It seems like whenever there is a small change to Zerg the maturity level of this board takes a shit. I don't know if it's because of IdrA's influence, or what, but you don't see the other races complaining nearly as much as Zergs do.
99% of the games you lose are because you were outplayed. Not because of imbalance.
Small change. You know just those two words make me so angry. how can one be so ignorant? Neural Parasite was in the past 1-2 months the ONLY, and i repeat, THE ONLY way of dealing with huge colossi deathballs. 1year of whining blizzard finally changed something and ZvP became a whole new matchup. That counts for zvz and zvt aswell, but i want to concentrate mainly on the ZvP aspect.
ONE YEAR and blizzard came with a new idea an the matchup changed, finally those useless corrupters were replaced and the deathball wasnt too powerful to deal with anymore, but it wasnt to weak so they got roflstomped everytime.
This is is how ZvP will look like in the future. Early game the usual 3gate expand shit and what not and zerg defends. Then mid game Protss techs to Colossi + warpgate, only way of dealing with it is Roach+corrupter+infestor, maybe hydra as well. More colossi means less hydras, more corrupter means less infestor cause of gas. Less infestor means less fungals. Less fungals mean less DPS More Corrupter means huge supply -> less ground army.
and now we find ourselves back in the beta, except roaches have 2supply.
And now that zergs are again forced to go AA against COlossi, the upgrade mechanics will be fucked up again.
Ultra buff my ass. i have to upgrade range at least +1 cause i HAVE TO GO roach hydra. what then? +1 air? that would be good for corruptor against colossus ... and broodlord but broodlings do very little damage. Ultras have no upgrades in the beginning and no matter how short their production time is, they only appear in late game. So, i cannot fight with 0 2 (?) ultras against at least 2 2 protoss units. i cannont upgrade melee blindly because im not sure if toss techswitches or i survive the midgame or whatever. If i transition into ultra i wont need +1 air anymore so this is waisted.
In general: everything that zerg is doing is trying to survive the next period of the game. and in the end we're fucked anyways.
And something else. Zerg had to cry and whine and complain for almost 1 year and nothing happened so zerg had to change their style. Magic box, Banelingbombs, Hydradrops, Queennydus. and nothing worked effectivly. THEN FINALLY BLIZZARD HELPED US. they buffed the infestor Protoss were crying Fast Imba INfestor changed into Slow Imba Infestor Protoss were crying again Slow Imba Infestor changed into SLow useless infestor. Protoss happy :"zerg are whiny bitches, stop crying noobs"
how did your style changed? beta: colossus stalker 1year later: colossus stalker does not work to bad to use High templar -> zerg HAS TO BE NERFED COlossus stalker works again, no nead for hightemplar. Happyface
Is this what its going to be in the end everytime? is it impossible that zerg will one day be on the same level as toss and terraN? Thx blizz for Blueflame Nerf, but 3 redflame hellions kill probes and drones anyway in oneshot, so fuck that techlab at the factory ... just no marine doublereactor factory and fuck that workesr. and hellions are still cheap as fuck so all the gas goes directly into cloaked banshee cause the only counter against hellions are roaches, and as far as i now roaches cant shoot air
GG WP BLIZZARD, gg wp PROTOSS im proud of you
And btw. I stop playing this game if i see another Masterleague Protoss trying to kill 30+ mutas with 2phoenix and a few archons and saying: Muta Op. SERIOUSLY WTF?!?!?!
Oh, my ass. You lose all cred with your first paragraph. Only way of stopping the deathball... maybe 1/5 high masters zerg I face ever use neural parasite. Fungal growth has always been the impact spell since it was buffed... neural is nice, but dont delude yourself into thinking it was used because protoss havent been getting colossus in recent months. Why not? Because you cant, because of the threat of neurals...whether they research it or not. Baneling bombs aren't effective? Go practice man... seriously. The time it took you to write this diatribe could have been time spent learning how to use the tools blizzard gave you. I doubt you've used a neural parasite in the last 2 months anyways. Some of what you say in your post is true but its REALLY difficult for a reader to pick through all the BS and rage to find your point, but one thing is clear: You do not have a deep understanding of starcraft 2.
On September 10 2011 04:10 Lasbike wrote: WHAT??! NP can't be used against Clossis & Archons & Thors ?
This is ridiculous -.-
To be honest, I don't care about what they did to NP i just wish they would call it what it is. They removed almost all its utility from the game, meaning it should simply be removed from the game.
Its now nothing more than a gimmicky victory cigar.
when did this happen? Now Zergs are going to wtfdie to P again. Watch Zerg win rates plummet.
