Now even the warp prism picking up range and liberator range upgrade got nerfed, but queens’ 8-range AA is still there, what a joke. But TBH, this issue seems not quite urgent for now.
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Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have zerg biased. You can track my comment history. I actually advocated against Infested terrans and Swarm Host. I also expressed, multiple times, how stupid parasitic bomb is as zergs AoE anti-air spell. So it’s laughable that you scream biased with no actual evidence to support it.
The reason why Queen has long range is because it’s their only AA unit for a large part of the game. They were buffed to better deal with Liberators. You used to play whack-a-mole with spore crawlers. In addition, transfused used to be a lot stronger. Now that it’s nerfed you can’t just walk queens into the lib range and tank it. 1 liberator can out gun a few queens. The range is so large on libs that you basically render a whole mineral line unminable.
Another reason is warp prism. The warp prism can be used aggressively and once protoss starts warping in units and it snowballs. So the slight buff there gives more opportunity to shut down aggressive warp prisms.
It’s not a question of air units have what range. Balance wise, it’s always better when air units are weaker and have good counters on the ground. Air units ignore terrain. So that is where they get their advantage. That’s why it’s good to have solid Anti-Air ground units who can handle them. We see that with the queen, Thor, Cyclone, and Blink stalkers ( Though protoss could still use better ground based AA)
It’s the air units job to find an angle that sneaks past defenses and gets some damage done. Not the ground units job to be so weak that they allow the unit to deal damage. It’s the attackers job to find the holes in the enemies defense. Why should defending be so pitiful that the attacker fears nothing and can harass as much as they want with no r ramifications? We see that all the time. The liberators find that small section that isn’t defended and can pick off a few drones. Or the medivac that sneaks past the overlords.
Spore crawlers are defending units. They plant in an area and defend it. The queens are for driving things off. They really don’t do that much damage. Their long range allows them to pick and prod at units and force them to retreat.
In 2019 it’s weird to be having this econ conversation. Because even after a zerg gets the economy they want, we still have zergs that lose in the late game. We’ve seen zergs get picked a part.
The conversation about queens get old. The races are not symmetrical. Why do queens need to disable larva? Everything comes from larva. Terran and protoss it does not. If you make an SCV you can still make a marine. But if you make a drone that means you cant make a roach and you can’t make an overlord either. So the queens are there to not only provide more larva but also act as base defenders just like bunkers or Planetary fortress or shield batteries. There’s lots of ways to play around them, but they are able to stand up to early game harass and allow zerg to stay in pace with the other races.
But you’re trying to argue multiple points. terran Econ is another conversation, and has no basis on what a zerg can do. You’re just trying to throw out multiple points instead of having a focused conversation.
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Warp prisms pick up range got nerfed
Maps don’t have deadzones behind mineral lines for Liberators anymore.
The only Bio unit that properly needs some mid-game buffs is the Reaper.
Hold up.
You are saying Zergs macro mechanic should also be good at killing air units?.
This reminds me so much about the MSC.
“Hero defense unit” spawned from main base structure used to fend off all attacks around the base.
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The issue still matters and needs to be addressed.
Bio in TvZ “struggles” because Queens hold off anything early on that might do eco damage to Zerg, including mid game drops themselves.
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The warp prism nerf had nothing to do what I talked about. What I was talking about is when there are units infront of it, like stalkers and immortals. Protoss can’t just camp right up next to the third and keep warping in. Because queens can reach it. It has nothing to do with dead zones. If you know how libs work, you know that they operate in a radius, so before you’d have to charge into the circle or mcgyver around and find that 1 sweet spot +1 range helps mitigate that.
As for your mothership
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The mother ship wasn’t a macro unit. Chrono has always been on the nexus.
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The core was a hero unit. So it could only be 1 place at a time. Over charge could actually hold off a lot of attacks. Queens can’t.
Queens area a defensive unit but they are very limited in what they can do, and can easily get caught and killed. If you miscout or miss something they can get overruned. This idea that queen are the end all be all is insane. You do need units. The queen just lets you have some space in the early game to drone, but zerg still makes units because drops become a factor other things that require units. Zergs tend to make a round of lings around the time that drops could happen. Each race has their defensive units such as mines or tanks for terran. The argument against why zerg should have that unit that keeps them safe is paper thing. If terran can have a tank on the high ground to make zerg think twice about attacking? Whycan’t zerg have that unit that makes terran think twice about diving in with hellions. Because I played the game in those days and it was not good days. If we had that now with how good terran is the games would be rubbish. These early game harassment units are about finding holes. It’s not about forcing the race to have holes.
