We all know raven hellion is a standard TvZ option, and that raven hellion is the “proper” counter to zergs who rush burrow or do a proxy hatchery. Imagine if Zerg could make 1 infestor and that’s all you needed to be safe vs cloak, could shut down entire mineral lines with no risk, and would guarantee you’d win the first large battle.
Now imagine a player crying that this unit is not just useless, but “THE MOST useless”. Ha ha, very “funny.” That’s a “good” one!
This is what would happen if you made an infestor. You’d throw out a fungal, it would be dodged, and the infestor would die. Your economy would be ruined because you rushed out a useless unit when you needed to make drones and keep drones off of gas.
What’s a zerg supposed to do if he sees a raven? Chase it down with some zerglings like a terran could do to an infestor with literally any unit he’d be making at that stage, e.g. marines, hellions, or even a raven?
Suggesting the infestor is as powerful as a raven is just totally detached from reality. The reason terrans don’t like to use ravens is because they have even better options. The raven is a great option, but a banshee or a BC or a double medivac drop are infinitely superior. So what you are really saying is that if the raven isn’t absolutely busted, it’s trash. That’s nonsense. God forbid that picking terran isn’t a free win against zerg.
If terran players had to work with the trash units that zerg has, they’d lose their minds. The only reason units like the infestor can be sorta good is because zerg has a large economy and you can make a lot of them. You offset the fact that they are absolute garbage with the ability to make lots of absolute garbage.
that is a true point.
That’s why spellcasters become so interesting for zerg when the armies are bigger.
on the other hand also understandable. if you add Raven you also have to control another unit. myself i also don’t like to play comps where you have to watch out for too much.
Between the cast range and the infested Terran range, Infestors have about 14 range to work with when using Infested Terran offensively, and more than that when used defensively since the pursuing units must usually cross the same paths. There are plenty of cases where the Infested Terran spell could be exploited with no repercussions.
No, this is not even close. Like I said in the very section you quoted, the Siege Tank must be immobilized in order to attack at long range, and it must remain rooted to keep dealing damage. The Tank is somewhere you can chase it and try to kill it and any units protecting it to stop the damage. The trade can turn out very favorably for the defender, and even if it doesn’t the defending player is still likely to kill some valuable units.
In contrast, the Infestors could just drop their Infested Terran in one location and run off to another. In order to stem the damage, the other player has to go kill the Infested Terran, which were all free. That is always a losing trade for the defending player. If you try to chase down the Infestors instead, you will take more damage from the Infested Terran that were already dropped, and you can easily be delayed and damaged further by Fungal and more Infested Terran that the Zerg player drops along the way.
Disruptors are the only unit you listed that does not deal damage over time; however, they remain immobile and at risk for longer than Infestors when they throw their energy blast, and they don’t force the opponent to waste effort killing something at their target location.
I see that you both missed the point and intentionally avoided responding to more than half the quote.
Once again, those AOE spells cannot be spammed to stack up potential damage. The ability to spam a spell for a stronger effect is a problem that encourages massing casters, and often enables the player to defeat almost any army by massing the caster (sometimes with minimal support). Infested Terran is one of the spells which had that problem. That by itself is a sufficient argument against Infested Terran, just like it was a sufficient argument to justify removing Seeker Missiles. It is also my main argument for replacing Steady-Targeting and Snipe with something different, and it is one of several arguments I have for removing Auto-Turrets.
Second, the point of mentioning the range of other spells is that it puts the casters using those spells at more risk. Brood Lords, Lurkers, Siege Tanks, Tempests, Disruptors, and other casters all have the potential to reach a caster attempting to cast an AOE spell. The Infested Terran spell was extra safe because you could use exploit range and movement of the Infested Terran to get the spell off at a much safer distance. The opponent still had to respond to the Infested Terran you dropped after you left.
