It’s a shame signature ability Infested Terran was removed and replaced with lame Microbial Shroud, which is rarely used and doesn’t fit lore or reason they were even called Infestors. Hydras and Queens are the only ground units that shoot up so are the only units that benefit from Microbial Shroud.
I understand Infested Terran was hard to balance as shown with large number of balance changes before being removed. The dev team overlooked simple solution. Make Infested Terrans behave similar to Swarm Host Locust’s whereby a specific number of ITs are spawned with a corresponding cooldown. The number of spawned ITs could be two or even three, but would have to be tested to not be too strong. This way ITs can still harass and give Zerg another anti-air solution to defend against air threats, but prevents mass Infestors from spamming IT deathball.
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Hydras and Queens aren’t “the only units that benefit.” That’s not how the ability works. It reduces damage to ground units, from air units. If ultras or lings or roaches or infestors are taking damage from Banshees, BCs, Liberators, etc. it reduces the damage.
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The ability is badly designed and uninspired change, and doesn’t fit lore of Infestors. They should bring back signature ability of IT.
Microbial Shroud is like a Dark Swarm specialized against air units, and it reduces damage by much more than advertised whenever armor is involved.
Gameplay mechanics trump lore.
Infested Terran, and similar abilities that can stack without penalty, are just bad game design. They encourage mass-caster armies that can spam to deal with any composition played by the opponent. Blizzard was right to remove Infested Terran, Point-Defense-Drone, and Seeker Missiles for that very reason; and they were also right to rework Parasitic Bomb so that it would not stack.
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I’m not asking to bring back ITs with no changes, ITs should behave similar to Swarm Host Locust’s whereby a specific number of ITs are spawned with a corresponding cooldown. That would prevent mass-caster armies.
I am aware of the changes you are suggesting, but they do not discourage Zerg from massing Infestors for added firepower.
Large numbers of Infestors can still produce large armies of fodder despite the cooldown, and the cooldown itself might just help Infestors spend their energy more evenly.
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Infested Terrans were a cancer, and should never have been in the game to begin with. Free units are bad game design, and putting a cool-down on the ability doesn’t make it any less problematic than it already was.
I would argue that Swarm Hosts, even in their current state, are still problematic units for a number of different reasons, not the least of which is that locusts are absurdly strong units which you’re forced to respond to while Swarm Hosts are uncatchable since they can launch and then leave before ever being in danger, allowing you to literally never have an unfavourable trade since you’re trading nothing for something each time you launch the locusts.
Frankly speaking, the only reason Swarm Hosts are considered “balanced” right now is because they don’t get used very much due to their prohibitively high supply cost effectively only making them useful against one specific playstyle.
The Infestor had no such issues; ITs, much like Locusts, were dump-and-forget units that you were forced to engage with. And like Swarm-hosts can, you can launch them while burrowed; but unlike Swarm Hosts, Infestors can also move while burrowed. So you can dump them while cloaked from long range, and always force engagement, and leave before the infestor is ever in threat range.
Arguably the only time ITs were “balanced” was when Infested Terrans were all but useless because they didn’t scale at all with upgrades and took forever to hatch. Even then, you’re still trading “something” for “nothing” each time you used them, but they weren’t worth using because the energy cost was to great for them to be worth using when they didn’t have any form of scaling whatsoever.
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