It makes much better gameplay to see that the queens are out of position and sneak a drop in or the hellions in rather than the hellions straight up looking at the queens and going, “Nahh, let’s go!” because they are so ineffective.
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I’m talking specifically about the Queens 8 air range, the ground range and damage is perfectly fine.
Did Zerg really struggle with anything when the Queen air attack range was 7 from WoL to 2016 LOTV?. Would Zerg struggle with anything in this meta if they had 7 range again?.
These are the things we should be talking about, because it’s very obvious 8 air attack range on Queens is a little too good.
I’m not against Zerg, I’m in favor of buffing units like the Ultralisk, Lurker, Hydralisk and even Mutalisk. I’m very supportive of SH reworks and redesigns.
But when you see a Zerg build basically just Queens to hold off everything, there is a problem.
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That could be fixed by making Hydralisk hatch tech and locking both of the upgrades at Lair. They could then make hatch tech hydralisk have 80HP, but get back the +10HP after getting the speed upgrade.
There are design ways to correct the huge hole in Zerg’s design of them lacking AA outside of Queens and Spires early game. Zerg being reliant so much on Queens defense is a problem, just like how Zerg has to rush hive to survive.
If you want to test out Queens with the 7 anti-air range back, it’s in my balance mod right now. Long requested change.
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I know what you’re talking about. But you keep going off on these tangents like the mothership core. The change was made to address early game liberator harass. That’s where the 7 range to 8 range came it. And with the transfuse nerf, it’s more applicable now since queens can’t tank liberators as well. It’s not a little too good. It’s fine. It still leaves plenty of opening to sneak in and do damage. This notion that somehow range 8 queens is the sole reason for less early game harass isn’t supported because, as I pointed out, there are lots of factors that play into that,
There’s nothing wrong with range 8 queens. You actually want ground units to be better against air. Because air vs air is really garbage. You want units on the ground that can stand against them, and Hydras wouldn’t solve the issue. You’d end up losing a few in the early game just to kill off 1 liberator most likely since they only have 6 range. So you just trade 2-4 hydras for 1 liberator. That’s a huge larva and gas investment just to defend 1 unit. You don’t really have a good argument for queens either. you keep saying, “Well terran doesn’t behave like that.” When the races operate differently, and on the other hand we see things like the hellions or a couple tanks or a cylone that kind of serve the same function. Zerg has a robust defense in the queen. terran Gets robust map control in the hellion. The races get their advantages in different places. You’re basically arguing that zerg shouldn’t have any. The queens should be weak. Zerg should be forced to fall behind in economy by spending larva on units they may not even need, and air units should dominate zerg early game.
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Bunch of stuff I’d like to see taken out of the game. SH being one. Nydus, prisms, they should all be limited to 8 supply warp in/load capacity. Make the prism cheaper, lower its range, same with main nydus building make it cheaper, so you can feasible make 3 nydus if you want to make the investment to transport 24 roaches. But one nydus alone should be a harrassment tool, same with prism, nto a game decider. Obviously were going to stick with huge maps, terran is the only race that is limited by physics in the game it seems, bar the battlecruiser. I wouldn’t mind seeing that go too, and it reverted to something else, like an invunrable stasis, where it doesnt do or take damage for 10 seconds, so the bc can get out of dodge, or fly into a good area to camp there.
Generally speaking spells keep getting stronger, which has led us to this hive rush meta. None of the top zerg (bar Soo) do anything at all before they get hive tech out. They just sit around, make few lings and queens, scout and micro queens.
Either increase the time to get hive, or make hive more expensive, there should be a trade off and not a case of I scout with speed overlords make either defensive roaches and banes and ill be a.ok. (ZvZ of course excluded).
I’m sorry dev team, but your, or your predecessors urge to “involve” all late game units into the game by buffing them has led us to where we are. 5 min bcs, 6 min corruptors. 8 minute vipers. This is not how starcraft used to be. It used to be tank marine pushes, 2/2 vs 1/1 etc, zerg was hanging on, got their tech out to hold, maybe gained an advatange, then it went to late game.
Also I understand people don’t enjoy pvp at all, I can’t speak on that. But I urge you to look into the issues and listen to the pro gamers.