As for “trades” against Infested Terran. Any trade where the player took any damage at all fighting Infested Terran was a negative trade for that player. The Zerg player didn’t lose anything of value nor need to spend any resources repairing. The other player often did. It frankly doesn’t matter if one spent less energy than the opponent cleaning up the Infested Terran, the Zerg player had an incentive and a benefit to massing more Infestors because of the Infested Terran spell, and while massing extra casters was of little benefit to the opposing player.
Again, any trade where Infested Terran deal damage is a loss for the other player. The other player can only come out ahead if they damage/kill some Zerg units that actually cost resources to make and replace; and that tends not to happen when you are fighting a mostly free army.
It frankly doesn’t matter that splash units could “potentially” kill a clump of Infested Terran. That was not enough to prevent the opponent from just massing Infestors with a few Brood Lords and/or Vipers to take care of almost any army (particularly Protoss armies).
Regardless of Scan and TJ, Battlecruisers have to remain near a target in order to damage it, and thus they can be counterattacked. Battlecruisers cost money to make, money to replace, and money to repair.
Queens and Spores are sufficient to hold off Battlecruisers early. Corruptors or Infestor-based compositions hard-counter any use of Battlecruisers later, hard enough that Terran players usually lose all of their Battlecruisers and stop making them entirely.
The trend was the opposite with Infestors and Infested Terran. The later the game went on and the more tech and production the opponent had, the more benefit the Zerg player had to massing Infestors and spamming IT.
It’s a “counter” to a build that’s seen in maybe 1/5000 games. I’ve played against proxy hatch roach burrow plays. By the time burrow roaches are at your base you maybe have 1 cyclone with a starport on the way. You absolutely can not get a raven out in time but the new patch might fix that. You will now have to wait an additional 75 seconds for any future turrets so have fun, may as well be a banshee. I’m looking forward to trying to turret harass when the Zerg player already has full saturation and mass queens ready to deflect. Your post would make sense if turrets could still 2 shot drones from a cast range of 3.
If you want to use it as a creep clearer enjoy being able to clear maybe 4 tumors before it’s too damaged to continue. Now your tech is late and you’ve delayed your double medivac drop for something that could be achieved by using a scan.
You didn’t play when infestors had neural by default? The balance team realised it was too busted and it never made it to the live game. You should watch some Meomika games, dude loves his early infestors. You should also watch some of Snake’s games, dude plays infestor ultra and dares you to step on creep with your bio ball. Microbial shroud is also the reason that Terran players opt for thors instead of liberators, you don’t want to see such untapped potential.
Why is it so rare for a Zerg to go for those builds? Ravens hard counter burrow and proxy hatch openers to such an extreme that it deleted them from the meta. This then becomes proof that the raven is bad according to the Terran Cry Force.
That’s an excellent argument. The raven’s abilities should be locked behind upgrades. Good point. Now zerg players will be able to get more value out of burrow play which will increase the prevalence of these builds above 1/5000 games. According to your theory, this will make ravens used more often and that means the raven is a better unit. #Logic.
Oh no, you can’t just hotkey your hellions and raven and click it where the creep is. No! You have to micro it. Truly the greatest injustice SC2 has ever seen.
Liberators or drops. What can I tell you man. Avilo and Playa got GM. It’s an easy game. Someone’s massing ultras? Ok whatever just mass some ravens and win.
The opposite occurs. If the proxy hatch didn’t straight up end the game, the zerg player puts all his focus onto spreading creep so that the terran is forced to invest into a raven etc. This allows the Zerg player to build up enough to stop a counter attack. When I say 1/5000 I’m talking about the pro level not the Catz of the world that do it on ladder every game.
Go ahead, the thing that makes ravens non-viable is the add-on requirement. When Serral was smashing Innovation at homestory cup 18 with burrowed roaches Inno had no intentions of making a raven, that’s how much of a “hard counter” they are.
Overlords spot your every move so that queens are always in place. This isn’t a get good issue, if ravens had the same surveillance mode that other races enjoy then you would be correct… You can’t say the same about infestors. Burrow makes it viable to get into aggressive positions which makes their spells that much more game ending.
