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On April 04 2013 01:26 -_- wrote:
Zerg cannot have the strongest 200/200 army
As the most mobile race, and the race which can most easily repopulate high tech units, it simply cannot have an army which can wipe out the other races.
Supply free units in WOL made the game imbalanced. Infested Terran, Broodlings, and Sunken walls were the reason. Blizzard couldn't give Zerg another.
That creep one might've been cool.
???
Those Nydus Destroyers attack buildings only...
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Nydus worms are definitely under utilized. I remember watching a game during WoL beta where the zerg abused the mobility of nydus worms. He built a worm near a terran expansion, unloads a bunch of ultras, snipes it then run away into the worm as the army arrives thus he only lost 100/100 while doing so. During all that another worm appears at another corner of the map and the ultras snipe another base. So, 2 bases dead for 200 min 200 gas. I'll take that trade any day.
Seriously why are people so stuck in the mindset of 'im gonna spawn a worm right in the centre of his base and I hope he doesn't see it'. NOT seeing the worm offers arguably greater psychological impact to the opponent. So no you don't have to sneak an overlord into the back of his main, spawn a worm and hope he doesn't see it. All you have to do is build 2 nydus networks and simultaneously spawn 2 worms in front of his natural and, say 5th base(preferrably out of sight). When the army arrives to clean up one of the worms you unload the other one and attack that expansion, spawn another worm at that expansion and when the enemy army arrives you jump back into that worm. 300/300 for a base, still a pretty nice trade for me. Meanwhile you can spawn even more worms around the map just to keep him confused and attack at the first sign of weakness.
People are just too caught up with their deathball mentality and see worms as a way to increase the mobility of an army, when it also provides a constant and real threat to an opponent with poor army positioning. It's not a cheesy tactic to get your army somewhere, but a solid way to get your opponent else where.
So I guess 300/300 for one base is more than enough of a reason to NOT buff nydus worms. People just need to think outside the box and be bold enough to experiment.
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They should just bring back the BW Nydus Canal.
I sincerely see no other reason than "we want something different" for not having it in SC2. This led them to scrap off great ideas from BW and reinvent them in some butchered version which will have/had to be taken out later on...
Don't reinvent the wheel.
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On April 04 2013 02:44 uh-oh wrote:+ Show Spoiler [for length] +
Nydus worms are definitely under utilized. I remember watching a game during WoL beta where the zerg abused the mobility of nydus worms. He built a worm near a terran expansion, unloads a bunch of ultras, snipes it then run away into the worm as the army arrives thus he only lost 100/100 while doing so. During all that another worm appears at another corner of the map and the ultras snipe another base. So, 2 bases dead for 200 min 200 gas. I'll take that trade any day.
Seriously why are people so stuck in the mindset of 'im gonna spawn a worm right in the centre of his base and I hope he doesn't see it'. NOT seeing the worm offers arguably greater psychological impact to the opponent. So no you don't have to sneak an overlord into the back of his main, spawn a worm and hope he doesn't see it. All you have to do is build 2 nydus networks and simultaneously spawn 2 worms in front of his natural and, say 5th base(preferrably out of sight). When the army arrives to clean up one of the worms you unload the other one and attack that expansion, spawn another worm at that expansion and when the enemy army arrives you jump back into that worm. 300/300 for a base, still a pretty nice trade for me. Meanwhile you can spawn even more worms around the map just to keep him confused and attack at the first sign of weakness.
People are just too caught up with their deathball mentality and see worms as a way to increase the mobility of an army, when it also provides a constant and real threat to an opponent with poor army positioning. It's not a cheesy tactic to get your army somewhere, but a solid way to get your opponent else where.
So I guess 300/300 for one base is more than enough of a reason to NOT buff nydus worms. People just need to think outside the box and be bold enough to experiment.
First, just a minor correction. 2 nydus networks and 3 worms is 600/700 not 300/300.
Second, I think the reason people think of them as harassment is because otherwise you're still trying to break the front, but then you're spending your time loading units and then unloading one unit at a time. It is literally faster and far cheaper to just use Overlords or to move there usually. Additionally every time you're just spawning a worm around the map to keep him confused your army is spending more time loading and unloading and you're spending the money on transport which in all likelihood isn't benefiting you at all. That's before even considering that you have to load them units in, in the correct order if you want to be able to load anything more than 1 fastest unit (Zergling) at a time. They're just not a threat, and certainly not a risk worth investing in.