We’ve had like 8 years of zerg late game having a 80% winrate if they get to that very late game. Mass raven was completely nerfed out of the game (after 6 months), because once terran had it, they had maybe a 70% chance of winning, it took a long time to get there and a lot of skill to pull it off, on the contrary 10 vipers at 11 minutes is now a thing and it completely invalidates a mech army that doesnt have like 16 supply of vikings ready. What gives? Neural, yoinks, shouldnt be the the game. Anything that controls an eneny unit is silly imo. Give them a frenzy spell to buff zerg armor to break siege lines or something, but watching innovation against serral in nationwars final was just ridiculous. Innovation was laughing all along. The vipers cant be touched, and they can even quickload their energy back up. Utter nonsense and harmful to the beauty of the game.
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And a robust economy because the Queen defends everything early game.
No, I’m saying it doesn’t need and shouldn’t have 8 AA range at this point. BC openers are popular in TvZ because Queens shut down everything else a Terran can do that comes out of a starport.
The 8 range AA even impacts ZvP where Protoss can’t harass with Oracles well.
Early game air units don’t have 7+ range
Zerg should be forced to fall behind in economy by spending larva on units they may not even need
That’s the entire point of harassing Zerg or threatening to harass Zerg. So are you try to say Zerg shouldn’t have to fear harassment and should just drone all day?. Because that is what the 8 range AA queen does right now.
I’m very grateful for the Adept reversion. In the mid-game when the upgrade would be researched, you need to keep the Gateway army together when in an engagement so you can huddle under a Guardian Shell. Shading into the the enemy army is just suicide, and shading onto yourself generally takes too long.
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They brilliantly ignored or didn’t read these nice proposals for Adepts:
45% Attackspeed normally as of now, but
+15% attackspeed after shading
-15% attackspeed after canceling
Another one was:
30% or 45% attackspeed as normal, but
+30% or +15% attackspeed after shading, respectively (later one buffing the adept slightly)
Fostering and incentivising some more shading use, instead of a damn boring REVERT to just 45%. Blizzard had the right idea, but fell for oversimplified feedback, instead of adjusting their change to go in line with meta and balance.
we can’t find use for Microbial Shroud timing.
Microbial Shroud is better than Fungal Growth
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It’s kind of silly how you are harping in the range 8. If you think about it what Terran is like, “range 7 okay I can still use banshees. But range 8 oh I absolutely can’t open banshee. The only thing it did was help vs liberators. It had no effect on anything else. We continue to see all kinds of openings despite what you say.
Also, meta game has a lot to do. Yes queens are strong. But Zerg gets stronger the more the Mets game settles. The reason being they know when they can get away from drones. It’s nonsensical to blame the queen when it’s impact in this day and age is minimal. The changes has been in the game for years. You’re making it sound like we haven’t seen any oracle or banshee or liberator opening against Zerg since 2016 and that is false
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Zergs recent surge in wins says otherwise. Zerg being able to safely get into the late game is a direct result of Queens stopping lots of harassment especially air harassment, unless it’s with a BC.
I’ve seen countless games where Zerg doesn’t even build units and instead just builds Queens and drones.
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Name all the openers involving air units used against Zerg in the current meta now.
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This argument doesn’t make sense on a couple levels. One, if by recent you mean last year when reynor and serral started winning everything okay but that was way after the queen buff. So you can’t even link the two. Queen buff was 2016. And two if you look at zerg domiance, it’s mostly serral, reynor and a handful of koreans like dark. Those are kind of the top zergs. The rest are doing good with some others sneaking in sometimes. But most of the wins are like split between 5 players. I’m not sure what games you are watching but there are not countless games of just queens and drones. Unless you’re like catz maybe. Because even with nydus play you make more than queens. No pro player just masses queens.
Well in the 3 years since the buff happen There’s oracles, liberators, banshees, ravens, BC, Pheonix. The buff happened in 2016 and there has been air openings since then. They didn’t just cease to be a thing for 3 years. Liberators were common for a long time after that buff, and oracles are still used. You’re trying to make a link when there is none. You’re trying to say queens got + 1 range and then nobody went air, adn that’s not true.
Early game they do every single time. Production tab is 3 things constantly. Queens, Drones and Overlords.
I’m saying going air against Zerg for worker harassment as Terran and Protoss became far less viable and far less possible. Unless you are going BC as Terran.
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