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Aside from the obvious "hydras are slower than the rest of the army", you also have to remember that back in BW hydras were 1 supply with 80 HP. They now have half the HP/supply that they used to.
Another thing that I think is pretty dumb is that Hydras are light, which makes them susceptible to blue flame hellions, banelings, and even phoenixes. I really think that Hydras need their light classification removed and be just biological.
A third issue with Hydras is that they are a dead end tech tree. Infestation pit opens up hive, spire is useful for mutas, corruptors, and BL's.
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While playing the game you just NEED to get roach/ling/baneling speed to make them viable attacking units. Roaches and banes are quite good @ defending but NEED the speed unpgrade to make them viable attacking units. Can u imagine ZvP without the roach speed? ZvT without ling speed? If you attack with hydras you can't go back. Stimmed marines will own hydras, so will speedlots and stalkers.
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thre problem of the hydra is that it is an expensive glass cannon that is also slow. those things just dont work except in extreme examples like the Reaver, which has to be used in combination with a shuttle to be useful offensively.
Edit: agree with the dead end tech tree. The hydra just has no place as a T2 unit without lurkers or anything.
(Random: I also hate that zerg is no swarm army. where are my 1supply roaches and hydras? I want them!)
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United States7483 Posts
On October 26 2011 17:10 Xapti wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 15:42 Whitewing wrote:
Just to point out, the hydra attacks much faster than roaches, so the upgrade scaling isn't quite so easy to pin down. They attack more than twice as fast as a roach, so they scale BETTER with attack upgrades than the roach does (+1.2 dps per attack upgrade vs. +1 dps per attack upgrade of the roach).
No your thinking incorrectly. Whether you have 100 attacks per second or 1 attack every 100 seconds, +1 damage on base 1 damage is a 100% boost in damage output. Hydralisks simply get less DPS boost than almost all other units in the game. The only units that have worse benefits are stalkers vs armored (assuming 50% armored 50% non-armored they'd be tied) —which is understandable because it's bonus damage— , ground-mode vikings —which are hardly ever used and shouldn't even be strong— are also tied with hydras, and corruptors which I am particularly perplexed at them not getting more damage per upgrade (the fact they are bland and niche just like hydralisks doesn't help either).
I would argue that you're thinking incorrectly here. Yes, you're right that the upgrade increases the strength of the hydralisk less than that of other units as a % of damage done, but that's in a vacuum comparison ignoring that the hydralisk is actually just flat out better in almost all regards stats wise, and deals way more damage. Yes the upgrades matter a little bit less as a %, but they're still better as a flat dps comparison. What matters in a game like this isn't the % increase in dps from an upgrade, but the actual flat increase in dps.
The hydra just does so much damage compared to the roach that having their upgrades scale worse still makes upgrades more powerful for them.
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people ignore that the hydra is pretty damn fast on creep and only see them off creep x3. I like to get them for timinig pushes. And if you see them used along with creep mechanics they are pretty good. (even in pro games) Without they are pretty awful (also pro games). So i like the decision to give them an hive upgrade that enables hydra use if you are a noob.
The light unit is no issue, as they rip apart light unit counters with ease. Their weakness long range aoes, as they line up really nicely for colossi for example or clump before reaching their combat range, so aoes do some nice damage. They are also smaller then roaches, so more get hit. So basically you need to split them manually like marines, which is easily possible on creep.
Basically people fail with hydras like they fail with banelings against siege tanks (clumped up so two shots is enough to clean up 12 banelings).
I like the argument of hydras are a dead end tech, but thats why hydra den and infestation pit only cost you an apple and an egg.
So for me hydras work, but i guess people want to be bwish, only using hydras all day long from early till lategame.
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United States7483 Posts
On October 27 2011 00:08 KULA_u wrote:
thre problem of the hydra is that it is an expensive glass cannon that is also slow. those things just dont work except in extreme examples like the Reaver, which has to be used in combination with a shuttle to be useful offensively.
Edit: agree with the dead end tech tree. The hydra just has no place as a T2 unit without lurkers or anything.
(Random: I also hate that zerg is no swarm army. where are my 1supply roaches and hydras? I want them!)
You had 1 supply roaches in the beta, they were absurdly overpowered. You still see a lot of games today where the zerg just masses pure roach for a long time and does pretty well, if they had double the roaches it'd be game over.
The swarm host looks like it'll add some of that flavor back, and you'll be able to use hydras on hive tech effectively, those things are bloody fast with the speed upgrade.
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On October 26 2011 20:46 Callynn wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 18:19 onemanlan wrote:
There is tons of good information that has already be brought up regarding the hydralisk in this thread, but I'm going to throw in my 2 cents.
