Is Zerg underpowered

General Discussion
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First, I am not complaining, lol. This is a zerg complain thread. Durrrrr. All I did was reply and say that TvZ is okay, and PvZ may be a problem. I agree that there may be an issue there. And I also said we need to wait and see how the changes in the recent patch play out before making judgements. (So unreasonable and biased of me, lololol.)

Second, you are the one crying in every thread about zerg. Not me. That’s a fact. You are one of the biggest zerg whiners on this forum. Everyone knows that. You, of all people, calling me a complainer is utterly sad and laughable.

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Who is clem again? Cyclone hellion is easy to beat with ling bane if you just get a surround. It’s literally the easiest unit comp to beat. Cyclone hellion is the one unit comp a zerg can win fights against when behind in supply. That’s how insanely good it is to just crash a few banelings into a big cyclone blob. You can blind counter it by rushing baneling speed off 2 gas which is a good option vs almost all bio builds too. This patch absolutely was a massive buff to zerg. You can literally a-click corruptors through carriers, no focus fire necessary, or abduct & let the spores kill the carriers. The only issue I see is the short rush distances.

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Yes, none of the changes were able to eclipse the benefits of running banelings into things but on the Terran side the person with the best bio control (maybe second to Byun) thinks that the changes can outdo his marine stutter stepping. Oh well, at least Batzy can play ZvP with a broken finger still.

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The baneling isn’t the issue there. The lings are the issue. The banelings are just there to clear out the hellbats. It’s not like you can say this is OP when it’s entirely up to positioning. Terrans just have no concept of how to position their army and how to rotate out on the map. They legit just click it into an area that has two entrances and you can be surrounded there. The only reason it works is because terrans just don’t understand positioning. Why, though? It’s because the medivac makes it impossible to punish a terran for bad positioning because he just lifts and goes somewhere else. You can’t do that with cyclones, and that’s why terrans get absolutely wrecked by a simple surround. It goes to show just how much of their rank is carried by terran. Terran shelters them from the vast majority of the game. That’s just a fact.

Siege tanks are similar, but in a different way. It doesn’t matter where you siege the tanks, the tanks are guaranteed to delete the zerg army with reasonable efficiency as long as you siege on time.

There is no unit comp in the terran race for which positioning can cause a catastrophic outcome, except cyclone hellion. Every other unit comp always either has a way to retreat, or is guaranteed to trade decently no matter what. Positioning is almost irrelevant to terran. The most that terran has to consider for positioning is that he wants to be close to cliffs. Literally. That’s it. Medivacs love cliffs. Tanks love cliffs. Liberators love cliffs. Banshees love cliffs. There is zero positioning to terran. It’s cliche how simple terran is.

That’s why hellion cyclone is so bad. It’s only terran unit comp that can be absolutely destroyed by zerg for bad positioning. That’s why I am not afraid of it. I can position my army better than these terran clowns, and so helion cyclone is a free win. You can’t escape your screw-ups using the medivac, sorry, sweetie.

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Clem has garbage control. He over-micros, and that’s actually bad. He has some of the worst control I’ve ever seen. Mines that normally would do OK and maybe get 5 lings he instead does burrow/unburrow micro on them and then the mine dies and gets nothing. He micros for the sake of microing, not for an actual purpose. It seems like he can’t tell when he should micro, or not micro, and that’s really bad. 99% of players can look at a scenario and decide if they ought to micro or not. He’s legit like diamond-level in skill in that department. He just spams actions no matter what, even if it doesn’t make sense to do that. It’s like a kid who is trying to show off how fast he can run, but then trips on his shoelaces only because he was so excited to run that he didn’t bother to ask the question of if he SHOULD run.

Clem is probably the most boring pro player to ever exist. He’s like the enbodiment of everything I think is wrong with SC2. Positioning is irrelevant to terran as long as you react fast and load into medivacs and boost to another spot. That’s why positioning doesn’t matter. Because positioning doesn’t matter, strategy doesn’t matter. APM spammers have negated the strategy of the game by fast reaction mechanics like medivac lift micro.

