Charging + zergling like speed… Looks like bad design, it’s redundant.
Especially it’s not unique anymore… (zealots/speedlings, instead of a more bulky zealot but that can close the gap almost instantaneously in an actual fight).
Hello,
my name is fffffiend and I watched the recent BeastyQT commentary on the new patch at youtube, Check it out! “BEST BALANCE PATCH EVER? - …”
By the way: Zealot’s don’t need that speed: They can already be warped in anywhere… The whole concept in Sc2 is so much different than in Brood war, where the speed was a good design and necessary. Here you have warp in, charge and good! speed still, to move around with your army.
Zealot’s unique deisign role in WotL was to tank… Doing that by closing in quickly closing gaps, hindering the enemy movespeed… AND in order they can’t just be ignored they ought to do somewhat acceptable damage (actually very high dps in a 1on1 unit scenario, which is normal for melee units) = State of WoL.
I remember in WoL I did alot of micro battles against friends were one tried to ignore the Zealots and starget the stalkers which were dealing the unavoidable damage to either roaches or marine/marauder (or pure marauder). Why did we train that because once stalkers were killed you could! kite zealots… that was hard to do of course even charge (to have an even result). Once charge was up, they fulfilled their role of denying that. Period.
LOL@good times!
However let’s look at today:
The zealots nowadays don’t make sense anywhere anymore (in this regard) (there were to many “balancing” patches but while balancing they ruined the role:
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Charge until now was OP (was because the next patch is imminent) It got into the game because people overbuild zealots (because they are super cheap and deadly strong vs unaware enemies). But then after some time they started to get countered by simple kiting, and the charge damage balancing began…
INSTEAD you should have looked at their role more, the game shouldn NOT consist of winning with a mass of zealots but a good part of them as supportive force. -
NOW (now because the next patch is imminent) there will be a combination of charge and super speed (patch announcement 14-11)
WHAT?!
I think most can agree the damage was OP for this cost/supply/ and infrastructure efficient unit that can be reinforced anywhere. Confirmed by this unit playing a mandatory role in many many protoss pushes,up to endgame, and there have been many tests by blizzard.
But the design doesn’t make sense anymore : Zealot’s don’t need (more) speed: They can already be warped in anywhere… The whole concept in Sc2 is so much different than in Brood war, where the speed was a good design and necessary. Here you have warp in, charge and good! speed still, to move around with your army.
INSTEAD: Get them some (small) tanking ability (remember they are cheap in many regards)
- there are many ways, a super small taunt coming with charge
- a really short temporary shield buff coming with charge ,
- or any temporary defensive buff, like 1 armor, +10 MaxHealth, +10 MaxShield, after charging in, on a bigger cooldown than charge. In numbers and “for free”…
- other temporary shield buffs, like a shield recover when it got drained to zero, or either the old immortal-shield or the current immortal-shield, but only very short and very small, like 1-2 seconds!
- a temporary immortality, like 0.5 to 1 second… (remember this is for each single cheap… zealot…) or a rebirth, delayed and very minor health recovered .
For more inspirations Check out the ever awesome Korean Arcade (High Quality) Map: Desert Strike 3 (not to be confused with 2 or other versions):
데저트 스트라이크 3 (kr server, advertise it in chat to get some players quicker at non prime times)