"Rock" comments about the Infestor (Blue post) - Page 16

Hi dudes,

So the infestor has become the target of many people's whines recently. I'm not sure that this is the place to rant about it, but I wanted to get my opinions out there for people to see, and hopefully for Blizzard to comment on.

While I can recognize that tournament results at the highest level have remained varied, I can't help but feel like late game Zerg play has become very face-roll and skill-less. This isn't to say that top level Zerg play isn't impressive - it is, but in certain matchups, on certain maps, and in certain cases, we see the game devolve to Zerg turtling behind spine crawlers and infestors, defending drops and harass, and slowly accumulating a critical mass of brood lord / infestor before pushing out to win the game.

Yes, we were all very impressed when Rain dismantled DRG in the OSL finals, and I can recognize that it is possible for Protoss to win in the super late game against Zerg, but I can't help but to feel that Protoss has to work a lot harder at a certain point in the game to get those impressive wins.

Like... a loooot harder.

When we step back and look at the game, we see a lot of things that are, perhaps, too strong.

Infestors. Brood lords. Spine crawlers. These things are all super powerful.

As are Colossi, blink stalkers, mother ship, and tons of other Protoss stuff.

The problem isn't overpowered stuff. The problem comes when you no longer have an answer to overpowered stuff.

And I do feel that, at a point, infestor broodlord just snowballs out of control.

I don't blame this on it being a far superior fighting army... We've seen Protoss players kill this composition in the past even without vortex.

And I don't blame it on the fungal mechanic shutting down micro.

I think it just boils down to points in the game where Protoss is disallowed from engaging certain aspects of the Zerg army.

A zerg player has to make a mistake for Protoss to kill his infestors. A zerg player has to expose his broodlords for that army to be threatened.

Incidentally, all of this also applies to Terran in some ways.

Fundamentally, I think you can solve this problem with one small change to Protoss, and one small change to Terran... By buffing their anti-infestor casters. The high templar and the ghosts respectively.

I think increasing the range on feedback and snipe would do wonders to bring stability, and MOBILITY back to the matchups, and I also think it would silence the masses that love to cry about the overpoweredness of certain Zerg army compositions.

It's almost impossible for Protoss and Terran players to successfully feedback or snipe infestors without losing the units they commit to doing so. Often, we see Protoss players send 2-3 high templar forward to feedback, successfully kill 1-2 infestors, and lose their units, resulting in a cost-ineffective trade.

I honestly feel like this happens purely because you can never reach infestors.

I would like to see feedback range tested at something like range 12. Give them broodlord range, so that infestors have to be positioned underneath broods, and can be punished if left overly exposed.

This will still preserve the strength of broodlord infestor, while giving Protoss a way to combat the strength of fungal.

Obviously, if you're going to buff feedback, you have to buff snipe, but in this case, I think an equivalent range buff to ghosts would do wonders to ease Terran woes as well. (And for all the same reasons listed above)

For me, as a player, I get very bored of the turtley games that we are continuing to see day in and day out. As a caster, I can put on a blindfold and talk an audience through a PvZ on Daybreak. And as a fan of the game, I long for mechanics that push players away from being static and immobile, and toward being aggressive and active.

I would love to hear what other top players think of this change, and also to see what Blizz has to say on the matter.

<3s and kudos. Thanks for reading.