Oh wow, he clicked fast. So, uh, interesting! :roll_eyes:

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Hydras still can’t kite zealots? Is it maybe because zealots are the counter to hydras and not the other way?

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Zealots counter 80% of the ground units in this game. They cost 100 minerals, zero gas. Why are they that cost efficient against anything? 100 minerals the counter to 100/50 + 200/200 in upgrades, like what? Do you not understand the bad game design and why Starcraft 2 is basically done?

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It isn’t that they’re too strong, it’s that they’re too easy to use. Too fire and forget.

Back when Protoss was adept phoenix, the top Protoss players truly distinguished themselves. Now any GM Protoss looks more or less the same as any other.

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Batzy suggesting that he actually takes frontal engagements rather than constant counter attacks. Ironically also the biggest weakness of Clem. That’s probably the reason that clem’s opting for mech play now. Oh, the only thing that can keep up with cyclone hellion is also hard countered by hellions? :rofl: Good luck with that. Cyclone hellion wants active engagements and the ability to take cost effective engagements. They purposefully take the risk of being surrounded because it can go just as bad for the zerg player.

I remember watching a game between Dark and Cure on Neohumanity where Cure has the most ridiculously overpowered tank position at the fourth and natural of Dark. Dark completely ignored it and just expanded elsewhere. Dark respected it so little that he was going to hive already even before bane speed. That is why non committal harass triumphs over dedicated pushes.

Clem’s opponents can consistently waste a widow mine shot by only losing a single ling. Unborrow/burrow micro is a necessity at that level.

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Zealots getting absolutely destroyed by banelings, roaches, lurkers, ultras. But hey, they kill hydras and lings… 80%…

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Counter-attacking is the worst possible way to win with zerg because counter attacks lose more resources than they gain. The fundamental problem is that terran pays for a production wave in advance and/or has mules, so even if you wipe out a base of SCVs, you do nothing to lessen his army strength in the short-term. In the short term, you’ve just spent a bunch of lings/banes on killing SCVs so your army is weakened. Mind you, zerg can’t win fights vs terran even with 100% of your army supply in the battle. How is a zerg supposed to win a battle with supply wasted on a counter-attack?

If it’s a small counter-attack, terran stims back and/or transfers workers. If it’s a large counter-attack, terran stims into the zerg and wins. The best you can hope for is if the terran looks away from his army when a small counter attack hits, and that you are able to crash some banes into his bio. PiG praises Reynor for winning with counter attacks, but that only works because the modern day terrans are just awful players.

Zerg is very simple. Zerg wants to win big fights. Terran wants to avoid big fights and chip away at his opponent for efficiency. Terran does this by securing placing out on the map that are extremely inconvenient for the zerg, which is why Zergs want to win fights. Winning fights means displacing the Terran, which means the Terran stops netting insane efficiency bonuses from their position. Counter-attacking doesn’t help this problem – it makes it worse. The only way counter-attacks help with this problem is that you pray the Terran is a moron who watches the counter attack and not his army.

“Oh no, a counter attack! I guess I die!”. Lmao. HotS era terrans are rolling in their graves.

Yeah he’s a terrible player so of course he will lose to something as simple as a counter attack.

Hellions don’t hard counter ling bane. It depends on the engagement. It can be anything from a couple banes killing all the hellions, to the hellions kiting the ling bane for eternity. That’s why a surround is important. If you get a surround, you will wipe his army and he can’t retreat. Bio can retreat after being surrounded.

All zerg units move faster than terran units if you set up a flank. It’s not only how fast you move that matters, but how far you have to move. If a zerg only has to move 3 units to the left, but the terran has to move 300, it doesn’t matter how fast the units move – the zerg will successfully intercept. The intercept distance is what matters, and the movement speed of units is only a small portion of that. If the terran goes into an area that has two entrances, the intercept distances is near zero because there is no path the terran can use to retreat which won’t be flanked by the zerg.

