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Hey, this will be a long post considering current zerg balance - I will try to avoid ideas of 'nerf terran' or 'nerf protoss' and completetly focus on pure state of zerg right now.
Just to start with, I will drop some creditentials since I would like to avoid getting flamed for ' LOL COPPER LEAGUE IDEAS' - if you dont care, just skip this paragraph.
If you care, click: + Show Spoiler +Before I had to stop for monday/tuesday I was at 612 elo, which was top 5 euro and highest rated zerg. Im at 636 elo atm, which is top50 according to RTS sanctuary and currently 5th zerg. During beta I've played over 1100 games with familiar success ( ~400-450 being random ), being rated top50 eu for full duration of beta, minus phase 2.
Recently I've been trying to develop some new strats and openings, and as far as it goes, the problem with zerg is as following: there are no viable multiple openings against each race.
Sure, you can all-in baneling burst against Terran, but at high diamond play you will almost always get blocked which will result in a lose just minutes later. Against Terran there is probably one opening only atm which is pool with speedlings-> hatch and then adapt. Pretty much same against Protoss. This is quite different from Terran, who can open with reapers, marine/tank push, thor drops, fast banshees, fast vikings, hellion harras into fast expo, hellion into marauder/tank/marine push etc.
By no means Im saying that Terrann needs a nerf - it's exactly opposite: Zerg needs some unit diversity, and instead it's getting worse and worse.
And here we come to Beta Patch 12 notes:
![[image loading]](http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/5751/roach.jpg)
* ZERG
o Roach
+ Supply count increased from 1 to 2.
This is where the problem lies in my opinion, and let me explain why.
There was one huge over-nerf, where almost whole scene didint agree it was justified ( if you would like to see players opinions please refer to this thread: Patch 12 - Changes and Discussion ), and Zerg players were promised something in exchange. Better infestor, faster ultralisk, whatever. Nope, nothing came.
Let me ask you: how often do you see roaches being used in high-lvl games now?
Im sure you will agree that almost never, probably only case they are used is defending a 2 gate early game from protoss, or SOMETIMES against hellions, since it's questionable as well - at the moment it's considered better to just build second queen and block the ramp of natural while spine crawlers defend from hellions.
Roaches are just not good enough for 2 supply in early game, and later they are just not made often, since there are better units: hydra's who are far superior vs Toss, mutalisks against Terran or Zerg.
Some people will say 2 supply instead of 1 isnt a big deal - yes it is. For every 4 roaches you make you could make another 2 drones.
I think roaches being brought back to 1 supply would fix quite a lot of problems without imbalancing the game - Roaches were fine with 1 supply after all the nerfs already, which is pretty easy to see in the thread from patch 12 I linked.
One supply roach could fix:
1) Early terran pushes.
Roach was designed to counter mech, and let's be honest - it doesnt now. Tanks are insane and later game even 1 supply Roach wouldnt be game breaking since atm Zerg's only chance is to... zerg terran anyway.
There would be actually a way to keep decent economy compared to Terran with mules, and prepare for a upcoming Thor mix/Tank mix push coming in 7-8th minute of game.
2) Two gate pushes / pylon+cannon blocks.
It's insanely hard to defend a proxy 2 gate push on Desert Oasis/Lost temple vs Toss, let alone speaking of mid/late game where toss can just put forge and block the choke with cannons. There is no viable counter by Zerg atm ( banelings are all-in which is easy to counter by 1 proper force field ), besides playing macro game and praying you can get to corruptors and mass enough force before Toss push with 2 robo colossus comes.
There is no punishment for Toss playing that kind of strat, since there is pretty much no way Zerg can reply fast and make any sort of counter attack.
3) The awesome state of Zerg vs Zerg match-up
Does it need a comment?
Speedlings vs Speedlings, add some banelings, there you have the most random match-up of sc2. One bad or lucky explosion can completely turn the game around.
Almost every player hates the match-up and big part of player base would agree that roach/hydra at least required some flanking, fungal growth usage and micro instead of being random.
Roach being 1 supply would make it possible to defend early speedling/baneling push, however speed-baneling would still be viable as the strat takes insane map control with spedlings + mutas. Let us choose what we want to play, and not force the match up into one strategy.
My suggestion?
Bring roach back to 1 supply, but..
I dont think it would be imbalanced, as one supply roach was already working fine pre-nerf, but if Blizzard thinks it would be game-breaking in lower leagues ( which is probably the reasoning for destroying the unit itself ) just nerf it to 0 armor ( atm its 1 armor ) and put an 100min/100gas update at lair tech that would increase armor of roach by 2.