Festor was their only tool for dealing with big weapons, their gimmick nerf being completed, they will now fall away from anything resembling a good win ratio.
the only hope now is to hope that the P army makes some immortals, because then you can NP them and shoot the colossus.
You pay 300m 200g for a Colossus right? And 300m 200g for a Thor?
Given the commitment of resources I think you should be able to use them in a fight, not have them used against you. That's just in principle: 'spent money on x, x killed stuff'.
Now, as I've read from you folks, infestors could be feedback-ed (fedback?) or focus-fired to eliminate the NP when it's in use, so battles will generally work off these mechanics (i.e. some games the infestors will avoid danger and hold onto their quarry; in other games, they will get squished/burned by army or exploded by templar). The way it usually goes with NP is that you 'spent money on x, protected x with y, x killed stuff', so with NP in play you need - for these already very expensive units - other units, and the ability to micro more or less well.
I don't think SC2 is well served piling cost on cost, so that we fight over our 'magic units' exclusively, which is what I see a lot of in VODs of the top players. So many times you'll see a Zerg player mass infestor with ling/bling, and spellcast his way through everything.
Of course I have fallen victim to Protosses with their growing deathball finally rolling over me 5 minutes later, having had those 5 minutes to do my best to respond. And I've also had Terrans protect one or two Thors and stomp through endless of my units and both bases in the early game, or have 6 or more in the midgame with huge amounts of other units to wipe the floor with me.
In both instances it seems that if I spent so much MORE money and effort than my opponent trying not to die and failing so hard, there's something wrong with the game. If this is a game of economy and army management, then the build up of workers and minerals in the early game and the transition into units in the mid game (or whenever I wanted or needed them to play with), should (common sensically) determine your success. Very roughly determine, of course, but still be determinant enough that if I spend 10 times more than you defending your attack, I should at least destroy your attack (without even talking of the units I should have left). BUT THIS ASSUMPTION IS NOT TRUE!
Now, it is true that economy and army are absolute requirements to play against your opponent in this game. But the issue of what you spend your money on and why is not a mechanic of the game itself, because it is a strategy game, and therefore vastly open-ended. Appreciating this point is, I think, a real problem when talking about 'balance', for the reason that your decision making as to how you're going to play this game is structured by what players are doing with the game at the moment (what you call the 'metagame' is just the most developed outcome of this point amongst the best players).
As players we need to stop thinking backwards from the most developed state of the game (i.e. I was killed by a deathball at 20 minutes) to the 'obvious counter' that you COULD have had (or COULD NOT have had depending on 'balance'), and start thinking positively as to how we're playing and why. I've heard Day9 talking like this many times in his casts and I think that if he's a great player and instructor and guide to this game, then I'm learning!
I've read on the forums here that the game is SO well-balanced that only top pros experience any kind of balance issues in their win/loss percentages. But that use of the 'balance' term ignores the fact that they have highly developed ways of playing the game, and relies upon their extremely good intuition. But that same intuition, that 'mastery of the game', regardless of playstyle, build orders and tactics, is a reflection of the development of their ability to succeed relative to others. They may 'be programmers' (two 'm's) but they're still outwitting their opponents in a game of strategy and not computation.
Learning a unit or a unit composition, or a method for safely expanding, is 'good' or 'bad' or 'unusable'; being told that 'you can't do that because of x and y counters' or of 'balancing issues'; or that (for example) 'Mutas are great in ZvZ due to a timing window'... All these encounters structure your actual way of playing this game in a way that is fundamentally based upon feelings. Better or worse ones for sure, but this is very different to talking about 'balance'. Talking about 'balance' means not understanding two of our friends that enable us to reason:
ANALYSIS and DEDUCTION! (stay with me)
You can say in terms of 'balancing' that 'there was nothing I could do!', like a poster above, who writes:
This is is how ZvP will look like in the future. Early game the usual 3gate expand shit and what not and zerg defends. Then mid game Protss techs to Colossi + warpgate, only way of dealing with it is Roach+corrupter+infestor, maybe hydra as well. More colossi means less hydras, more corrupter means less infestor cause of gas. Less infestor means less fungals. Less fungals mean less DPS More Corrupter means huge supply -> less ground army.
and now we find ourselves back in the beta, except roaches have 2supply.
(Coopa826)
You can head nod to all of that, as it's all somewhat in our experience as Zergs and backed up by the negative reinforcement of having lost many times. It is an ANALYSIS - it starts at the endpoint and works its way back (if we assume colossi kill us, then we shouldn't have built many hydras before the armies fight. But if... etc). Now, we don't question the validity of this analysis for generalising issues about the game for a very simple reason - we have not attempted to DEDUCE this game-ending situation. DEDUCTION moves forwards in time from the beginning of the game. We don't consider DEDUCTION because the way the games play out get more familiar to us the more we play and the better we get!
