Is the Queen too good?

General Discussion
1

Now I know this might come as a surprise to many players that the queen is getting criticised at this point in the game but it is due to the fact that I feel the queen carries a zerg player so easily to the late game where they just annihilate every other race at the moment coupled with the brood lord and infestor combo.

I personally feel that the queen is just too good at everything. It has a fairly large health pool but what makes it extremely resilient is the fact that it has no armoured/light tags giving it no real counter. On top of that transfusing fellow queens is better than transfusing a roach or hydralisk, for example since a roach/hydralisk takes bonus damage from armoured/light units its health is in effect less than a queen when faced with those units. A queen however gets a flat health buff taking no additional damage from any unit in the game (due to them not having any armoured/light tags) making them extremely tanky and very supply efficient.

Zerg players can also choose to make 6 to 8 Queens over lings in the early game and save larva and gas and rather make drones instead and also get ahead on creep spread and larva production at the same time by injects.

The queen is an “all in one” unit that has very little draw backs except its obvious slow speed off of creep which can be negated if a Zerg decides to nydus you. Not to mention the insane anti-air range and late game capabilities that the queen has to offer without any upgrades needed unlike the infestor or high templar for example.

Its as if there is no reason not to make a bunch of queens. Queens transition so well into the late game and considering that they are mainly a defensive unit which requires no larva and costs very little supply also taking into account their insane health pool with no armoured/light tags and spells and also no gas cost there is no reason not to make a lot of them to carry a zerg player into late game scenarios where zerg players thrive in the current state of the game with the infestor being so strong.

I don’t know what kind of change the queen needs, but I feel that the queen is way too efficient considering its supply cost, price to make (no gas needed), no larva cost, insane anti air range, great defensive capabilities, and how efficient it makes a zerg army with transfuse and the ability to obviously inject and spread creep.

I don’t know about you but I feel that the queen is a literal zerg archon with a very high health pool and no armoured/light tags, that can also spread creep, inject, heal and costs no gas and very little supply and is made from hatchery tech (I’m not proposing that the queen should be made off of lair/hive tech, I’m just giving you a picture of how strong the unit is even from hatch tech).

Let me know your thoughts on the queen as a unit taking into account its mentioned attributes such as not having any armoured/light tags and the fact that it costs no gas, no larva and has a low supply cost and great defensive capabilities and transitions very well into late game scenarios.

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Is the sky blue???

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Queen in the unit that (usually) allows Zerg to live through the early game without dying or being too far behind in eco.

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That is a valid point that you make and I do agree with it. It would definitely make early game survival tougher for zergs if the queen had to receive a nerf. I feel though that the queen needs to have some sort of draw back. If we take into consideration its mineral cost we see that it is possibly the most efficient unit in the entire game considering its supply cost, health pool. no armoured/light tags ect…

I was thinking of reducing the health on the queen because I think giving it an armoured or light tag would make hellions way too deadly and also immortal warp prism micro would be insane, so maybe making it more of a healer role rather than a tank/healer role with a slight health nerf would make it rather rely on units around it to deal and take damage and then maybe revert the healing nerf that it received a while back allowing it to rather heal units around it better than letting the queen be able to tank tons of damage.

1 Like
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The thing is, Queen has to be that good as it covers for many weaknesses Zerg has - even more in LotV than in WoL and HotS. From the production (Inject) and creep spread to the AA and base defense. More often than not few Queens are the only base defense Zerg can afford in the early game, both due to Queen not consuming larva and due to other units not being efficient enough to deal with certain kinds of harass, especially air-based ones.

Also, some of the buffs Queen has received are direct consequence of other races receiving buffs. For example, Queen got AA range improved because of existence of Liberator and Prism pickup.

All in all, you can’t nerf Queen - not even give it a tag - without considerably buffing Zerg’s early game. Zerg has too many holes in the early game that Queen has to patch.

10 Likes
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Go ahead. Nerf the queen. Right after you buff zerg to cover the numerous glaring weaknesses zerg has in the early game that the queen covers.

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The real problem isn’t queen, but how broken early game is for T/P compare to Zerg.

Zerg has to deal with hellions/hellbat push, medivac with boost, liberator, banshee, oracle, BC now, WP harass with no real T1 anti-air, weak static, no tank/PF/repair/shield battery.

The funny part is Terran cries about queen because they want to kill Zerg before 5-6 min while TvZ is already heavily Terran favor from early to lategame.