Using them as a proxy pylon can be fun (provided that it's not faster for the units to run to the spot again) but it's not the wrong mentality that's keeping Zerg from using Nydus more. Conceptually it's the coolest weapon in the arsenal...it just doesn't work out that way.
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Aperently Protos are perfectly fine with using pylons to warp in for multi-pronged attacks or reinforcements, despite the fact that they cost minerals and can be found and destroyed, an you can only warp in however many warpgates you have.
Also, you do not have to use mostly zerling armies, do you?
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On April 03 2013 09:26 HeeroFX wrote:
Shooting nydus worm could be pretty OP and hard to balance, I mean how do you justify the cost of something that can pop up anywhere and tank dmg while the rest of your army does dmg. Creep worm is pretty OP because creep is already hard enough to clear simply because it slowly disapates.
Yes, how do you balance every Gateway unit from Protoss?
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On April 04 2013 03:11 naastyOne wrote:
Aperently Protos are perfectly fine with using pylons to warp in for multi-pronged attacks or reinforcements, despite the fact that they cost minerals and can be found and destroyed, an you can only warp in however many warpgates you have.
Also, you do not have to use mostly zerling armies, do you?
Are you really suggesting you see no difference between a 100 mineral structure which allows as many units to spawn as you can build at it (which doesn't warn the enemy ahead of time) and a 100/100 structure with half the health which requires a 150/200 structure to build, and allows you to get units one at a time after they first run from their spawn location to another building, which you then have to tell to unload every time a new unit makes it in to the network before you regain the use of your units? Oh yeah, and there's a chance that you can lose everything you put in it.
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On April 04 2013 02:53 Iyerbeth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2013 02:44 uh-oh wrote:+ Show Spoiler [for length] +
Nydus worms are definitely under utilized. I remember watching a game during WoL beta where the zerg abused the mobility of nydus worms. He built a worm near a terran expansion, unloads a bunch of ultras, snipes it then run away into the worm as the army arrives thus he only lost 100/100 while doing so. During all that another worm appears at another corner of the map and the ultras snipe another base. So, 2 bases dead for 200 min 200 gas. I'll take that trade any day.
Seriously why are people so stuck in the mindset of 'im gonna spawn a worm right in the centre of his base and I hope he doesn't see it'. NOT seeing the worm offers arguably greater psychological impact to the opponent. So no you don't have to sneak an overlord into the back of his main, spawn a worm and hope he doesn't see it. All you have to do is build 2 nydus networks and simultaneously spawn 2 worms in front of his natural and, say 5th base(preferrably out of sight). When the army arrives to clean up one of the worms you unload the other one and attack that expansion, spawn another worm at that expansion and when the enemy army arrives you jump back into that worm. 300/300 for a base, still a pretty nice trade for me. Meanwhile you can spawn even more worms around the map just to keep him confused and attack at the first sign of weakness.
People are just too caught up with their deathball mentality and see worms as a way to increase the mobility of an army, when it also provides a constant and real threat to an opponent with poor army positioning. It's not a cheesy tactic to get your army somewhere, but a solid way to get your opponent else where.
So I guess 300/300 for one base is more than enough of a reason to NOT buff nydus worms. People just need to think outside the box and be bold enough to experiment.
It is literally faster and far cheaper to just use Overlords or to move there usually. . . That's before even considering that you have to load them units in, in the correct order if you want to be able to load anything more than 1 fastest unit (Zergling) at a time. They're just not a threat, and certainly not a risk worth investing in.
Again I would like to stress the point of nydus worms is trying to get your opponent where you want him to be. You aren't supposed to unload your worm when there are units around because you are supposed to get his units away from one of the worms, the one that you'll unload if he fails to identify it's location(which he should because having the worm out of sight is better than letting him see it: if he doesnt know where the worm is he won't know where you'll attack). It's about pulling your enemy away and being able to retreat quickly which is something overlords can't do. They don't have ignite afterburners and cannot guarantee a safe retreat, and why risk your overlords getting killed in a fake drop that tries to pull units out of position when a nydus worm can do the trick? It's not even a fake attack, basically you have units in two places at once before unloading(schrodinger's cat anyone XD) so he must defend where he thinks is important
yes you can only unload units one by one, but then you don't have to face his army directly anyway(his army's out of position+you have a ticket home), so you can simply load in enough stuff to take out a base instead of having the whole army inside to avoid such nydus congestion. Dont think in terms of deathballs.
Additionally every time you're just spawning a worm around the map to keep him confused your army is spending more time loading and unloading and you're spending the money on transport which in all likelihood isn't benefiting you at all.