Now, what does a DEDUCTION involve such that we can support the ANALYSIS? It basically involves a 20 minute BUILD ORDER that never changes no matter how you get attacked, and ends with the same resulting army mix that instantly wins. That build order must be the most thorough build order possible, down to the last 5 minerals, and the last pixel on every map.
Another thing about Day9 - he's a maths student and he knows exactly what I'm talking about! Doesn't he always say to you that you should do your analysis from the 'earliest possible point that something went wrong'? That's because the further ahead you go unquestioningly, the more unsafe your reasoning becomes!
Yeah, back to the time where zergs went roach/corrupters against deathball. If you make too many corrupters, you don't have not enough ground army, stalkers kill you. If you make too few corrupters, colossi still live and kill you.
as a protoss player, i dislike the NP change. It was one thing when they made mothership unable to be NPed, and I always wondered why Ultralisks couldn't be NPed. NP was one of the OMFG abilities that when used right made the fans scream and the enemy cringe, BUT IT WASN'T IMBA. Never was NP actually able to change the game unless protoss allowed it. SO what if they NPed your archon or Thors from the second level of Shakura's plateau or similar, it was the zerg counter to Massive Units.
tl;dr
NP has never been imba, never will be imba, and now that it can't np massive units, may as well be removed from the game.
I think that NP can still be helpful in some cases. Like compositions with immo or siege tanks. these two units tend to do a good amount of damage against certain units and can still definitely swing an engagement in the Zerg's favor. The only question is if spending energy on NP will be more helpful than spending energy on fungal. We won't know for sure until everyone gets to play with these changes for a while.
NP has never been imba, never will be imba, and now that it can't np massive units, may as well be removed from the game.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. If this change is followed through, I foresee a future where VERY few Z's will even research the damned spell, so why keep it in the game at all?
Someone today said to me: "Idk why zergs cry about infesters when they do so much with their Infested Terrans, fungals, AND NP all in one unit. It's OP!"
To be honest, I think everyone can agree it is ridiculous that blizzard even put us in this situation. Why does so much of Z's success in the current metagame have to rely on one unit? I would love for this NP nerf to go through or have it removed completely; what we need is a replacement to balance the Zerg arsenal instead of having to rely on one friggin' unit to give us the cost efficiency we need against virtually everything.
On September 10 2011 12:21 SuperYo1000 wrote: how many protoss ARE in code s now?
It is a sad sight that only 5 remain. all that were in code S got booted out, including the bosstoss MC. And all that had a chance to get in failed, including Trickster and JYP, who both had a chance but lost to MKP for the last slot.
Karne, that goes along with my long talked about belief that Blizzard put very poor design into protoss and zerg. It's always understandable, that the main race of the campaign in any game is always the most thought out, but in a game like SC2 having the non campaign races so HORRIBLY designed is unacceptable. Taking balance out of the equation, toss/zerg just have stupid design this time around. Whether its about the protoss warpgate mechanics and how the entire race has to be rebalanced around warpgates, or the zerg which has extremely powerful situational units, but are forced to go to 1-3 units every game 80% of the time despite how powerful each and every unit can be.
On September 10 2011 12:34 darklight54321 wrote: Karne, that goes along with my long talked about belief that Blizzard put very poor design into protoss and zerg. It's always understandable, that the main race of the campaign in any game is always the most thought out, but in a game like SC2 having the non campaign races so HORRIBLY designed is unacceptable. Taking balance out of the equation, toss/zerg just have stupid design this time around. Whether its about the protoss warpgate mechanics and how the entire race has to be rebalanced around warpgates, or the zerg which has extremely powerful situational units, but are forced to go to 1-3 units every game 80% of the time despite how powerful each and every unit can be.
Absolutely agreed, it is sad and I pray the expansions will cure this for both the Zerg and our toss counterparts.
On September 10 2011 12:21 SuperYo1000 wrote: how many protoss ARE in code s now?
It is a sad sight that only 5 remain. all that were in code S got booted out, including the bosstoss MC. And all that had a chance to get in failed, including Trickster and JYP, who both had a chance but lost to MKP for the last slot.