Queen is just a bandaid to allow zerg not to die before starting to play (while it’s already paintful as you can only defend as zerg until mid game vs Protoss, and Hive tech vs Terran).

8 Likes
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Its debatable whether the early game is broken because the zerg queen is so strong and protoss or terran players have to get around the power of the queen, or whether the queen is so strong to defend against the power of the early game of the other two races

Having said that, zerg is also the race that needs to take damage from protoss or terran so that they can stay in the game or a Zerg will run away with the game easily.

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So, if the mid game is balanced, the early gsme is balanced, but the late game is imbalanced, you want to nerf Zerg early game…?

It doesn’t make sense, man. Things changed a good bit in LotV. They dont have the excess of larva they used to and they need the defensive powerhouse units to protect the drones they do have.

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personally i don’t build many queens in zvp, but if they are so good i test it. I find queens a bit too slow.

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I do agree with you on those point. I just feel that the queen is a bad band aid to zerg design as it almost feels like the zerg protoss mothership core. All early defence relies on the queen.

And just something that you pointed out on the queen AA range. The queen already had an AA range buff since early HotS if I am not mistaken, so no they did not buff AA range due to liberator and prism pickup. The queen AA range just so happened to coincidentally line up perfectly with the new LotV units in terms of base defense. However I feel that the new spore crawler with the fast rooting times really helps zerg vs libs and is a good patch in the direction of game design and balance instead of balancing a race around a single unit which is used for basically everything.

I don’t know how you feel about zerg relying on the queen basically like protoss did on the mothership core in HotS but I feel like it makes zerg very 1 dimensional in a sense since making a lot of queen has little to no draw backs because zerg players generally want to be defensive in any case and try get to that 80+ drone count number and go into late game scenarios with broodlord infestor.

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I feel that a supply increase of some sort in the queen would at least make having a lot of them in the late game more costly.

But don’t you feel that queens are too good because of how amazing they are through every single stage in the game and that something should be done to at least make them drop off towards the later stages of the game?

1 Like
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That’s kind of my point. The queen has just been designed around zerg transitioning into the late game where they can actually attack and I feel that is poor design.

I feel there should be other changes to the zerg race to make them stronger without having to rely on the queen for everything. I can understand why the queen is so good in terms of early game defence but I also feel that the design of the queen also encourages zergs to turtle to hive tech which is why the other races try to kill zerg before then because they struggle in the late game vs zerg at the moment.

1 Like
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it’s true. the early game is the queen important, but i’d say because of the air harass- banshee, drop, wp, oracal, phoenix. example if you’re not careful you may lose 3 queens, becasue marine dps. vs ground units you need supporting dmg, beacuse they can tank dmg but they do no dmg vs ground.

they nerf late game queen a bit with the heal change.

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Bla bla bla… thats your post. No word about dps and speed off creep. But okay, we trade. Ravager shoot also air, so early air harass is defendable and Hatch/Lair/Hive produce 4/5/6 larvae at own and I give you that you can build only 1 Queen for 1 Hatch/Lair/Hive!

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I think the last +1 range buff was unnecessary

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If your going to increase the supply cost you better compensate zerg elsewhere. As is zerg armies are generally smaller then terran and protoss.

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There is no question that zerg’s anti air in the early stages of the game is lack luster. But to touch on the point that you made about queens tanking damage from marines. Well to put it plain and simple, marines kill basically anything, the only way to kill marines is to kill them faster than they kill you with Psi storm, banelings, fungal growth and other splash damage options. So I still feel that tanking the damage is irrelevant due to the fact that if you’re tanking damage with queens you probably don’t have banelings in the first place to kill marines since lings don’t do much to them in them in any case. And if you have roaches instead of lings they hold up pretty well with transfuses in the early game vs marines.

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and that’s it in the early game. no banling speed, no fungal, no muta to follow, no hydra.
example you have banling without upgrade T see them come and fly away to the next harass. or the wp when you trade more and more units. beacuse imortal range and ling/raoch can´t attack air.
And btw queens also good for creep spread, the “wall of” for a zerg palyer.
Alternatively you can play a late 3 base, and get fast lair.

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I think it’s a bit strong right now because of the prevalence of nydusses.

How about changing the nydus so that a single nydus network can only build a single exit at any point in time and after completing one there would be a short CD?

That would balance out the cheap spamming of nydusses.