This really isn’t flipping rocket science, but terrans have forgotten about it because they can evacuate any position at any moment with medivacs and there is literally nothing a zerg can do to catch medivacs that execute a properly timed retreat. This results in positioning being totally irrelevant to a terran’s decision making, so of course modern terrans don’t understand positioning mechanics. They solved the same problem using the medivac where everyone else used their flipping brains.

It really doesn’t. Terran production comes in fixed waves which means a sudden interruption in army supply is a big risk for a counter-attack while a new production wave comes out. Since he is making cyclones and not tanks, he has no buffer. The hellion cyclone is the buffer, and once dead the ling bane rockets across the map in only a few seconds time.

The reason a rebound-attack works, but not a counter-attack, is because there is no threat of the terran counter-attacking himself. If the terran has a position out on the map, you counter attack, he counter-attacks and he wins. Terrans are advantaged in that scenario due to a stronger army and the ability to lift bases, block with depots, etc. The rebound-attack works because the terran’s offensive has been gutted by winning a big battle. Zergs like to win big battles.

They take on the “risk” because there isn’t any. All the pro players counter it with roaches into infestors. None of them use ling bane.

The true beauty of ling bane is that it’s not an end-comp. You can always go into something like mutas. After losing a fight, he wants to make ground control vs the ling bane but the threat of a muta switch at that point is extreme.

This is why it’s important to keep your banshees alive, counter-attack with hellions, and/or hit the far-off bases with a liberator. This isn’t a problem terran can’t solve, cure just played like trash.

The problem is that he can’t tell when he needs to do it or not. He just micros for the sake of micro.

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Splitting in this game might sound like nonsense to a Protoss player, but I know you can do it. Once again, trading Zealots for gas units like banes/roaches is a great counter. Also, roaches do not counter speed-zealots. Lurkers and Ultras counter zealots sure…but thats a late game unit with tons of upgrades, and when you move across the map with your lurkers, 15 zealots are going to warp into your base in 5 seconds and counter anything you can pop out of those eggs.

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Pig also praises Zerg players that don’t head butt right into a sieged up terran with liberators and siege tanks. Yeah, in the meta that terrans are opting for creep denial into a big 2-2 push with liberators and tanks, they want to take those big fights where you can just target all the banes with impunity.

You’re correct that Zerg typically wastes more resources when they counter attack against SCVs except they leverage that creep will buy them enough time that you can subvert a counter attack and can win with having the better economy.

HotS era terrans parade pushed off 3 bases for 20 minutes with maps that are counter intuitive to counter attacking. Sure they had to deal with mutas and a better fungal but the power of trading marines with a constant stream was strong.

Terrans also definitely did abuse medivac lift mechanics in hots. When MMA won the first tournament he was boo’d by the crowd because they thought widow mines and medivac boost was OP, lmao. Those terrans also had the opportunity to delete 20 mutas with a few well placed widow mines. Why would you want to build anything else if there’s no ravagers or lurkers.

I think you meant to say WoL Terrans. :rofl:
https://youtu.be/jcQedw7R1zk?t=38

Every time I watch PracticeX’s stream I see Zerg players think that mutas are a good idea and then they end up losing despite massive advantages. This is now compounded by cyclones being a better counter and also auto targeting air units. Ling bane muta can only work against mech in the hands of Reynor.

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Yeah you have to hit them when they are moving out.

Terrans can do whatever they want. They can YOLO a bc into your base, lose it, and macro out just fine. Back in the day, it was catastrophic if a terran lost a banshee and/or didn’t keep his hellions alive. The terran is so far ahead by default, he can play like a drunkard and macro out of it on the back of the siege tank.

Translation, “Pray the terran is dumb enough to prioritize killing creep when he has a chance to win the game.”

The only reason ling bane works is because the zerg has massive amounts of it. You have to have enough to fully surround the bio so it can’t stutter step and you take massive losses when you do this. The DPS of the marine alone can gun down an infinite number of lings with stutter step. You have to have a huge swell of lings and banes in order to break a terran’s position. You can’t do that if you are counter-attacking.

