You pull this number from where? Bl, infestor, lurker, ultra, viper what else is there in the 30% of zerg lategame, plz tell me.
Yes in fact maps also play a role, and maru played defensive turtle style on the map least favoured towards that style and still won (g1).
To be clear it’s no problem that maru beat dark, but the manner in which it was done gives substance to what zerg players like me have been saying for years that zerg can’t do anything when terran reaches ghost mech. It’s not just maru either, clem, bunny, cure all the top terran are gravitating towards this style more and more just like on the ladder. Maru vs dark shows us this style in the highest level of play, but metal league players will continue to dismiss it offhandedly saying zerg players much better than themselves just lack control in a scenario fundamentally disfavoured towards them in being forced to rely on casters countered by ghost, when it is in fact low level terrans that lacks proper control to execute ghost play.
Don’t believe me you can ask any top zerg what they think of ghost mech and whether such scenarios are playable, I watched elazer recently say “don’t let them get there”, “not much you can do”, etc.
What I’ve said for years is now being done in the highest levels of play and being discussed by top players, how long until you drop the facade that it is just maru? 6 months? A year? You sound just like the ppp defending 2 years of void degeneracy saying it’s “just trap”.
These 2 statements are mutually exclusive.
If you think cost to cloak is worth an 18 dps vs light auto attack and all spell cast from cloak that is your prerogative.
But if you would like to keep sarcastically appealing to unit asymmetry so you don’t have to acknowledge complaints about ghost then I will throw those remarks back at the ghost.
Lemme know when neural becomes a permanent +1 instead of a temporary +2 that has 2 less range, does not refund energy, and can be interrupted for the entirety of its duration.
As a Terran, you have to kill the infestor in order to free your controlled unit from the neural. If you don’t straight up kill the infestor, you don’t get the unit back before the full 11s ( time during which it is usually suicided on the Z army or its siblings).
I must admit that I didn’t expect a reader would understand those sentences would apply from a Z point of view, since you’re not supposed to be trying to kill your own infestors. I know I mentioned some players did consider exclusively a Z point of view, but I didn’t expect that to go that far.
Years, do you say ? Are you implying you were already whining when we had ZvZ after ZvZ in Majors/WCS tournaments events, sometimes even starting in semi-finals ?
Well, what can I say, if you always whine, sooner or later someone will complain the same a you.
As for ZvMech, I give you that at low to decent level, it’s much harder to counter as a Z than to just ball up, siege and aclic as a mech player. However as you just above referred, until a surprising level this is just Z refusing to use their casters, or lacking proper control to sync them with their armies.
Yep. It’s also a matter of will sometimes. When you’re used to aclick your opponents, its gets frustrating to have that strategy fail against others. And with the exception of some really aggressive strats, there’s a level above which Z need to acquire the use of their casters, since they are the real power of Z lategame.
No convoluted calculations behind it, it was just meant to state that aside of an unit tester, ghosts do not counter the whole of Z lategame.
As for lategame units than can counter ghosts :
SH (locusts)
cracklings
speed banes
infestor (fungle)
Viper (abduct)
sieged overseers (the detection outranges ghost’s snipes)
mutas in high numbers.
static in significant numbers. Nukes usually are an answer to static, since for most races, those can’t move. Well, Zerg’s static can move.
You’re going to say : « hey Trias, you terran scrub, when I sit down my vipers and unburrowed infestors doin’ nothing, they get sniped, how can they counter ghost if they can get sniped ? ». Well it’s simple : it’s a micro tug of war. If the terran controls his ghosts and army better, he’ll be able to snipe your casters. If you manage your army and casters better, you’ll be able to fungle the ghosts (even to abduct some). And so the ghost being a counter or countered is in fact dependent of the control, multitask and army setup of both player (not to mention you’re supposed to have taken measures to limit the Zerg’s growth before getting at that point to even get at chance at trying yourself at it).
Hence why Maru’s ghosts can appear so strong at times. Because Maru is exceptional (I recall someone even mentioned he could be the GOAT). If you’re only a top EU terran, then this happens :
And this is Clem, which is probably top 8 or even top 4 world Terran, so allow to me to have some doubts about how precise your idea of how difficult having a “proper control to execute” a bio TvZ lategame actually is.
