EPTWhy Zerg sucks and several other complaints/suggestions
The beta has been out for two weeks now, and after watching tons of livestream the 1st week and being able to play several games on my friend’s account since last week, I’ve found that Protoss is horribly imbalanced. By imbalanced I don’t mean that they have advantages over the other races in terms of winning games, but that Protoss is extremely more interesting to play as. As a BW Zerg player, I am extremely disappointed with the current state of Zerg, as the changes made to the race have all but destroyed every aspect of BW Zerg that I loved.
The new units for Zerg are Queens, banelings, roaches, and overseers. I do not consider the infestor or corrupter/broodlord as new units as they are simply the defiler and devour/guardian in new skins. It should also be noted that lurkers and scourge have been removed, and that muta-micro is completely butchered. Although I just said the infestor was a defiler (as it is the Zergs ONLY spellcaster while the other races each have at least 2), it is really just a nerfed dark archon with some shitty summon spell( SPAWN INFESTED TERRANS IS THE STUPIDEST FUCKING SPELL IN THE GAME) instead of feedback and nerfed mind control and nerfed maelstorm (units still attack when affected).
In BW what I love so much about the Zerg is how micro-intensive they are, and how every unit has an extremely large depth to it in terms of learning how to control it properly. Muta-micro is my favorite part about BW, I love the way that mutas give Zerg countless options in tactics and strategy, and are extremely dynamic in what purposes they can serve (either purely harass, defense, or just support). I loved the way a whole multitude of playstyles were not only available but totally viable (for instance PvZ you can play very aggressive with 5 hat hydra play or go very defensive with sunken/spore/lurkers). I love the way that defilers, although the most powerful spellcaster in the game, are also hardest to use but also the most versatile spellcaster ( the way swarm placement allows infinite options to the Zerg player to hold any choke or attack any base with proper control, not to mention the usefulness of plague). I love the way Lurkers allow even more options to the Zerg. They are arguably the best defensive unit in the game, but can also be coupled with other units (defiler and zerglings) to be extremely offensive as well.
In SC2, Zerg have lost all these units (mutas might as well be completely different units as they function completely differently now and are basically useless as harass units, at least compared to BW mutas) and the options of play they provide. Currently, from my experience, Zerg play in SC2 is basically “make a bunch of roach/hydra/ling and hope its more than the other guy can kill.” There’s absolutely no finesse to any of the Zerg units (unlike the way Terran have ghosts and reapers or protoss have stalkers/sentries). With the removal of the scourge, lurker, and dark swarm (or rather the complete removal of that entire role in the Zerg army), Zerg now have 0 “defensive” units. A defensive style of play is extremely harder to pull off now, and really is just counter-intuitive. I guess mass nydus-worm (which is basically the only GOOD way to play Zerg right now) is a defensive style(although simultaneously an extremely offensive stlye), so maybe what I just said is stupid, but I feel it’s still a very makeshift defensive style.
Zerg late game options are a fucking joke right now. Either get the best unit in the game or get buffed guardians that will probably die to 1 anti-air unit just like in SC1 but you don’t even have scourge to try to defend them better (I will admit right now though that this is just my impression of broodlords as I have only used them once in a game that was already over and have rarely ever seen them used, which perhaps speaks of their usefulness already). In BW there was this beautiful dynamic (particularly in ZvT) where you finally get that 3rd gas and have the option of getting guardians (again never used), defilers, or ultras. Defilers were almost always the GOTO unit because swarm is just so fucking useful and dynamic (can be helpful in countless situations) and allowed for a completely new phase of the game to take place as you are using defilers to try to take a 4th and 5th gas to THEN get ultras. Not to mention the fact that upgrades don’t really make sense any more. Unless you just get all 3 upgrades at once, you basically either get melee which only affects early game and very lategame (lings/ultas) or missiles which only affect the mid game (roach/hydra). Without the lurker (and defiler to make late-game hydralurk viable) you have no strong unit to transition to lategame except for the ultralisk, so you might as well JUST upgrade melee.
IN SC2 there isn’t even a rush to hive, because you are only getting a hive for the sole reason of getting ultralisks (or I guess maybe upgrades for other units?). While rushing for hive being gone isn’t exactly a bad thing (im not saying its bad just because its different), it does exist solely because theres no reason to get a hive until you have an economy to switch completely to ultalisks. This means that the entire zerg lategame can ONLY revolve around ultralisks. This completely sucks, as Zerg right now have the fewest options available to them.
When the queen was first announced, I was very excited about it. I thought larva inject was a great idea and was the best new macro ability. While right now I still feel that larva inject is really cool, I feel like there are a lot of missed opportunities with the queen, primarily the fact that the queen’s other 2 spells are completely useless. I have the feeling that blizzard came up with creep tumor and it was really awesome and then 2 weeks later they made it so that every overlord can drop creep once you get a lair. At that point im quite sure they meant to take creep tumor out and replace it with something useful but they forgot to. Creep tumor might have been an interesting thing to balance out larva inject with but right now its not even worth fucking touching compared to larva inject. The heal ability is stupid too, possibly more useless than ghost energy upgrade in SC1.
Ultimately I feel the Zerg race right now is really fucking lame and not very fun at all. I think banelings are somewhat interesting, larva inject is sweet, overlords dropping creep is cool, and roaches are sorta cool with the “move while burrowed” thing (although completely boring as a unit otherwise), but ultimately Zerg to me has just boiled down to “make a bunch of shit and a-move eventually and hope he cant kill it all” which I guess could describe SC1 to an extent, but there is just an absolute lack of finesse required to the race, and more importantly I feel there is just no depth at all in any of the units. SC2 Zerg is completely broken at the moment.
