zerg is going to go 3 base hatch tech into hive tech, failing pretty much always in the 5 minute window.
Also, you get your Diehard gamechanging spellcaster at T1,5, with warp-in. Please put some effort in your post...
are you calling hts T1.5?? the problem is that zerg jumps from ling to infestor and doesn't need any other tech all game. So they can kinda just make a fuckton of drones
God I hate infestors. It is just like a unit that they made up in 5 minutes and tossed in because they realized zerg only had 5 units.
I loath infested terrans, because they don't make sense and they aren't zerg units. I loath neural parasite (np a tank? wtf). Fungal is meh, okay I guess. I liked the old defiler plague better, honestly. At least with plague, there would be the potential for 10 important units to just die with one muta. It was a cool bated breath moment in brood war. Fungal is boring compared to that.
The burrow move mechanic is awkwardly hammered into the tech tree in that they couldn't find a way to unify it with roaches.
Frankly it looks terrible. The overall model is okay, but it just the way it moves looks wrong to me.
I don't think I can ever forgive blizzard for deciding that zerg balance should hinge on such a stupid unit. I hate that it really is one of the strongest units in the game, up there with collosus and tank. I almost have to use it in two matchups, and I find myself wondering if I shouldn't use it in all of them.
On August 25 2011 15:58 ToastieNL wrote: Zerg POV:
Infestor is very, very strong, currently. It may be TOO Strong.
On the other hand, Infestors are the only VIABLE T2 we have for a straight up fight, Mutalisk don't fight well and Hydralisk... well, you know what. Corruptors are lame as shit, they don't count either.
If you want to nerf Fungal bigtime, a buff to Hydralisk is required. If not, Zerg is going to go 3 base hatch tech into hive tech, failing pretty much always in the 5 minute window.
Also, you get your Diehard gamechanging spellcaster at T1,5, with warp-in. Please put some effort in your post...
are you calling hts T1.5?? the problem is that zerg jumps from ling to infestor and doesn't need any other tech all game. So they can kinda just make a fuckton of drones
I think Infestors are a bit powerful overall, however other zerg units are too weak so the infestor is carrying the zerg (like marines ). I think there should be a nerf (8 secs again plz? Awesome stuff was enabled with that, and it was not OP), but other areas of zerg will need a buff to compensate (hydras?).
Off topic: Its kinda annoying how balance discussions are always by people who are incredibly biased towards their own race, and will make context-less comparisons to other, completely different races and unit. Random represent :D
As a Zerg I think I can give way to a few things. Is the infestor OP? ... no Is it too cheap? Sure
Solution: +10sec Infestation Pit build time Infestor Cost Changed to 125/150 from 100/150 Infestor Burrowed Speed Decrease by .25? (not sure how big of an impact this will have)
Why is the infestor not OP? because you can spread your units to minimize fungal growth damage (i don't clump banelings then complain about Colussus/Tank AoE dmg (ok I do but I believe it has a balance)) TBH Zerg needs the fungal damage to even dent a protoss deathball and fungal keeps terran honest while being aggressive (no 1 t a ftw) I actually don't see a problem with infestors... If you scout infestors, don't continue with an all in (i know thats what you were doing!!) instead, sit back and play more turtle/harass oriented. Don't push out until you have map control/vision.
Its like scouting a reactor starport and not preparing for drop harass - Sure there is no real way to stop infestor harass; there is however, a way to minimize the harass. By proper detection placement, you minimize the room the infestor has in order to force unfavorable positions for the infested terrans. 30 infested terrans sitting behind a mineral line or on the edge of your base can only do so much damage. The infested terrans are incredibly slow, and are useless unless on hold position. They will stumble amongst themselves, and X% won't even be firing unless on hold position (even then, the ones that have nothing in range won't be attacking) Ok so you lose a nexus or you lose a lot of probes. Good thing you are on top of scouting doing everything you can to counter the potential threat of your opponent. Thats why you take bases faster than you need them =D. Lategame as Zerg I have multiple blank-ish bases, so when 1 dies I can just transfer to a new base. Honestly what is 400 minerals? Delay your timing attack for 15 seconds and get another base. As long as you aren't caught completely offguard by infestors, I honestly don't see them being any more effective in a fight then colussus/tank - only infestor is viable harass and awful in small battles, and colussus/tank aren't the best for harass ( you don't just send them off on their own to harass; map permitted) and great for small battles.
My point is: With proper micro you can deal with infestors, just like you can deal with any other AoE with micro. ( by spreading units, target firing )
On August 25 2011 16:14 onmach wrote: God I hate infestors. It is just like a unit that they made up in 5 minutes and tossed in because they realized zerg only had 5 units.
I loath infested terrans, because they don't make sense and they aren't zerg units. I loath neural parasite (np a tank? wtf). Fungal is meh, okay I guess. I liked the old defiler plague better, honestly. At least with plague, there would be the potential for 10 important units to just die with one muta. It was a cool bated breath moment in brood war. Fungal is boring compared to that.
The burrow move mechanic is awkwardly hammered into the tech tree in that they couldn't find a way to unify it with roaches.
Frankly it looks terrible. The overall model is okay, but it just the way it moves looks wrong to me.
I don't think I can ever forgive blizzard for deciding that zerg balance should hinge on such a stupid unit. I hate that it really is one of the strongest units in the game, up there with collosus and tank. I almost have to use it in two matchups, and I find myself wondering if I shouldn't use it in all of them.
Careful man, Blizz might give you infested zealots instead.
If we consider the lore, then I suppose the infestor is at least somewhat consistent. It's definitely much more offensive, and lacks any of the anti-caster abilities that the other races have, which is kind of strange imo.
On August 25 2011 16:14 onmach wrote: God I hate infestors. It is just like a unit that they made up in 5 minutes and tossed in because they realized zerg only had 5 units.
I loath infested terrans, because they don't make sense and they aren't zerg units. I loath neural parasite (np a tank? wtf). Fungal is meh, okay I guess. I liked the old defiler plague better, honestly. At least with plague, there would be the potential for 10 important units to just die with one muta. It was a cool bated breath moment in brood war. Fungal is boring compared to that.
The burrow move mechanic is awkwardly hammered into the tech tree in that they couldn't find a way to unify it with roaches.
Frankly it looks terrible. The overall model is okay, but it just the way it moves looks wrong to me.
I don't think I can ever forgive blizzard for deciding that zerg balance should hinge on such a stupid unit. I hate that it really is one of the strongest units in the game, up there with collosus and tank. I almost have to use it in two matchups, and I find myself wondering if I shouldn't use it in all of them.
Careful man, Blizz might give you infested zealots instead.
If we consider the lore, then I suppose the infestor is at least somewhat consistent. It's definitely much more offensive, and lacks any of the anti-caster abilities that the other races have, which is kind of strange imo.
The only real problem with a HT Infestor micro battle is that they out range ht, and move faster than them. (idk about ghosts, i don't play terran). But, Neural parasite outranges Feedback, Fungal Growth's effective range, outranges feedback. And with how slow HT move, they are stupid easy to fungal. That is my only qualm.
On August 25 2011 16:09 synapse wrote: I would love if fungal made units really slow (yes, BW ensnare) instead of making them unable to move.
Hehe basically combining plague and ensnare eh?
Plague was pretty much a free spell that could bring down every unit except for the battlecruiser to 1hp. 300 damage unavoidable AoE spell that costs nothing due to consume.
no one complained about it though lol, wasn't even actually used all that much until like 5 years after the game came out.
Grubby wins the Showmatch 3:0 anyway, game 2 and 3 seemed more like Destiny falling apart
Grubby uses HT to absolutely destroy the infestor play, furthermore he even shows that it is really easy to deflect infestor harass: As soon as the observer spots the infestor hit squad, he warps in a couple HT nearby who have enough energy to instantly feedback all those infestors. Even though Grubby was slow to react, he maybe lost 1-2 probes and no Nexus whereas Destiny lost much more. Also if Grubby had an observer with his army during the first infestor raid, there would have been ~8 dead infestors (game ending right there, i watched Destiny's stream and he was sweating a lot since he knew one observer at the right position would seal his defeat)
Infestor are a huge investment in gas; usually you cannot afford more than one unit category out of Mutalisks, Hydralisks, Brood lords, Ultralisks and Infestors As shown in the Showmatch the High templar/Archons (and Colossus, but much less) combined with Force Fields destroy every single zerg unit except maybe Brood lords, since Archons are pretty darn strong against Ultralisks and Mutalisks. Also note that infestors are large units which is both a curse for zerg. You might think that this would prevent them from taking too much AoE dmg (storm, EMP), but in reality they get sniped if not clumped up or feedbacked. Being that large means they are so hard to control getting safely to the front through your army, and once they are there they either get pushed in by your own units into the enemy or they block your units from reaching the enemy in one ball, so your units trickle in (and die horribly).
I honestly think that infestors are strong, but they are both needed for zerg and not that hard to counter (as shown in the Showmatch). And when they get countered, zerg loses since zerg had to invest so much gas into them (they are not cheap at all!) If you do not make Ghosts/HT against infestors, it is the same as not getting Vikings against a Colossus ball. Sure you might pull off a lucky marauder stim to take them out, but most of the time you get annihilated. Same goes for infestors, you need counter units (which is a new concept for many people - having to counter zerg and not dictating everything yourself lol)
On August 25 2011 14:04 ETisME wrote: In theory, they are really good. But, korean zerg has shown that good zerg only uses it for support, rarely any infestors for harassment. I don't think I have seen any infested terran in any of the GSL matches
ling/banelings/muta is still the best choice against a terran siege tank marine push ling, roache agression preventing a protoss third or quick tech to broodlords with roache+hyrdas is still the popular choice for zerg against the protoss deathball
Yeah, it's really amazing Koreans haven't caught on to the Destiny style. They are not stupid tho. They must have a pact not to do it unless in case of extreme emergency in order not to get hit with nerf bat. Snipping expos at 10-11 min mark is just awesome ad Destiny does it like every other time I see him play.
I believe that destiny said it himself that he cannot opt for a quick 3rd for this style or he will get rolled and that's a big disadvantage for this style. I think for Koreans, they are preferring muta because a good marine split can neglect fungal easily unless you are only going ling and all gas to infestor.
it is really good against a protoss but not so much against a marine tank terran imo.
...Shouldn't get infestors because marine splits are too good against them?
At least you have the chance to counter their micro with your micro and force mistakes.
Which is not really true of muta/bane vs good marine/tank play as the marine count climbs.
I am not saying they shouldn't. I am saying this is probably why the koreans prefer ling/baneling/muta composition. I watch Destiny's stream quite often and some of the patterns I find is that quite often infestors have to fungal a small group of stimmed 4 to 5 marines that are sent to kill off the infestors.
I would be happy if they would remove the mana upgrade. Zergs production coupled with that upgrade makes the infestor hilariously versatile directly after an engagement or before, because they'll have faster more energy.
I would understand it if the thread was about "how to maximize the use of infestors" or something like that. But writing in the OP that this should not become a whinefest about a certain unit and than posting several points as "weird stuff" and the comparisons to marines etc. are useless. infestors are made of paper, even when you write this:
"90 health, armored.
Without upgrades, it can take 7 shots from a stalker, 5 shots from a marauder, 4 shots from a mobile tank, 2 shots from a siege tank, 10 ticks of the void ray's laser (starting from 0 charge), and three hits from an Ultralisk."
...on top of your post, it doesn`t serve any purpose, since none of these units are send alone on the battlefield. But if you see a single infestor with a marine, stalker, zergling ... you just kill it in seconds and are happy. (if the infestor uses his energy to kill that one unit he lost nevertheless)
At another point you compare infested terrans with marines. why are you doing this? You could also compare a pair of zerglings with a Ravens Autoturret.
Zergs can do much damage with the infestor, but they had to use it for more than a year now and learn. Often there just is no other midgame or even lategame option, but making infestors. In BW you could trade armys and rebuild another one before the enemy was attacking your base. In sc2 this doesnt work, because every race reinforces/moves much faster and when you lose a battle the game often ends seconds later. The infestor stalls forward pushing armys at least a bit and gives zerg real AOE damage (banes have to be in melee range and they often don`t work, because good opponents will dodge/kite/scan them). I would freaking love to play something like ling/roach/hydra from time to time, but it just doesn`t work.
Besides all that, terran and protoss have units especially designed to counter spellcasters.
On August 25 2011 09:03 vOdToasT wrote: I don't think anyone above master level thinks they're hard to use. I mean, it's basic positioning and then F click F click F click. Pretty much like templars.
Anyway, I am a T and Z user and I see no problem with them. I just don't see what imbalances they create. Would I want them to be harder to use? Of course, I want the game to have more micro in general, for every race. The only race that has even slightly interesting micro, in my opinion, is Terran. And Terran could still use more.
the fact that 4 infesters summon like 2384928394 infested terrens and kill cc hatches ect. thats imba and a good example is destinys live stream a couple days ago won a game against some guy on the korean ladder. he was behind by alot but had alot of infesters, this guy had alot of ultras and he spammed infested terrens and won the game IMBA
Infestors, used correctly, are deadly and extremely hard to beat
I think that one of the abilities should be taken away or nerfed at least because it is extremely hard to protect yourself from fungal growth killing your whole army or infested terrans screwing up your probes and main bases.
Although good infestor play is extremely entertaining to watch as the opponent falls apart from superior infestor control, I still feel like they should do something to make it less threatening. For example, they might lower the life of the infestor so it dies quicker and can't use the energy as much as it could have if it had lived.
what I've always felt that made fungal growth "imbalanced" ist the fact that you can NOT avoid being chain-fungalled by....anything
I go back to my warcraft 3 experience (I was orc): orc units were very vulnerable to opponents' spells like slow, etc. This sucked, nevertheless this was why orcs had TWO ways to disable spells - purge (single target) and disenchant (aoe; required research).
There is NOTHING that either terran or protoss can do once we are fungalled. From a competitve gaming view this is just terrible. EMP-ing, let alone feedbacking all infestors is not possible in lategame. I mean, fungal growth would be a good spell even if it did ZERO damage - completely removing the ability to MOVE is a frickin amazing ability dammit.....especially since you also have broodlords. It's this exact combination: a) no movement (not just slow) b) aoe damage (actually quite high) c) NO WAY OF REMOVING IT
I sincerely hope Blizz adds units in HotS that have a spell that removes stuff like fungal and forcefields - because this would enable the opponent to have a micro/skill-based response to this.
infestor is the strongest and most versatile unit in the game, for sure, but the rest of zerg is shitty compared.
zergling - good overall except for the fact that they are very vulnerable to AoE. baneling - awesome if they get into the thick of things, but too expensive to use as anything but a niche unit. (banelings vs marines is a niche since the banelings are normally not used for any purpose at all except killing marines) roach - good and very cost effective in small numbers, but cost way too much supply to be viable in the late-game queen - so immobile it is basicly static defense and a part of your base, an army containing queens are very resilient to damage and can be used together with T3 (everything else dies faster than you can click on them) to great effect, but if hardcountered by HT or ghost you will instantly lose because you have spent too much time getting queens which is the only zerg unit not built from larvae. hydralisk - a zerg marine, but has less dps/cost less hp/cost, higher in tech, keep all vulnerabilities of the marine and is slower than the average zerg unit, so it becomes annoying to use. mutalisk - an excellent harrasser, but any unit that can fire at it, fights cost efficiently with it, exception voidray (yes vikings are cost efficient vs mutas, 4 vikings beat 3 mutas, both cost 300 gas, the problem is that terrans can't produce 4 vikings per 3 enemy mutas, due to not having enough production). corruptor - only useful as 1. a shield for broodlords from small numbers of vikings 2. a collossi killer 3. morphing into broodlords 4. keeping air-control vs phoenixes and 5. uselessly hanging around on the map after their initial purpose have dissappeared. infestor - a very very good unit if it has energy, else useless, but most of the time it has energy and wreak havoc on the opponent in whatever way you wish. broodlord - is very susceptible to aerial attacks, have excellent offensive power vs ground units, but slow and surprisingly weak when fired at, a non AoE zerg colossi on higher tech (alt. a very strange way of applying AoE). ultralisk - big, bulky and very susceptible to bonus damage vs armoured, which is like, every 2nd non-zerg unit, cannot be zoned, which helps in bringing the ultralisk to the fight, but can still be kited by most ranged units cost-efficiently.
Like the other posters here, what makes me think of the infestor as an 'imbalanced' unit is the fact that you can literally do nothing about the units the get fungalled. Neural Parasite is fine, Infested Terran is fine (but hella annoying when like 20 pop up to your brand new saturated base D: ), but Fungal growth is one of the few abilities, and certainly the easiest one to control ( I guess the other being FF), that has the potential to turn that one tiny little mistake of yours, and transform it into an INSTANT victory.
This goes more for TvZ than for anything else, as the protoss units that are commonly fungalled have significantly more health and are more resistant to bunching together. (compared to marines)
A good example of this is the recent games (a few hours ago) of MajOr vs Destiny SO SPOILERS AHEAD:+ Show Spoiler +
I know that the play here isn't really the tip top korean bonjwa vs bonjwa level play, but it's still at least as high level as to use as an example. Destiny, who had not been ahead but not exactly been behind the entire game, decides to move out with his trademark Infestor/Ling/Roach/Broodlord combo. MajOr, who has been preparing for this, starts taking potshots at the broodlords with his ball of probably 8-12 vikings. He stays there a fraction of a second too late, gets every viking fungaled by a single infestor, and from there the game is over. Losing all those vikings gives MajOr nothing to combat the broodlords. Though he stayed in for a little while longer, the game was lost at that point. This is because the vikings, once fungalled, are dead. Literally NOTHING can be done at this level of play to save the vikings.
Same thing with marines (Though to a lesser extent in my opinion); 1 infestor can kill 20+ supply of marines with 2 fungals, and likewise there is nothing that can be done about it unless you already have tanks seiged to prevent the second fungal from coming down and finishing them off, virtually inviting the lings to come in and clean up.
I would say that there are two solutions for this (actually only two that i'll explain in retrospect, and 1 of them isn't even viable -.-), and neither one of them is the small damage nerf that blizzard incorporated (though that is a really simple way to approach and I'm genuinely curious to see how it will effect the matchup(s))
1: Prevent air units from stacking. This would solve the problem of having that 1 clump of mutas/vikings/phoenix insta-killed before your very eyes and I think would probably work for the most part as a long term solution, though this would obviously destroy control for air units as we knew it.