So while it might not fit your « Maru’s skill is standard » #playLikeMaru agenda, the conclusions your draw on overall balance from a single encounter between Maru and Dark are biased by how exceptional Maru can get sometimes. Maru’s skill isn’t the one of the other terrans, even top world. And so I let you imagine how inferior the ghosts or simple masters, diamond or even platinum players are… while their micro is often superior to those of Z or P players of similar level.
Except PPP did whine ; and you’re playing the partition of the whiners here. What’s the acronym for Zerg whiners ?
If ghost mech was OP, then all terrans beyond a certain level would play only that, we wouldn’t have so many vs Z finals, and this wouldn’t happen :
So there might be more limits to your #JustPlayLikeMaru thing, and more solutions as a Zerg than your agenda actually registered. Though it’s true that if you were already whining when we ended up with Ro4 like that https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/2019_WCS_Summer/Qualifiers/Europe I doubt you’d be able to ever notice.
Yes they are, if they are being killed by other units that is not the infestor, you even admit this when you say ‘usually’. If the neural has a duration then you get it back, it’s that simple. And if you get it back then this
cannot be true.
Luckily nobody is talking about killing their own infestors, though feel free to bring on the strawmen.
Yup, took some time for the pro meta to reach it but it has.
Press cloak
https://youtu.be/VewG_pY7cGY
stop lying
Learn to emp
see above
Lemme know when an overseer kills a ghost.
youtu.be/6flFIsoynyw
stop lying
This is why arguing balance with metal league players is pointless, fungal counters snipe while emp counters all zerg spells. See other thread for more info.
Maru played that style on the worst map in the pool for it and had his ghosts neuraled multiple times and still won after going down to 11 workers.
Idk idc feel free to make one.
Yes and terran meta is gravitating towards it more and more.
Let me know which of those quarterfinals you’d like to see go the other way
Everyone knows ghosts are OP, all I see here is a bunch of whataboutism to try to redirect instead of just admitting ghosts are the strongest unit in the game, 1 shotting all tier 3 units and fliers with snipe.
You could just make ghosts and win against a lategame army.
as speak of a 2 sup unit and speziel in TvZ overloaded looks.
soilde combat unit against light units (auto attack-> gtg/ gta), relatively fast (same speed as speed-bane off creep), relatively tanky. long range on poke/ kill ability → snipe against all T2+ units. hard counter to spell caster.
and then tools like cloack/ nuke.
then don’t forget the set up at every ramp or choke point 1-2 PF/ turrets/tanks (smart terrans have sensor towers).
hard to crack.
simply the list is so ~lala:
ling not really tank/ PF stop most of the rest can be fought by ghost.
Speed bane have the same problems as ling + speed is the same ( 5 bane must contact)
infestor Viper → emp and abduct as counter … rather not. Blind cloud ok or then infestor with Fungal or Trias secret technique mass Np …
the overseers thing is rather la la just because you see it doesn’t mean the problem is solved…
Mutas not really, possibly with 40+ we have not seen yet.
it doesn’t look that good.
but zerg player adapt.
i think the terran turtle style mech/ghost can be broken like mech style with sh. especially for lower player.
top lvl we see attempts with BL → mass broodling waves.
or maybe we see from defense strong player like Dark a passive style. that only waits until terran has to psuhen for a win or next base.
builds a wall from static def + broodling waves.
Okay. So if the Zerg player neural your units and then goes AFK without even giving them the order to kill each other (let’s say he has 50+ years old, has to go urgently to the bathroom, and doesn’t even have the time to ask for a pause) , then you get your units back.
I see three fixes :
— Either we ask Zerg players to go to the restroom before each game
— Or we ask the ESL to allow for adequate gamer gear during competitions https://i.redd.it/lh2esqv6foo21.jpg
— And alternatively we consider they use the neural only when they intend to actually do something of it
What if the Z pressed the overseer button upon seeing the ghosts ? What if you need the energy to perform the snipes (contrary to the infestor, ghosts don’t accumulate energy when being cloaked) ? What if there are lings or mutas to defend the SH ? Also, unless the mothership has been made Terran, your workers, buildings and the rest of your army don’t have a cloak button, so that won’t deflect the wave.