Pretty simple, mid and late game unit dealers used against roach deal 50+ per hit anyway so it wouldnt be abused, and early game zerg would have an armored unit capable of mixing into the army. ( I still think it would be fine with 1 armor, thou it's just a proposition 'in case' ).
There are obviously few more problems with Zerg, but that would be a good start, wouldnt it?
I think Blizzard could think of some other changes like:
1) Putting ultralisk on ealier tech
Same as for Roach, zerg just needs a unit that can soak dmg and dont die in 1 shot. Ultralisks take considerably longer to get out then other race's equivalents ( Colossus / Thor ) and they are not really available until late game play. My idea would be making them available earlier: Make Ultralisk Den require Lair + infestation pit, without teching to Hive.
For that, remove Ultralisks splash and add it to the armor upgrade on Hive tech. There you have an unit that takes dmg, doesnt cut throu armies like break, and actually makes spedling/ultra work together.
That would punish also players attack moving and not microing as well, since Zerg would have a mid-game dmg taker that could actually work when pushing against tanks without control.
2) Neureal Parasite change on Infestor
Please... first it was nerfed to be researched ( 110 times and high cost, ok ). Then it was nerfed by DOUBLING the energy needed from 50 to 100. And now, it was nerfed to last 12 seconds from infinite. How ridiculous is that?
Neural parasite is absolutely terrible atm, and putting so much gas into Infestor tech is just asking to get owned. Fungal growth is still very cool, but it's mostly used against MMM ball of terran ( which is never played atm anyway ) or in ZvZ when one player is trying to stop mutalisk harras. Occasionally maybe to stop a hellion ball late game, when we are going speedlings or hydra.
Infested terrans and neural are not used at all, and they wont be without any change to them.
The problem with Terran dominance over Zerg is in Zerg itself.
Every player is saying that Zerg needs more unit diversity since the start of the beta, and Blizzard is taking the completely opposite direction. First roach was gone, now Infestor is pretty much done as well - did you see a neural parasite off cliff latetly to control Thor or tanks being dropped on cliff on Lost temple? Surprise, nom it doesnt happen.
Thanks for reading. Thoughts?
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Ultralisks are ridiculously strong in the current build you know. The Roach nerf make holding off some early terran pressure hard, but that's a general problem not just an issue with the roach.
Go make some ultralisks, they just rape everything terran makes currently.
Neural Parasite is still devastating against Thor builds and harass.
I agree ZvZ sucks though
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Ultras didn't get better? Are you serious?
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get those glasses off that zerg fun
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On August 05 2010 01:24 Piy wrote:
Ultralisks are ridiculously strong in the current build you know. The Roach nerf make holding off some early terran pressure hard, but that's a general problem not just an issue with the roach.
Go make some ultralisks, they just rape everything terran makes currently.
Neural Parasite is still devastating against Thor builds and harass.
I agree ZvZ sucks though
Sir, you didint read my Ultralisk suggestion of getting splash removed and putting it together on the hive upgrade with armor. That way it wouldnt cut throu with anything, and would just work as a tank.
I cant agree on Neural Parasite, if you can get a mind control off, any decent player will snipe your infestor with sieged tanks or stimpacked marine/marauder anyway in 3s 
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very well thought out post.. i agree with the supply cost on roaches.. i love them, and 1 supply would definitely make them more viable than they currently are.
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I actually see a lot of roach play, in my games, in just random ladder games from other people, in high-level play.
I do agree on some points but not on others.
You say you want the roach to be 1 supply again, and in turn nerf the 1 armor and make it an upgrade.
My thoughts:
-How does this help in the early game, yes you need to make less overlords, with the implications of that, but now zealots become harder to deal with, so you will need to make more roaches.
-Their 1 armor actually helps a good amount in the later stages of the game, and especially once you start getting some upgrades
-Another roach upgrade? as it stands now I already have so much "bloat" in my ZvT games for example, because you need tons of different units to deal with ground/air/different openings, I want either/combination of Ol drop/burrow/roach burrow movement + speed/nydus, then I haven't even started upgrades.
And then I need another upgrade? No I actually want to see less upgrades or cheaper upgrades for specific things not more
-And more importantly with the armor gone, how does this help diversity? Roach is arguably already a hydra with less range but more hp/armor that can't shoot air, that will make it even worse in that regard imo.
Agree that neural parasite sucks atm, I don't even know why I would put all that gas/research time into it now.