2: Instead of immobilize, slow. I think this is a better choice. Slow 50-80% so you can still get money fungals on marines, and if you're lucky, take a hell of a lot of them out, but so you can't instant-win just by getting a single lucky chain fungal on a clump of air units (this goes pretty much exclusively for combatting broodlords)
As it is, the infestor I feel is way too much of a Swiss Army Knife kind of unit: It can do the roles of almost everything (drop prevention, eco/base harass, sniping, creating positioning for your army, huge AoE), it can basically do everything, and it does all of the jobs much more efficiently than any of the other spell casters due to the immobilize effect on fungal growth. You can argue that templar are the same way, but there are much easier ways to avoid it- ie running workers away from a worker storm, pre stimming units in a dropship to prevent a full energy medivac that would get sniped on arrival, 'dodging' storms, etc etc. I feel nerfing fungal to a slow spell would change this over-effectiveness of the infestor
tl;dr: I think the best way to go about this would be to remove the immobilize effect on fungal and instead do a slow, even if you increase the damage on it. Or at the very least, some nerf to prevent chain fungals on units.
On August 25 2011 17:50 sleepingdog wrote: what I've always felt that made fungal growth "imbalanced" ist the fact that you can NOT avoid being chain-fungalled by....anything
I go back to my warcraft 3 experience (I was orc): orc units were very vulnerable to opponents' spells like slow, etc. This sucked, nevertheless this was why orcs had TWO ways to disable spells - purge (single target) and disenchant (aoe; required research).
There is NOTHING that either terran or protoss can do once we are fungalled. From a competitve gaming view this is just terrible. EMP-ing, let alone feedbacking all infestors is not possible in lategame. I mean, fungal growth would be a good spell even if it did ZERO damage - completely removing the ability to MOVE is a frickin amazing ability dammit.....especially since you also have broodlords. It's this exact combination: a) no movement (not just slow) b) aoe damage (actually quite high) c) NO WAY OF REMOVING IT
I sincerely hope Blizz adds units in HotS that have a spell that removes stuff like fungal and forcefields - because this would enable the opponent to have a micro/skill-based response to this.
Well, if they returned the duration to 8s (or more) and reduced the mana cost to 50 (as FF) I would have no problems of fungal doing no damage. It would effectively be a zerg version of FF then. Maybe even useful with hydras (6 range against 5 range marines).
People mention slow, but how do you really counter blink stalkers if it was changed to slow (which then mean you can blink)? On certain maps, blink stalkers are so cost effective versus the zerg army.
And as a infestor user myself, I find it nice to have one unit, that is scary. Rest of the zerg units are, bleh. I feel with the infestor out, your enemy is actually scouting your army, and is scared, he just cant walk over you. It also delays the army so you can have a few seconds to get your units out.
Also keep in mind, that the infestor is FREAKING huge in size. I guess it has to be since it can burrow move, but still.
On August 25 2011 18:42 crappen wrote: People mention slow, but how do you really counter blink stalkers if it was changed to slow (which then mean you can blink)? On certain maps, blink stalkers are so cost effective versus the zerg army.
And as a infestor user myself, I find it nice to have one unit, that is scary. Rest of the zerg units are, bleh. I feel with the infestor out, your enemy is actually scouting your army, and is scared, he just cant walk over you. It also delays the army so you can have a few seconds to get your units out.
Also keep in mind, that the infestor is FREAKING huge in size. I guess it has to be since it can burrow move, but still.
Blizz could prevent stalker blink / dropping / picking up / changing form while slowed, nobody said that had to be removed if the effect was changed to a slow.
They could pull it off; they pulled off a drug that makes a marine pull the trigger faster and run as fast as the world record holder for the 40 yard dash
Why do we never see someone NP an enemy worker and start a Nexus or Command Center, how cool would it be if some pro's would incorporate that into their play. Yo 'sup, I'm going roach siege tank.
On August 25 2011 19:05 Thorakh wrote: Why do I have never seen someone NP an enemy worker and start a Nexus or Command Center, how cool would it be if some pro's would incorporate that into their play. Yo 'sup, I'm going roach siege tank.
Would be the sickest thing ever if that would be viable haha, unfortunately the investment is too big =( edit: amg i evolved
Infestors have evolved to be a solid unit, and as zerg players too have evolved they have been used more and more. Infestors contain great potential, lets use that power!!
Like the other posters here, what makes me think of the infestor as an 'imbalanced' unit is the fact that you can literally do nothing about the units the get fungalled. ...
now imagine you play against a toss that uses sentrys and traps all, or parts of your army, while collosus/HTs deal their AOE damage.
On August 25 2011 19:05 Thorakh wrote: Why do I have never seen someone NP an enemy worker and start a Nexus or Command Center, how cool would it be if some pro's would incorporate that into their play. Yo 'sup, I'm going roach siege tank.
Would be the sickest thing ever if that would be viable haha, unfortunately the investment is too big =( edit: amg i evolved
Play until midgame, research NP (which will also help in battle), NP SCV, build CC at an expansion, make some SCV's (do drones return resources to the CC or will they go to a hatchery? haha), build 6 reactor barracks, pump marines, WOOT!
On August 25 2011 17:50 sleepingdog wrote: I sincerely hope Blizz adds units in HotS that have a spell that removes stuff like fungal and forcefields - because this would enable the opponent to have a micro/skill-based response to this.
On that note, zerg needs feedback or EMP like ability to combat enemy spellcasters.
On August 25 2011 17:44 hydrar wrote: infestors aren't overpowered..they're just good, actually the best unit of zerg (better than tier 3) that's the truth
Imba is defined as a unit used in a disproportionate number of situations, aka the "go to unit" that marginalizes all other choices. Or alternatively a unit/tactic that takes low skill to use compared to skill to stop it. Based in that criteria infestor is imba. No way around that. Especially the way someone like Destiny plays all-infestor-all-the-time. Have even seen him take out 15 ultras with just infestors before now that you mention it.
Whether it's needed due to Zerg's other deficiencies is another issue. But it's bad for the game as is.
On August 25 2011 17:44 hydrar wrote: infestors aren't overpowered..they're just good, actually the best unit of zerg (better than tier 3) that's the truth
Imba is defined as a unit used in a disproportionate number of situations, aka the "go to unit" that marginalizes all other choices. Or alternatively a unit/tactic that takes low skill to use compared to skill to stop it. Based in that criteria infestor is imba. No way around that. Especially the way someone like Destiny plays all-infestor-all-the-time. Have even seen him take out 15 ultras with just infestors before now that you mention it.
Whether it's needed due to Zerg's other deficiencies is another issue. But it's bad for the game as is.
Yeah.. But what could they really do for the Zerg otherwise besides the infestor that wouldn't cripple the race is the question that comes to mind then.
Only thing I could think of really that'd make up for it even would be lowering costs more, fixing hydras, and 1 food on.. something. Then some form of real anti air unit IN the air, like how the devourer used to be in BW. Something that can handle the air battles of SC2 that isn't a slow piece of crap. :/
They'd really need to just re-do a LARGE portion of the race, and they said that they didn't wanna do any monsterous changes after beta, so.. Yeah. Infestors are what we get to equalize it, bad or not for the game.
Bandaid fixes are fun, amarite?
*edit* Btw, in that video, is it just me or did incontrol seem a bit defensive on the infestor issue? It kinda sounded like incontrol actually just doesn't agree with the way that protoss is ment to be played with the current meta game, and wants it to change.
On August 25 2011 19:05 Thorakh wrote: Why do we never see someone NP an enemy worker and start a Nexus or Command Center, how cool would it be if some pro's would incorporate that into their play. Yo 'sup, I'm going roach siege tank.
Would only really work with toss due to insta build. Some sweet BM though.
On August 25 2011 19:05 Thorakh wrote: Why do we never see someone NP an enemy worker and start a Nexus or Command Center, how cool would it be if some pro's would incorporate that into their play. Yo 'sup, I'm going roach siege tank.
Would only really work with toss due to insta build. Some sweet BM though.
Is it possible to infest a probe, then load it into one of your OL's and fly it off to your base? Keep an infestor with the probe in the OL for when it lands, then infest and build away. Make cannons everywhere, lol.
On August 25 2011 19:05 Thorakh wrote: Why do we never see someone NP an enemy worker and start a Nexus or Command Center, how cool would it be if some pro's would incorporate that into their play. Yo 'sup, I'm going roach siege tank.
Would only really work with toss due to insta build. Some sweet BM though.
Well, you can just NP the SCV over and over again until it finishes the CC :p
On August 25 2011 17:44 hydrar wrote: infestors aren't overpowered..they're just good, actually the best unit of zerg (better than tier 3) that's the truth
Imba is defined as a unit used in a disproportionate number of situations, aka the "go to unit" that marginalizes all other choices. Or alternatively a unit/tactic that takes low skill to use compared to skill to stop it. Based in that criteria infestor is imba. No way around that. Especially the way someone like Destiny plays all-infestor-all-the-time. Have even seen him take out 15 ultras with just infestors before now that you mention it.
Whether it's needed due to Zerg's other deficiencies is another issue. But it's bad for the game as is.
Yeah.. But what could they really do for the Zerg otherwise besides the infestor that wouldn't cripple the race is the question that comes to mind then.
Only thing I could think of really that'd make up for it even would be lowering costs more, fixing hydras, and 1 food on.. something. Then some form of real anti air unit IN the air, like how the devourer used to be in BW. Something that can handle the air battles of SC2 that isn't a slow piece of crap. :/
They'd really need to just re-do a LARGE portion of the race, and they said that they didn't wanna do any monsterous changes after beta, so.. Yeah. Infestors are what we get to equalize it, bad or not for the game.
Bandaid fixes are fun, amarite?
*edit* Btw, in that video, is it just me or did incontrol seem a bit defensive on the infestor issue? It kinda sounded like incontrol actually just doesn't agree with the way that protoss is ment to be played with the current meta game, and wants it to change.
I'd like to see Lurker & defiler back in action. Baring that would take major revisions of current units I don't want to speculate on.
I think infestors are fine. Yes, they are very strong, but I think it gets balanced out by the fact that it does not have any anti-caster spells like the ghost and HT.
i really don't think it's OP. It is just a unit that stopped A-moving a zerg who now has a unit to fear just like tanks for Terran and Colo(FF) for Toss.
Infestors are OP......but so are colossus and hellions, etc. Infestors are SO INSANELY needed for zerg to make them remotely playable, mostly because they are zergs only all-round unit that they can put in a composition and have some kind of anti air. Not to mention that all the other spellcasters hardcounter them as they are the only caster without an anti caster spell.
please watch Grubby vs Destiny Showmatch (game 1 starts at 8:30, games after game 1 not really worth it) http://www.twitch.tv/sc2communitycup/b/293240992 infestors are strong but when countered you notice how much of a glass cannon they really are. No one here complaines about high templar killing up to 4 infestors (600 gas!) in a split second with feedback, everyone has accepted that a few DT/zealots can wreak havoc on your expos without you able to to much at all (and yes, kill the hatch too)
chain fungal just punishes you when you move a small group of your army into the enemy. No zerg should be able to chain your main army with HT/colossus around since they get fedbacked/stormed/blinked upon/sniped/emped/siege shot/marauder assaulted so easily and the movement preventing effect actually is too small if you do not chain fungal, it will rarely allow your ultras to touch blink stalker if you fungal on max range and send the ultra at the same time
Given anyone who has read every post I've made would know I've come out in defense of Infestors repeatedly (you'd also be insane, but what the hey) but I do think there is a problem there.
When you look at the pre Infestor buff's every time a Zerg would ask for help you'ld have the other races postnig cliche'd comments about drinking tears and how players just had to get better, but subsequent to that one unit being buffed a little (half the stun, double the DPS, same damage, it's not really that huge) Zerg has found a core unit they can build around to carry them through the late game in a viable fashion and compete in the late game efficiently. The issue is, the Infestor buff, in my opinion, wasn't the entire problem fixed.
Infestors fill that core unit point that other races have in their Siege Tanks and Collosus. A strong core unit that if managed properly demands a reaction and can anchor an army. The Infestor though, simply comes out too early for what it is. I think the underlying issue is that Zerg was (is?) missing a T2 unit that rounds out the mid game and scales appropriately with game time.
So, I feel the Infestor should be bumped to T3 and *something* else should be added to T2 that better follows the progression of the game, and can actually add some more synergy to the T1/T2 army. I make no suggestion as to what that unit should be, frankly I'm not good enough to evaluate the whole game sufficiently to make that decision, but it feels like there's just a big hole in Zerg play that was plugged with the Infestor, but that needs properly working out. I don't think the unit itself is the problem, but the way it comes in to the battle.
Edit: Also, I think Fungal working similarly to the Chains of Ice spell from WoW, with a severe slowing effect that gradually dissipates as the spell goes on might be a good compromise allowing more dynamic play without hurting the essence of the ability.
i dont have a problem with infestors. The big problem is the great synergy with BL's, wich makes Broods almost impossible to touch as toss. Zerg needs infestors, but having to rely on blink stalkers vs brood/infestor is hard. And the abillity to make BL's earlier cause you get infestation pit anyways makes it even tougher.
On August 25 2011 17:44 hydrar wrote: infestors aren't overpowered..they're just good, actually the best unit of zerg (better than tier 3) that's the truth
Imba is defined as a unit used in a disproportionate number of situations, aka the "go to unit" that marginalizes all other choices. Or alternatively a unit/tactic that takes low skill to use compared to skill to stop it. Based in that criteria infestor is imba. No way around that. Especially the way someone like Destiny plays all-infestor-all-the-time. Have even seen him take out 15 ultras with just infestors before now that you mention it.
Whether it's needed due to Zerg's other deficiencies is another issue. But it's bad for the game as is.
So stalkers are imba?
Lets be honest, ITG, Inc was trashing destiny saying how he could beat much better players just because he used infestors. In reality, destiny is probably better then Inc (really what has he done lately?) and only beats players who don't prepare for or play against infestors. Basically, it's not hard to deflect infestors at all if you even try to do it.
In fact, I think it's telling that Inc thinks that destiny is pretty bad. Why? cause he can't win tourneys etc. Why? Must be cause he is bad because he has those OP infestors right? No, it's really because infestors are NOT hard to beat if you know they are coming and prepare for them. (and really, why would you ever not prepare for them? all the other T2 options are shit // arn't immeduately game ending with an incorrect response) The reason Destiny doesn't win tournaments is because of an overreliance on infestors (which means people can metagame him) and that they are not actually hard to deflect (and his macro isn't amazing...).
If infestors were really that powerful, then zerg would never lose and everybody would be using them. No offense, but I don't see any actual GOOD players complaining about infestors.
I don't feel they're OP as such, but I do feel they're too strong too early. Nowadays if a Terran makes a 10min timing push, chances are one fungal will end it. They're so much easier to get than HTs and ghosts and feel like much less of an investment. I feel they need to remove the energy upgrade in the same way they did to HTs. Perhaps also nerf max energy to stop the infested Terran spam. Zerg currently seem to spam investors, unlike HTs and ghosts, where you tend to make a limited number, and I don't feel that this is what blizzard intended as a spellcaster.
Im curious, a lot of people complain about the infestors.
But why didn't they complain about Plague in SC:BW? Or was there a period where so many people complained about it, similar to the infestors? Wasn't that stronger?
On August 25 2011 20:15 SEA_GenesiS wrote: Im curious, a lot of people complain about the infestors.
But why didn't they complain about Plague in SC:BW? Or was there a period where so many people complained about it, similar to the infestors? Wasn't that stronger?
Defilers weren't really massed as a single unit. They were support. So didn't matter if you had 20 defilers plaguing around you couldn't kill anything without having support around them. It also didn't lock units in place so they could just retreat. Science Vessels were great too
On August 25 2011 20:14 mcclurg wrote: I don't feel they're OP as such, but I do feel they're too strong too early. Nowadays if a Terran makes a 10min timing push, chances are one fungal will end it. They're so much easier to get than HTs and ghosts and feel like much less of an investment. I feel they need to remove the energy upgrade in the same way they did to HTs. Perhaps also nerf max energy to stop the infested Terran spam. Zerg currently seem to spam investors, unlike HTs and ghosts, where you tend to make a limited number, and I don't feel that this is what blizzard intended as a spellcaster.
Uhh, almost never do zergs have infestors at the 10min mark vs terran. Maybe in about 5% of my games does that happen.
As a terran i have no problem with infestors, i dont know how it is for protoss though. But terrans can just use ghosts and split units, i dont know why any terran would complain about infestors.
People really exaggerate how good the infestor is. The only thing i dont like is when like 4 infestors just take down an expansion with infested terrans, especially in ZvZ, it seems really silly.
As it is, the infestor I feel is way too much of a Swiss Army Knife kind of unit: It can do the roles of almost everything (drop prevention, eco/base harass, sniping, creating positioning for your army, huge AoE), it can basically do everything
I think lots of people are getting close to the actual problem with infestors without realizing it. It has too much versatility. An infestor can:
1. Kill clumps of small units with fungal 2. Disable large powerful units by Neuraling them 3. Lock down fast units 4. Reveal invisible units 5. Harass mineral lines with 2 different spells 6. Take out large amounts of infrastructure with IT's insane DPS
Also - - It can get into bases without the use of drops thanks to burrow movement - Only Neural requires research, but the fact that it counters large units with long build times makes the research time not too important. - Through the combination of Zerg larva mechanics and Infestor's energy upgrade, a zerg player can get 10 infestors simultaneously, all with the ability to fungal instantly.
The infestor is not OP, however it is maybe a bit too versatile, which is why it sees as much use as it does, and why people complain about it so much.
Infestor A (current infestor model): Infested Terran, Neural Parasite, Explode (think a really slow SC1 Infested Terran), Infest Command Center/Nexus. Spawns a creep tumor and 2 infested terrans upon death.
Infestor B: Ensnare, Fungal (larger radius, more damage, but over longer time, no hold, sorta like a plague that deals less total damage), [another spell?]. Would also be tier 2, but cost more. Slower build time? No energy upgrade. Can ensnare immediately though.