Suggestions:
I feel like the 2nd tier is somewhat close to being fun again actually. I’m not completely sure what good steps to take would be, but the roach is definitely not a good Zerg unit (and unfortunately the roach is the absolute key unit in every MU for Zerg right now too -_-). My suggestion would be to replace the roach with a new unit more suitable for harass (maybe give him a cliff-hoping ability since Zerg is STILL the only race without that) that is not just a huge tank. I would recommend giving the queen new abilities besides larva inject that are actually interesting and useful, perhaps give her more defensive type spells like she was originally planned to have.
The infestor needs completely new spells. Fungal growth is OK I guess but spawn infested terrans and neural parasite (but especially spawn infested terrans) aren’t very interesting spells at all and definitely don’t feel zergy at all. I don’t get why Blizzard is sticking to their guns so much on “ZERG MUST HAVE SOME SORT OF INFESTING SPELL!” Maybe the Zerg was originally imagined to be like that 11 years ago but over that time of playing the game, they play completely differently from that (did you know no one uses queens?!).
Mutas are pretty fucking weak right now and completely not too fun to control (maybe they should just scrap mutas and bring in a new air unit so I will stop comparing them to SC1 mutas lol). The lack of muta micro has effectively eliminated them as a great harass unit, and with the removal of the lurker Zerg now have 0 harass units. Maybe I should just accept that it’s impossible to have mutas as good as they were before (I assume the only reason mutas still suck is because blizzard is unable to do it technically), but mutas will only ever be good serving a support role, at least in any way I can see. I never really use corruptors because they are the reincarnation of one of the least used units of all of SC. One that sucks is how they moved broodlords to morph from them and not mutas, so while I MIGHT use mutas (especially with the possibility of them later being turned into broodlords) once in a while, I can completely see broodlords being used much less because youre literally just building a spire to turn it into a great spire so you can build corruptors and turn them into broodlords. The overseer is fine I guess, I was never a big fan of removing detection from all overlords (although that might just be because I’m a zerg player lol) but I feel like I’m still not getting a lot out of the overseer, especially since its 50min/100gas (while observers are cheaper and permacloaked and basically better). Changelings are surprisingly good but feel really really fucking out of place, especially since it’s the overseers ONLY spell. I would like to see the overseer get some more spells, especially if they won’t make the infestor useful at all.
The absolutely biggest problem for the Zerg I feel (and already stated) the complete lack of late-game options. I feel like simply bringing the lurker back into the mix at hive tech would be sufficient to solve this (albeit a lazy solution). Ultimately The Zerg just need SOME new unit to use at hive tech that offers an alternative playstyle to ultras.
I know this is a lot of complaints but there are a lot of things I like about SC2, and maybe theres just been a fundamental shift in the playstyles the races offer as Protoss just seem to me far far more interesting than the other races (with warp-in, stalker blink micro, forcefield micro, etc) and Zerg is actually way “interesting” to some people and it’s all just a matter of taste. I don’t know. It’s true the beta has only been out for 2 weeks and normally it’s far too early to make conclusions such as “zerg is broke,” but right now it’s very very hard for me to see Zerg sneaking up on me and being way cool, at least without a lot of changes.
List of other complaints that don’t really fit into what I just wrote (lol):
ZvT is fucking broken right now. Maybe im just playing it completely wrong but every ZvT I’ve played has just been early game I contain the Terran with lings or banelings or roaches and maybe win a few skirmishes and feel pretty far ahead. Then it hits the midgame and it just completey boils down to mass medivac armies vs mass nydus worm defense/offense (where I basically put my whole army in nydus network and either defend vs mass drops or try to doom drop) and it generally just last more than 5 minutes past that point.
SPAWN INFESTED TERRANS IS FUCKING LAME
I want to also repeat things we’ve heard about hard counters and how the game focuses too much on unit composition. I feel this is/could be a big problem in the fundamental design of the game.
I haven't really seen this YET and I feel its just because the game is only 2 weeks old and no one is “good” at it yet, but I feel there might be too much “goddamnit” units in the game. For instance the reason I hate modern warfare 2 so much is that there is a bunch of shit in the game that kills you instantly and you cant really do anything about it. While its true a good player can always scout and prepare for anything, theres a lot of stuff in the game I feel that is just TOO GOOD and while each race has it, it still isn’t FUN. Examples being 4 reapers can kill a nexus in like 8 seconds, warprays can kill anything so fast, medivac mass drop is really lame, nydus worm attacks are super lame (and basically the only sound strategy).
I complained that larva inject wasnt balanced out with anything interesting, but its 10x worse for terran. MULES are clearly much better than scan (for the most part), but ultimately the worst part about MULEs is that balancing them out with scan isn’t really fun at all. Super supply depots make me lol.
Basically almost every spell is a variant of stasis (IE freezes units) or psi storm (IE target unit and do damage to it). Every race I guess needs one, but there are way too many spells that are way too similar.
Things I DO like: (or well, a small list of my favorite things about SC2)
I said it before and ill say it one more time, Protoss is really cool. This is probably because they are the most polished race of the 3 (and maybe blizzard just sorta ran out of good ideas half way through terran?), but they just have way more interesting units (or maybe just the most NEW units and abilities?). Forcefield is probably my favorite spell in the game, as it is just super creative and offers up all sorts of great micro moments and theres a ton of room for creativity. Warp-in is badass and warp-prisms are great too. Blink is awesome (even though just taken out of WC3). I would LOVE to see more spells like forcefield that aren’t just “target enemy and do damage to it” as almost all spells are like that now (and so few were like that in SC1 ).
Overlords dropping creep is probably my favorite new addition to Zerg,
Reapers are pretty sweet although I wish they still had that cool grenade ability