I do think that zerg has some problems, but imo they require more/something else then just fiddling again with the roach.
+1 supply roach will break ZvP balance imo.
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Roach nerf sucks. I don't really have anything to add except that almost all of zergs units seem to require too much investment for little return.
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ultras are good i think they could use a shorter build time or make the den build faster.
roach 1 supply i think is TOO good, but 2 supply is kinda lame. I do use roaches a lot and i see them used a lot, but the overlord issue kinda sucks.
not really sure what to do with em, maybe faster attack speed?
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At least the nerf made zergs do something but mass roach hydra all game
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Ultras Are Buff.. if you dissagree then you're bad
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Maybe you've forgotten, but before the roach nerf it was Z >>>>> P and T because all you had to do was 200/200 on roaches. A 200/200 roach army was almost unstoppable. The roach change was REQUIRED!
However, your points on having only 1 viable opening vs terran is valid. That is moreso a fault of reapers forcing speedlings than anything else. Roach supply doesn't even factor in.
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The roach nerf was very necessary and I'm glad blizzard did perfect balance adjustments in beta. Pre-roach nerf every zvt, zvp, zvz was about how many roaches you could make every game.
Roaches were waaaaay too strong back then, now they are just right. And ultras, omg ultras have almost always been strong, but then they were uber buffed and are very good.
People are too quick to judge SC2 balance. Almost no one is qualified to make absolute balance judgements, because there usually is a counter or what is perceived is imba really is not.
Also, being a very good player, even a top known player does not make a person qualified to balance a game, nor does it mean all of their balance judgements are perfect or anywhere near good. Blizzard are the game designers + balance designers, and 9/10 they are usually correct in how they are balancing the game.
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On August 05 2010 01:31 Lz wrote:Ultras Are Buff.. if you dissagree then you're bad
I never said they were bad, they just dont come fast enough compared to other races.
Do you ever see a mid-game push with speedlings/hydralisk and 1-2 ultras by zerg, as compared to 3gate/1 robo or 2 factory marine/hellion/thor ? :D
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I'm still on the boat of 'keep 2 supply roaches, but revert them to 2 armor again.'
Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the zerg. Maybe a small tweak, but I'm good as is.
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I disagree. Roach pressure into expand is still a decent build against Protoss.
Roaches will perhaps fill more of a niche roll now but that's a good thing. There was a time I wanted Roaches just removed from the game entirely, this is a better compromise.
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The roach nerf really does cut down on their viability, early game it is a massive hassle to produce them fast enough to defend a timing attack or make a push. Mid game they are alright because your income is higher and you aren't near the 200/200 cap but end game you will get rolled because they simply do not stand up against other two supply units.
The problem is that roaches shouldn't be a mid game unit and are only useful in certain situations. They have some really unique mechanics and I would love to see them lowered to one supply so that I can use them as burrow harassers without devoting so much of my potential army to them.
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On August 05 2010 01:31 Lz wrote:Ultras Are Buff.. if you dissagree then you're bad
On August 05 2010 01:32 Floophead_III wrote:
Maybe you've forgotten, but before the roach nerf it was Z >>>>> P and T because all you had to do was 200/200 on roaches. A 200/200 roach army was almost unstoppable. The roach change was REQUIRED!
However, your points on having only 1 viable opening vs terran is valid. That is moreso a fault of reapers forcing speedlings than anything else. Roach supply doesn't even factor in.
qft + qft. Ultras own, and playing versus 70 roaches every game was pretty boring and shallow, not to mention very imba.
As T back then, only mass tank mech could beat mass roaches, but only because siege tanks may have also been too strong at that point in time, which blizzard also appropriately adjusted 
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Let me ask you: how often do you see roaches being used in high-lvl games now?
im low diamond dont know if im high enough but play against higher z diam.
and I see them OFTEN!
as a hellion droper the z need them agaisnt me and as a hellion droper i have problems with fast roaches. if they are 1 food i think you can break 111 build at start easy.
i dont post in this tvz threads and i just ignore the zerg who complain tvz after loose.
i dont complain : ultras are op when i loose to them ( and i do often) .
i hear BC are op after a zerg build roach into ultra
i hear hellion are op after a z build hydra only
i hear thor are op after a zerg build muta only and stay on 1 base hole game.
and i see many nice zerg strats that let me play def and they easy outmacro me.
ultras:
if the z gets ultras and you dont have massair your death. so a tvz is a little bit boring.
as t the question is : can i kill him before he gets utras?
The change your suggested is not bad i think. bliz should test this.
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EPT
