Another Neural Parasite Change. - Page 53

On September 17 2011 01:24 imbecile wrote:


Ok, actually watched the replay now (was too painful). It was exaggerated, sure, because that's how it felt to me in the game.

The actual stats right before the game ending battle at my natural:

56 workers vs 43
4 base vs 2 base.
Greater Spire Morphing vs. robo tech + gateway
2:1 upgrades vs 1:1 upgrades
106 army supply vs 74 army supply
11 infestors and 7 corruptors + lings + 2 spines 4 queens vs 2 colossus and pure stalker + zealots

20 seconds later my army consisted of 3 corruptors and he still had everything except the 2 colossus handily destroying my main and natural.

On September 17 2011 01:31 QTIP. wrote:
Yeah. Just submit the replay so we can try to help you out.

On September 17 2011 01:54 imbecile wrote:


Oh, upon seeing the replay I know what went wrong: I put fungals too fast over the same units, so that they neither did much damage nor did much of a job snaring. And half my lings I sent for a unsuccessful counter attack (a few warped in zealots at wall were enough to repel that) which meant the chargelots could carve up all the infestors quite easily with neither fungals nor lings blocking them.

Still doesn't sit right with me that someone who builds army on 2 bases and the a-moves out can so soundly crush a semi-solid zerg that made a few micro mistakes and a wrong decision. Especially considering that I did ok harass up to that point (13:1 workers killed, and resources lost was dead even).

On September 17 2011 01:19 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:


Because the change is unwarranted?

NP is by far the weakest spell on the infestor and prior to these ptr changes being brought up, people hardly complained about it. Infestors are made of wet paper, cannot move while using it, have to research it, AND it only lasts 15 seconds. Furthermore, the prime targets for neural (colossi and thors) requires you to get into a reasonable position to be sniped.

Protoss has their range 9 feedback, blink stalkers with range 6, colossi pretty far back, some are even using phoenix to lift them up.

Terran will have siege tanks and maybe even ghosts if the game goes on long enough.

If the infestor is to be nerfed more intelligent changes would be one of the following:

1) Removing the snare effect on fungal and replacing it with a movement speed reduction. Even as a zerg I feel this ability is bad for the game, because once it lands there is little the player can do aside from just taking as many fungals as I wish to dish out. This should be priority number one.

2) Remove the ability to neural massive AIR units. Or at least, I don't think you should be able to steal a mothership, and maybe if carriers and battlecruisers were used against zerg the corruptor would have a purpose again besides being turned into a much better unit.

3) Hell I'd probably be more content if they returned fungal to its state prior to the patch and buffed neural in exchange. Fungal and infested terrans have always been good.

I feel like people are so desperate to have the infestor nerfed they'll take anything they can get without even considering what might be best for the game.

On September 17 2011 00:18 WinteRR wrote:
why are the zerg players still not happy about this?

a totally bad change (no NP on massive units) has been revoked and instead a far weaker nerf has replaced it which won't completely change its application too much anyway. I guess people will always find a way to vent their frustration.

Umm, "NP will be unusable" - what the hell? Of course it'll still be great.

On September 17 2011 02:04 TolEranceNA wrote:


Really shows why you "understand" zerg so much.

On September 17 2011 02:06 sc2trainer wrote:


NP is still op, 6x infestors can take 6x colossus thats a huge supply change. you can still make a front line and pull it off its just harder. Personally I preferred the massive nerf.

On September 17 2011 02:15 Robstickle wrote:


With 9 range, that's only possible when protoss players try to send their collosi on random walk abouts.

On September 16 2011 12:37 -_- wrote:


Blizzard has stated in the past that they do take into account non-professional players when balancing the game, but aren't you in favor of this policy? If not, what do you think about the players in Korea who smile sardonically at the difficulties a North American Grandmasters Zerg player has?

Infestor heavy play is not in vogue in Korea. Perhaps Korean Protoss players are so skilled, they can perfectly target down the Infestor who is siphoning the Colossus, making the prospective neural parasite change moot. In Korea, Neural Parasite in Starcraft 2 could be the equivalent of Medic's Restore in Starcraft Broodwar.

If this is the case, are you in favor of a spell being imbalanced when players can't exercise enough control, and unusable when they can?