On August 25 2011 19:47 OnlineHero wrote: I think infestors are fine. Yes, they are very strong, but I think it gets balanced out by the fact that it does not have any anti-caster spells like the ghost and HT.
Just gonna add one more thing. Ghosts and HTs are still usefull after they run out of energy, while infestors are useless. You have to hide them for a long time, or simply suicide them to free up supply. Ghosts can still shoot (though not that great damage) and HTs can be morphed to archons.
On August 25 2011 20:15 SEA_GenesiS wrote: Im curious, a lot of people complain about the infestors.
But why didn't they complain about Plague in SC:BW? Or was there a period where so many people complained about it, similar to the infestors? Wasn't that stronger?
Defilers weren't really massed as a single unit. They were support. So didn't matter if you had 20 defilers plaguing around you couldn't kill anything without having support around them. It also didn't lock units in place so they could just retreat. Science Vessels were great too
Defilers weren't massed because they had infinite energy thanks to consume. If they could only cast dark swarm or plague once every 3 minutes, then they would be massed more. A single defiler is stronger than 20 infestors ever will be. Defiler completely nullified a Terran without vessels going bio, and considering some Terrans don't even bother with ghosts to defeat infestors, it seems clear that the infestor doesn't really make ZvT imbalanced at all. People complain about 4 infestors with energy taking down a nexus, but can you imagine 12 zerglings and 1 defiler taking down a nexus with 12 cannons surrounding it? It took around 5 seconds for that nexus to die which meant you NEEDED AOE defence which wasn't static. OMG SHOCK HORROR YOU CAN'T MAKE 1 BALL AND A MOVE. The most powerful Protoss unit - the reaver- was used to defend these bases, because zerglings were too strong vs nexi.
Even as a Zerg player I gotta admit that infestors are overpowered compared to most other units but right now the infestor is simply necessary. Zerg lacks the army strength and area control of Protoss and Terran, and due to the (compared to BW) smaller maps there's often no time to reproduce and gather enough army to stop a Terran Bio or Protoss Deathball push.
Also Zerg is much less ressource efficient without the infestor and due to the maps (again compared to BW) it's much harder to control more mining expansions in the late game than in BW.
I'm speaking from a high diamond point of view, so I won't pretend to understand the game on a pro-level, but right now, without any major unit revisions I simply can't imagine an infestor nerf (the 1.4 changes will probably be ok, but I believe that any major nerf would wreck the Zerg matchups).
I am sad to see the global whining guiding the ballance decisions. It was a huge nerf reducing the movement speed from 2.5 to 2.25 a couple of months ago and now dmg reduction seems like an attempt to put the unit out of use. Bluntly stated - I think that Zerg's mid-late game gets nerfed again because 2 base mass gate style and marine&tank attack move strats got too hard to execute.
EDIT: About the theorycraft stating that infested terrans are supposed to annihilate all - it just does not work that way. It is the worst way to use your infestors' energy in combat and extremely inefficient in fighting any army. And the claims that 10 infestors with 200 energy could raze your base - well indeed that is possible. However if you allow your oponent to survive spending 2000 gas on something that he does not use for 3 minutes and dont build a simple cannon/turret/crawler at the entrance of your base - maybe you are just a worse player and he could have killed you with whatever he wished.
I gotta ask, what does the Infestor bring that does not exist for other races?
Fungal: Means you gotta think before you engage, split up your units, and not a-move with a clump into an infestor heavy army. If it bothers you not being able to mass up a ball of units and a-moving to victory, I can see that this would be upsetting. Can't really see why this should be possible for P and T to do though, given that it's never possible for Z vs any of those races if they are played correctly.
Neural Parasite: A big f-ign cord points to the Infestor to kill. Kill it. It is squishy and pops like a piñata if you poke it. If you can't get to it through the supporting army, back away from the NP'd units and try again later. Costs 100 energy and has limited range and duration, so we can't neural forever, (even if it seems popular to believe Infestors have unlimited energy). Once the energy is gone, the Infestor is just a very fat caterpillar which basically any unit can kill easily.
Infested Terran: Nothing new here. Yes, it is powerful if you let 4-5 infestors get into your base and mass-cast it. Easily countered by some detection. For P, cannons are nice, for T a Turret + a Tank or Marines will do. If you deny drops and entry to the back of your mineral lines, you are safe. It's much like Zerg has to watch for drops from T/Cloaked Banshees, and for DT's from P. Once you realize you NEED detection and actually need to defend your bases, it should be rather doable to put up some protection vs the 4 brofestor hitsquad (tm). If IT's are tossed at your main army, you should be able to move away from most of it. They die quickly on their own, and move like sedated slugs.
So, Is it powerful? Hell yes. Is it OP? No. You just have to scout and prepare accordingly.
You may now all bash me for my noob-ness, and I freely confess that these are just my _opinions_ and may not at all be valid since my understanding of the game admittedly is on a rather low level.
On August 25 2011 20:14 mcclurg wrote: I don't feel they're OP as such, but I do feel they're too strong too early. Nowadays if a Terran makes a 10min timing push, chances are one fungal will end it. They're so much easier to get than HTs and ghosts and feel like much less of an investment. I feel they need to remove the energy upgrade in the same way they did to HTs. Perhaps also nerf max energy to stop the infested Terran spam. Zerg currently seem to spam investors, unlike HTs and ghosts, where you tend to make a limited number, and I don't feel that this is what blizzard intended as a spellcaster.
well then why not just remove every spell casters energy upgrade? because even the ghost just owns the protoss because of the EMP just taking a complete armies shields. I agree with Iyerbeth with his statement with the Infestor needing to be T3 but we need something to take that T2 spot. because right now are mid game is so fucked without infestors. We need a backbone, we have infestors, what would be an equal or greater backbone for the midgame?
This may be an honest discussion, but the OP made sure its an honest discussion about the advantages of the infestor, rather than its role as a whole.
I especially like the comparison of 5 infestors worth of infested terrans equaling the amount of damage that could be done by 11 gateways, and that they could kill an entire main apparently, if the supply depots get the skyscraper upgrade.
And their statistics don't even show that they despawn unless you look at the "Weird Stuff."
On August 25 2011 23:06 BoneMachine wrote: This may be an honest discussion, but the OP made sure its an honest discussion about the advantages of the infestor, rather than its role as a whole.
I especially like the comparison of 5 infestors worth of infested terrans equaling the amount of damage that could be done by 11 gateways, and that they could kill an entire main apparently, if the supply depots get the skyscraper upgrade.
And their statistics don't even show that they despawn unless you look at the "Weird Stuff."
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
On August 25 2011 23:06 BoneMachine wrote: This may be an honest discussion, but the OP made sure its an honest discussion about the advantages of the infestor, rather than its role as a whole.
I especially like the comparison of 5 infestors worth of infested terrans equaling the amount of damage that could be done by 11 gateways, and that they could kill an entire main apparently, if the supply depots get the skyscraper upgrade.
And their statistics don't even show that they despawn unless you look at the "Weird Stuff."
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
I think his Skyscraper upgrade quip aimed at the lack of mobility of the IT. They can basically move through what, half a base in their lifetime, make it a quarter if they're stopping on the way to kill shit (haven't seen Infested Terrans stutterstepped, so far lol). Their potential damage output is limited by the number of buildings they can actually physically move to and target down while they're spawned.
On August 25 2011 23:19 Koshi wrote: Great read. The infestor is a good unit, I should use it more.
Especially the part of the infested marines was interesting. I have seen Destiny (ab)use them, but the raw numbers are funny to read.
I would love to see more players use Infestors for IT like Destiny does. I think so many people overlook this ability. It's so powerful, but it is still balanced. It is definitely a great way for a better player to dominate a weaker player. Players of equal skill will negate each other in the spell caster area, so I'm hard pressed to call the IT too strong.
I see other Zerg pros streaming, and they say they will "try the destiny build today" and then they have 14 Infestors which they only use Fungal Growth with. Infested Terrans is definitely Destiny's coup de grace.
On August 25 2011 23:06 BoneMachine wrote: This may be an honest discussion, but the OP made sure its an honest discussion about the advantages of the infestor, rather than its role as a whole.
I especially like the comparison of 5 infestors worth of infested terrans equaling the amount of damage that could be done by 11 gateways, and that they could kill an entire main apparently, if the supply depots get the skyscraper upgrade.
And their statistics don't even show that they despawn unless you look at the "Weird Stuff."
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
I think his Skyscraper upgrade quip aimed at the lack of mobility of the IT. They can basically move through what, half a base in their lifetime, make it a quarter if they're stopping on the way to kill shit (haven't seen Infested Terrans stutterstepped, so far lol). Their potential damage output is limited by the number of buildings they can actually physically move to and target down while they're spawned.
I think that's what he was saying.
Yes, true, but in theory, a skillful player, perhaps one more skillful than the likes of Nestea, would know how many Terrans to throw where. It would certainly make me panic if there were suddenly groups of 10 IT in 4 different parts of my base.
On August 25 2011 23:06 BoneMachine wrote: This may be an honest discussion, but the OP made sure its an honest discussion about the advantages of the infestor, rather than its role as a whole.
I especially like the comparison of 5 infestors worth of infested terrans equaling the amount of damage that could be done by 11 gateways, and that they could kill an entire main apparently, if the supply depots get the skyscraper upgrade.
And their statistics don't even show that they despawn unless you look at the "Weird Stuff."
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
Using Destiny's build, 5 infestors are done at 11:30. You are calculating on them having 200 energy which takes about 4 in-game minutes after the upgrade is done to achieve.
So, what you are saying is essentially: If the Terran leaves his base wide open at 16 minutes into the game, and places his structures so that the Infested Terrans can be launched with perfect DPS from start to end, and has no defence, no detection and just lets it happen, he will lose a lot of shit. Hmm... Interesting point.
Personally, if I can get into his base so easily at 16 minutes and he has clustered his buildings like that, and has nothing for defence & detection, I think he deserves to lose....
I also think he would lose to any massed unit (zergling, baneling, roach) if he leaves his base wide open at the 16 minute mark. It just would mean that the T is stupid, not that IT is IMBA.
On August 25 2011 23:06 BoneMachine wrote: This may be an honest discussion, but the OP made sure its an honest discussion about the advantages of the infestor, rather than its role as a whole.
I especially like the comparison of 5 infestors worth of infested terrans equaling the amount of damage that could be done by 11 gateways, and that they could kill an entire main apparently, if the supply depots get the skyscraper upgrade.
And their statistics don't even show that they despawn unless you look at the "Weird Stuff."
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
Using Destiny's build, 5 infestors are done at 11:30. You are calculating on them having 200 energy which takes about 4 in-game minutes after the upgrade is done to achieve.
So, what you are saying is essentially: If the Terran leaves his base wide open at 16 minutes into the game, and places his structures so that the Infested Terrans can be launched with perfect DPS from start to end, and has no defence, no detection and just lets it happen, he will lose a lot of shit. Hmm... Interesting point.
Personally, if I can get into his base so easily at 16 minutes and he has clustered his buildings like that, and has nothing for defence & detection, I think he deserves to lose....
I also think he would lose to any massed unit (zergling, baneling, roach) if he leaves his base wide open at the 16 minute mark. It just would mean that the T is stupid, not that IT is IMBA.
Destiny himself does this all the time. If you've never seen Destiny play, don't comment on the Destiny build.
It is most definitely a midgame tactic. Firstly, the structures listed were by no means a definitive list of everything that will die should this happen. It was a comparison, something to help you visualize what 15,480 damage is. Would you have preferred I list it in destructible rocks?
Also, if you ever get hit by a DT, even once, you're a bad player and you deserve to lose, because you didn't cover 3-5 bases in detection.
On August 25 2011 23:40 hawliet wrote: the only thing i don't like about infestors is that blink stalkers can't blink when fungal growth -_-
I think this would make Stalkers too strong. Infestors are so weak, so when Stalkers were hit with Fungal they would just blink towards the Infestors and murder all of them,.
Infestors come earlier than templars and are far better. Not really sure what else there is to consider. Templars are joke spellcasters compared to ghosts and infestors.
On August 25 2011 23:46 Loodah wrote: Infestors come earlier than templars and are far better. Not really sure what else there is to consider. Templars are joke spellcasters compared to ghosts and infestors.
D: but you can cast feedback by clicking beyond units or on the map, like A-moving, but instead you carry the NASL audio team with you.
On August 25 2011 23:06 BoneMachine wrote: This may be an honest discussion, but the OP made sure its an honest discussion about the advantages of the infestor, rather than its role as a whole.
I especially like the comparison of 5 infestors worth of infested terrans equaling the amount of damage that could be done by 11 gateways, and that they could kill an entire main apparently, if the supply depots get the skyscraper upgrade.
And their statistics don't even show that they despawn unless you look at the "Weird Stuff."
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
Using Destiny's build, 5 infestors are done at 11:30. You are calculating on them having 200 energy which takes about 4 in-game minutes after the upgrade is done to achieve.
So, what you are saying is essentially: If the Terran leaves his base wide open at 16 minutes into the game, and places his structures so that the Infested Terrans can be launched with perfect DPS from start to end, and has no defence, no detection and just lets it happen, he will lose a lot of shit. Hmm... Interesting point.
Personally, if I can get into his base so easily at 16 minutes and he has clustered his buildings like that, and has nothing for defence & detection, I think he deserves to lose....
I also think he would lose to any massed unit (zergling, baneling, roach) if he leaves his base wide open at the 16 minute mark. It just would mean that the T is stupid, not that IT is IMBA.
Destiny himself does this all the time. If you've never seen Destiny play, don't comment on the Destiny build.
It is most definitely a midgame tactic. Firstly, the structures listed were by no means a definitive list of everything that will die should this happen. It was a comparison, something to help you visualize what 15,480 damage is. Would you have preferred I list it in destructible rocks?
Also, if you ever get hit by a DT, even once, you're a bad player and you deserve to lose, because you didn't cover 3-5 bases in detection.
Woha, maybe my tongue in cheek didn't translate very well, you come across at a bit angry with me... Believe it or not, I HAVE seen Destiny play.
Anyway, as far as I've seen, Destiny usually moves out when his 5 infestors are done and punishes expansions. You will also note that, while very effective, it is very rare his opponents have moved his entire army out of the way and loses his entire production capabilities.
While I've seen Destiny be able to take out expansions (Nexus/Command Centers) I've never seen Destiny get into the main with 5 infestors at 16 minutes to destroy 4 barracks with addons + one command center. Maybe because most T's Destiny plays walls off and actually defends. My point was merely that the calculation done, while mathematically correct, does not really apply to any in-game scenario I have ever seen.
YES he can do a shitload of damage with his 4 bro-festor hitsquad. However, so will a T with just a small group of marauders or blue flame hellion drops.
As for the DT's, I agree. If I have scouted DT's and don't at least have a spore and a spine at my bases, I have myself to blame.
On August 25 2011 23:40 hawliet wrote: the only thing i don't like about infestors is that blink stalkers can't blink when fungal growth -_-
Every unit should have some form of counter. Blink Stalkers can shoot ground, shoot air, blink up and down cliffs and have some of the fastest movement speed in the game even without blink.
On August 25 2011 22:46 Zergnub wrote: My own 2 noob-cents:
I gotta ask, what does the Infestor bring that does not exist for other races?
Fungal: Means you gotta think before you engage, split up your units, and not a-move with a clump into an infestor heavy army. If it bothers you not being able to mass up a ball of units and a-moving to victory, I can see that this would be upsetting. Can't really see why this should be possible for P and T to do though, given that it's never possible for Z vs any of those races if they are played correctly.
Neural Parasite: A big f-ign cord points to the Infestor to kill. Kill it. It is squishy and pops like a piñata if you poke it. If you can't get to it through the supporting army, back away from the NP'd units and try again later. Costs 100 energy and has limited range and duration, so we can't neural forever, (even if it seems popular to believe Infestors have unlimited energy). Once the energy is gone, the Infestor is just a very fat caterpillar which basically any unit can kill easily.
Infested Terran: Nothing new here. Yes, it is powerful if you let 4-5 infestors get into your base and mass-cast it. Easily countered by some detection. For P, cannons are nice, for T a Turret + a Tank or Marines will do. If you deny drops and entry to the back of your mineral lines, you are safe. It's much like Zerg has to watch for drops from T/Cloaked Banshees, and for DT's from P. Once you realize you NEED detection and actually need to defend your bases, it should be rather doable to put up some protection vs the 4 brofestor hitsquad (tm). If IT's are tossed at your main army, you should be able to move away from most of it. They die quickly on their own, and move like sedated slugs.
So, Is it powerful? Hell yes. Is it OP? No. You just have to scout and prepare accordingly.
You may now all bash me for my noob-ness, and I freely confess that these are just my _opinions_ and may not at all be valid since my understanding of the game admittedly is on a rather low level.
How do you stop 4 infestor or 8 infestor hit squad in ZvZ? You are in the middle with your army with roachs/infestors and or hydras. He drops 70 50IT at your upgrading greater spire and hive. You are garenteed to lose to. Do you have to make 5 spores and spread creep around every base? Then what about shakuras when he can just throw IT up a clift? in ZvZ IT are too strong.
On August 25 2011 23:06 BoneMachine wrote: This may be an honest discussion, but the OP made sure its an honest discussion about the advantages of the infestor, rather than its role as a whole.
I especially like the comparison of 5 infestors worth of infested terrans equaling the amount of damage that could be done by 11 gateways, and that they could kill an entire main apparently, if the supply depots get the skyscraper upgrade.
And their statistics don't even show that they despawn unless you look at the "Weird Stuff."
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
Using Destiny's build, 5 infestors are done at 11:30. You are calculating on them having 200 energy which takes about 4 in-game minutes after the upgrade is done to achieve.
So, what you are saying is essentially: If the Terran leaves his base wide open at 16 minutes into the game, and places his structures so that the Infested Terrans can be launched with perfect DPS from start to end, and has no defence, no detection and just lets it happen, he will lose a lot of shit. Hmm... Interesting point.
Personally, if I can get into his base so easily at 16 minutes and he has clustered his buildings like that, and has nothing for defence & detection, I think he deserves to lose....
I also think he would lose to any massed unit (zergling, baneling, roach) if he leaves his base wide open at the 16 minute mark. It just would mean that the T is stupid, not that IT is IMBA.
Destiny himself does this all the time. If you've never seen Destiny play, don't comment on the Destiny build.