Lmao.

Terrans in HotS had to deal with a 3,000 gas deathball that could ruin their economy or production in a split second and which could attack from almost any angle, and which could chase down and kill their medivacs so retreating wasn’t an option for terran back then (they were actually committed to fights). Terran’s attack vectors were limited because drops were extremely risky, and tanks could be picked off too so he had to defend them.

Modern terrans cry because some lings, which can only come into their base from 1 or 2 vectors, killed a few SCVs. They cry despite being able to retreat from any position at any time and to attack from any angle with impunity. They cry even though their tanks are totally safe from air based attacks which means they can be tucked away into a nook of the terrain and are totally safe.

Modern terrans are a flipping joke. There is nothing about terran that makes it hard. Zerg has to deal with attacks from every angle. Why is terran exempt? Oh wait blizzard designed it for the gold league players. Terran can attack from any angle, but only has to defend 1 or 2 vectors. The design is such an enormous double standard that the game is just a complete joke. It’s obvious that terran is designed to minimize the difficulty of the game to an extreme.

Not without risk. They can do it now with impunity because zerg can’t kill medivacs. Zerg does not have a hard counter to medivacs. The first soft-counter to medivacs that zergs gets is the viper. The muta was a hard counter. Medivacs out on the map were totally useless vs mutas.

Imagine this. Terran can delete all of zerg’s tier 3 units by simple click micro and for energy cost only, but zerg isn’t allowed any hard counters whatsoever vs basic terran units like the medivac. Zerg’s answer to everything is to simply be more ahead. How do you get ahead? Pray the terran is dumb. That’s literally how it works.

There isn’t a single zerg unit in the game that trades at a positive efficiency vs terran. They don’t exist. Efficiency plays are simply off the table. The zerg is going to go bankrupt eventually, and it’s up to him to win the game before that happens. The game is designed for the terran to win by default. Ling bane for example trades at about 50% resource efficiency. Zerg has no hard counters, no efficiency plays, and is just praying the terran walks his army into some banes. That’s literally the entire state of ZvT right now.

Yes, mutas are the most over-countered unit in the game. Literally everything terran makes, by default, counters mutas to some degree. Hellions can threaten counter-attacks and keep the mutas back at home, for example. Not to mention, marines, thors, mines, vikings, cyclones, BCs, liberators, ghosts, etc. It’s a flipping joke. It literally doesn’t matter what units you make, you are guaranteed to be safe vs mutas.

I once had about 30 mutas and he had some ghosts in medivacs and I decided to pounce. I killed the medivacs, then watched as all my mutas died to the ghosts. A zerg is totally committed to an attack like that because the ghosts will shred through the mutas with snipe of they retreat. The same is true for pouncing on thors or widow mines. If you miscalculate, everything dies. Terran on the other hand can go “oopsie, oh well, I will just load into medivacs and leave”.

Zerg absolutely is not allowed to challenge terran’s air supremacy at any point in time in the game.

Let’s add up all the advantages here:

  1. Air supremacy.
  2. Efficiency supremacy.
  3. Shorter tech paths (aka tech supremacy).
  4. Upgrade supremacy (zerg 3/3 requires hive).
  5. Army supremacy (combination of upgrade & tech supremacy).
  6. Economic supremacy (mass orbital, free workers, and higher resource efficiency).

Meanwhile zerg has:

  1. Do a counter attack and pray the terran loses his army to some banes (lol).

Terrans still have the gall to complain about balance FFS. :exploding_head:

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By the way, this entire dynamic could be fixed if zerglings could trade mineral-for-mineral against marines, and/or the cost of marines properly reflected their value (such as adding a +5 gas cost to each marine made out of a reactor).

Right now, marines are way too cheap for how efficient they are, and that’s fundamental issue. Zerg usually has 10-15% more economy than Terran, but zerglings trade at 50% efficiency which just equates to the game be rigged for terran to automatically win by default.