A tough accusation to make when
one of the two units groups isn’t even half of the value of the second one.
the ghosts are even supply to the lings (!) and as packed as possible, both greatly reducing the melee area/preventing the lings to surround each ghost, and making them extraordinarily vulnerable to any banes that would usually be included.
In real game, where the ghosts are produced from techlabs, where there are banes, and where the armies have similar value, this happens :
I’d say that the author of the previous video probably had a whiner’s agenda as well.
Go say that to Maru.
« Maru, please L2P/PlayLikeMaruYourself,
with love,
a noname Zerg whiner »
Are you going to maintain your « Lack of proper control to execute ghost play ? ? Or maybe finally admit that there can be a tug of war between the Zerg’s micro of the infestor and the Terran’s microgestion of the ghosts ? It’s the micro that make those two units counter each other.
So infestors can’t counter ghosts when I mention so, but when you get forced to see it with your eyes, they do ? Interesting.
Ghosts don’t fare that well against mechanical units. Not to mention, no zerg is going to stay AFK long enough for you to get a maxed out full ghosts army, and even if they did (let’s say due to intestinal or urinary issue), ghost don’t stop massive lategame bbusts, and cannot snipe when you have nothing to prevent the zerg jumping at them.
Actually speebanes are slightly faster (3.9 vs 4.1). Granted, associated speedlings (6.58) are a much better option to get a surround first. Ideally you’d need both, as banes do force a spread, and cracklings can either surround (and allow the banes to strike at packed units) or deal the damage to spread units.
Two points :
— Unlike Zerg static, PF are not mobile. Good luck at sniping things if you could only do that near PF vicinity. Tanks are an answer to banes indeed, but cost efficient against lings, so need good (well microed) bio support to perform against lings banes.
— It is not required for the banes to kill the ghosts. If each ghost is surrounded by lings banes, cracklings can finish the work without problem (cf; above tournament video).
—Plus even if you had decided to kill the terran with pure banes (let’s say one that be massing only ghosts), then nothing prevents you from massing banes. If you can kill a PF with banes, it’s not a few ghosts that will prevent that from happening.
Damned, who comes at me about balance when forums Zergs do not even have their own Battlenet forum acronym ? When the PPP exists, and the terran earned the famous TCF ? Talk about severely messed up priorities !
Anyway, tough call for a single Battlenet user to decide.
What about :
ZWF, Zerg Whining Federation ?
Or ZZZ, Zerg Zealots Zoo ?
Or even WZS, Whining Zerg Sect ?
I have a preference for the first one, but I’m open to proposals.
Because we are better people and better players than terran/toss. We don’t just get to cry and get our way, or wait for blizz to give us super game ending cheese units. We have to do everything the old fashioned way. Our only choice is to “macro out”, therefore we are more sturdy people.
If a zerg is 50 years old for having to rapid fire neurals outranged by emp and snipe and then rapid fire target fire with the neuraled units, what does that make terran players that can’t even rapid fire snipe and emp properly?
Neural can’t be used if the terran has proper ghost control.
Then you press the snipe button, you rapid fire on the sh before they launch, or kill the zerg in the down time, or use the ghost’s superior range, speed, and bonus to light to kite locusts. The very fact that you suggest sh to counter ghosts tells me your knowledge of the MU is entirely worthless.
Once again if a unit ‘counter’ does not work at equal supply then it is not a counter but a don’t let them response, eg roaches trade well with marines early game but nobody is claiming roaches counter marines because 3/3 and stim ensures that relationship gets turned around when you enter lategame.
But thank you for once again making the argument for zerg to not let the terran get there.
You think this is favourable for lings? Lmk which map in the pool has a more wide open area than this or where you see pro terrans just not kite.
You keep bringing up additional units for zerg needed to counter 1 unit for terran, if you assume unit complexity for one side then do the same for the other, if the zerg can have banes then terran can have mines, if zerg has mutas then terran can have thors, the unit interactions remain terran favoured when they reach ghost mech.
You link me 2 clips from the same game that maru won where he is going heavy marine marauder and serral is doing everything he can to stop maru from maxing as proof that ghost mech is beatable? Tell me which part of ‘ghost mech’ implies marine maruader.
If you want a game where terran actually reaches their endgame comp look here:
https://youtu.be/nHY5lcWvmmY
1hr26
https://youtu.be/gVQpxgF-DtQ
35m
https://youtu.be/h09qnC7Cujc
37m
But tell me moar how it’s just maru.