It is most definitely a midgame tactic. Firstly, the structures listed were by no means a definitive list of everything that will die should this happen. It was a comparison, something to help you visualize what 15,480 damage is. Would you have preferred I list it in destructible rocks?
Also, if you ever get hit by a DT, even once, you're a bad player and you deserve to lose, because you didn't cover 3-5 bases in detection.
Woha, maybe my tongue in cheek didn't translate very well, you come across at a bit angry with me... Believe it or not, I HAVE seen Destiny play.
Anyway, as far as I've seen, Destiny usually moves out when his 5 infestors are done and punishes expansions. You will also note that, while very effective, it is very rare his opponents have moved his entire army out of the way and loses his entire production capabilities.
While I've seen Destiny be able to take out expansions (Nexus/Command Centers) I've never seen Destiny get into the main with 5 infestors at 16 minutes to destroy 4 barracks with addons + one command center. Maybe because most T's Destiny plays walls off and actually defends. My point was merely that the calculation done, while mathematically correct, does not really apply to any in-game scenario I have ever seen.
YES he can do a shitload of damage with his 4 bro-festor hitsquad. However, so will a T with just a small group of marauders or blue flame hellion drops.
As for the DT's, I agree. If I have scouted DT's and don't at least have a spore and a spine at my bases, I have myself to blame.
It was more stern/serious than it was angry. Don't worry, I still love you.
So I think we settled the damage argument, which is that it was more of a visualization tool than a fact. It is much easier to send a few mostly full energy brofestors to a 3rd/4th and massacre the command center.
Also: you better have a ton of Overseers when their cost is reduced to 50/50 for morph. Show those Protoss how useless their observers are now.
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
It just seemed that your post was very selective in the somewhat random statistics it listed. A useful statistic to have included might have been how many fungals it takes to kill certain units, or comparisons with other races casters?
Maybe it wasn't done out of bias but the infested terran section was misleading. The immobility of the infested terran allows one collous and one well placed tank to almost completely nullify an attack like this. The damage they can do in an attack seems to ignore the obvious fact that the other player is going to have units that can combat them and stop some of the damage. Also, against protoss and terran players a missile turret/tank and cannon completely stop this as well as kill 500 minerals and 750 gas worth of army so it's a risk.
However, its still obviously a very strong spawn unit, and serves a similar function to the auto-turret, though the heavy energy and tech investment leaves you open to counter attacks or marine drops in the mineral line which can be very good against an army with out of position infestors with no energy, and a zerg with usually basic tech besides the infestor.
While the analysis of this specific tactic, as well as other tactics the infestor is capable of probably isn't necessary in this thread its simply a means to explain how a unit like the infestor and his abilities can't really be discussed completely with just statistics.
I'm honored that your first post is in this thread. The role of the infestor is shown by his strengths, like all spellcasters, he is an all-purpose utility limited only by the skill of the player using him.
However, 15,480 damage is enough to kill 4 Barracks at 4000 health total, 4 attachments, at 1200 health total, a command center, at 1500 health.
15480 -4000 -1200 -1500 8780
8780/400 (400 being the health of a supply depot) = 21.95 = 21 supply depots. Adjusting for +1 armor on buildings, I took off 2.95 supply depots, capping the assault at 19 supply depots. It wasn't by any means an exact science, so the supply depots lost in this hypothetical situation should be +/- 1 or 2. 19 supply depots * 8 food per supply depot = 152 supply.
Adding the Supply upgrade would actually double the damage to maximum supply.
It just seemed that your post was very selective in the somewhat random statistics it listed. A useful statistic to have included might have been how many fungals it takes to kill certain units, or comparisons with other races casters?
Maybe it wasn't done out of bias but the infested terran section was misleading. The immobility of the infested terran allows one collous and one well placed tank to almost completely nullify an attack like this. The damage they can do in an attack seems to ignore the obvious fact that the other player is going to have units that can combat them and stop some of the damage. Also, against protoss and terran players a missile turret/tank and cannon completely stop this as well as kill 500 minerals and 750 gas worth of army so it's a risk.
However, its still obviously a very strong spawn unit, and serves a similar function to the auto-turret, though the heavy energy and tech investment leaves you open to counter attacks or marine drops in the mineral line which can be very good against an army with out of position infestors with no energy, and a zerg with usually basic tech besides the infestor.
While the analysis of this specific tactic, as well as other tactics the infestor is capable of probably isn't necessary in this thread its simply a means to explain how a unit like the infestor and his abilities can't really be discussed completely with just statistics.
Well, truth be told, this wasn't a complete summary of spell casters compared to one another, nor was it a complete thought.
I plan to make one of these for Orbital Commands, High Templar, Ghosts, Queens, and Ravens. This will take me some time, being a full time (6 days a week argh) college student. But once it is done I'd probably make a blog containing every single original post, and then we can have at it once and for all.
The infestor is an amazing unit. With great micro, a player should be rewarded with great damage output. It annoys the shit out of me when people say infestors are shit when they expect their army to 1a move them to victory in the face of a zerg with good infestor micro
On August 25 2011 14:59 Nizzy wrote: AOE Attack Fungal - HP Nuke AOE Attack Fungal - Few Second Stun AOE Attack Fungal - Reveal Invisible Units Summon Infested Terran - Only 25 Energy Summon Infested Terran - 9 DPS Unit Summon Infested Terran - Able to use from burrowed position Attachment Neural Parasite - Takes Control of 6+ Food unit, etc... Attachment Neural Parasite - Able to attack, build, & use opposing unit skills Attachment Neural Parasite - Range of what, 14?
You would think this unit should cost 300/300 for what you can do with it.
Unreal IMO.
You forgot the part about them being noticeable lumps of wet paper with only 90 hp.
Or the part about infested terrans lasting for only 30 secs and being slow as hell
Or that Neural costs 100 energy, has to be researched, the infestor can't move, and it only lasts 15 seconds...
It's not had to protect the 90 hp unit when they are behind 90+ food of pure HP meat in Roaches.
Infested Terrans don't have to move when they are spawned right from the ground beside the nexus they can take out easy.
100? To control my 6 food thor? The infestor doesnt have to move Neural range is insanely long. 15 seconds? I've seen spanishiwa grab a colosus from a guys army, calmly walk it to his army, and kill it. 15 seconds is long enough.
100 energy, research, ??? take a look those numbers are better then the raven's.
I wish that they had a more distinctive appearance compared to roaches and moved more slowly off creep.
To fight against roach/infestor with for example colossus, you must focus-fire ~10 very rapidly moving brownish blobs mixed in a sea of similar-looking brownish blobs. Each infestor takes 3 colossus hits to kill. If they NP your collosus, then you must explicitly select only the non-NP collosus, visually trace a brownish strand floating over a sea of brownish colors back to the NPing infestor, and then focus-fire it. You may not be able to do this of course because it's easy to have more infestors than colossus so all of your collosus may get NP'ed roughly simultaneously. Then your options are either to suicide-blink your stalkers into the middle of a roach pack and try to focus-down infestors while your own collosus are also hammering your stalkers, or to blink your stalkers away from the fight and retreat (to lose the game moments later because all your colossus died). Of course the retreat option isn't there if a fungal landed.
Meanwhile, what is this incredibly skill-based micro that the zerg player must pull off? Well, it's to a-move the roach ball and then smart-cast NP on a few very large, very obvious colossus.
It doesn't strike me that controlling the infestor is the hard end of that encounter.
If you are going stalker colossi against roach infestor you absolutely need sentries and amazing forcefields to split the infestors behind the roaches and out of range + always having colossi in back of army.
I used to think fungal was op and now I think it's fine. Sure I would love it if it was changed to slow rather than freeze, but that's only because I play toss. I this it's a necessary skill for z to have.
I think the IT skill is a bit OP the way it is right now. Like someone else said, you can just sneak burrowed infestors into expoes and kill a lot of shit for a very low cost. I think it's too much damage potential. Perhaps raise the mana cost or create a small cooldown or nerf the actual infested terran damage just a tad would make it a more balanced skill.
I think neural parasite is a great skill and perfect the way it is (though I hate it when they neural my archons/collosus)
On August 25 2011 14:59 Nizzy wrote: AOE Attack Fungal - HP Nuke AOE Attack Fungal - Few Second Stun AOE Attack Fungal - Reveal Invisible Units Summon Infested Terran - Only 25 Energy Summon Infested Terran - 9 DPS Unit Summon Infested Terran - Able to use from burrowed position Attachment Neural Parasite - Takes Control of 6+ Food unit, etc... Attachment Neural Parasite - Able to attack, build, & use opposing unit skills Attachment Neural Parasite - Range of what, 14?
You would think this unit should cost 300/300 for what you can do with it.
Unreal IMO.
You forgot the part about them being noticeable lumps of wet paper with only 90 hp.
Or the part about infested terrans lasting for only 30 secs and being slow as hell
Or that Neural costs 100 energy, has to be researched, the infestor can't move, and it only lasts 15 seconds...
It's not had to protect the 90 hp unit when they are behind 90+ food of pure HP meat in Roaches.
Infested Terrans don't have to move when they are spawned right from the ground beside the nexus they can take out easy.
100? To control my 6 food thor? The infestor doesnt have to move Neural range is insanely long. 15 seconds? I've seen spanishiwa grab a colosus from a guys army, calmly walk it to his army, and kill it. 15 seconds is long enough.
100 energy, research, ??? take a look those numbers are better then the raven's.
HSM isn't channelled, and 90+ food of roaches is impossible in a normal game when a zerg has to have 70-80+ drones alone. And NP range is 9. Also, NP on drones makes them die pop right out when you try to build. And same goes for larva, I am pretty sure. And fungal isn't an HP nuke, especially if the new PTR goes through. Which it will, unless IdrA sues and wins ten million somehow.
To fight against roach/infestor with for example colossus, you must focus-fire ~10 very rapidly moving brownish blobs mixed in a sea of similar-looking brownish blobs. Each infestor takes 3 colossus hits to kill. If they NP your collosus, then you must explicitly select only the non-NP collosus, visually trace a brownish strand floating over a sea of brownish colors back to the NPing infestor, and then focus-fire it. You may not be able to do this of course because it's easy to have more infestors than colossus so all of your collosus may get NP'ed roughly simultaneously. Then your options are either to suicide-blink your stalkers into the middle of a roach pack and try to focus-down infestors while your own collosus are also hammering your stalkers, or to blink your stalkers away from the fight and retreat (to lose the game moments later because all your colossus died). Of course the retreat option isn't there if a fungal landed.
Ehhh, what the fudgesicle? Roaches look nothing like festors, at all. And as for NP selecting, it's called the ctrl-key. Look, people, it's a thing of the player versus the player, not units versus units. And if festors are such an issue, just get some HTs.
Well, it's the most powerful and versatile unit in SC2. Even with the upcoming nerf, Fungal is the best micro-stopper in the game. Neural parasite, when used correctly, can make a bigger difference in a battle than any other spell. Infested Terrans used on a CC/Nexus/Hatchery is a vastly better nuke than a nuke. The only thing that makes them not completely overpowered is that the other races have caster-killer spells.
But what really scares me about infestors is that there are top Zerg players like Nestea and DongRaeGu who do just fine without them.
Infestors where fine I believe T and P players were finally learning to spread out HT and Ghost and split their army etc That said I think the nerf isn't so huge that it will change much other than giving the less than top players a little more margin
On August 25 2011 22:45 Giantt wrote: I am sad to see the global whining guiding the ballance decisions. It was a huge nerf reducing the movement speed from 2.5 to 2.25 a couple of months ago and now dmg reduction seems like an attempt to put the unit out of use. Bluntly stated - I think that Zerg's mid-late game gets nerfed again because 2 base mass gate style and marine&tank attack move strats got too hard to execute.
EDIT: About the theorycraft stating that infested terrans are supposed to annihilate all - it just does not work that way. It is the worst way to use your infestors' energy in combat and extremely inefficient in fighting any army. And the claims that 10 infestors with 200 energy could raze your base - well indeed that is possible. However if you allow your oponent to survive spending 2000 gas on something that he does not use for 3 minutes and dont build a simple cannon/turret/crawler at the entrance of your base - maybe you are just a worse player and he could have killed you with whatever he wished.
The speed "nerf" wasn't a nerf at all? It was changed to stop infestors moving ahead of your army and getting killed. Idra himself claimed it was a buff to zerg.
I honestly feel Infested Terrans need to be addressed. For only 25 energy they're incredibly powerful. Perhaps raising the energy to 50 and bringing their DPS in line with normal Marines should suffice. As it is Zerg can instantly generate dozens of free units that have more DPS than a Roach or a Stalker (against un-armoured targets). It's insane.
On August 25 2011 22:45 Giantt wrote: I am sad to see the global whining guiding the ballance decisions. It was a huge nerf reducing the movement speed from 2.5 to 2.25 a couple of months ago and now dmg reduction seems like an attempt to put the unit out of use. Bluntly stated - I think that Zerg's mid-late game gets nerfed again because 2 base mass gate style and marine&tank attack move strats got too hard to execute.
EDIT: About the theorycraft stating that infested terrans are supposed to annihilate all - it just does not work that way. It is the worst way to use your infestors' energy in combat and extremely inefficient in fighting any army. And the claims that 10 infestors with 200 energy could raze your base - well indeed that is possible. However if you allow your oponent to survive spending 2000 gas on something that he does not use for 3 minutes and dont build a simple cannon/turret/crawler at the entrance of your base - maybe you are just a worse player and he could have killed you with whatever he wished.
The speed "nerf" wasn't a nerf at all? It was changed to stop infestors moving ahead of your army and getting killed. Idra himself claimed it was a buff to zerg.
Idra would definitly be happy if they made the infestor faster now as it would make dealing with drops alot easier but w/e
Balance aside, I'd like to see some changes in infestors. Fungal's freeze + substantial damage just feels too potent at that tier. But it's hard to really argue that when you've got force fields at T1.5 too, so I guess I'd just like to see a pretty significant overhaul in the game design.
As the game is, I don't think infestors are particularly imbalanced, although they're certainly frustrating to play against sometimes.
On August 27 2011 22:30 Xaeldaren wrote: I honestly feel Infested Terrans need to be addressed. For only 25 energy they're incredibly powerful. Perhaps raising the energy to 50 and bringing their DPS in line with normal Marines should suffice. As it is Zerg can instantly generate dozens of free units that have more DPS than a Roach or a Stalker (against un-armoured targets). It's insane.
Infested terrans do more DPS than a marine because they have a limited lifespan and are slow as hell.
On August 27 2011 22:30 Xaeldaren wrote: I honestly feel Infested Terrans need to be addressed. For only 25 energy they're incredibly powerful. Perhaps raising the energy to 50 and bringing their DPS in line with normal Marines should suffice. As it is Zerg can instantly generate dozens of free units that have more DPS than a Roach or a Stalker (against un-armoured targets). It's insane.
Infested terrans do more DPS than a marine because they have a limited lifespan and are slow as hell.
They can be moved away from. They are more like a zoning spell when it comes to units. Marines can move. A lot.
On August 27 2011 22:30 Xaeldaren wrote: I honestly feel Infested Terrans need to be addressed. For only 25 energy they're incredibly powerful. Perhaps raising the energy to 50 and bringing their DPS in line with normal Marines should suffice. As it is Zerg can instantly generate dozens of free units that have more DPS than a Roach or a Stalker (against un-armoured targets). It's insane.
...Those suggestions just kill IT. 50 energy to spawn a marine that has limited movement and will die on its own? No one is gonna use that. IT's are great and I'm not gonna deny that they aren't. But if you nerf them, you really further hurt Zerg's anti-air situation when they already have a huge issue on producing AA units. Hydras are bad late game against both P and T. So you hafta rely on Mutas and Corruptors for AA. Void Rays just become even better in the MU.
Overall, Infestors are great units, but I feel that if you take away any of their 3 abilities, it really hurts Zerg's already limited spell-casting abilities.
Gotta love incontrol for explaining it so good why and just making greg look stupid.
"Greg you've used rouches and hydras for the past year,no one did infestors you played fucking terrible" .. nailed it.
And protoss really doesnt ahve an answer to infestors.NO HT is not the answer cos Infestor>HT .The infestor is always at the back and the units streaming in front of you makes your HT useless.
On August 27 2011 22:30 Xaeldaren wrote: I honestly feel Infested Terrans need to be addressed. For only 25 energy they're incredibly powerful. Perhaps raising the energy to 50 and bringing their DPS in line with normal Marines should suffice. As it is Zerg can instantly generate dozens of free units that have more DPS than a Roach or a Stalker (against un-armoured targets). It's insane.
...Those suggestions just kill IT. 50 energy to spawn a marine that has limited movement and will die on its own? No one is gonna use that. IT's are great and I'm not gonna deny that they aren't. But if you nerf them, you really further hurt Zerg's anti-air situation when they already have a huge issue on producing AA units. Hydras are bad late game against both P and T. So you hafta rely on Mutas and Corruptors for AA. Void Rays just become even better in the MU.
Overall, Infestors are great units, but I feel that if you take away any of their 3 abilities, it really hurts Zerg's already limited spell-casting abilities.
I'll concede the point about how difficult it is for Zerg to deal with air which makes nerfing the Infested Terran problematic. I'm not sure how you'd be able to alter it without affecting that aspect.
As far as movement speed goes though it's hardly relevant in the majority of uses for Infested Terrans. Take a look at Coca's games in MLG. When 32 Infested Terrans pop up at your expansion, sure you can move away from them but you're going to lose your expansion. Thus you're forced to choose between engaging what amounts to essentially 32 free roaches, softening up your army for the actual Zerg army...or losing your expansion (which is mostly likely going to happen either way). I think this is a problem.
Maybe leaving the DPS as it is is fine but the energy cost is a little too much. Each Infestor being able to spit out potentially 8 of them gets exponentially more powerful for every Infestor. When you get beyond four or five it becomes ridiculous.
Fungal is just OP. infestors cost a bit more than HT, but it is harder to deal with than storm because you can repeatedly fungal. infestor/broodlord combo is just so hard for terran because if you clump the vikings, its almost an instant GG. while i agree that you can spread units and and many things that zerg players suggest to do, the mico and unit management for terran players are a lot more intensive. i think the up coming nerf is a good way to go about it, but if infestor is still too strong, i hope one infestor can cost 3 supply.