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Using them as a proxy pylon can be fun (provided that it's not faster for the units to run to the spot again) but it's not the wrong mentality that's keeping Zerg from using Nydus more.
See this is the wrong mentality I was talking about: nydus worms are more than transports that helps you reinforce your army(creep highways already do that quite nicely anyway), they pull your enemy out of position so you can attack anywhere you want, and if being able to pull your enemy around the map like a puppet isn't a benefit I don't know what is.
About the 600/700 thing, remember the investment into nydus network isn't a one off but one that can be used throughout the late game. It's not a one time 'tactic', but a strategy that can repeatedly threaten the opponent. And even if it's a one off, 600/700 for all workers+base still looks like a decent trade to me.
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I think the problem with what you're saying though Uh-Oh is that the worms are so easily killed that there is no comittment to be made. You're alerted when the threat exists, and by the point you could afford to threaten multiple areas of the map at once, the game it usually so far through that production and defences are going to be protecting those areas enough anyway.
Also why not run by? It's cheaper, not much slower on most maps (sometimes even faster) and can achieve the same thing for the most part. There's no good composition to use this with in the current meta game (except swarm host play) where the alternative of not gambling on really fragile expensive worms is worse.
It's also worth mentioning I think, there's no way that if the nydus worm was powerful enough to be worth gambling on, we wouldn't see the best in the world use it.
Edit: Somehow this post feels more aggressive in tone than I expected. It's not intended to be. I do wish the nydus could be used for clever positional play. When I first picked up SC2 it was the thing I most wanted to be able to make work, but it just doesn't seem to work in practice.
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I think maybe nydus worm would be a lot more viable like this:
If you already have creep where you are placing a nydus worm , it finished the worm at 2 x the speed , or has 2x health or something ?
And they should be able to release lings quicker FFS , right now it's only viable if using roach or hydra or ultra , big units that ain't so bad being popped out 1 by 1.
I love the concept of nydus worm , but 95% of the time it gets caught and stopped so easy.
Then again , watch TLO's stream , amazing how he uses nydus worm.
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Creep worm looks insanely imba.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On April 03 2013 23:49 Ramiz1989 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 22:50 Qikz wrote:On April 03 2013 22:34 Zygno wrote:
I play Terran and think the Nydus worm isn't very good and would deserve a buff. Not sure how to change it though~ While they make it buildable anywhere, it can't be buffed. It's too strong vs slow armies if you can't kill it in your main before it sets off. If it was on creep only and a defensive thing they could give it a HP buff or something, but I still think defensive it's good already it's just nobody uses them. You as zerg basically have really great map vision if you're creep spread is good so you can get units in and out of it before they arrive at your base. I really disagrees with the "too strong against slow armies" part. I can't see how something is too strong if you can destroy it with 10 Workers before it emerges from the ground... I also think that Nydus is in "ok" place, and I think that they are really underused, but I don't see them as too strong vs. anything.
Nonono that's what I'm saying. If they got a huge health buff you wouldn't be able to stop them building.
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On April 04 2013 03:35 Iyerbeth wrote:
I think the problem with what you're saying though Uh-Oh is that the worms are so easily killed that there is no comittment to be made. You're alerted when the threat exists, and by the point you could afford to threaten multiple areas of the map at once, the game it usually so far through that production and defences are going to be protecting those areas enough anyway.
Also why not run by? It's cheaper, not much slower on most maps (sometimes even faster) and can achieve the same thing for the most part. There's no good composition to use this with in the current meta game (except swarm host play) where the alternative of not gambling on really fragile expensive worms is worse.
It's also worth mentioning I think, there's no way that if the nydus worm was powerful enough to be worth gambling on, we wouldn't see the best in the world use it.
The thing is when a worm gets killed you know where the army is, which means you know where an army isn't defending and can therefore proceed to attack that undefended location.
The thing about runbys is that they are small and can only do limited damage. Say you do a 12 roach runby into the main base, how much are you gonna kill before the enemy kills you? A couple of add ons or pylons, maybe one production structure but that's pushing it. Anything too big is just too much of an investment into a suicide attack that has no guarantee to do enough damage to justify such a manoeuvre.
With nydus worms, you can:
1 Draw the enemy army away with no units at all
2 Deploy a sizable force far away from the army that can do a lot of damage in a very short time
3 Retreat safely with minimal losses
4 Strike at another location again before the army is finished dealing with the previous attack to do even more damage while still losing very little units
A runby is a risky move that has no guarantee it will do enough damage, with the units involved in a suicide mission. In comparison, nydus worms, being able to do a lot more damage and without a suicidal nature is a far superior option.
