Infestor Burrow movement must be nerfed

On February 13 2024 05:04 Drahkn wrote:
There needs to be a easier to spot visual effect on infestors just like ghosts and DT and observers have, Serral was legit sharking around armies and Terrans had no clue whatsoever , you can easily argue single fungals pushed games in Serrals favor(Finals game nr 2). They are now even easier to get early because of the previous buffs. Fix this now I've made post about this many times before , it is just a matter of time before commentators start talking about it and it will get nerfed , should have been nerfed a long time ago.

Listening to PiG's voice trying to make it sound balanced while watching the most broken way to use a caster to win a tournament sine warp in storms back in early WOL.

Serral is one of the best to ever touch SC2 but with Zerg he is untouchable when he finds tactics like this infestor usage and it is not fun to watch.

It's like Magnus Carlsen vs Magnus Carlsen but one of them has 2 Queens.

NERF

On February 13 2024 09:45 Starcloud wrote:
This post must be a joke/troll, right ?

What everybody here already has said; there is one person in the planet who can use this cost-efficiently, and by no means that is guaranteed in every game. Its insanely hard to keep track individual infestors, move them, synchronize their plays with your army and still not get sniped or killed before you get to cast anything. Infestors have gotten nerfed like 10 times already, they are by no means OP anymore. Making them immovable would make them even more useless than they already are for 90% of playerbase, if not even more. Please stop.




I have actually agreed with you almost every post considering Serral and all this *hit-talking and balance-whining in multiple threads, so good work .

But on this one, I must disagree. Why should infestor be "seen". They are terribly slow, clunky units with no abilities to attack or even protect themselves, but burrowing and movement. In addition they cost a lot. They are mostly useful in the endgame if even then. If you make them visible, what on earth prevents terran just kill them with infinite scans ? Like you said yourself; "it’s extremely difficult and we don’t see it too often". I at least havent seen that kind of infestor use never before. Also terran already has a very powerful lategame against zerg, why on earth should we make it even more stronger ? In addition, like you and many others have already said; TvZ seems to be in a pretty good spot and balanced right now. Of course there will always be things to adjust and map balance could be discussed more, but infestor is not the problem in the matchup.

On February 13 2024 22:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
If we're going to nerf Ghost, I would like to say that the auto attack or snipe should be nerfed, please do NOT nerf EMP.
Nerfing EMP has the side effect of unnecessarily nerfing Mech, especially in TvP.

Please focus the nerfs or unit reworks in a way that target bio play firstmost, and mech last.
Mech TvP especially does not deserve a single unnecessary nerf ever again.

I hate when changes are made that are mostly to address bio or standard play, but end up nerfing Mech, and there are easy ways to compensate for that without affecting bio or other MUs but unfortunately because no one left playing/watching cares enough about Mech, there's no one to vouch and implement it i guess...

On that note, I was just thinking again:
Was the cost revert for Ghost from 200/100 back to 150/150 really necessary?
I tend to hear from casters that Ghosts are expensive, but gas isn't really a limiting factor for Bio is it? It's minerals.

David Kim said that the reason Ghost was changed to 200/100 from 150/150 (way back in WoL) was to make it more costly for Bio to get, while making it easier for Mech to get (since Mech is much more gas heavy and doesn't mind sinking minerals).

I still don't fully understand why the newer balance team reverted this. Their reasoning IIRC was that it makes more expensive, but does it really? I agree with David Kim's reasoning more. We see games where most resources are mined out, and mineral patches are emptied first with mass OC/MULE, while Refineries still have lots of gas.

Raven rework into being more of a early game / bio spellcaster also hurt Mech. I really hate how much the AA missile debuff specifically helps bio's weapons way more than Mech weapons. Now both spellcasters benefit Mech less for the cost compared to how much more they became useful to Bio ;(
(Though thankfully with the new Cyclone, AA missile is significantly more useful!)
I would be happy if Ghost cost was changed even to 175/125 and snipe slightly nerfed further (maybe 1 sec longer delay before firing? that way the damage is less burst and less potent in battles), that gas is precious.

On February 13 2024 23:01 WombaT wrote:

Good points, and as an avowed scumbag mecher at a decent level you have more insight than most of us as to what the actual pitfalls and difficulties of the style are.

Although ultimately I just think Legacy’s pace and how the eco works is really the core inhibitor. Everything else is an additional limiting factor. For mech to be viable you have to be able to say, [s]turtle[\s] play defensively and gradually build your defensive position in say, 2 base versus 4, or 3 versus 5, shore up and trade. You can’t really do that because you mine out quite quickly on your initial bases, which forces you to have to keep vaguely equal pace on expanding out, which in turn stretches traditional tank-based mech way too thin. You’re the expert in this field, am I wrong?