Or maybe you're just not skilled enough to comment on the balance of Starcraft 2, and thus don't understand why the change was necessary. Whenever North American players deride the balance opinions of less skilled players, I'm compelled to wonder how they ignore the cognitive dissonance which must occur when they consider where they rank on the Great Cross-Realm Starcraft 2 Ladder which exists only in our hopeful minds.

I'm not saying you shouldn't discuss balance unless you're one of the top players in the world, or that you're one of the people I'm describing. In fact, I greatly enjoyed reading the quoted post by you, even thought it was rather short. But I do think you should be careful when you imply that Neural Parasite is perfectly balanced if Protoss players would simply learn how to control their units. Korean Zergs control their units more precisely and hit their queen injects more regularly than you. Maybe Zerg against Protoss would be a simple matchup for Zerg if you could simply do the same?

On September 17 2011 02:40 JustTray wrote:
Once again Zerg QQ gets Blizzard to revert a nerf.

This one though really epitomizes how much Zerg cry. A 2 range decrease for a skill that was only useful if you were able to control all the units that would otherwise focus your infestors (tanks, collosi) will have negligble impact on how infestors are used except for bad players who used them incorrectly prior to the patch.

Further, they already had a hard counter to things like collosi (corruptors) that could then be morphed into the strongest air to ground in the game. Personally, I felt the air supriority into air to ground domination was a smart mechanic for Blizzard to build into the game. It seems though that only after infestors got their 1.3 nerf did Zerg then realize the power of Brood Lords, which is sad.

Compare this to every barracks terran making takes 5 more seconds, orbital command comes up 5 seconds later, reaper harrass comes out 5 seconds later, hellion rushes come out 5s later, etc, and you see it was Terrans who should have been crying most about this patch.

And 6 damage to fungal? Doesn't even change the number of fungals to wipe out T bio which is where it's OPness really shines. (also ZvZ lings)

On September 17 2011 02:44 R0YAL wrote:

The moment Blizzard announced that their goal was to balance the game at all levels of play, I knew that if anything this would be the downfall of SC2. Even if they managed to balance the game at lower-high levels it is beyond foolish to think that at the highest level of play (which we wont see for years to come) will be balanced. It doesnt even make sense to "balance low level" of play. The game should be balanced at the highest level and then if you have a weakness in a certain area then you work on that and thats how you get to the next level. Thats how bw was and nobody complained about because its not the games fault ITS YOUR FAULT, there was always at least one way to deal with something so your only excuse is that you are incompetant. The highest level of play is all that matters and is the only thing that will make SC2 a true success

On September 17 2011 03:20 Sayer wrote:
Putting the balance issue aside, I think neural is a poorly designed spell (and Zerg in general), I think it is boring, unzergy, and unoriginal. On top of that it seems blizzard does not seem to know what they want to do with the spell as they keep on changing it. At this point I'll just wait for blizzard to deliver something cooler for Zerg in HotS. Just my humble opinion.

On September 17 2011 02:40 JustTray wrote:
Once again Zerg QQ gets Blizzard to revert a nerf.

This one though really epitomizes how much Zerg cry. A 2 range decrease for a skill that was only useful if you were able to control all the units that would otherwise focus your infestors (tanks, collosi) will have negligble impact on how infestors are used except for bad players who used them incorrectly prior to the patch.

Further, they already had a hard counter to things like collosi (corruptors) that could then be morphed into the strongest air to ground in the game. Personally, I felt the air supriority into air to ground domination was a smart mechanic for Blizzard to build into the game. It seems though that only after infestors got their 1.3 nerf did Zerg then realize the power of Brood Lords, which is sad.

Compare this to every barracks terran making takes 5 more seconds, orbital command comes up 5 seconds later, reaper harrass comes out 5 seconds later, hellion rushes come out 5s later, etc, and you see it was Terrans who should have been crying most about this patch.

And 6 damage to fungal? Doesn't even change the number of fungals to wipe out T bio which is where it's OPness really shines. (also ZvZ lings)

On September 17 2011 03:20 Sayer wrote:
Putting the balance issue aside, I think neural is a poorly designed spell (and Zerg in general), I think it is boring, unzergy, and unoriginal. On top of that it seems blizzard does not seem to know what they want to do with the spell as they keep on changing it. At this point I'll just wait for blizzard to deliver something cooler for Zerg in HotS. Just my humble opinion.