Yea protoss is kind of in a sorry state right now to say the least. As a zerg player, I would like to see infestors get nerfed just slightly, however, the situation seems kind of precarious right now, any major nerf to the infestor and all of a sudden mech makes a giant upswing in ZvT, and collosus balls make a giant upswing in ZvP...however, I still feel as if this patch should make things a lot more interesting. Also add into this the immortal buff, and ZvP is gonna take on a different feeling all together. Personally, I feel as if using immortals after this patch in ZvP is going to be extremely unecessary, when collosus now cannot be NP'ed and therefore are vastly superior to the NP-prone immortals who can do heavy damage to your own army if turned against you, not to mention the fact that immo-stalker will prolly still lose out to infestor-roach combos anyways, however I guess if zerg moves back into mass roach corruptor balls immortals may be useful... roach corruptor has always been a weird build for me though , I feel as if it is very map oriented, b/c if you engage at a bad position you will auto-lose to most toss deathballs, however hopefully the decreased build time on the ultra will help a bit in this (i still feel as if the ultra AI kinda sucks...but I guess fungal is still in play anyways so nbd...)
It seems like whenever there is a small change to Zerg the maturity level of this board takes a shit. I don't know if it's because of IdrA's influence, or what, but you don't see the other races complaining nearly as much as Zergs do.
99% of the games you lose are because you were outplayed. Not because of imbalance.
Small change. You know just those two words make me so angry. how can one be so ignorant? Neural Parasite was in the past 1-2 months the ONLY, and i repeat, THE ONLY way of dealing with huge colossi deathballs. 1year of whining blizzard finally changed something and ZvP became a whole new matchup. That counts for zvz and zvt aswell, but i want to concentrate mainly on the ZvP aspect.
ONE YEAR and blizzard came with a new idea an the matchup changed, finally those useless corrupters were replaced and the deathball wasnt too powerful to deal with anymore, but it wasnt to weak so they got roflstomped everytime.
This is is how ZvP will look like in the future. Early game the usual 3gate expand shit and what not and zerg defends. Then mid game Protss techs to Colossi + warpgate, only way of dealing with it is Roach+corrupter+infestor, maybe hydra as well. More colossi means less hydras, more corrupter means less infestor cause of gas. Less infestor means less fungals. Less fungals mean less DPS More Corrupter means huge supply -> less ground army.
and now we find ourselves back in the beta, except roaches have 2supply.
And now that zergs are again forced to go AA against COlossi, the upgrade mechanics will be fucked up again.
Ultra buff my ass. i have to upgrade range at least +1 cause i HAVE TO GO roach hydra. what then? +1 air? that would be good for corruptor against colossus ... and broodlord but broodlings do very little damage. Ultras have no upgrades in the beginning and no matter how short their production time is, they only appear in late game. So, i cannot fight with 0 2 (?) ultras against at least 2 2 protoss units. i cannont upgrade melee blindly because im not sure if toss techswitches or i survive the midgame or whatever. If i transition into ultra i wont need +1 air anymore so this is waisted.
In general: everything that zerg is doing is trying to survive the next period of the game. and in the end we're fucked anyways.
And something else. Zerg had to cry and whine and complain for almost 1 year and nothing happened so zerg had to change their style. Magic box, Banelingbombs, Hydradrops, Queennydus. and nothing worked effectivly. THEN FINALLY BLIZZARD HELPED US. they buffed the infestor Protoss were crying Fast Imba INfestor changed into Slow Imba Infestor Protoss were crying again Slow Imba Infestor changed into SLow useless infestor. Protoss happy :"zerg are whiny bitches, stop crying noobs"
how did your style changed? beta: colossus stalker 1year later: colossus stalker does not work to bad to use High templar -> zerg HAS TO BE NERFED COlossus stalker works again, no nead for hightemplar. Happyface
Is this what its going to be in the end everytime? is it impossible that zerg will one day be on the same level as toss and terraN? Thx blizz for Blueflame Nerf, but 3 redflame hellions kill probes and drones anyway in oneshot, so fuck that techlab at the factory ... just no marine doublereactor factory and fuck that workesr. and hellions are still cheap as fuck so all the gas goes directly into cloaked banshee cause the only counter against hellions are roaches, and as far as i now roaches cant shoot air
GG WP BLIZZARD, gg wp PROTOSS im proud of you
And btw. I stop playing this game if i see another Masterleague Protoss trying to kill 30+ mutas with 2phoenix and a few archons and saying: Muta Op. SERIOUSLY WTF?!?!?!
Oh, my ass. You lose all cred with your first paragraph. Only way of stopping the deathball... maybe 1/5 high masters zerg I face ever use neural parasite. Fungal growth has always been the impact spell since it was buffed... neural is nice, but dont delude yourself into thinking it was used because protoss havent been getting colossus in recent months. Why not? Because you cant, because of the threat of neurals...whether they research it or not. Baneling bombs aren't effective? Go practice man... seriously. The time it took you to write this diatribe could have been time spent learning how to use the tools blizzard gave you. I doubt you've used a neural parasite in the last 2 months anyways. Some of what you say in your post is true but its REALLY difficult for a reader to pick through all the BS and rage to find your point, but one thing is clear: You do not have a deep understanding of starcraft 2.