The cyclone buff, as I predicted hasn’t really addressed this. At least at the top level, perhaps it’s different lower down. If you’re having success with battle mech on the edges of Zerg territory and dominating trades, the play is to just keep building battlemech and go kill, or at least cripple them. It isn’t to switch over to tank mech and take your hand off the throat. And if you’re not trading well or making a dent, well you have the same problem, only the time where you get swarmed by a very angry Zerg with their eco in full flow is going to be that little bit sooner.

Happy to be corrected of course, but that’s kinda my read on the state of mech, as it were.

On February 13 2024 23:48 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:


Haha you know the real reason why i like mech

But yes, i totally agree with your assessment. LotV has not been kind to traditional defensive mech play. The way the economy starts and scales means that economy will ramp up exponentially more than Mech can get its tech and production up, because teching is more linear (especially the time it takes to go from your reaper to your factory and starport and first tanks). This has created a much larger early window of vulnerability for Tank based mech than in HotS. When you are trying to hold your 3rd the Protoss can already be 5 Nexus if they're going mass gateway and just throw so many chargelots at you that your Hellbats which are supposed to hardcounter chargelots can't even hold against.

Mech TvP in HotS was actually perfectly viable, because the timings lined up such that if you open reactor hellion you are actually fully safe and can get 8-16 hellions to sit in front of the Protoss's natural and contain them on 2 base until they slowly get 1-2 Colossus to push out, and by then you have tanks defending your third. And if you hold your 3rd vs any kind of push they try, those hellions remain useful as they become hellbats and you have a strong timing where you can attack their 3rd with ~15-20 Hellbats, ~4-5 Tanks, 2 Medivacs, and any Raven/Banshee leftover from your opening. But now you can't do that because Protoss will be able to reach a mass of Blink stalkers early enough that you don't have enough tanks to take your third, let alone be able to have that early buildup of hellions to gain map control and scout and harass.

The new Cyclones thankfully have allowed "Mech" (as in Factory-based comps) to be more interactive and move out more and be less vulnerable early on, especially in TvZ and TvT, but it has only helped a little in TvP.
I agree with your assessment with the Cyclone too, it's really too bad how many players saw all the issues with the unit and how much it failed to address, yet it still pushed through. Like you said, Cyclone is more of a tempo based unit so if you fail to outpace the opponent and start getting out swarmed, you have the same problem where tank based defensive play is still weak and realistically you're not going to climb back with that when behind. And if you are outpacing them with your Cyclones, then the way the unit is designed to snowball often incentivizes players to just build even more Cyclone.

There is thankfully one middleground where if your Cyclones in early and mid game do well but isn't enough to end the game, you slowly add in Tanks 1-2 at a time which is enough to support your Cyclones and keep scaling along with their increasing numbers of Roach/Ravager/Hydras or whatever they build. So in that scenario, which isn't too uncommon actually, Cyclone did manage to help cover Mech vulnerability early on and allow it to slowly add in tanks, and slowly slowly it does become more worth it to reproportion your supply to having more Tanks, Libs, Ghosts, and Thors than Cyclones, all of which are more of that traditional positional mech unit comp.

This does still apply a little to TvP, it just really sucks that the main goal of the Cyclone was to help Mech be viable vs TvP, and the main main issue there that LotV introduced is that it's too hard to get your 3rd safely vs blink stalkers, and if you can't get your 3rd quickly and safely then you are always behind from there on and can't get new bases fast enough. It's really really dumb that the Cyclone's new lock on is still specifically countered by Blink back micro, because even though lock-on has 0 cd it also has a shorter range so Blink still counters it lol. And the design team really didn't do anything to try to design a unit that specifically is strong vs Blink stalker early on and gets weaker later on so that you're incentivized to swap to more traditional tank based play. David Kim's torpedo Cyclone idea was much better at negating Blink as much as possible, where it was focused on having a very strong ground rapid fire attack (so Blink is harder to dodge projectiles and even if it does it's just like 4 damage you dodged, and you also don't cancel Lock On), though i know the unit was a bit dumb/busted in its own ways.

Ok i ranted too long, i just like talking about mech too much xD. I bow down to David Kim who looked out for my mech brethren and loathe the newer balance teams. I really respect game devs when they consider other less common playstyles when balancing the game and avoid unintentionally nerfing them via side effects

My 2 cents is please when the Ghost will inevitably be patched again in the future, is to keep in mind us Mech players too