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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
Btw I just watched a MLG game with Naniwa, where he did void harass and fast expanded. The zerg literally was at 200/200 at the 13minute mark of hydra,roach, corruptor on 3 base. (no exaggeration) and he just rolled Naniwa hard, 3 colossus out and lots of FF too...... didn't even need infestors lol
There are 2 things I have issue with, surrounding the infestors. 1. With high enough numbers, it can basically be the answer to any and everything. 2. The immobilize of the FG is both dull and punishes misclick/slight overcommitment *way* to much(similar to ff and to a lesser extend concussive). Spells that prevent micro = bad.
Edit: I'm not certain if it's to strong(atleast TvZ), just the unit itself is insanely dull and stupid.
I think that infestors are too strong right now. Their biggest strength is their versatility. There is just no real situation where infestors are not useful and where you go: "Damn, should have scouted and built X instead!" (sure, you can run them into a bunch of hts... but if that happens you screwed up big time). They are always useful! It doesn't really matter if your opponent goes for Air units (Fungal / Infested Terran / Neural), masses of cheap units (Fungal / Infested Terran), beefy units (neural), you need to harass (burrow / Fungal / infested terran), forgot detection (fungal) They excel in a lot of situations, and this is what i think makes them too good. Sure, they have quite low health, but with burrow and the stun of fungal, they have also a good chance at escaping unharmed. I think they need to tweak them in a way so they fill in less roles and change stun to a slowing effect. I play random at the ladder atm and make them whenever i get zerg, just because they always help you out, no matter what your opponent throws at you.
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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
Btw I just watched a MLG game with Naniwa, where he did void harass and fast expanded. The zerg literally was at 200/200 at the 13minute mark of hydra,roach, corruptor on 3 base. (no exaggeration) and he just rolled Naniwa hard, 3 colossus out and lots of FF too...... didn't even need infestors lol
Haha yeah I was shocked at the Naniwa vs Coca game. It was also pretty funny when Day[9] said (if I remember correctly) something along the lines that the a big reason for Naniwa losing was that he lost his void ray. I don't know but if losing one void ray in the mid-game has that big of an impact I think the game is kind of going in the Zergs favor.
On August 28 2011 11:13 Zarahtra wrote: There are 2 things I have issue with, surrounding the infestors. 1. With high enough numbers, it can basically be the answer to any and everything. 2. The immobilize of the FG is both dull and punishes misclick/slight overcommitment *way* to much(similar to ff and to a lesser extend concussive). Spells that prevent micro = bad.
Edit: I'm not certain if it's to strong(atleast TvZ), just the unit itself is insanely dull and stupid.
When the immobilize is that readily accessible, yeah, I'd say spells that prevent micro = bad.
Maybe the "problem" with fungal growth is not how much damage it does or what it does, but that you can be so careless with its use due to how many fungal growths you've got banked up. I wonder if the solution would be to keep the immobilize and damage of Fungal proportional to an increased energy cost. An example would be 125 energy to fungal growth for ~60 damage over ~7 seconds instead of the current 75 energy for 36 damage over 4 seconds. What this would do is drastically reduce the number of stored fungals in an infestor ball, create a fair-sized waiting time before an infestor actually had a fungal growth, and still keep the current energy - per - damage - dealt ratio.
It'd force the zerg to be more careful about how and when he drops fungal growths or opts to use infested terrans, and eliminate the current opportunity for a Zerg to just get so many fungal growths that he kills your entire army from a reasonably happy distance.
Obviously, 125 energy per fungal would fucking suck ass, but I can see that infestors have won me some games I probably shouldn't have won, and can see how a few adjustments might be necessary. They're kinda like colossus in that way, except I can actually make them ;P
I never understood why people didn't really use infestors till Patch 1.3.0. In my opinion fungal immobilizing units eight seconds was far more powerful then the version we have today which people use almost like a zerg version of psi storm. Really, how was the deathball ever a problem for zerg when they had a unit like the infestor? Fungal the stalkers, neural parasite colossus, kill everything with colossus while other units are stuck/trying to get past stalkers to get at infestors, then clean up the rest.
The bio ball? Fungal marines, banelings easily kill everything while they are frozen for eight seconds.
Army marching towards you? Stall them with fungal after fungal while you build up your forces.
Eight seconds of not being able to move is a extremely long time during battle.
They should just make fungal act like SC1 ensnare - slows unit movement (not freezes units) and slowly drains a little bit of health.
Also, infested terrans need to be toned down. Having the ability to essentially throw out 50 marines for just energy...too strong...
The problem with the infestor right now is that it can literally fit every role in the game as just one super unit. Infested terrans can kill base infrastructure; fungals can kill clumps of units; neural can tactically counter collosus/mech; and burrow gives infestors great survivability and use.
Hell, the infestor can even counter cloaked units with fungal growths...so basically, the infestor has a use for literally everything in the game...to the extreme that the infestor in large enough numbers can even counter ghosts and templar....which are meant to be able to handle infestors...and the problem that a lot of people do not understand about this is that while T/P do need to utilize ghosts/templar to handle infestors...T/P do not get any use out of ONLY massing ghosts/templar whereas a Z player that continually masses infestors (with lings) keeps getting value from more and more infestors due to energy accumulation allowing for mass infested terrans/fungals...hope that makes sense.
It's just too good - no unit in any RTS should be able to do anything and everything. Ghosts and Templars are great, but they have specific niche uses. Storm is great aoe, and feedback can drain energy but you'll never see templars going around also destroying entire base infrastructre's on top of their niche use.
Ghosts can emp and drain some shields, but their main use is to drain templar energy, and they have extended use with tactical nukes. But all of that requires physical mineral/vespene resource expenditure, not just pure energy. Also cloak runs out, unlike burrow.
I am just giving examples of T/P spellcasters because they have a role, and they cannot do everything in the game by themselves like infestores can potentially do right now, and then you add in broodlords...way too strong, and it has been like this for months...you can also even argue that planning tactical nukes/army positioning and using psi storm takes infinitely more skill and precision than simply ensnaring a group of units that will get ganked 100% by fungal growth and follow-up units.
From a spectator point of view, there's also no "uncertainty" that creates tension. With storm, nukes, feedback, emps there is the "omg will he avoid this, omg is he positioning this correctly, omg omg" effect. With fungal, it's "oh he fungalled that and everything is going to die guaranteed." Things can escape and there is opportunity on both sides to show off micromanagement with ghosts/templar, with infestors...not so much.
The new patch notes also will not change anything to how strong infestor/broodlord is right now.
It's amazing how Idra brings up DongRaegu failing vs Huk as an evidence that Protoss race and Protoss players are retarded.
And his argument is that Protoss players aren't good. I remember him playing protoss. If it is such an easy retarded race, he can show it. Like, try even random like TLO did. Or ask TLO really.
PS Also, it's shocking to see how much PainUser sucks up to Idra. I mean, come on.
As for Infestors, I like that unit. This game has very few special units, and its one of them. Keep it.
Yes, Protoss can complain that High Templars have no amulet, while infestors have its equivalent. But that's not Infestors being OP or bad, but Blizzard making Protoss weak.
I think in general its dumb to have spell casters just do damage. As many people have said before casters should be used sparingly and it particular situations where you can maximize their utility. The infestor is the opposite of it, and zergs just build as many as they can, and can kill infinity marines by just spamming f.
Without upgrades, it can take 7 shots from a stalker, 5 shots from a marauder, 4 shots from a mobile tank, 2 shots from a siege tank, 10 ticks of the void ray's laser (starting from 0 charge), and three hits from an Ultralisk. - from the OP
i dont play the game, but any sc1 land unit spell casters die ten times faster and so they should in its sequel.
after reading that statistic on how much shots fire they can take, i was laughing a little because when i see some events streamed, i see hordes of infestors in zerg army, now i know why they have so many haha. next thing will be x2 infestor can mutate into infested ultralisk and cast psionic storms.
ive seen a few good points in this thread, one is that it is an everything in one unit even a detector with fungal.
All the protoss saying their deathball is no longer effective, you're wrong. A lot of protoss die to zerg, but they're still trying to make all kinds of allins/coinflips work. There are so many series where the protoss loses because he did a dumb build 2/3 times, but 1 game he played turtley and rolls the zerg and then complains that his race sucks.
I think infestors are fine. They actually make players do something. It's the only unit zerg has that basically says
"hey, I'm getting this unit, you HAVE to get a unit to deal with it"
much like colossus does for protoss or ghosts do for Terran.
Terrans and protoss both have tools for dealing with infestors (ghosts and templar). I find all the imbalance talk so hypocritical after months of zergs dropping dead left and right to protoss and having to hear about how their units were fine and we needed to play better. Now that we have a way to deal we have to hear about how it needs to go back to the way it was.
I like the infestor. I think it's a fun unit that has advantages and disadvantages, but I still think it has plenty of vulnerability (take ghost mech for example)
I am deeply concerned by the alarming number of comments in this thread that say the infestor is too good because it is a safe core unit that is useful in just about every situation and has only counters that require good micro.
There is a unit called the siege tank that fires a shot with mass AoE damage at 13 range over and over and is completely safe to get every single game, but that is okay. Just like how lurkers were okay and reavers were okay and colossi are apparently okay as well (though they could be argued not as safe). Zerg actually having a reliable ranged unit is a necessity, as is having units that force the other player to actually react.
Zerg currently has literally zero other units that perform adequate anti-air duties in the late-game and you'd be kidding yourself to say otherwise. Void Rays shred corruptors and mutalisks once there are a decent number fielded, and hydralisks cannot even get in range before they are killed. Vikings, Thors and marines counter all Zerg anti-air options except for infestors as well.
I'm of the opinion that nerfing Fungal Growth's damage will serve absolutely no purpose in the current metagame except to bring about the return of Protoss turtling into void ray/colossus builds, due to the damage to Zerg's anti-air and anti-ball abilities. The midgame of ZvP will be almost completely unchanged--infestor/ling will still completely control the map against the same styles simply because it can kill sentries and overpower what's left. Its ability to stop blink play is also completely unchanged. Infested Terran is the truly overpowered spell in the matchup because there is a window where it lets you create two armies which are both stronger than everything Protoss has combined without his sentries, at two different locations, thus getting an extremely easy Nexus kill while expanding.
Infested Terran is also the overpowered spell in ZvZ, and it really has absolutely no counter except to try to catch the infestors while losing a base, which is extremely hard to do since the spell is fairly long-range and fire-and-forget.
ZvT you could argue that fungal is too good against Vikings, but the idea that fungal is somehow too good against infantry is ludicrous since it's supposed to be Zerg's strongest counter to them. Using ghosts and bigger, more supply-efficient units in the late-game (the ghost/mech composition, regardless of your route to it) already works and Zerg actually doesn't even have an answer for it to my knowledge short of winning the game before it's up.
FACT #1: Fungal Growth does much less damage than storm yet costs the same amount of energy FACT#2: (Regarding the argument of Fungal Growth revealing cloaked units) EMP also does this FACT#3 Neural Parasite cannot be casted on a cloaked unit, instead fungal must be casted and then later neural parasite for a total energy drain of 175. This massive energy drain in most cases is worth the price of losing a banshee/dt etc... FACT#4 Infestors are slow and easy for many units to snipe FACT#5 Infestors have a VERY long build time
BROOD WAR FACT MIND CONTROL from dark archons was effectively PERMANENT neural parasite...and yet we are still complaining about neural parasite being OP'ed
WATCH GSL AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF PLAY...THESE 3 UNITS INFESTOR/GHOST/HT ALL TEND TO DO A LITTLE DANCE AROUND THE ARMIES AS THE JAB AROUND FOR POSITIONING PRIOR TO ENGAGEMENTS....EMP'S ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO GET OFF, FEEDBACKS ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO GO DOWN, & INFESTORS ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO FUNGAL OR NEURAL
WHEN THE PROS DO IT THE PSIONIC UNITS ACTUALLY BATTLE FIRST PRIOR TO THE "MEAT" UNITS COLLIDING....AND THE WINNER OF THE PSIONIC UNIT BATTLE IS USUALLY THE RESULT OF THE MAIN ARMY CLASH AS WELL
On August 28 2011 16:47 NITTYOLDMAN wrote: IM JUST STATING FACTS IN DEFENSE OF THE INFESTOR:
FACT #1: Fungal Growth does much less damage than storm yet costs the same amount of energy FACT#2: (Regarding the argument of Fungal Growth revealing cloaked units) EMP also does this FACT#3 Neural Parasite cannot be casted on a cloaked unit, instead fungal must be casted and then later neural parasite for a total energy drain of 175. This massive energy drain in most cases is worth the price of losing a banshee/dt etc... FACT#4 Infestors are slow and easy for many units to snipe FACT#5 Infestors have a VERY long build time
BROOD WAR FACT MIND CONTROL from dark archons was effectively PERMANENT neural parasite...and yet we are still complaining about neural parasite being OP'ed
Fact #1 - You can't move on army away from fungal after it's been cast. Fact #2 - Emp doesn't freeze units or do damage to anything zerg besides drain energy Fact #3 - not sure where this one is going... you can just fungal and kill said dt/banshee with a queen or zerglings or w/e Fact #4 - Templar are slower than infestors (1.88 for HT vs 2.0 for Infestors off creep) and don't get a movement bonus for being on creep. Fact #5 - Templar have 45 sec cool down time compared to 50 sec infestro build time.. not that much
Fact #6 - this isn't brood war.
EDIT: Fact #7 - HT also have a delay before storm hits, and storm damages friendly units (infestors don't have any of these problems) Fact #8 - Storm has a smaller radius than fungal (1.5 vs 2.0)
Really though, i think infestors are fine (in PvZ, idk much about TvZ matchup), its the protoss midgame that needs work. Relying on a gas heavy support unit that has very little DPS (sentry) is severely limiting. Yeah, you can turtle turtle turtle and cannon the shit out of everything until you get deathball and upgrades but that approach is boring and bad for e-sports.
Plus if zerg sees protoss is playing turtle style they can just macro up and have a 200/200 army before protoss gets late-game worthy economy/production capabilites. (see huk v DRG)
Protoss creativity in the mid game gets punished because it always sucks.
Fungal = Ok, especially after the next patch nerf assuming it will not be removed. Neural parasite = At some situations very powerful, but it is hard to say whether it is OP or not. Infested terran = Ridiculous. 4 infestor hit squads can wipe out entire bases with just infested terrans. They just have too much DPS I think.
It's not to powerful why the hell are people whining. Both ghosts and HT's hard counter infestors. But infestor is kind of a semi-soft counter to them both because of fungal. But it's a micro war more or less and if the zerg wins it's not the unit that is op because of fungal. It's because the terran didn't get a EMP of or did bad positioning.
It's the same tech as the other spellcasters and 50 minerals more than an HT.
It's amazing how Idra brings up DongRaegu failing vs Huk as an evidence that Protoss race and Protoss players are retarded.
And his argument is that Protoss players aren't good. I remember him playing protoss. If it is such an easy retarded race, he can show it. Like, try even random like TLO did. Or ask TLO really.
PS Also, it's shocking to see how much PainUser sucks up to Idra. I mean, come on.
That was shocking, and by shocking i mean really fucking stupid. Every competent zerg SMASHES protoss in a long macro game, that turtle style doesn't work. It only works against bad zergs or against zerg that have no clue how to deal with it (idra for instance).
Poor Geoff, i would have raged so hard at the ignorance and stupidity thrown directly at your face.
It's amazing how Idra brings up DongRaegu failing vs Huk as an evidence that Protoss race and Protoss players are retarded.
And his argument is that Protoss players aren't good. I remember him playing protoss. If it is such an easy retarded race, he can show it. Like, try even random like TLO did. Or ask TLO really.
PS Also, it's shocking to see how much PainUser sucks up to Idra. I mean, come on.
That was shocking, and by shocking i mean really fucking stupid. Every competent zerg SMASHES protoss in a long macro game, that turtle style doesn't work. It only works against bad zergs or against zerg that have no clue how to deal with it (idra for instance).
Poor Geoff, i would have raged so hard at the ignorance and stupidity thrown directly at your face.
How are you supposed to attack a protoss thats on 3 base on taldarim? We all know that when a protoss gets 4 base vs zerg. Zerg is fucked. On taldarim you can simcity soo well and get away with a third by just putting two cannons and three gateways at the main entrance.
On August 28 2011 18:45 Olsson wrote: It's not to powerful why the hell are people whining. Both ghosts and HT's hard counter infestors. But infestor is kind of a semi-soft counter to them both because of fungal. But it's a micro war more or less and if the zerg wins it's not the unit that is op because of fungal. It's because the terran didn't get a EMP of or did bad positioning.
It's the same tech as the other spellcasters and 50 minerals more than an HT.
I agree, at the hands of GOOD infestor users like Destiny, he can make them look OP. But I have barely seen any OTHER progamer that actually have the whole army centred around the infestors. How many progamers do that ling/infestors timing attack? As far as I know, none.
I think Ghost is an even stronger unit, snipe pretty much kills all tier 3 zerg's units extremely well yet not a lot of zerg complained, why? because a lot of terran don't get huge amount of ghost against zerg.
Against terrans zerg players go with muta/ling/bling anyway. On big maps, it's enough to win, they very often doesn't even get the infestation pit and a-move all the time (IdrA). So I don't really see any excuse why should infestors be so OP.
That Inside the Game clip is extremely painful to listen to - just everyone's opinion during that debate...ow. I'm definitely no where near the highest level of play, but I can't believe some of the arguments and anecdotal evidence (even after "statistics") that were being brought up.
The infestor is strong, but honestly its exciting to me that we may soon see some really crazy spellcaster dynamics between all races now that Zergs have finally learned to abuse how strong the infestor is.
What we're really supposed to be talking about is Ghosts. So versatible, nuke harrasment so hard to deal with and so good, EMP very versatile and snipe beats all zerg T3 units.
Infestor is like colossus that has potential to be much more effective in hands of better player and much less effective in hands of worse player, which is great design wise. It's also similar to colossus in other way - you must counter it. Just like you get vikings/corruptors/NP, you need to get High Templar/Ghost/ or well controlled blink stalker/phenix.
With current skill level of top players, it doesn't seem to be OP, and small nerf in 1.4 will certainly help to keep it that way.