As can be said about literally any mechanic in the game.
You evidently did not understand the point being made, a tank can kill units approaching it before those units are able to do a single point of damage, resulting in a free trade, exactly like your argument that IT’s result in a free trade when launched from range. The crux of your argument is range advantage confers absolute safety, a tank, disruptor, mine, etc any unit that takes a free trade through its range advantage would violate your design rules as there is nothing to stop it from leaving afterwards.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the range advantage’s damage being applied over time compared to in burst. The only way your argument would work is if those free units were permanent, but they are temporary and easily killed with splash available at the time infestors can be massed.
No it is not, like I said your inability to have units in position is not a fault of game design.
Another thing, if the only damage dealt by IT’s are healed by shield regen/battery/medivacs or are killed by long range units/before they hatch, in what way is this always a losing trade for the defender? Does a depleted infestor not have downtime, or is consume useless?
That is entirely dependent on context, infestors used in drops are at risk longer than disruptors, as are they against HT and ghosts while disruptors rape those units.
I didn’t respond to it because it was irrelevant to the point being made.
IT takes up space just like all other units in the game, it may have more potential for concentrated dps than other spells but those other spells also do not risk having their effects negated through a hatch time or being outranged. You can ignore it all you like but fact is in order for IT to do a single point of damage it has to get in 5 range, and last I checked siege tanks and disruptors had a hell of a lot more than that.
The only thing of relevance is presence of counterplay from the opponent, in which case there are plenty as both race’s anti-casters deal with infestors supply and cost efficiently with their energy drain spells, and have the splash options to trade favourably with IT’s.
It is not, summoners are perfectly fine in rts. Look at wc3 they even have permanent free units in charm, phoenix, carrion beetle, ‘stacking’ free units in quilbeast, black arrow, water elemental, rod of necromancy, raise dead, force of nature, serpent ward, free units that spawn other free units in lava spawn, pocket factory, vengeance, even invulnerable free units with animate dead. These units are countered by spells like dispel (aoe burst), lightning shield (aoe dot), purge (single target burst), etc, and spells or units with similar qualities exist in sc2 that are sufficient to deal with IT’s.
The infested terran is literally the slowest unit in the entire game with 5 range and a lifespan of 21s, its ability to move in no way guarantees a favourable trade for the zerg when there are a plethora of splash options available that can make a positive energy trade against them without taking any damage due to outranging the infested terran.
However none of those casters are as useless and vulnerable as infestors without energy. Long range and mobile units also have the potential to reach the infestor as well, provided they are in position. The hatch time allows units close by to close the gap against the slow moving infestor, and whereupon the IT hatches both players are then trading damage on units that cost resources. The opponent’s response to the IT’s can still be a positive energy trade, no amount of restating your points will change the fact that races are equipped with both the anti-caster and splash tools to trade favourably with mass infestor and IT spam.
Terran bio can take damage and heal with energy from medivac, protoss can take shield damage and heal through regen or batteries. Seems to me even if you technically ‘took damage’ on units it can still be a positive energy trade.
You are sticking your head in the sand by considering a positive energy trade where no units are lost or damage taken by the defender as a trade favouring zerg, there is zero logic in such a position and that is evident.
Massing extra casters absolutely has use for the opposing player as both ghost and ht trade cost and supply efficiently with infestors and their IT’s.
Again, such trades can be dealt with before they do any damage resulting in a positive energy trade, and damage that is dealt can often be healed freely through other means.
No, the other player can come out ahead in a positive energy trade, else what is the point of emp and fb?
It is not potential, it is fact. Splash options exist by the time zerg is able to reach mass infestor that can trade favourably with IT’s.
That was before a slew of changes affecting the ability for zerg to get into an economically advantageous position.
So a unit with a global teleport can be counter attacked, but not one that depletes its energy and has no attack of its own?