They hydralisk costs too much in terms of gas. As it has been said before it costs around 250 gas to get the building/grooved spines upgraded, then 50 gas for each hydra after that. When you could produce around 2 roaches per hydra, the costs/hp+armor+attack on roaches far outweighs the usefulness of the hydra. Furthermore the roach can regenerate health quickly underground allowing it's utility to potentially be infinite in theory. The hydra on the other hand might as well be a sack of gas that is liable to die at any second.
Hydras on creep, while nice, is a rare thing mid-late game. If the zerg player is amazing about spreading his creep(see stephano) then hyras utility goes up, but just as good zerg players spread the creep good toss/terran players remove it just the same. The likelihood of battling on creep in the mid-late game when decent hydra numbers have been achieved is pretty low unless you're fighting in your own zerg base. Therefore when marching across the map your lings/roaches/etc all get there first while the hydras lag behind slowing the assault down.
When running from a losing battle hydras tend to lag behind the rest of the zerg army due to the slow speed relative to its counterpart units. With the current cost of hydras it becomes incredibly costly to have them lag behind the rest of your army after a losing battle. A good player will pounce on the opportunity to destroy expensive, fragile hydras while the faster, more disposable part of the zerg army(ling/roach) retreat back to safety.
When you look at all the downsides to the hydra, barely any of which were touched on by my post, as a zerg player you tend to see that there are much better gas investments than the hydra. Why invest 500+ gas into hydras when you could sink half as much into roaches and have +1 upgrade as well as speed? Anti-air? That's laughable in most cases. Protoss effectively bate zerg players into going hydra so they can just come back and crush it with colossi and force field later on. Terran don't seem to have any strategies that make the hydra cost efficient in any manner over the versatile infestor or mutas and that isn't even touching on the cost effectiveness of marines. The hydra does have a place in ZvZ, but I think that place is limited dependent on your opp's build and how effectively you can employ the hydras.
Obviously all avenues of hydra strategies haven't been worked through, but in the current state of the game I really see very little use for the hydra. That being said I'm more than open to seeing it used. As a huge BW fan/player I am disheartened by the current state of my lovable hydralisk. Most of all I want my ****ing early anti-air back that isn't a queen! + Show nested quote +I wrote this hoping to open the eyes of some less-studious players, as well as perhaps dispell some of the "hype" around the Hydralisk being too slow to be useful. I hardly think the 2.25 speed the Hydralisk sports is a single crippling weakness holding back a very potent damage dealing unit. You say you want to teach people who are less 'studious' about knowing the Hydralisk, but forget the core reasons of them being underused and slightly underpowered: 1) Too high gas cost, as explained in the quote above. 2) Only pro creepspreaders have a hydralisk that is viable in combat. The small buff in HotS for increasing off-creep speed is fine considering the cost of the hydra, since there are tons of counters to these light-armored, expensive tier 2.5 units.
In combat has little to do with speed. Sure, you want your units not to slug around the back finding a hole to fire through, but IN combat isn't the issue. The problem is entirely out of combat, occasions where you're trying to get to point A from point B, or escape from a poke at the army/base. Every army loses stuff while retreating, and hydras are that unit for the zerg.
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On October 26 2011 17:54 Ventor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 13:40 fdsdfg wrote:
Um... this is a misguided topic.
"What is holding the hydralisk back"? A lot of things. Its low HP, its inability to exist with colossi on the field, its terrible benefit from upgrades, and it's speed.
The OP is just 'compared to slow units from other races, the hydralisk isn't much different!' I know. It still sucks past the 12 minute mark.
The worst thing about them IMO is the upgrades.
With each +1 attack, Hydra goes from:
+0: 12
+1: 13
+2: 14
+3: 15
Meanwhile the Roach gets
+0: 16
+1: 18
+2: 20
+3: 22
The Zergling
+0: 5
+1: 6
+2: 7
+3: 8
It's awful. +3 hydra does 25% more damage than +0, compared to 37/60% more from these other two units respectively.
That and their role in the metagame is very dumb.
ZvT I've very rarely seen hydras used, but I have also never tried it very much so I can't say much about it. I've used hydras in a lategame army after I've economically won, but that isn't saying much
ZvP hydras have a very weird role. Hydras are good against every opening. Hydras are great against phoenix/voidray, immortal/warp prism, and blink stalkers. With a pure gateway build, hydras are great against every unit. Hydras are not bossed around well by forcefields.