On August 28 2011 20:20 Rebel_lion wrote: I do not get this whining... In my eyes the defiler was way better. Lets do a straight swap, i'd be happy with that.
On August 28 2011 20:20 Rebel_lion wrote: I do not get this whining... In my eyes the defiler was way better. Lets do a straight swap, i'd be happy with that.
100% agree as well.
Considering they are the only true spellcaster unit Zerg has, of course they are good. Zerg is pretty lacking on spell abilities to be used in battle tbh, considering all the other spells are so situational.
On August 28 2011 20:32 Asmodeusz wrote: Infestor is like colossus that has potential to be much more effective in hands of better player and much less effective in hands of worse player, which is great design wise.
I disagree... Colossus doesn't need skill at all, and is countered easily (viking, corru...). Infestors are not hardcounter'd like that
I played a zvp a couple days ago, and we had a climactic fight somewhere around the half hour mark where I mind controlled 5 out of his 6 colossi. Thing is, they weren't really colossi. They were hallucinations. FML.
On August 28 2011 20:32 Asmodeusz wrote: Infestor is like colossus that has potential to be much more effective in hands of better player and much less effective in hands of worse player, which is great design wise.
I disagree... Colossus doesn't need skill at all, and is countered easily (viking, corru...). Infestors are not hardcounter'd like that
Corruptors to counter colossus are much more of an investment compared to what protoss can add to your army to counter infestors (assuming good micro) as well as forcing a tech path that you can plan ahead of time to counter
On August 28 2011 20:32 Asmodeusz wrote: Infestor is like colossus that has potential to be much more effective in hands of better player and much less effective in hands of worse player, which is great design wise.
I disagree... Colossus doesn't need skill at all, and is countered easily (viking, corru...). Infestors are not hardcounter'd like that
Indeed. One feedback and they're dead. The counter to infestor is good positionning and micro. If you let your units clump, they die.
On August 28 2011 20:32 Asmodeusz wrote: Infestor is like colossus that has potential to be much more effective in hands of better player and much less effective in hands of worse player, which is great design wise.
I disagree... Colossus doesn't need skill at all, and is countered easily (viking, corru...). Infestors are not hardcounter'd like that
Indeed. One feedback and they're dead. The counter to infestor is good positionning and micro. If you let your units clump, they die.
On August 28 2011 20:07 shindigs wrote: That Inside the Game clip is extremely painful to listen to - just everyone's opinion during that debate...ow. I'm definitely no where near the highest level of play, but I can't believe some of the arguments and anecdotal evidence (even after "statistics") that were being brought up.
The infestor is strong, but honestly its exciting to me that we may soon see some really crazy spellcaster dynamics between all races now that Zergs have finally learned to abuse how strong the infestor is.
I agree with these two observations.
Not, to the OP. "Honest opinion?" = First paragraph you make it sound like the Infestor is super hard to kill because your examples are shallow and out of context.
Second, you leave out the actual units that rape the Infestor and should be used in battle when Infestors are on the battlefield. Like Ghost = 1 EMP at least 1 Infestor is useless while the Ghost will still do damage. Like HT which can Feedback 1 or 2 Infestor or 1 Feedback + 1 Storm and/or can morph afterwards into half of an Archon, which is quite the damage dealer and tanker.
But even this addition is too little and even your nice OP is shallow. Because you need to analyze how is used and what damage does per context, not list the abilities. I mean, I can read wiki.teamliquid for Infestor...
Example. 1. Backstab.
When the zerg gets Infestors into your base or mineral line. Well.. the Terran has Sensor Towers to know when it comes. It also has ghosts to EMP. What about a ghost in base? Or other units. So the Terran can deal with this. Also, if you have 2 Infestors in an OV, that's 300+300 cost which is quite some. And 4 Infestor (500+600) are a huge risk. The toss has Blink Stalkers and HT to guard, pretty much like vs Terran.
Drop for Terran into Zerg base is known to do way more damage. Marines or Hellion, it doesn't matter. If you look at the pro games, how many times the Infestor backstab or Baneling bombs do damage as drops from Terran? But yeah, Theoretical Infestor Backstab is sooo frightening atm.
Toss lacks in this area but hopefully because they think Warp Prism is made of paper (but think about taking and empty wp or with 1 ht by the edges of the map and then warp units in). We'll see if the new pach goes through. But I think that even with the current Warp Prism, Toss has similar harass potential. Because a couple warped in DTs or 4 warped in speed lots rape a base when units are not near. So the zerg would have to have Infestor or something in the base, pretty much like the Toss or Terran need to have something there to handle backstabs.
To summarize. All races have potential to do decent drop harass (maybe Toss will equalize with new Warp Prism if is not there already). All races have ways to deal with this harass. It comes down to skill and preparedness.
So this is how examples should be honestly given. I don't use Infestors too much but until they become standard in pro games so we can see their potential and ways to use and deal with, I think we have still have to research...
I dont see how anyone can claim they're op when their damage can only be chained, not stacked. This means that coll and siege tanks still have more dps. Not to mention they're hard counterable by good ghost or HT micro.
On August 28 2011 21:20 BigJoe wrote: What if FG did 0 dmg and was only used to hold together clumped units? Would like to see what kind of change in play this would bring for zerg.
The change would be that Zerg would have 10% win ratio.
On August 25 2011 20:15 SEA_GenesiS wrote: Im curious, a lot of people complain about the infestors.
But why didn't they complain about Plague in SC:BW? Or was there a period where so many people complained about it, similar to the infestors? Wasn't that stronger?
Defilers weren't really massed as a single unit. They were support. So didn't matter if you had 20 defilers plaguing around you couldn't kill anything without having support around them. It also didn't lock units in place so they could just retreat. Science Vessels were great too
Defilers weren't massed because they had infinite energy thanks to consume. If they could only cast dark swarm or plague once every 3 minutes, then they would be massed more. A single defiler is stronger than 20 infestors ever will be. Defiler completely nullified a Terran without vessels going bio, and considering some Terrans don't even bother with ghosts to defeat infestors, it seems clear that the infestor doesn't really make ZvT imbalanced at all. People complain about 4 infestors with energy taking down a nexus, but can you imagine 12 zerglings and 1 defiler taking down a nexus with 12 cannons surrounding it? It took around 5 seconds for that nexus to die which meant you NEEDED AOE defence which wasn't static. OMG SHOCK HORROR YOU CAN'T MAKE 1 BALL AND A MOVE. The most powerful Protoss unit - the reaver- was used to defend these bases, because zerglings were too strong vs nexi.
1. Defilers get insta gibbed by irradiate science vessels, and really doesn't help that much against mass speedlot toss 2. Any half decent Terran will just you know, move out of dark swarm, unless he is dumb enough to let you waltz up to his place with a defiler (which can't move while burrowed). 3. A defiler is TIER 3, consume and plague both need to be researched. 4. There is little to synergy between defiler and guardians, where as in SC2, infestor + blords are just stupid as fuck.
The thing I don't like about infestors is that they are a good counter to EVERYTHING. what are they bad against, really? ghosts/templar? infestors can still fungal groups of them or even mind control and then emp/feedback/storm the other ghosts/templars. I think in one of the MLG games some one basically rushed to infestors on two base on taldarim and pwned the other player (protoss), who was also on two base, with mass lings (mineral dump) and infestors (gas dump).
On August 28 2011 23:02 thisisSSK wrote: The thing I don't like about infestors is that they are a good counter to EVERYTHING. what are they bad against, really? ghosts/templar? infestors can still fungal groups of them or even mind control and then emp/feedback/storm the other ghosts/templars. I think in one of the MLG games some one basically rushed to infestors on two base on taldarim and pwned the other player (protoss), who was also on two base, with mass lings (mineral dump) and infestors (gas dump).
Coca against Huk.
But i feel the same, you can never have enough infestors. Theres no reason not to have 15 infestors, they are good against anything.
They are good against balls, against harass, against air, they themselves can harass, they can snipe expansions on their own.
You won't get a better army if you have 15 Hts or 5 with Mana. But you're army will be infinitely better with 15 Infestors than 5.
I think infestors were balanced before their buff, but zerg players just aren't good enough to do seomething else than a-move with ling/bling/muta and this is why infestor play wasn't popular. Even now most of the zerg players stick with a-move ling/bling/muta against terran. Starting with IdrA. Zerg doesn't need any buffs. They have just too poor micro to use their units properly. All they focus on is macro and I don't blame them - it is primary source of win in sc2. But their units were fine before the infestor buff.
So I think It's just all about the flavour of the season. For example:
Hellions wasn't popular until blizzard buffed their icon to blue (seriously). And suddenly people realised it was a good unit. Immedietly after BF hellions became popular they get nerfed to being useless. Now nobody will spend 150/150 for a useless upgrade that does nothing. You won't even kill workers in 2-shots so why would you upgrade it anyway.
I think if blizzard wants to make all fun terran units useless they should just remove them. I'd trade reapers and hellions for vultures with spider-mines any time.
i honestly think only zergs should be allowed to post in this thread. but that wont be possible. there should be a race selection detection feature on threads like this, not this one, but threads like it. and yeah that would be interesting. but how honest would people be and not change their race to zerg just to flame...
I agree wishbones, people don't understand a lot of woes of other races until they actually play through a lot of these scenarios to understand different frustrations. The same can (and should) be said for players of all three races, in my opinion.
On August 29 2011 01:07 Aiurr wrote: Hellions wasn't popular until blizzard buffed their icon to blue (seriously). And suddenly people realised it was a good unit. Immedietly after BF hellions became popular they get nerfed to being useless. Now nobody will spend 150/150 for a useless upgrade that does nothing. You won't even kill workers in 2-shots so why would you upgrade it anyway.
Separate thing altogether, but it was just a coincidence that the icon was changed near the same time the shift in the metagame happened. I know that Nada and other top Korean Terrans had been well into a shift into mech in TvT before that, and as far as I understand, that's where hellion use started to get more popular in all matchups shortly afterward from.
On August 28 2011 23:02 thisisSSK wrote: The thing I don't like about infestors is that they are a good counter to EVERYTHING. what are they bad against, really? ghosts/templar? infestors can still fungal groups of them or even mind control and then emp/feedback/storm the other ghosts/templars. I think in one of the MLG games some one basically rushed to infestors on two base on taldarim and pwned the other player (protoss), who was also on two base, with mass lings (mineral dump) and infestors (gas dump).
I don't understand your point. Basically you said, "I saw a game where a zerg used infestors and totally killed the protoss, obviously infestors are OP." What? You gave so little context or detail, I have no idea what you think is wrong with infestors.
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Not to mention feedback can actually be map-clicked, essentially bringing it down to an auto-cast.
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Feedback has 9, as Fungal. But Fungal has AOE, so effectively higher.
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Not to mention feedback can actually be map-clicked, essentially bringing it down to an auto-cast.
It's not reliable, because you have to hit pixel perfect. Clicking on the model is easier.
The problem with infestors is that they are the answer to everything.
Worker harass? Fungal growth + infested terrans
Lots of units balled up? Fungal growth
High tier units that threaten to kill everything you have? Neural parasite
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves
WTF is this? terrans whining about zerg units being op? wtf so hows ZvT working in late game brofester is zergs maingoal cause its most powerful army zerg can have EFFING GHOSTS COUNTERS BOTH THOSE UNITS snipe is fucking op cause all high tear units of zergs are armoured (ultra infestor broodlord) and snipe simply ignores armour so why dont you use that against t3 and infestor? Emp is even better than feedback cause its aoe and it makes ALL INFESTORS USELESS especially cause infestors clump up no matter who hard you try
Ghosts are invisible so you can sneak in and eliminate all infestors before engaging .. why is nobody complaining about this? HERP DERP infestor kill all my marines herp derp of course they do cause they are meant to do so now that terrans figured out that banelings are countered by marine micro they cant accept a unit to exist that is good against marines so sad
The problem with infestors is that they are the answer to everything.
Worker harass? Fungal growth + infested terrans
Lots of units balled up? Fungal growth
High tier units that threaten to kill everything you have? Neural parasite
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves
WTF is this? terrans whining about zerg units being op? wtf so hows ZvT working in late game brofester is zergs maingoal cause its most powerful army zerg can have EFFING GHOSTS COUNTERS BOTH THOSE UNITS snipe is fucking op cause all high tear units of zergs are armoured (ultra infestor broodlord) and snipe simply ignores armour so why dont you use that against t3 and infestor? Emp is even better than feedback cause its aoe and it makes ALL INFESTORS USELESS especially cause infestors clump up no matter who hard you try
Ghosts are invisible so you can sneak in and eliminate all infestors before engaging .. why is nobody complaining about this? HERP DERP infestor kill all my marines herp derp of course they do cause they are meant to do so now that terrans figured out that banelings are countered by marine micro they cant accept a unit to exist that is good against marines so sad
On August 28 2011 16:47 NITTYOLDMAN wrote: IM JUST STATING FACTS IN DEFENSE OF THE INFESTOR:
FACT #1: Fungal Growth does much less damage than storm yet costs the same amount of energy FACT#2: (Regarding the argument of Fungal Growth revealing cloaked units) EMP also does this FACT#3 Neural Parasite cannot be casted on a cloaked unit, instead fungal must be casted and then later neural parasite for a total energy drain of 175. This massive energy drain in most cases is worth the price of losing a banshee/dt etc... FACT#4 Infestors are slow and easy for many units to snipe FACT#5 Infestors have a VERY long build time
BROOD WAR FACT MIND CONTROL from dark archons was effectively PERMANENT neural parasite...and yet we are still complaining about neural parasite being OP'ed
Are you seriously comparing a dark archon's mind control to an infestor's neural parasite? Holy shit.
That's like saying BROOD WAR FACT: marine stim doubled their damage output. omfg buff stim!1!1! No, BW and sc2 are different games, stop being an idiot.
also:
1. fungal stun/reveal/doesn't need to be teched to/comes out earlier 2. Emp does not lock units in place so they can't run away after being revealed. 3. Why does this matter at all? Actually I love sending single cloaked banshees to pick off a zerg's infestors late game. Unfortunately the energy they lose doesn't mean a thing when they have 15 infestors. I only still do it because they have to use 2 fungals + IT to kill it usually, meaning that I can usually push a bit further/have my drop do more damage. 4. HT's are slower and creep bonus is pretty good 5. You can also essentially build as many as you would like at the same time
On August 28 2011 19:11 Olsson wrote:
How are you supposed to attack a protoss thats on 3 base on taldarim? We all know that when a protoss gets 4 base vs zerg. Zerg is fucked. On taldarim you can simcity soo well and get away with a third by just putting two cannons and three gateways at the main entrance.
I think that zerg can play a game against a 4 base protoss ezpz. Banelings are pretty damn good. Infact, I know some zergs with like 90% wlr on ladder against protosses that don't even need to use infestors to win.
I really do hate using destiny as an example, but I think people can tell you that he's gone for 2 base broodlord infestor and won against 3-4 base protoss players. Can you imagine the outcry from zerg players like idra if protoss could have created their deathball (while having a great harass option with infestor drops/burrowed infestors) on 2 base instead of 3?
And it's not like feedbacking infestors is the only thing that protoss have to do to win a fight, while I would argue that zergs can essentially a click their army, then just focus on fungaling/neuraling units. The problem is that if protoss misses feedbacks on neural parasiting infestors, they essentially cannot do anything about it unless the infestor had 190+ energy.
Also, unless protoss is specifically preparing for an infestor opening (quick obs -> templar tech) on tal darim, it's not too hard for zerg to just lob 50 infested terrans into one of the protoss bases.
I will admit that Terran is a lot better at dealing with infestors though.
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Not to mention feedback can actually be map-clicked, essentially bringing it down to an auto-cast.
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Please check your facts before you make you make claims. When I offrace zerg I get neural's off on spell casters surprisingly often. Actually iirc, if an infestor neurals a ghost and the ghost emps it at the same time the infestor will get the neural off (so if the ghost has over 150 energy then he can emp his friends).
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
From Liquipedia: Fungal Growth: range 9, radius 2 Feedback: range 9, radius 0 EMP: range 10, radius 2
Fungal has a larger effective range than feedback, shorter than EMP though.
The big problem I see with fungal is the chainability of it. As was seen on Saturday in MLG, Haypro vs Tyler and in a TvZ (can't remember the players, sorry), chain fungals took down a huge pack of phoenixes and vikings, completely turning the tides of the battle. Once you get your units fungal'd there is absolutely nothing realistic that can be done to save them. No other spell in the game does damage + lockdown, it's just an incredible combination. And now with double DPS, it happens so fast.
And, as has been mentioned before, infestors are the answer to everything. Between fungal, infested marine, and neural, they're such a powerful unit. Burrowed movement also makes them super sneaky and tough to kill.
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Feedback has 9, as Fungal. But Fungal has AOE, so effectively higher.
Sorry for the misinformation then, was sure it was longer. Anyways to further get my point out ot Blyadischa feedback insta-kills an infestor above 90 energy meanwhile you have to chain fungals to kill HTs. None of the casters are better than others they have different roles.
Edit : Even as a zerg player myself I believe the infestor should stay as it is but fungal should be changed to slow down units instead of freezing them.
But i feel the same, you can never have enough infestors. Theres no reason not to have 15 infestors, they are good against anything.
They are good against balls, against harass, against air, they themselves can harass, they can snipe expansions on their own.
You won't get a better army if you have 15 Hts or 5 with Mana. But you're army will be infinitely better with 15 Infestors than 5.
i agree they aren't good against everything though. Banshees when cloaked have a high chance to get over the infestors and if there is no other anti air then the infestor, you will snipe atleast one infestor, and they eat tons of fungals. I generall use 4 banshees flying in from several directions poken infestors. at my level 2 banshees would probably be enough to whipe the floor with the zerg going ling infestor. Also bunkers do good work against them. Another thing is that if the zerg has to much infestors they can't protect them against single unit run ins. And sieged tanks can protect units a range of 2 cells ahead haha. So there are a few things that infestors can't do, but its really micro intensiv. But thats what casters are about. OP if they have energy and the opponent doesn't micro. But if you wear their energy down you have a good chance.
oh and bad example from the person above, every non light non bio unit is untouchable by the ghost (exception the archon), thats why they can cloak and have an normal attack heh. to make them different from the other races casters, even though they are not.