It costs nothing for you to scan and blink onto an area with no aa, or are you suggesting the enemy is expected to have aa at every part of the map?
Usually is not always, when the terran is able to survive and get to a massive fleet of battlecruisers, there is nothing zerg can do because he cannot split his infestor corruptor around the map and still be able to kill the bc fleet, nor can he counterattack if the terran blinks to where his army isn’t, nor does he have an answer should the terran decide to match his 2 unit composition with ghosts.
Not if they were massing anti-casters and/or long range splash. Rest assured though that terran players will eventually figure out how to transition to BC’s, just as soon as they are forced out of ghost thor. 1 down 1 to go.
This is a response of yours to someone that wanted afterburners nerfed to address widow mine drops. Yet if you state the problem with IT’s is they cannot be punished, why would you be in favour of removing the unit altogether instead of adjusting the cast range to the same as the auto-turret (2), making the total range of IT slightly higher than 1/2 a tank? Why would you destroy every use IT, such as baiting shots, killing drops, or harassment if the problem is lack of risk from the combined range of IT+cast range? And when you assume the 14 range why is the amount of IT’s killed before hatching not relevant, because it is energy? And you would say the same about killing a fresh batch of mules?
As always your position is nothing but contradiction fueled by terran bias and a gold league understanding of the game.
It’s all under the umbrella of “trading efficiency”. Every issue anyone could ever list for “free units” boils down to high efficiency. You can then re-apply their arguments to any other high efficiency unit in the game and ask the simple question: why is it OK for Terran and Protoss to trade efficiently and not Zerg? They then say Zerg has a larger economy. You then point out that the trading efficiency drastically dwarves the increased income that Zerg has. They then go back to trolling / saying you misrepresented their argument which is totally false. As soon as you catch them in an absurdity, such as a blatant lie, the argument is over. They’ve lost and they know it. You know it. Anyone with a brain knows it. There is a 99% chance terranic is avilo or someone like that.
Yes I find his position increasingly ridiculous as sc2 discussions progress as it is essentially saying energy depletion is irrelevant. Like imagine if I said killing 5 mules means nothing, yet he will fight to the death that killing 10 IT’s for free favours the zerg? lol
Yeah you did a lot better at figuring out WTF he was saying. I don’t have the patience for that. It’s an insurmountable challenge to unify whining about the efficiency of free units and turning a blind eye to a unit efficiency chart. That’s a contradiction of cataclysmic proportions. If free units are an issue, then we’ve got a lot of issues – just look at this chart. Oh, you don’t think that’s fair reasoning? OK blocked. Lmao.
I’ve been doing mass hydralisk builds as memes for awhile now. Have you ever tried to win in a ZvZ with 2 base hydra? It’s basically impossible, but I almost beat LiquidSnute with it. Hydralisks are being buffed in the new patch, so I can’t use them anymore. Blizzard just keeps ruining zerg. How’s a man supposed to flex if zerg keeps getting buffed!
One time I beat a GM protoss with a 1 base drone pull into 2 base hydralisk. Lmao. I then clowned on a streamer, who then looked through my match history and saw that game. He asked me if he could have the replay, and proceeded to be mind blown that GM protoss can be beaten like this. Yep, I didn’t make a spawning pool for the first 5 minutes and still won. Yeet.
I’ve tried 1 base hydralisk rushes in all matchups. I have won a single ZvZ but have won multiple in ZvT and ZvP. It’s amazing what kind of nonsense you can get away with when you make the game state unusual and do a really good job at hiding what you are doing.
In ZvP you do a proxy hatch and light pressure while you move up to lair. You go lair as a response to seeing a stargate. You then have to get hydralisk speed and catch the void rays to win. In ZvT you do the same thing but have a lot more emphasis on creep spread. This provokes hellion raven which is really quite bad against 8 or so hydras if you split them well. This is especially the case if you can kill the raven for free. Against terran you almost always have to expand, so the 1 base hydra is just the opener.