Good composition for this kind of play? Anything bigger than roaches will do nicely(so you can unload your strike force sooner). In the lategame I reckon hydra/ultra will be the best in these kinds of scenarios as they can be unloaded relatively quickly and has insane DPS output.
Reason why no pros used nydus worms? BL infestor is a bad comp for nydus worms, and then there's of course the deathball mentality. Similar to how mass recall is underused in WoL because people are so obsessed with winning a deathball battle with stinky vortex toilets when mass recall can be used in a similar fashion as well(and mind you we have seen pros, notably kiwikaki, use this to great effect vs machine and stephano)
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On April 04 2013 03:57 uh-oh wrote:
With nydus worms, you can:
1 Draw the enemy army away with no units at all
2 Deploy a sizable force far away from the army that can do a lot of damage in a very short time
3 Retreat safely with minimal losses
4 Strike at another location again before the army is finished dealing with the previous attack to do even more damage while still losing very little units
I hadn't considered your first point, but wouldn't that only be the case if they were made aware of it's location (and thus able to kill it with anything)?
The rest of your points though, I fear, are somewhat undone by the .5 unloading time for units and the .25 second loading for each unit. Trying to imagine a group of units that could be a threat to anything late game that wouldn't take longer to get to a worm, load up, unload and then move in than would take to simply run to the point is quite challenging. And with running to the spot, you don't pay the extra cost.
Trying to load in with the .25 seconds per unit also makes retreating kinda expensive unless you had enough time to retreat that you could have just left anyway.
Your fourth ponit is the way I've always seen it attempt to be used in the past (when not simply used as an 'I hope he doesn't see this in his main' ability) and the reward just never seems worth the risk. If we're still just talking a small group of units, bane drops or Mutas just seem better.
Edit: I always feel like it's a more expensive, non flying warp prism that takes longer to use and alerts your enemy while being completely stationary. I was so excited when Blizz said they would look in to making it more usable/fun.
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On April 04 2013 04:08 Iyerbeth wrote:
I hadn't considered your first point, but wouldn't that only be the case if they were made aware of it's location (and thus able to kill it with anything)?
Simple, deliberately bait the enemy into seeing the fake worm by spreading creep with overlords, perhaps even unloading enough units so he has to pull his army away. He has to pull his army because he doesnt know what's inside the worm and he can't risk having 5 ultralisk coming out and killing that puny force he sent to clean it up.
The rest of your points though, I fear, are somehwat undone by the .5 unloading time for units and the .25 second loading for each unit. Trying to imagine a group of units that could be a threat to anything late game that wouldn't take longer to get to a worm, load up, unload and then move in than would take to simply run to the point is quite challenging. And with running to the spot, you don't pay the extra cost.
Trying to load in with the .25 seconds per unit also makes retreating kinda expensive unless you had enough time to retreat that you could have just left anyway.
the group of units you are looking for is ultralisks, perhaps with hydra support, they dont have to be in large numbers because like I said, they do insane DPS. Im no zerg but Im sure they will do MUCH more damage then a flock of mutas or baneling drops. With the relatively small number of ultras/hydras you need to do damage and the fact the the enemy army is out of position, the load in/unload time shouldn't be too much of a problem. Also you always want to leave at the very last second in order to maximize the time that you are doing damage, and nydus worms are your best bet at that.
Oh and you can spawn more than one worm to speed up the loading process if you really want to get a big blob of stuff in one place.
Your fourth ponit is the way I've always seen it attempt to be used in the past (when not simply used as an 'I hope he doesn't see this in his main' ability) and the reward just never seems worth the risk. If we're still just talking a small group of units, bane drops or Mutas just seem better.
the risk is actually VERY small, either you do sick damage to your enemy, or you lose a nydus worm for the price of one mutalisk and a tiny amount of units. spawning more worms minimizes the risk even further, in that even if one worm is killed you can still retreat. This style is also more effective in the late game when the enemy has more bases to defend, and I don't think investing in occasional baneling drops or late game muta switch is as good in that situation, let alone being unable to do more damage than ultra/hydra can.
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On April 03 2013 09:42 Cinim wrote:
It's quite wrong to say that it's too early for big changes because hots is released, there was some quite major changes early in wol
Of course there's going to be plenty of balance changes in the future but we're not going to see any units removed or new units introduced until the next expansion. I believe this'll also apply to no changes in how current units work (the most drastic perhaps been the removal of a research-able upgrade) so for the next couple of years we're stuck with the Nydus as it is.