While his post is a little bit venting and raving, he does bring up a few good points (actually he mostly rants, but yea Zerg had limited options against colossi). I'm a Master League Zerg (seewutididthar?) and NP is really the only 'reliable' option against colossi - and even then it's not reliable since you will always lose infestors NPing, and you have to have about 1.5x more infestors than colossi, without support (or with your own huge ground army).
Baneling bombs are really good, and in a way, I'm a bit sad that infestors got buffed so fast because baneling rain was becoming more popular. But baneling rain is not consistent at all, as it is ruined by air play (VR/Colossi) and stalker/colossi with heavy stalker play. It takes an inordinate amount of micro to pull off - which, please understand, I'm not crying that Zerg has to outplay Protoss' a-move - that really only works when Protoss doesn't micro correctly (which happens all the time, even at the top level, don't get me wrong).
Baneling bombs are extremely effective, but are costly. Most times, it is cheaper for Zerg to go with Hive tech (or infestors, really) (they cost more gas per supply than BCs, colossi, or ultras), and if Protoss micros, there's nothing Zerg can really do about it. It's not like marine splitting where Zerg can split their banes and use flanks with zerglings to hold marines in place.
On a side note, I wish people would stop saying "mass thor herp derp". No one holds mass thor by making infestors, they hold it with mass muta, mass roach, or ling/roach. You're better off getting BL than infestors w/np against thors.
Neural Parasited units will now retain their weapons upgrades. This will make NP'ed colossi and tanks / thors alot more powerful, and should cause protoss to think twice before upgrading to +3 attack before even starting armor level 1. (Actually saw this in the patch, just completely forgot to include it - cheers for pointing this out).
but np doesnt work on massive units now! +_+ (or did i misunderstand?)
What is zerg supposed to use against archons now then. I don't think NP nerf was needed at all especially with the immortal buff NP would be needed against it I feel. About the whining between races it is true that zerg whined for a consecutive 6 months and some nerfs were thrown out at races but on zerg aswell (roaches, but they were op then). It wasn't before the infestor buff when we got a decent buff to our race, we tried different things though. Protoss whines for two months and gets the change almost directly compared to zerg just because they still are going Stalker + Colossi and don't want to use HT.
My personal view of the design flaw of the game are two units. Colosi and sentry. Thanks to the mechanic on how the work they leave the toss severlly underpowered at the start and therefore the other races get nerfed. This further amplifies the problem when the toss gets the numbers high at later game and can produce some tactical advantages that people tend to call op, Not having the sufficient amount of units at the start and relaying heavelly on sentries just to survive. Then comes the colosi with its abilities of moving through the terrain and range. Add this to sentry and it becomes a powerfull death ball at the end. The design issue imo is in Toss =( not in the other races. It seems that Blizz is tyring to nerf all th other races so that Toss can have a chance. Its the fundamental of their design flaw.
Neural Parasited units will now retain their weapons upgrades. This will make NP'ed colossi and tanks / thors alot more powerful, and should cause protoss to think twice before upgrading to +3 attack before even starting armor level 1. (Actually saw this in the patch, just completely forgot to include it - cheers for pointing this out).
This makes me so happy, i had totaly given up all hope on next patch untill i read this. Now terran will finally be able to actually stand equaly vs zerg late game, just like zerg have it hard in the start vs terran.
The spell is in general Uberpowerd. I mean when have you EVER seen a bc zerg vs terran? It's because it's so shit to use atm because if you have 4-5of them the zerg can just controll them and the terran army will kill itself. Getting really tired of the infestor BS everygame there my entire army gets fungeld and my thors get's MC'd and finishes the rest of my army. i hope i can start to use BC vs zerg late game. This would make me really happy to see that our more expensive unit can be used atleast 1/5games or something instead of never.
This is compareable to hellion change and will balance the game A LOT.
The only thing about hellion is that i dont understand why the hellion doesnt get a flat damage increase of 5damage instead of just vs light because hellions are a total waste of a unit if you arrent up vs a lot of light units because of there extremly low damage vs armor. I mean i want atleast 8hellions so be able to beat 3maruders -.-
On September 10 2011 14:16 genius_man16 wrote: I'm just gonna go mass thor every-game now cuz the only way to stop it was with NP, but now i'm free of that.
Yay free wins vs zerg?
Check out MvP vs DRG at MLG game 2 i think. He beats MvP without Infestors.