In ZvZ, the only game I won with this was after an aggressive 13/12 left both of our economies decimated. I was a little better off and had forgotten to pull drones off of gas, so I fired up a lair while he droned for a bit (going from 2 or 3 drones to 10 or 12) before he expanded. I was ahead and I could end the game any way I wanted to, but not so far ahead that 1 base hydra wasn’t tremendously risky. Hydras are just garbage in ZvZ. Zerglings just run them over not to mention banelings. He should’ve won, but I killed like 4 overlords and he was super supply blocked and that made the difference. It was all about hiding the hydralisks until the last second when they started killing overlords. The supply block prevents him from firing up an initial round of lings, and an overlord NEVER dies that fast in early game ZvZ. It always gives you more warning in a normal situation. So an overlord instantly dies and he sees hydras and queues up lings but finds out he’s supply blocked. Checkmate, newb. You’ve been clapped by the meme master.
Did I tell you I’ve beaten JimRising with mass slow zerglings? Lmao yep. Who is JimRising? He’s generally 6,000 MMR and one of the best zergs on the NA ladder. Yep, I clapped him with about 100 slow zerglings. He had an overlord out of position and I was planning on roaches, but I saw the overlord and was like “Huh, this guy only makes 1 pair of lings to morph some banes as defense and his overlord is out of position, I bet I could just mass some lings and win.” Yep, it worked.
This game’s just too easy. Can we nerf zerg, please? I mean, come on. The apes have terran and protoss to play. Do we really need to buff all the units that I love so much? It’s going to ruin SC2.
I don’t watch replays anymore. I don’t memorize builds. Every build is totally free style. The game is just too easy if you use after-game map-hacks (why does blizzard even allow it?) and research the best builds from pro players. Who even has time to put that much effort into a video game. But now that they are buffing zerg, what am I supposed to do? Maybe I will play blindfolded or play left handed. I am getting desperate here man. I know, I will play on my phone with that itty bitty screen. That might do the trick. It will lag so bad on my phone that my opponent should stand a chance, don’t you think?
It’s not the same. Spawning mechanics have a combination of two issues that are not shared by other mechanics:
Infested Terran and other spawn mechanics direct the enemy to go after the summoned units, not the caster. The caster is free to move into a different location while the opponent is forced to respond to the summoned units to stem the damage, and those summoned units can remain active in the area for a decent period after the caster leaves.
Since the spawned units are free, any lasting damage or resource trade on the part of the defending player is a loss. It doesn’t matter if you kill the units efficiently, if you took lasting damage from them, it was a loss. This would not be the case if the spawned units required Minerals or Gas to make.
Units without spawning mechanics never have those issues. You deal with those units by going after them directly. While it is possible for Tanks or other ranged units to kill enemy units on approach, the ranged units do not force the player to attack another location; and it is possible to overcome any advantage they have through flanks, including certain support units, or through raw numbers.
The Infested Terran spell also had a third issue that a few other spells share: They could be stacked without any penalty. If the spell is “useful” in the first place, then that encourages players to mass casters to maximize the effect of the spell. Most stackable spells have been removed, and the game is better for it.
Do you expect players to be omnipresent, and have combat units at every base, expansion, etc at all times? And do you expect them to always have enough of those units on location to be able to deal with the Infested Terran, and go after the Infestor as they retreat?
That is not to mention that each Infestor had the potential to drop an army of Infested Terran worth several times its own supply value in terms of strength.
If all of the damage dealt by the summoned units is regenerated for free, then it is wash. If the damage is permanent, or requires resources to repair (Protoss health damage, damage to any non-Bio Terran unit), then it is a loss.
Do you actually use Infestors in drops?
Usually Infestors were burrow-moved to attack expansions or to sneakily Fungal/Neural enemy units (as they still are), or they were kept with the main force to drop Fungals, Infested Terran armies, or Neural Parasites whenever a fight broke out.