Those creep high-way and building attacking Nydus' do actually sound good on paper but look incredibly gimmicky. I do hope the Nydus is re-invented in some way in the future though, it's a great concept that's I believe is been very under-used at the moment. It just needs something to coax people into using it more and subsequently realising they're actually good (just like with Warp prisms and Phoenix in WoL).
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I think the current Nydus Wurm is neither too strong nor too weak, however it is heavily underused, having other utilities such as a creep spreader and perhaps the Nydus attacker(though not so creative,) would make getting Nydus Canal more attractive.
It's kinda like when Hallucination wasn't free, it wasn't necessarily bad, it's just that you don't alway know when it would come to great use, but now that we have it always, we suddenly start to do a lot of creative shit with them.
Same can be said, if there were new options for Nydus.
And the cannot be balanced part, really annoys me, because that's obviously bullcrap. You can adjust builld time, damage, cost, life and even vision. I think the creep spreader should definitely just spew the creep and then it should immediately start to dissipate like normal creep, then that would be moderately balanced.
The Nydus Attacker I don't think is so creative, so I don't wanna talk about that one, but think about a Dune Wurm-like Wurm that you place at one place and it's invisible like a mine and then when units walk over it, it jumps up and eats everything, something like that would be really cool!
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Just make nydus worm cloaked until he gets built, but with clear sign that he is there. Opponent would need detection to destroy it, but would be aware of the worm.
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On April 04 2013 04:25 uh-oh wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2013 04:08 Iyerbeth wrote:
I hadn't considered your first point, but wouldn't that only be the case if they were made aware of it's location (and thus able to kill it with anything)? Simple, deliberately bait the enemy into seeing the fake worm by spreading creep with overlords, perhaps even unloading enough units so he has to pull his army away. He has to pull his army because he doesnt know what's inside the worm and he can't risk having 5 ultralisk coming out and killing that puny force he sent to clean it up. Show nested quote +
The rest of your points though, I fear, are somehwat undone by the .5 unloading time for units and the .25 second loading for each unit. Trying to imagine a group of units that could be a threat to anything late game that wouldn't take longer to get to a worm, load up, unload and then move in than would take to simply run to the point is quite challenging. And with running to the spot, you don't pay the extra cost.
Trying to load in with the .25 seconds per unit also makes retreating kinda expensive unless you had enough time to retreat that you could have just left anyway.
the group of units you are looking for is ultralisks, perhaps with hydra support, they dont have to be in large numbers because like I said, they do insane DPS. Im no zerg but Im sure they will do MUCH more damage then a flock of mutas or baneling drops. With the relatively small number of ultras/hydras you need to do damage and the fact the the enemy army is out of position, the load in/unload time shouldn't be too much of a problem. Also you always want to leave at the very last second in order to maximize the time that you are doing damage, and nydus worms are your best bet at that. Oh and you can spawn more than one worm to speed up the loading process if you really want to get a big blob of stuff in one place. Show nested quote +
Your fourth ponit is the way I've always seen it attempt to be used in the past (when not simply used as an 'I hope he doesn't see this in his main' ability) and the reward just never seems worth the risk. If we're still just talking a small group of units, bane drops or Mutas just seem better.
the risk is actually VERY small, either you do sick damage to your enemy, or you lose a nydus worm for the price of one mutalisk and a tiny amount of units. spawning more worms minimizes the risk even further, in that even if one worm is killed you can still retreat. This style is also more effective in the late game when the enemy has more bases to defend, and I don't think investing in occasional baneling drops or late game muta switch is as good in that situation, let alone being unable to do more damage than ultra/hydra can.
Assuming everything you've suggested is right for a moment (I do think that cost for cost, mutas will always be the better option for instance) there still seem to be a few problems. First, no one under masters would be able to do that stuff well enough for the investment, so it would at least remain unused to 98% of the player base for the most part.
Secondly though, we're still left at the point where zerg are investing in a technically challenging build when the standard and known works at least almost as well, if not better. Any other option is already capable of winning games without such an APM increase requirement, and the investment can actually fight back. It feels like an investment of effort that is being tried to fit in just because it's not used and not for any actually good reason. Of all the options to put a threat somewhere on the map, the nydus worm appears to be simultaneously the hardest to use and the worst.
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I think they should just take away the sound the nydus worm makes when it finishes.
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EPT