The only problem is how well infestors can chain their fungal growth. If it was an ensnare that did the same amount of damage, it may be more balanced.
On August 29 2011 03:09 Blyadischa wrote: The problem with infestors is that they are the answer to everything.
Worker harass? Fungal growth + infested terrans
Lots of units balled up? Fungal growth
High tier units that threaten to kill everything you have? Neural parasite
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
The problem with ghosts is that they are the answer to everything.
Worker harass? Nukes + snipe + auto attack.
Lots of units balled up? Nuke + emp.
Units to counter ghosts? Only HT's.
Nuke cost hella money and research and time to land when you have warning. All you need to counter ghost is one single canon. While you just need to burrow infestors, throw in 50 infestors, right click the nexus and run for free.
Well apart from the immobilize which can be easily chained--which kills micro which I enjoy to watch--the fact that you can amass a million infestors unlike you can with their counterparts seems to be a big problem. Maybe they should up the food count infestors take up so if you amass that much your overall army will be smaller.
On August 29 2011 04:22 tuho12345 wrote: Nuke cost hella money and research and time to land when you have warning. All you need to counter ghost is one single canon. While you just need to burrow infestors, throw in 50 infestors, right click the nexus and run for free.
Hella money? 100/100. The same as 2 reapers.
If you can counter a Ghost build with just 1 cannon ('canon'), why do you not have any GSL titles under your belt?
If Infestors could throw more Infestors the game would be so much more fun.
Every unit has a counter ... except marines herpderp =D i mean ... if course you get roflstomped by infestor if you have no ghosts and only marine and of course you loose against infestor if you go only blinkstalker and lings can surround you. But seriously guys. Thats the same with EEEEEVERY other unit in the game
i cant go mass hydra against colossi i cant go roach against void ray
i cant go mass stalker versus siegetanks i cant go zealot against shock marauder
i cant go banshe against muta AND I CANT GO MASS MARINES AGAINST INFESTOR ... well actually you can go mass marine against banelings herp derp
So if you dont counter a unit your absolutly F*cked. Dont Complain. Learn to Play
On August 29 2011 03:09 Blyadischa wrote: The problem with infestors is that they are the answer to everything.
Worker harass? Fungal growth + infested terrans
Lots of units balled up? Fungal growth
High tier units that threaten to kill everything you have? Neural parasite
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
The problem with ghosts is that they are the answer to everything.
Worker harass? Nukes + snipe + auto attack.
Lots of units balled up? Nuke + emp.
Units to counter ghosts? Only HT's.
Nukes are so easily countered, all you have to do is build detection and static defense, and if you don't, then just pull drones.
Detection + static defense or not, a good amount of infestors and take out bases in <10 seconds. Nukes cost money, and it takes 4 of them, 20 seconds to land to kill a nexus, cc or hatch.
EMP only does damage (not even lethal damage) vs bunched up units in TvP, not TvZ, if you're bunching up infestors vs a T you're bad. Also, ghosts are specific counters with a high cost, too many or too little and you're going to get stomped either way.
How do you counter ghosts? Don't bunch up your infestors, and don't engage until you're ready. Ghosts get jammed up hard if you just run tons of lings in, or use brood lords. After that your infestors can just fungal/NP everything.
On August 29 2011 03:09 Blyadischa wrote: The problem with infestors is that they are the answer to everything.
Worker harass? Fungal growth + infested terrans
Lots of units balled up? Fungal growth
High tier units that threaten to kill everything you have? Neural parasite
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
The problem with ghosts is that they are the answer to everything.
Worker harass? Nukes + snipe + auto attack.
Lots of units balled up? Nuke + emp.
Units to counter ghosts? Only HT's.
Nukes are so easily countered, all you have to do is build detection and static defense, and if you don't, then just pull drones.
Detection + static defense or not, a good amount of infestors and take out bases in <10 seconds. Nukes cost money, and it takes 4 of them, 20 seconds to land to kill a nexus, cc or hatch.
EMP only does damage (not even lethal damage) vs bunched up units in TvP, not TvZ, if you're bunching up infestors vs a T you're bad. Also, ghosts are specific counters with a high cost, too many or too little and you're going to get stomped either way.
How do you counter ghosts? Don't bunch up your infestors, and don't engage until you're ready. Ghosts get jammed up hard if you just run tons of lings in, or use brood lords. After that your infestors can just fungal/NP everything.
Stopping mining is good. You think every Zerg has 100 drones so we can drop enough static defense for the amount of extra bases we have to have to keep up with Terran late game? All it takes is one hole in the static defense for the cloaked ghost to sit.
There's a reason Korean Terrans slow move push across maps while building FORWARD MISSILE TURRETS. That lets your tanks see burrowed infestors. But then again, you're probably too stupid to do that too.
Ghosts are specific counters when they counter all of Zerg T3 and Infestors... right...
On August 28 2011 23:02 thisisSSK wrote: The thing I don't like about infestors is that they are a good counter to EVERYTHING. what are they bad against, really? ghosts/templar? infestors can still fungal groups of them or even mind control and then emp/feedback/storm the other ghosts/templars. I think in one of the MLG games some one basically rushed to infestors on two base on taldarim and pwned the other player (protoss), who was also on two base, with mass lings (mineral dump) and infestors (gas dump).
I don't understand your point. Basically you said, "I saw a game where a zerg used infestors and totally killed the protoss, obviously infestors are OP." What? You gave so little context or detail, I have no idea what you think is wrong with infestors.
Do I have to give every situation in which infestors are good for my argument to be valid? I think not. But other examples: infestors> dt's/banshees(sorta) because FG reveals them. imo, if you can get an infestor in the same spot as a bf hellion, the infestor can do more damage, either with infested terrans or fg. Tell me what infestors ARENT good against, or what a direct counter to them is. you can mind control archons/colossi/tanks/thors, which are pretty important in major battles.
On August 28 2011 23:02 thisisSSK wrote: The thing I don't like about infestors is that they are a good counter to EVERYTHING. what are they bad against, really? ghosts/templar? infestors can still fungal groups of them or even mind control and then emp/feedback/storm the other ghosts/templars. I think in one of the MLG games some one basically rushed to infestors on two base on taldarim and pwned the other player (protoss), who was also on two base, with mass lings (mineral dump) and infestors (gas dump).
I don't understand your point. Basically you said, "I saw a game where a zerg used infestors and totally killed the protoss, obviously infestors are OP." What? You gave so little context or detail, I have no idea what you think is wrong with infestors.
Tell me what infestors ARENT good against, or what a direct counter to them is. you can mind control archons/colossi/tanks/thors, which are pretty important in major battles.
HIGH TEMPLAR
GHOSTS
MICRO'D COLOSSUS (WITH ETL COLOSSI AND NP HAVE EQUAL RANGE).
God are you guys dumb?
Toss has a robo out, so he spots ahead with his obs. He sees the exact location the Infestors are coming from (along with main Z army) so he micros his colossi away, and if any colossi get NPed, insta target the infestor with the rest of your colossi or feedback it.
My God, half of you must be in fucking Platinum league or something and keep all your armies on 1.
well as a lowerleague player i know that the infestor is absolut garbage if used inccorrectly or badly thats only comment i have on them in pro level they dont seem inbalanced but when people get better it seems like it might be a tad overtuned
On August 29 2011 04:22 tuho12345 wrote: Nuke cost hella money and research and time to land when you have warning. All you need to counter ghost is one single canon. While you just need to burrow infestors, throw in 50 infestors, right click the nexus and run for free.
Hella money? 100/100. The same as 2 reapers.
If you can counter a Ghost build with just 1 cannon ('canon'), why do you not have any GSL titles under your belt?
If Infestors could throw more Infestors the game would be so much more fun.
we're talking about nuke and ghost harass the mineral not ghost rush into timing attack ok. Who the hell making ghost, research cloak, get nuke, run into expo and harass with nuke and snipe? Read the previous post pls. 1 single cannon can spot the cloaked ghost, snipe it. So I say it can be counter with 1 cannon
On August 29 2011 04:22 tuho12345 wrote: right click the nexus and run for free.
free? ahh apparently energy is free. There are a lot of things you can do to beat infestors. Big Drops / Greedy Expanding / Fortifying the center of the map
On August 28 2011 23:02 thisisSSK wrote: The thing I don't like about infestors is that they are a good counter to EVERYTHING. what are they bad against, really? ghosts/templar? infestors can still fungal groups of them or even mind control and then emp/feedback/storm the other ghosts/templars. I think in one of the MLG games some one basically rushed to infestors on two base on taldarim and pwned the other player (protoss), who was also on two base, with mass lings (mineral dump) and infestors (gas dump).
I don't understand your point. Basically you said, "I saw a game where a zerg used infestors and totally killed the protoss, obviously infestors are OP." What? You gave so little context or detail, I have no idea what you think is wrong with infestors.
Tell me what infestors ARENT good against, or what a direct counter to them is. you can mind control archons/colossi/tanks/thors, which are pretty important in major battles.
HIGH TEMPLAR
GHOSTS
MICRO'D COLOSSUS (WITH ETL COLOSSI AND NP HAVE EQUAL RANGE).
God are you guys dumb?
Toss has a robo out, so he spots ahead with his obs. He sees the exact location the Infestors are coming from (along with main Z army) so he micros his colossi away, and if any colossi get NPed, insta target the infestor with the rest of your colossi or feedback it.
My God, half of you must be in fucking Platinum league or something and keep all your armies on 1.
User was temp banned for this post.
Lol? so I guess you spot every single terran drop with those observers too right? And you never get your observers fungal growthed or just killed with the help of an overseer? Hero just lost to ling infestor, which allowed DRG to tech to broodlords and I'm pretty sure Hero isn't platinum league. He also had archons and templars.
On August 29 2011 04:22 tuho12345 wrote: right click the nexus and run for free.
free? ahh apparently energy is free. There are a lot of things you can do to beat infestors. Big Drops / Greedy Expanding / Fortifying the center of the map
if energy is not free then how much does it cost? Pls don't tell me it's the cost of infestor and energy upgrade.
How is big drops counter to infestor as protoss? How many warprism do you need to drop? How many base should protoss take and die to lings? What does center map control has anything to do with beating infestor? Your answer isn't clarify anything.
I honestly think the abilities themselves are fine, it's just the range on fungal growth (and maybe infested terran?) is a little bit too high. on neural parasite, however, a range shorter than what it is now would make the ability completely useless.
The range on infestor abilities makes it much more forgiving.
Also, one must be careful with storm and EMP because they do damage (or energy damage) to allied units, whereas fungal does not.
i for one would love to see fungal become some sort of movement speed slow / damage over time spell. i would be fine with moving at 20% of my normal speed as long as i can ATTEMPT to escape. the current fungal effect leaves you so ridiculously helpless, and obviously wide open to repeated follow up fungals.
also - while i agree that fungal growth requires some skill and timely placement to achieve the strongest effect -- i do NOT find this to be true with the infested terran. to be honest the infested terran cost / dps seems, to me, just utterly random and yes im gonna say IMBALANCED. a little bit too cheap an energy cost for you to be able to COMPLETELY clear out a probe line / even an expansion in a few seconds. ----- AT THE COST OF ENERGY.
Neural parasite is awesome. aside from MAAAAAYBE its insane range i find nothing wrong with this spell. exactly what the infestor (and the zerg race as a whole) needs to truly combat insane tech units from terran / protoss.
On August 29 2011 01:07 Aiurr wrote: I think infestors were balanced before their buff, but zerg players just aren't good enough to do seomething else than a-move with ling/bling/muta and this is why infestor play wasn't popular. Even now most of the zerg players stick with a-move ling/bling/muta against terran
You think ling/bling/muta works with a-move? If I might offer some advice: next time a thought pops into your head that requires all the pros who choose to play a particular race to be coincidentally shit in the exact same way in order for it to be right, do your best to let it pop right out again.
Imagine for a moment Protoss never made a Colossus. Zerg would be doing a Ling/Roach/Hydra tapdance on the head of any Protoss who didn't win in the first seven minutes. Ling/Roach/Hydra would be the 'Zerg deathball' in ZvP. Then Protoss starts adding some Colossus to their armies, and all of a sudden the 'Zerg deathball' is being chewed up and spat out with close to zero Protoss casualties. Holy shit, them Colossus must be imba!
No. It just does not work like that. It's fine for an army to be a 'deathball' against one unit composition and to fall apart versus another. It's fine for heavy infestor play to force you to dust off those ghosts and work out which end the EMP comes out of, or to build turrets against something other than mutalisks. Or do what I've seen several pro Terrans do against compositions like infestor/broodlord, and exploit the inability of Zerg to split or manoeuvre their army with drops. Or flank with vikings and stim an assassination squad of marines in to prevent the infestors waiting the 12-16 seconds it takes to fungal down the air units.
I've seen lategame Zerg do very well. I've also seen it made to look utterly foolish and useless. Until what I see converges to one or the other I have no reason to attribute the variability to anything other than skill, nerve and experience.
On August 28 2011 18:37 jstar wrote: I think the best way to deal with the Infestor is to make it a T3 unit. Either that or a nerf to NP range. It's range is way too long atm.
Yeah man, the range of NP is rediculous, if only protoss and terran had something with as long a range..., I mean, the only way NP would be worse is if it had splash damage and killed every fucking thing in its way. Oh wait, terran and protoss do have units like that. How silly of me. Oh well, the NP is still OP because it's on zerg, and zerg is supposed to be the shitty race amirite?
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Feedback has 9, as Fungal. But Fungal has AOE, so effectively higher.
Units to counter infestors? Fungal growth or neural parasite and use them to counter themselves.
Please, feedback and emp both have a higher range then fungal, and if you let one of your ghost/templars get NP long enough for the zerg to use it against you, you deserve what happens next.
Not to mention feedback can actually be map-clicked, essentially bringing it down to an auto-cast.
It's not reliable, because you have to hit pixel perfect. Clicking on the model is easier.
It's how I trained myself to use it. And even larva vomits with queens. It works on Infestors cause they're actually large on the map. I was speaking from my own point of view, didn't really consider others'. D:
As a random player I'd say TvP has the same issue as PvZ. If Protoss gets those storms of it might heavily swing the game in their favor, if they get emp'd it's not good but might not loose them the game, atleast not intill teh top lvl. If a zerg gets too chain fungel, NP and spam infested terrans P is in alot of trubble, a lost army against a zerg often means a loss. And if P managae too get those feedbacks and stalker/colossi micro going the game often moves on from there.
If one of them are imbalanced so is the other imo. I find it harder too land good enough emp's vs toss then too micro colossi and feedbacks vs Z tbh, even when they play that Destiny mass infestor style.
On August 29 2011 07:50 Zypher_ wrote: As a random player I'd say TvP has the same issue as PvZ. If Protoss gets those storms of it might heavily swing the game in their favor, if they get emp'd it's not good but might not loose them the game, atleast not intill teh top lvl. If a zerg gets too chain fungel, NP and spam infested terrans P is in alot of trubble, a lost army against a zerg often means a loss. And if P managae too get those feedbacks and stalker/colossi micro going the game often moves on from there.
If one of them are imbalanced so is the other imo. I find it harder too land good enough emp's vs toss then too micro colossi and feedbacks vs Z tbh, even when they play that Destiny mass infestor style.
Edit: Master lvl btw, if that adds any credit.
Lol, if a protoss gets his high templar EMP'd he has definitely lost the game unless he had a massive lead. We see this time and time again where gateway armies without HT support absolutely melt to terran armies which drop a couple supply.
Infestors are just too versatile, I think fungal is fine as is tbh, but infested terrans might be too good (maybe, not sure). That said, having both spells AND neural + burrow move lets the unit do almost everything, and an army of nothing but infestors would be absurdly strong.
Infestors will still be good after the Nerf. I think the reason Ts and Ps are flipping out right now is that they were never used to not being able to attack straight up. Zergs had to learn to weasel and position themselves long time ago, but Infestor hunting is not the Protoss' specialty.
I just don't understand why Toss can't help but morph their HTs into Archons as if they had the plague. Yeah we have lings, but your zealots are just fine. Storm and feedback until kingdom come before morphing those! You get what you deserve if you charge on with Archons.
Phoenixes and HTs are two good counters. The deathball is gone forever though, and it won't be missed.
Infestors are very bizarre, in my honest opinion I feel like they were put in place to fill the spellcaster role that was missing in sc2 zerg...
'Fungal Growth' seems to combine a less fatal version of 'Plague' with a more extreme 'Ensnare' from Brood War. My problem with it, is protoss have sentries and high templar, which are very good in their own right. Terran have Ravens and Ghosts, which are also very very useful. And Zerg have THE infestor which to make up for this is just like an overall amazing spellcaster.
It seems to be in place because Zerg have no way to deal with spellcasters i.e Feedback/EMP. And the only way to give them this is to stop units from moving and doing any abilities. Yet I feel if it made units move at 25% of their actual speed, it would be easier for Zerg to avoid a slow ghost trying to get in range for an EMP. And it would add a slight hint of micro-ability for the other races.
I would have absolutely no problem with it, if it couldn't be chain used keeping your units in the same place, incapable of being recovered.
I think everything will be fixed come HotS, if Fungal did not stop movement and abilities, but slow it. And Zerg could have an ability like Dark Swarm from the first game, which gives the units protection from special abilities but maybe not all attacks.
All Zerg need is a tier free spellcaster. That's all that I think is missing. Zerg late game misses the dynamics of the match ups.
I think the reason people cry imbalance is more to do with how frustrating it feels for your army to just be completely frozen leaving a player incapable of doing anything but watch their microless army get surrounded and destroyed.
On September 06 2011 12:01 silentblob wrote: Infestors are very bizarre, in my honest opinion I feel like they were put in place to fill the spellcaster role that was missing in sc2 zerg...
'Fungal Growth' seems to combine a less fatal version of 'Plague' with a more extreme 'Ensnare' from Brood War. My problem with it, is protoss have sentries and high templar, which are very good in their own right. Terran have Ravens and Ghosts, which are also very very useful. And Zerg have THE infestor which to make up for this is just like an overall amazing spellcaster.
It seems to be in place because Zerg have no way to deal with spellcasters i.e Feedback/EMP. And the only way to give them this is to stop units from moving and doing any abilities. Yet I feel if it made units move at 25% of their actual speed, it would be easier for Zerg to avoid a slow ghost trying to get in range for an EMP. And it would add a slight hint of micro-ability for the other races.