Zerg “drops” have always been very rare because of the slow speed of the Overlord, which is makes any Overlord drop riskier than Warp Prism or Medivac drops.
The meager amount of space that Infested Terran take up does not prevent you from spamming the spell. Essentially, you can scale the spell up to match the strength of almost any army, giving you an incentive to mass Infestors for that spell. That is always a problem, even when the spell has some limitation (such as interrupting Ghosts or a delayed hatch for Infested Terran) that may weaken it in some cases. Ravens also had a stacking issue on all three of their initial spells, and two of those spells have already been removed & replaced because of it.
Back when Zerg still had Infested Terran, it was not uncommon for them to beat Skytoss armies supported with splash units by spamming Infested Terran.
WarCraft III has stricter limitations on summoners than StarCraft. Even so, it still has problems. For instance, mass Necromancer & Graveyard compositions can certainly be abused to overwhelm an enemy with waves of free units. The two problems I mentioned with spawning units up above are also still present.
As for the "limitations’ I mentioned:
Apart from Necromancers and rare creeps, only specific Heroes can summon units. Since a player can only have 3 unique heroes, this strictly limits how many summons a player can make at once. You cannot kill an army by massing Water Elementals, Treants, or Shadow Wolves.
Just about every Warcraft III faction has spells specifically designed to dispel buffs, debuffs, and to kill summoned units with high instant-damage. For instance, Dispel Magic and Disenchant can both insta-kill swarms of Skeletons, and a single caster can store up the energy for 5 or 6 casts respectively. StarCraft has never had anything close to that. EMP and Feedback function as mana-burns, but they do absolutely nothing to summoned units that are already on the field. Feedback also happens to be expensive enough that it wouldn’t be useful against summoned units even if it could kill them.
WarCraft III is heavily based around heroes. They make up a significant portion of the army’s strength, gain more power and abilities as they level up, and they can gain experience from summoned units. If a player is prepared for summoned units (Priests, Shaman, Dryads, Spirit Walkers), or has a powerful enough army that can heal itself or limit losses, then sending waves of summoned units may feed the player until he can just overrun the opponent.
The problem here is the summoned units themselves. Not just their range. Even with a 2-range cast, Auto-Turrets are still problematic. Lowering the range may make the spell easier to deal with in some cases, but the problems with summoning units still remain.
Never less how strong IT was when Zerg was maxed and infestor. Removing it and giving us another 75 spell is poor. Which mean
I would like see IT back even if nerf where each infestor can only spawn 2 or make each one has pop 1. Once maxed pop you can’t cast anymore.
See anything Zerg gets Terran or toss won’t stop complaining if it can’t be killed by 13 range or mineral base army.
Just because so called free unit does give main unit retreat abilities or have ability wither army value.
Because Zerg has one unit that can do that even if IT was around.
But guess what siege tank has 13 range and Thor 10 range where Zerg has to take some damage if want to engage.
Free units does same thing so argue that unfair is same argument where certain units will deal damage because longest range.
Going back infestor needs something to help when two main abilities drained. If not then it be better find away then trying relie on infestor since gives enemy whole minute destroy Zerg.
Yep, and because they are such incessant whiners they actually managed to hold Blizzard’s ear for a moment and, in that moment, managed to cause some of the most severe balance issues that have happened in the past 10 years. It’s actually a good life lesson on what happens if you listen to celebrities. Celebrities aren’t very intelligent and don’t know what they are talking about 99.9% of the time. They are simply very personable, which makes them good entertainers. That’s it. That’s the net sum of their skills. If they were good at designing games, they would’ve gone to school and become a computer science major. They didn’t. They became youtubers. So if you listen to these people, it creates issues. That’s broadly applicable to all pop culture and not just SC2. If you listen to what celebrities have to say on any subject, you are going to be misled. If you want to know the truth, you want to listen to statisticians, lawyers, and scientists.