However, robo and templar tech grow up to get colossi and psi storm, both of which completely nullify Hydralisks. Once air units get too numerous, hydras can't attack effectively since they bump into each other, so they don't work against late game starport play either.
Hydras can be the damage dealers when they first come out, but they cannot sustain their role in an army for long. I go hydras often just so I can tech switch to something else once they respond, and they can be good before they respond - but they're just too easy to nullify. Did it ever occur to you the hydra only gets +1 attack per upgrade due to it's attack speed? I'm sorry but if hydras got +2 per upgrade you'd have yourself a unit which could do over 20 dps.
Doesn't matter. Attack speed doesn't change, so DPS goes up by the same % that Damage does. You pay X amount for each hydralisk, and for its DPS. The difference between an endgame Hydra army and an early Hydra army is that % DPS change. The hydralisk has the smallest improvement in the game from early-game DPS to end-game DPS.
To put it another way, a stimmed marine goes from 10.5 DPS to 15.6 with +3, while a Hydralisk goes from 14.5 to 18.1.
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The point is not that it is just slow. It's that it is expensive, its got no health AND it is slow. You can't run with it since it will be hunted down. If you run with an army, the hydra is going to be the last unit in the line of units, and get picked off. In other words you cannot retreat from an engagement with them, so you have to engage exactly perfectly and win a battle with hydralisks, or you lose them.
They are also expensive. A group of hydras is massive gas cost. the fact you can't retreat with them, means you have to replace them, and that is a massive financial investment.
In the end, being slow mixed with how bad they are in other aspects is why the Hydralisk is no good. Good DPs is not enough justification for building them.
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United States7483 Posts
On October 27 2011 00:15 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 20:46 Callynn wrote:On October 26 2011 18:19 onemanlan wrote:
There is tons of good information that has already be brought up regarding the hydralisk in this thread, but I'm going to throw in my 2 cents.
They hydralisk costs too much in terms of gas. As it has been said before it costs around 250 gas to get the building/grooved spines upgraded, then 50 gas for each hydra after that. When you could produce around 2 roaches per hydra, the costs/hp+armor+attack on roaches far outweighs the usefulness of the hydra. Furthermore the roach can regenerate health quickly underground allowing it's utility to potentially be infinite in theory. The hydra on the other hand might as well be a sack of gas that is liable to die at any second.
Hydras on creep, while nice, is a rare thing mid-late game. If the zerg player is amazing about spreading his creep(see stephano) then hyras utility goes up, but just as good zerg players spread the creep good toss/terran players remove it just the same. The likelihood of battling on creep in the mid-late game when decent hydra numbers have been achieved is pretty low unless you're fighting in your own zerg base. Therefore when marching across the map your lings/roaches/etc all get there first while the hydras lag behind slowing the assault down.
When running from a losing battle hydras tend to lag behind the rest of the zerg army due to the slow speed relative to its counterpart units. With the current cost of hydras it becomes incredibly costly to have them lag behind the rest of your army after a losing battle. A good player will pounce on the opportunity to destroy expensive, fragile hydras while the faster, more disposable part of the zerg army(ling/roach) retreat back to safety.
When you look at all the downsides to the hydra, barely any of which were touched on by my post, as a zerg player you tend to see that there are much better gas investments than the hydra. Why invest 500+ gas into hydras when you could sink half as much into roaches and have +1 upgrade as well as speed? Anti-air? That's laughable in most cases. Protoss effectively bate zerg players into going hydra so they can just come back and crush it with colossi and force field later on. Terran don't seem to have any strategies that make the hydra cost efficient in any manner over the versatile infestor or mutas and that isn't even touching on the cost effectiveness of marines. The hydra does have a place in ZvZ, but I think that place is limited dependent on your opp's build and how effectively you can employ the hydras.
Obviously all avenues of hydra strategies haven't been worked through, but in the current state of the game I really see very little use for the hydra. That being said I'm more than open to seeing it used. As a huge BW fan/player I am disheartened by the current state of my lovable hydralisk. Most of all I want my ****ing early anti-air back that isn't a queen! + I wrote this hoping to open the eyes of some less-studious players, as well as perhaps dispell some of the "hype" around the Hydralisk being too slow to be useful. I hardly think the 2.25 speed the Hydralisk sports is a single crippling weakness holding back a very potent damage dealing unit. You say you want to teach people who are less 'studious' about knowing the Hydralisk, but forget the core reasons of them being underused and slightly underpowered: 1) Too high gas cost, as explained in the quote above. 2) Only pro creepspreaders have a hydralisk that is viable in combat. The small buff in HotS for increasing off-creep speed is fine considering the cost of the hydra, since there are tons of counters to these light-armored, expensive tier 2.5 units. In combat has little to do with speed. Sure, you want your units not to slug around the back finding a hole to fire through, but IN combat isn't the issue. The problem is entirely out of combat, occasions where you're trying to get to point A from point B, or escape from a poke at the army/base. Every army loses stuff while retreating, and hydras are that unit for the zerg.