Ah yes, because as the game you linked adequately showed, even with a point blank fungal on a group of ghosts with ling bling muta to back them up most of the ghosts will still survive.
Compare to what you think will happen if ghost gets a point blank emp on group of infestors? Rapid fire snipe goes pppppeeeeeewwwwww
Thanks for pointing out their entirely relevant weakness to TvZ
ZWF is a bit of a handful to say, TCF and PPP flows off the tongue.
You guys literally whined the widow mine out of existence because splitting was to difficult for you to do back in HotS and it almost completely removed the terran race from pro play for almost a year.
You whined about broodlords getting bugfixed when they had a literally game-breaking bug that meant they had near infinite range, and whined about broodlord infestor getting nerfed.
You whined about infestors having ITs removed despite the fact that they were unequivocally the most broken unit in the game, and quite literally impossible to balance.
You whined about the justified Fungal nerfs - Everything from removing instant fungal, to being unable to cast it while burrowed, to the fact that it no longer roots and therefore insta-kills your opponent’s army.
You whine even now, when Mech is nearly nonexistant, that Mech is to strong, despite the fact that mech is almost never seen in pro play.
You whined consistently about Skytoss and how it was impossible to beat, despite swaths of evidence to the contrary, and despite having the literal best skytoss counter in the game bar none (though to be fair, Skytoss was cancerous - because it created the cardinal sin of any entertainment - being boring to play with,
And against, as well as to watch).
You cried in LotV beta so hard that when they removed macro mechanics for all races, instead of removing them for Zerg like they did for T and P, they instead automated them so every Zerg player became Rogue and you couldn’t tell the difference between who was actually a good player and who was a bronze leaguer.
You guys cry and whine about win-rates in ZvP and ZvT, and yet have had the most tournament wins, second places, unique victors and unique runner-up placements of any race, 3 years in a row, and do so by a vast margine.
You guys consistently whine about the ghost now (and lets be honest, thats exactly what it is), despite the fact that literally no other player on the planet aside from maybe Clem has been able to even imitate (not replicate) Maru’s ghost control and style. Reaching a composition is one thing. Being successful with it is a whole other can of worms.
We even had whine about the new maps because, for once, they’re not inherently zerg favoured for 6/7 maps.
I could go on. There’s a lot Zerg players have whined about, despite arguably having the least reason of all races to whine, especially right now.
That isn’t to say protoss and terran players don’t whine too - all races whine and have their whiners, whether you want to admit it or not, and there is plenty of things that both P and T whine about, justified or otherwise.
Ironic you remember the hots widow mine but hots IT is absent from memory, ask any pro player whether IT’s were broken in hots see what they say about the unit you parrot as “impossible to balance”.
The HotS IT was garbage. It was so bad that it saw less use even than microbial shroud has, such that they might as well have removed it from the game back then and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
And then they gave it a minor buff in LotV, and suddenly all you saw was mass IT for a little while because it was impossible to trade against. We literally saw numerous games where all you would see is mass Infested Terran. And then they tried something else, making it more AA focused, but the core problem with ITs remained.
So they removed it. It was impossible to balance it properly because the unit was too polarizing. In order for it to be balanced, it had to be so bad that you never actually used it at any point in time, or the unit breaks the game because you can literally never trade against it at any point in time because you trade minerals and gas for energy alone.
Absolutely not, hots IT saw magnitudes more use than MS, the “minor” buff made them ignore armour vs air with more than double their dmg compared ground, had more range, as well as brought back upgrade scaling.
No they tried for 2 weeks in the ptr that nobody played and the community of casuals whined it out of existence.
do you think the bug during its duration had an impact on their perceived strength?
do you think the nerfs to queen, creep, bl, bane, and map changes have an impact on zerg’s ability to mass infestor?
did those changes happen before IT’s were removed?
Just to add, IT’s were used in every MU as a last resort, MS is seen in one MU (vP) once in a blue moon, and I don’t even think they do it anymore, and I saw it used as a last resort vs liberators right before the zerg left the game.
I do not think it had any impact on their perceived ability to be balanced. On their percieved strength, initially yes.
I actually think their percieved strength felt weakened when it was found that the damage they did was due to a bug.