I would have absolutely no problem with it, if it couldn't be chain used keeping your units in the same place, incapable of being recovered.
I think everything will be fixed come HotS, if Fungal did not stop movement and abilities, but slow it. And Zerg could have an ability like Dark Swarm from the first game, which gives the units protection from special abilities but maybe not all attacks.
All Zerg need is a tier free spellcaster. That's all that I think is missing. Zerg late game misses the dynamics of the match ups.
I think the reason people cry imbalance is more to do with how frustrating it feels for your army to just be completely frozen leaving a player incapable of doing anything but watch their microless army get surrounded and destroyed.
You're right about the surrounded part. It's like FF 4 gates were, except slightly worse(I was Zerg at that time and am Terran now).
i remember the queen being an excellent fighter [or at least tank] as well ^^ technically it could be considered the second caster.... maybe, just maybe, we'll be seeing more strats involving (mass) queens and (even) more creep generation in a year or so vOv or perhaps we'll stick them into overlords and go ninja dropping creep tumors all over the map (read: expos) or use them as poor man's medivacs to heal ultras/broodlords.
i certainly don't have the APM for that but such borderline insane gameplay will be needed to make sc2 as watchable as BW's goon dance, drop ship micro etc.
On August 31 2011 13:22 Psychlone wrote: Infestors will still be good after the Nerf. I think the reason Ts and Ps are flipping out right now is that they were never used to not being able to attack straight up. Zergs had to learn to weasel and position themselves long time ago, but Infestor hunting is not the Protoss' specialty.
I just don't understand why Toss can't help but morph their HTs into Archons as if they had the plague. Yeah we have lings, but your zealots are just fine. Storm and feedback until kingdom come before morphing those! You get what you deserve if you charge on with Archons.
Phoenixes and HTs are two good counters. The deathball is gone forever though, and it won't be missed.
infestors outrange feedback. So you have to float your incredibly slow moving HT in front of your army while the zerg can keep in the back.
Imo if they changed infestor range down or feedback up it would make the HT a more viable counter [Terran ghosts dont have that trouble obviously/tanks out range everyone unlike the colosis]
Also if infestors could do friend fire the way storm is zerg wouldnt be able to chain spam fungal as liberally because their zerglings would die to.
A 2 food unit should not be able to spawn 8 stimmed marines. 4 casters should not be able to kill a base in a few seconds flat unless its Ghosts nuking simultaneously.
On August 29 2011 07:50 Zypher_ wrote: As a random player I'd say TvP has the same issue as PvZ. If Protoss gets those storms of it might heavily swing the game in their favor, if they get emp'd it's not good but might not loose them the game, atleast not intill teh top lvl. If a zerg gets too chain fungel, NP and spam infested terrans P is in alot of trubble, a lost army against a zerg often means a loss. And if P managae too get those feedbacks and stalker/colossi micro going the game often moves on from there.
If one of them are imbalanced so is the other imo. I find it harder too land good enough emp's vs toss then too micro colossi and feedbacks vs Z tbh, even when they play that Destiny mass infestor style.
Edit: Master lvl btw, if that adds any credit.
You know, that has me thinking - Maybe it's not that infestors are too good, but that High Templar might too shitty at handling them (probably in the movespeed department) - When I watch high level games, HT vs Ghost and HT vs Infestor matchups almost always end poorly for the Protoss. The problem seems to be in how Feedback needs to be used - you almost always have to send the HT forward, and it's SO SLOW that even if you get your feedback off, you're probably going to lose the HT, losing the same amount of gas as your opponent (not an ideal prospect vs zerg, who likely has more bases than you.) And that's supposed to be the "correct" way to use feedback? (the only way to land them against top players, anyway.)
Even if you're doing it right, if your opponent, using an Infestor or Ghost or just 3 stimmed marauders or some mutas or speedlings or whatever, you lose your HT to no effect. Their spellcasters outrange feedback AND have more movespeed. We all know what happens when you both are outranged and outspeeded by the enemy - you get kited. The onus is entirely on the P's opponent to fuck up and let feedbacks land on their spellcasters, which are probably behind their units, so even if feedbacks go off, the HT is still good as dead since it's one of the slowest units in the game.
There doesn't seem to be a "correct" way for protoss to snipe enemy casters like this. They send their HT forward, and hope that their opponent is playing poorly, or they engage and just try to suck the full force of the enemy spellcasters. Protoss really seem to have a disadvantage in high level games lately when the game goes into a heavy spellcaster game, whether it be PVT or PVZ.
My conclusion? It's not the infestor that's OP. It's the Protoss' choices at handling enemy spellcasters.
On September 06 2011 17:59 arterian wrote: A 2 food unit should not be able to spawn 8 stimmed marines. 4 casters should not be able to kill a base in a few seconds flat unless its Ghosts nuking simultaneously.
They're temporary unstimmed marines without mobility with 5s delay hey. They're nowhere near as good in an actual army-vs-army battle, their main use is building sniping.
On September 06 2011 17:59 arterian wrote: A 2 food unit should not be able to spawn 8 stimmed marines. 4 casters should not be able to kill a base in a few seconds flat unless its Ghosts nuking simultaneously.
They're temporary unstimmed marines without mobility with 5s delay hey. They're nowhere near as good in an actual army-vs-army battle, their main use is building sniping.
Yeah, if 40 infested terrans met 40 marines, 40 marines win. Because they run away. ITs are ONLY useful when you are forcing a big fight to happen in a location (fungal) or killing buildings. Marines are good at like... everything.
In my humble opinion, the Infestor is the only useful unit of the Zerg with active abilities, but it can't attack directly, so it is considered a spellcaster.
Terrans and Protoss units have so many abilities eg.: Force Field, Guardian Shield, Graviton Beam, Siege Mode, Stim Pack, Blink, Turret, Seeker Missiles, Thor's Cannons. - all of these boost the unit's potential in mobility, attack, or buys space on the map.
Now look at Zerg's main units: Roach, Hydra, Zerglings, Mutalisks, Banelings - what do these units do? they JUST ATTACK, nothing more.
That is why the Infestor is the focus of every QQ about Zerg right now. It is the only unit that can give Zerg what the other races already have.
the roach get healing when it is burrowed, and banelings can explode burrowed.. for me it is a abiltiy... and no other race can make so many dropships like zerg xD. Also the corruptor has a ability called corruption! and dont forget the queen!
On September 06 2011 18:46 ProxySilmaril wrote: the roach get healing when it is burrowed, and banelings can explode burrowed.. for me it is a abiltiy... and no other race can make so many dropships like zerg xD. Also the corruptor has a ability called corruption! and dont forget the queen!
And you want to say that's comparable to Marine/Marauder stim, Siege mode, Thor cannon, Medivac heal, Ghost spells, Raven spells, Banshee cloak, Viking land, Battle cruiser yamato Reaper wallclimb... okay Hellion has no abilities.
On September 06 2011 18:48 IMSmooth wrote: I never went into the PTR but why was the missile fungal taken out of the patch back then?
It was difficult to hit I guess, though I'd prefer it to be a missile but stronger
On September 06 2011 18:55 dragonsuper wrote: Infestor = bad design choices , no micro against his powers and it's frustrating play against it.
And btw... Fungal ? what a ridicolous name... Dark swarm and plague was much better considering it's an alien unit.
SC2 was really designed by immature minds.
I'm just curious as to why aliens can be a) Dark, b) Swarmy, c) Disease-ridden, but are unlikely to be d) Fungal and how that makes the design choice immature.
I dont gave comment if it is compareable but u said only the infestor has a ability! And for my self I think fungal is rediculous, it counters all... for what does a toss need blink, forcefield or guardianshield... one fungal and its worthless! Also the HT which normaly may have to counter with feed back is worthless, when he is fungaled he cant go near enough to feedback! For me the Infestor is so OP like the HT was with the amuletupgrade!
On September 06 2011 18:46 ProxySilmaril wrote: the roach get healing when it is burrowed, and banelings can explode burrowed.. for me it is a abiltiy... and no other race can make so many dropships like zerg xD. Also the corruptor has a ability called corruption! and dont forget the queen!
And you want to say that's comparable to Marine/Marauder stim, Siege mode, Thor cannon, Medivac heal, Ghost spells, Raven spells, Banshee cloak, Viking land, Battle cruiser yamato Reaper wallclimb... okay Hellion has no abilities.
Wow, why dont you just switch to Terran if u want a lot of abilities?
Fungal removes micro ? Makes no sense whatsoever.... Fungal promotes micro, spreading your units around.
The difference is that it is just different and harder micro (arguably).
Personally i don't consider Infestors op. They have enough options to be countered. And they are a unit Z can fall back to, to compensate for bad design on a lot other units. If infestors are getting nerfed, i can't see it happening without some buffs or T/P nerfs to compensate.
On September 06 2011 19:03 ProxySilmaril wrote: I dont gave comment if it is compareable but u said only the infestor has a ability! And for my self I think fungal is rediculous, it counters all... for what does a toss need blink, forcefield or guardianshield... one fungal and its worthless! Also the HT which normaly may have to counter with feed back is worthless, when he is fungaled he cant go near enough to feedback! For me the Infestor is so OP like the HT was with the amuletupgrade!
wtf are you talking about, feedback has the same range as fungal. If youre getting fungaled before your getting youre feedbacks off, thats your problem. Not the game designs fault.
Eh, I guess infested terrans aren't so OP after seeing this: Originally intented zerg Damn that spell looked awesome. Also I want queens like this ! (I hope they get an upgrade in Hots keke)
On September 06 2011 19:30 Nasradime wrote: Eh, I guess infested terrans aren't so OP after seeing this: Originally intented zerg Damn that spell looked awesome. Also I want queens like this ! (I hope they get an upgrade in Hots keke)
You realize that all these old videos were the reason nobody liked sc2 at first? Everything was way too overpowered and stupid...
On September 06 2011 19:03 ProxySilmaril wrote: I dont gave comment if it is compareable but u said only the infestor has a ability! And for my self I think fungal is rediculous, it counters all... for what does a toss need blink, forcefield or guardianshield... one fungal and its worthless! Also the HT which normaly may have to counter with feed back is worthless, when he is fungaled he cant go near enough to feedback! For me the Infestor is so OP like the HT was with the amuletupgrade!
wtf are you talking about, feedback has the same range as fungal. If youre getting fungaled before your getting youre feedbacks off, thats your problem. Not the game designs fault.
On September 06 2011 19:03 ProxySilmaril wrote: I dont gave comment if it is compareable but u said only the infestor has a ability! And for my self I think fungal is rediculous, it counters all... for what does a toss need blink, forcefield or guardianshield... one fungal and its worthless! Also the HT which normaly may have to counter with feed back is worthless, when he is fungaled he cant go near enough to feedback! For me the Infestor is so OP like the HT was with the amuletupgrade!
wtf are you talking about, feedback has the same range as fungal. If youre getting fungaled before your getting youre feedbacks off, thats your problem. Not the game designs fault.
Typical poster has NO IDEA what hes talking about. There are plenty more posts here, that have NO IDEA what their talking about.
Its tough to take a lot of these posts seriously. I'm not taking sides, but please... research before you post.
Yes with all the technical, but i can guarantee you barely any zerg hits fungals on the outer radius of fungal to prevent ht from getting in range, Also the sight range (obviously depends on the situation) prevents zergs from hitting a perfect 11 range fungal.
Also please include some logical thinking into posts (everyone, not just you), ive barely ever seen zergs hit perfect 11 range fungals to prevent HTs from getting in range especially when taking into account reaction time/players ability etc etc, only very high masters i've played or some pr0 replays ive seen have done it on purpose.
(or just lucking out by spamming huge amounts of fungals in a few hundredths of a second)
On August 25 2011 09:42 BlueyD wrote: Fungal growth is fine... It makes infestors awesome against groups of small units and prevents micro, which is annoying but not really overpowered.
Neural parasite is fine... It makes infestors good once large game-changing units are out, by turning these against the opponent.
Infested terrans are fine... They help a lot against air, and give infestors a very strong tool against buildings for a low cost.
Burrow move (and their good moving speed) is fine... It makes infestors able to survive better than most casters, and gives them more harrass options.
I have no problem with any of these particular skills being available to zerg. However, all these good abilities are on the same unit, and perhaps that makes them too versatile. Controlled correctly, they're incredibly cost-effective against almost everything and very difficult to counter.
I agree with this post pretty much. Individually I think every ability is fine, but putting them all on the same unit may be a little much. Having said that, we know SC is a game of imbalanced units (see BW) fighting eachother so the infestor may end up being perfect as is in the final product.
Also, I didn't know that IT shot themselves in the face when the time ran out (they regained consciousness). That is fucking awesome and a nice detail by blizzard.
On September 06 2011 19:40 KeksX wrote: You realize that all these old videos were the reason nobody liked sc2 at first? Everything was way too overpowered and stupid...
You realize my words were about the line of "THIS was OP" ?
On September 06 2011 19:03 ProxySilmaril wrote: I dont gave comment if it is compareable but u said only the infestor has a ability! And for my self I think fungal is rediculous, it counters all... for what does a toss need blink, forcefield or guardianshield... one fungal and its worthless! Also the HT which normaly may have to counter with feed back is worthless, when he is fungaled he cant go near enough to feedback! For me the Infestor is so OP like the HT was with the amuletupgrade!
wtf are you talking about, feedback has the same range as fungal. If youre getting fungaled before your getting youre feedbacks off, thats your problem. Not the game designs fault.
Typical poster has NO IDEA what hes talking about. There are plenty more posts here, that have NO IDEA what their talking about.
Its tough to take a lot of these posts seriously. I'm not taking sides, but please... research before you post.
Yes with all the technical, but i can guarantee you barely any zerg hits fungals on the outer radius of fungal to prevent ht from getting in range, Also the sight range (obviously depends on the situation) prevents zergs from hitting a perfect 11 range fungal.
Also please include some logical thinking into posts, ive barely ever seen zergs hit perfect 11 range fungals to prevent HTs from getting in range especially when taking into account reaction time/players ability etc etc, only very high masters i've played or some pr0 replays ive seen have done it on purpose.
(or just lucking out by spamming huge amounts of fungals in a few hundredths of a second)
and.... you said absolutely nothing, but go back on your original point, as well as contradict yourself mid post.
Fungal growth prevents units from being loaded into a dropship of any type.
Why is that even weird? If you were all gobbled up in goo thick and dangerous enough to stop a Tank from moving, why would it be weird if you couldn't be loaded into anything?
On September 06 2011 19:53 KaidaN wrote: ive barely ever seen zergs hit perfect 11 range fungals to prevent HTs from getting in range especially when taking into account reaction time/players ability etc etc, only very high masters i've played or some pr0 replays ive seen have done it on purpose.
That's not really a justification lol...
Not to mention zerg blankets fungals just because they can with 20 infestors over an entire army. If a zerg is getting feedbacked its honestly his own fault if you take ranges into consideration and I guarantee if it was the other way around zerg would be complaining even harder. They already do about feedback when it has a shorter range.
The problem with infestors is that they're too powerful of a caster. They have the highest mobility, and the best spells.
Protoss on the other hand got nerfed to hell shit because other races kept whining and Zerg kept thinking they were underpowered because they never clicked the infestor button BACK when Fungal Growth was 32 damage over 8 seconds, which in its own right was still a pretty powerful spell.
I honestly don't even know why the infestor is getting a damage nerf. It's perfectly fine the way it is now, and can be easily dealt with assuming that you have an appropriate economy and decent preparation. It's a poorly designed unit, though, which is more symptomatic of general race design flaws imo.
On September 06 2011 20:06 KimJongChill wrote: I honestly don't even know why the infestor is getting a damage nerf. It's perfectly fine the way it is now, and can be easily dealt with assuming that you have an appropriate economy and decent preparation. It's a poorly designed unit, though, which is more symptomatic of general race design flaws imo.
Well, the damage nerf isn't really a big deal, as it will keep two-shooting the units that it used to; just allowing the banelings to survive to one fungal, which in my opinion is a very good thing... It's so ridiculous that ONE fungal can make the infestor pays so much for itself (6 banelings being double the minerals and as much gas... And a good fungal will get at least 8-10 as people don't spread banelings); without forgetting that the infestor can cast it right when popping. I think it's more thought to make a mass infestor play less efficient, especially against protoss whose shield will be harder to burn.
On September 06 2011 19:03 ProxySilmaril wrote: I dont gave comment if it is compareable but u said only the infestor has a ability! And for my self I think fungal is rediculous, it counters all... for what does a toss need blink, forcefield or guardianshield... one fungal and its worthless! Also the HT which normaly may have to counter with feed back is worthless, when he is fungaled he cant go near enough to feedback! For me the Infestor is so OP like the HT was with the amuletupgrade!
wtf are you talking about, feedback has the same range as fungal. If youre getting fungaled before your getting youre feedbacks off, thats your problem. Not the game designs fault.
Typical poster has NO IDEA what hes talking about. There are plenty more posts here, that have NO IDEA what their talking about.
Its tough to take a lot of these posts seriously. I'm not taking sides, but please... research before you post.
Yes with all the technical, but i can guarantee you barely any zerg hits fungals on the outer radius of fungal to prevent ht from getting in range, Also the sight range (obviously depends on the situation) prevents zergs from hitting a perfect 11 range fungal.
Also please include some logical thinking into posts (everyone, not just you), ive barely ever seen zergs hit perfect 11 range fungals to prevent HTs from getting in range especially when taking into account reaction time/players ability etc etc, only very high masters i've played or some pr0 replays ive seen have done it on purpose.
(or just lucking out by spamming huge amounts of fungals in a few hundredths of a second)
Almost every Zerg in master fungals my templars if they look at their army before they can feedback.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6b8pY.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/IKQJY.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamer-source.com/image/news/2010/6-22/infestor_fungieffect.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BfbDP.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7yYdv.png)
![[image loading]](http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110721130027/starcraft/images/thumb/0/0d/InfestedTerran_SC2_Cncpt1.jpg/365px-InfestedTerran_SC2_Cncpt1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8buzk.png)
![[image loading]](http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2010/9/14/04defc9f-983d-4d15-adab-2864c365535d.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FuJF8.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YmiE9.png)
. I thought it meant dropships don't work once fungaled. 