Speed is an in combat issue though, you can't kite with slow units and you can't storm dodge with slow units.
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80 health for a unit that costs 100/50 that is also light is pretty insane. Considering marines which cost 50 minerals have 55 health when upgraded and are quicker off creep. Although I understand there is a dps difference I don't see the justification for having a unit that is simply not very good other than AA vs protoss and taking gateway all ins early.
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The problem with the hydra is the timing at which it is available. By the time it comes out, it has no role to fill. As a vanilla unit, it is useful against unupgraded, unsupported T1, but it comes out about 2 minutes before those compositions are reinforced or upgraded into deal-breakers. This is why you almost exclusively see the unit used in PvZ as a counter to a mass gate push or stargate, but not much else. Let's pit the hydralisk vs. most standard game compositions that are available on the same timing window:
Hydralisk vs MMM with stim and combat shield: Curbstomp.
Hydralisk vs marine-tank: Curbstomp.
Hydralisk vs Mech: Curbstomp.
Hydralisk vs Colossi/gateway: Curbstomp.
Hydralisk vs Speedlot/Archon: Curbstomp.
Hydralisk vs Stargate tech: Useful, but Stargate usually hits before lair.
Hydralisk vs mass warpgates: Useful, but warpgate usually hits before lair.
Hydralisk vs unupgraded Bio: Useful, bu- ...you get the point.
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poor creep spread is what's holding it back, the unit itself is very good, one of the highest dps and on creep completely destroys many unit compositions.
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Calgary25980 Posts
This is a pretty shallow comparison. The way Zerg plays requires them to be faster than the other races to defend their spread out bases.
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It's the speed upgrade dude end of story. If you look at all the other units which have similar speeds, they all have some sort of escape tactic or are ridiculously cost effective. Terran mech is built to siege up and engage only in favorable positions. Terran bio can stim and run away pretty easily or lift off into medivacs. Stalkers have their blink, colossus have cliff walk, and the death ball is designed to be hard to kill and you never want to engage a protoss deathball upfront. The zerg race is not designed to participate in up front engagements. Zergs almost never win upfront fights, so you have to chip away at the army until you have an overwhelming force. Hydras are not good for this because the instant you get into an unfavorable engagement (off creep), all of your hydras die. At 100/50 a hydra loosing 10 of them just because you tried to attack is not an acceptable thing for most zergs. This is why hydras are only used for all in timing attacks (because they can't retreat).
Great analysis, but you're completely ignoring the race is supposed to be played.
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I can see in the balance phase of HotS that Speed will be moved from Hive to Lair. Late game hydras arent very good and they wont get better.
Its kinda like the roach, both upgrades burrow move and speed at lair.
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From reading that, I feel like the OP has no idea what hydras look like in combat, or a typical zerg playstyle.
If you try and retreat with hydras, EVERYTHING the other races will be using (as their core units) will be faster basically. Retreat and marines eat them. Retreat and stalkers eat them. Retreat and roaches eat them. Stand and fight and colossus/storms eat them. As well as marines/hellions/tanks/everything else terran has.
So a really expensive, fragile unit that can't retreat. Make one mistake and you auto lose the game because you lose your entire hydra army. Even if you make no mistakes other races can counter them too easily anyways.
I have no idea why you decided to compare speeds with spellcasters, they have nowhere near the same role/application.
On October 27 2011 03:48 NotSorry wrote:
poor creep spread is what's holding it back, the unit itself is very good, one of the highest dps and on creep completely destroys many unit compositions.
Lol... good luck keeping a reasonable amount of creep out when one observer/scan can set you back 5 min of spread.
And even assuming you can keep decent creep, hydras can't be used to attack then because you can't have creep in their base...
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Did it ever occur to you that the reason why hydras cost 1 increment above a trivial amount of gas is that you're not supposed to have a ton of mutas, infestors, banelings and hydras all at once?
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Speed off creep is seriously holding it back. But in HotS that will change, and we will see a lot more hydralisk play hopefully. Should be awesome!!!
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I finally get it!
The stalker is only supposed to be fast compared to every other slow as mud Protoss unit!!!
Just like the hydra is only slow compared to all the other ridiculously fast zerg units!
And here I thought this was some cruel joke.
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EPT