I suppose that depends on the changes you mean. Im honestly not sure how to answer this one because there are to many changes to consider, and I couldn’t tell you the timeline off the top of my head.
I honestly cannot answer the question without knowing A) what changes you are thinking of specifically, and B) as related to question 2, the timeline of those changes.
Again, we saw games - and indeed series - decided by mass Infested Terran specifically, and entire games where we saw mass IT for a large majority of the game and/or series. Rogue vs Classic comes to mind, though I couldn’t tell you the map other than that it was a sandy beach(?) map from LotV, cause it happened so long ago now.
Yes and by then the anti-free unit propaganda was well under way by the PPP and TCF that just so happened to die out with sh, auto-turret, mule, changeling and halluc still in the game once IT was removed.
BL and creep cancel removal happened in the same patch IT was removed and thors got turbobuffed vs BL, everything else like -1 range queen aa, no transfuse off creep, -4 bane dmg vs non-light, creep tumour to light, maps like golden wall, blackburn, and now stargazers and moondance came after IT removal. In other words they hit the endgame before stopping zerg from generating an advantage prior; the 50 energy IT may well have been considered balanced had the other changes happened first.
I’m talking about hots use. Every MU vs MS in one.
Immobile, lasts an obscenely short time. Only a few seconds l, doesnt recieve upgrades outside of turret range and building armour, and so does no bonus damage, and also requires to be placed according to building parameters. However, like ITs, I personally feel it should have been removed.
Does no damage, so you’re never trading minerals and/or gas for energy. In the context of combat, the unit actually uses minerals and gas for repair, and it also doesn’t generate its own money, so you can still only trade minerals and gas with minerals and gas when armies clash.
Completely irrelevant. Does no damage, costs no money, gives no money. Not even sure why you would bring this up other than “its free”.
Again, irrelevant. Hallucinations literally only do damage when something is under the effect of the Raven’s Anti-armour missile. A situation that is so absurdly rare that it quite literally is incapable of effecting balance at any point in time, and never, ever will turn the tide of battle.
Yep, this is another problem unit for the same reason as ITs. Drop and run - you drop the locusts, run the SH away and the Locusts trade minerals and gas for a cooldown that is almost meaningless. It is, frankly, bad game design, and should be removed or redesigned. However such a thing simply isn’t going to happen in SC2’s current climate. The unit is toxic and cancerous despite having a few counters and the swarm host itself not having an attack, made worse by the fact that locusts completely ignore terrain until they land.
And lets add the broodlord to that list. Unlike both the SH and the ITs, Broodlords utilize melee units to do their damage. Free melee units that have an insanely short lifespan. However the BL is SUPER slow, and it MUST stay within range to have broodlings be useful since their lifespan is so short. And while it does have a few considerations that you could argue are bad for the game - primarily broodlings blocking pathing - their short lifespan means it becomes skillful to utilize such a thing. And, in tandem with the fact that they must actively stay in the fight to continue doing damage, and they are unable to escape via other means such as a nydus worm or burrow, it also means they are vulnerable and you risk losing them when youre in the fight. Lastly, there are clear cut counters to the unit as well.
Of all the mentioned units, the only actually well designed combat unit is the broodlord.
Then to answer your question in point 2 earlier, no. I do not think any of these nerfs/buffs effected ITs at all because frankly they were almost completely irrelevant to them, and many of those nerfs happened after or at the same time the IT was removed, and honestly mass infestor would still be feasible even now if the IT hadn’t been removed and frankly still have the same issues.
Why are we talking solely in the context of combat? A free unit is a free unit whether serving combat purposes or not, are scouting and resource generation not also integral to rts gameplay like combat?
Furthermore mules can be used to tank, bodyblock, inflict friendly fire, and most importantly inflict psychological warfare on your opponent. /s
See above, free vision is pretty big, isn’t that what they say about creep?
halluc archons and colossi are decent tanks, double phoenix scout is pretty common
Well thank you for admitting free units can be balanced.
I just think if zerg wasn’t allowed to go to 200/200 with 15 infestors while terran is on 150 supply bio tank securing his 4th that maybe IT’s wouldn’t have been removed, and I think those aforementioned changes make it significantly more difficult for zerg to reach such a state, but hey maybe I’m wrong ¯_(ツ)_/¯
