I personally can't even remember the last time I've seen a Nydus Worm in a pro game and I dont think I've ever seen one on the ladder. I don't play Zerg as my main, yet recently I've been messing around with them when helping my friend who's new to Starcraft get into the game. The games were far from professional obviously, I didn't put endless pressure on him so I had a lot of resources to play around with all the tech whilst he did his thing.
So after seeing how useful it can actually be, why don't pro players, and even ladder players not use it very often, if at all?
Its uses are quite broad. 1. For offensive. It can be snuck into a corner of an enemies base with overlord/overseer vision, or even put in vision if your feeling more bold. 2. It can also be put on the map close to the enemies base to allow your army to be 'rallied' there much sooner. 3. It could possibly be used as a way to rally drones and produced units from distant bases to your focus defensive area. 4. I remember discussions on it being able to replace a Hatchery, using a series of rallies with drones. Not sure if this is practical or not I haven't tried it.
Now we do know the potential offensive purposes of a Nydus Worm, a few Zerglings to bypass a T or P's wall can be devastating and such a nuisance for them to deal with. You can even go more heavy and bring a big army to do much more serious damage in places they have undefended. A lot of Zerg's strength comes from counter attacks, however simply running some Zerglings into the front of an opponents base, while yes they can sometimes do massive damage, other times reinforcement units or a well build sim city can fend them off. Bypassing those sorts of defences puts the enemy in a whole new world of pressure and in many circumstances could force a retreat if their army is advancing toward you.
However I have also seen Zerg players die due to their multiple bases being separated, preventing any produced units from gathering together to fight the enemies army. In situations like this, wouldn't it be worth at least having a Nydus Canal and throwing up a head at the base you need it at, so you can gather your forces in either location to attempt a defence?
I believe the main Nydus building is 150/200 and the cost to spawn an additional Worm is a further 100/100. The minerals are nothing but 200 gas can be a bit painful to spend for a 'maybe' situation like the defensive reasons. Yet 200 gas spent is better than a loss to a Forcefield drop in your main, or a well positioned tank line.
If the Zerg does not intend to use the Nydus for offensive purposes, at least keep the main structure ready to build a head for potential defensive purposes. Thoughts?
Edit: Corrected the cost values, I don't play Zerg so I dont have the building costs memorised, I looked it up on wiki but mistakingly put the value of the Nydus Worm rather than the Network. The increased gas cost does change the argument slightly, but still. I'm sure this has uses we have yet to fully utilise, perhaps it could do with some buffing from Blizzard to encourage such experimentation.
Because workers can kill them, they cost gas each time you want to make a new one, and yes they are used but they tend to not be very effective except in late game for getting from one place to another very fast. Trying to use it to attack into someones base is usually useless.
Players usually have complete vision of their base. It cost 300 gas, so it's too expensive to use in the mid-game without weakening your army. It's only viable in the late-game, when opponents have static d at most of their bases to prevent runby's anyway, so you aren't really going to snipe a base. It also announces itself, spits units out 1 at a time (especially annoying when it's loaded with lings), and is super super fragile.
It's just not really worth it, unless you are 100% sure it'll go unspotted, and you'll have 10-20 seconds to unload your army.
I suppose they could be effectively used defensively to hold far bases but until the worms are cancellable and they can survive gentle caresses from small packs of workers, they're not gonna be a legitimate offensive threat.
Early game, Nydus is pure cheese. You do damage with it (or BO counter some cheesy warp prism allin) or you're in the hole 200+ gas for basically nothing; not to mention you basically have to rush to Lair to have Nydus be effective which leaves you open for large timing windows Late game Nydus is much more viable, in which case I've seen Nydus used many times in ZvT versus mech to much success, but it does nothing but make the 200/200 mech ball force an all-or-nothing scenario which the zerg is oftentimes severely disadvantaged against.
Basically, ZvP, Nydus is as coinflippy as it gets. ZvT it's a little more viable versus mech play. Then again, I am but a lowly masters player.
On March 01 2012 13:39 Bibbit wrote: I suppose they could be effectively used defensively to hold far bases but until the worms are cancellable and they can survive gentle caresses from small packs of workers, they're not gonna be a legitimate offensive threat.
I have a theory that it might be an interesting idea to add an "upgrade" to a Nydus Worm's head that increases it's health and unload speed. Perhaps the upgrade would temporarily disable the Nydus Worm's head while morphing and would take a while to morph, which would make it be unusable offensively, but it would make Nydus Worms be much more useful defensively like the Nydus Canals of BW.
Unless you want to become nydus dependant or go for an all-in, nydus won't be an effective way to invest early to mid game. When you got floaters and your army is a bit more immobile ie: no lings, then it is a good way to traverse the map.
My main problem with it is just that it unloads so slowly. Investing in drops has always been more effective in my opinion (it's only gas coast is the initial 200, then you have it all game) And while you do really need overloard speed for it to be of any use, you should have that anyway in every game.
Honestly with the way trends are lately, if Blizzard buffs Nydus, by reducing its cost or increasing its HP or something, I bet they're going to be so common. They're good, just nobody uses them, especially in late game.
For offensive: Because it makes a loud ass screeching noise, and most pro's have good vision around them.
For Defensive: Because you have to unload each unit 1 by 1, so if a huge protoss death ball is moving on your 4th base, the worst thing that could happen would be getting 1/2 your army out and they kill it. The other problem is speed. Zerg is usually pretty fast, so I guess I don't see it being much faster.
And if a pro start using it to move people to hidden expands, then once a pro does it a few times the cat will be out of the bag and once the opponent hears a nydus network pop up they go expansion hunting.
All in all, I think its more of a meta-game thing. The games I see nydus used most commonly on are Taldarim, a big ass map. Currently I think we're seeing larger 1v1 maps being established, which I don't think favor hidden expansions nearly as much.
Gotta echo everyone else's thoughts. It is a large investment that is not guaranteed for even the slightest return. In the lategame I actually prefer drops instead of Nydus, at least with drops you know the units will actually get out and do something. If the health was buffed slightly, it didn't have the ridiculous I'M HERE scream and maybe if they allowed it to be cancelled (I'd be ok with this not being an option if workers couldn't kill it) I'd be throwin' down Nydus like you wouldn't believe.
It's just not enough gaurunteed benefit for the cost. Imagine paying 200 gas to maybe get a +1 attack upgrade. It's just not useful enough for its cost and the areas where it is useful, it isn't garunteed.
It would be awesome if it cost like 200 minerals to create and 200 minerals to spawn. It would add a lot of options for late game Zerg and help for more defensive and offensive play at the cost of very good micro.
I think the Nydus Worm can be an amazing tool, but the technology metagame isn't there yet or something. Early game it costs so much so it can only really be an allin/cheese tactic, midgame it cuts from your army a lot, or delays tech, so again, it's sort of meh. Lategame I think it has a lot of potential, especially for moving key units around the map and for dealing damage to mech/turtles.
EPT