This would make terran’s pushes more reliant on splash to trade well vs zerglings and narrows the win conditions considerably. Terran still has the splash, range, and air advantage. Reducing the efficiency advantage just a tad would be really good for ZvT because it would put pressure on terrans to explore unit comps that aren’t marine-centric. TvZ has been the most stale matchup for years, and the marine is 100% the issue. Terrans will keep spamming marines from now until eternity as long as they keep trading at this efficiency.

As long as terran unit comps orbit the marine/medivac, the game will always be about “Ha, you weren’t fast enough to get into position” instead of “Ha, you weren’t smart enough to know I was going to move to this position.” The skill filter of SC2 is reaction speed because medivacs delete positioning mechanics, and that’s absolutely horrendous game play. What makes League interesting is the complexity of the hero’s abilities and how those abilities interact with other abilities. Speed is an element of League, but in SC2 it’s the dominant element which defines 95% of the gameplay.

The best strategy of SC2 is to go for multi-tasking intensive plays which provoke mistakes from a less mechanically gifted player. That’s not an interesting dynamic at all. The unit movements don’t make sense – there is no rhyme or reasoning to them – except that they are done fast. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it fast.

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Don’t threaten me with a good time. Ling bane muta verse bio mine every game? A zerg player staying on lair tech, spending all their gas income on a unit that has to actively end the game? Hots terrans didn’t realize they were living in the golden age. Every Zerg player in my region is currently off-racing and the ones that remain are playing full NA builds like 2 base nydus swarm host or using a variety of ravager all-ins.

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Is this a personal attack?

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Step 1: get Ovie speed
Step 2: death charge 1-2 Ovies into the Protoss main to see what they’re up to
Step 3: replace the dead Ovies
Step 4: adapt

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It’s not a good time for the terran. Terran’s efficiency is dependent on his ability to evacuate using the medivac, and mutas made that unlikely. That alone would completely rewrite the entire TvZ meta. I think this was so zerg favored that it was technically impossible for terran to win a fight as long as the zerg reacted properly. If the mutas attack the back tanks, he has to split marines. If he splits marines, the mutas can pick off individual groups of marines. So he has to clump his marines to save his tanks, and that makes them vulnerable to banelings / a surround. The mutas swoop in, start killing tanks, he clumps to defend and ling bane cleans his marines unless he lifts into medivacs. The medivacs then die to mutas.

It was really tricky micro especially vs widow mines instead of tanks, but I think it was technically impossible for terran to win.

I remember the 2/1/1 builds that hit with 2 medivacs and 2 widow mines really fast. I remember that I could go 2 base muta into a third, get baneling speed & 8 mutas by the time it was hitting. The two mines are sniped by the mutas or triggered by lings, then the zerg amoves and focus fires medivacs. After the medivacs are dead, you are free to take a fourth, start 1/1 and deny terran from ever taking a third base. This was practically a guaranteed win.

I used this style up until I couldn’t beat UpATree with it anymore. That tells you how absolutely awful 2 base muta builds are. Terran hard counters it by default so even if the terran doesn’t scout he still wins.

It’s the maps. The maps are awful for zerg, but they are kinda OK for aggressive zerg styles like 1 base ravager allins. This is the most anti-zerg map pool I’ve ever seen. Zerg absolutely hates maps with short rush distances, short travel-by-air distances but long travel-by-ground, terrain near expansions, expanding toward the opponent, etc. These maps have literally all those features. Even the “big” maps are really small because the expansions are so spaced out.

There are certain bases that are literally impossible to take just due to the doom drop maneuvers that terran can do. The terrain gives a guaranteed kill to a third/fourth, and the terran is free to doom drop the main from there. It’s literally impossible to defend this BS without mutalisks to kill the medivacs, and the push distances on these maps is so short that there just isn’t time to get out anything except ling bane.

Technically, the old infestor could also deal with these maneuvers but the current infestor absolutely cannot. You could fungal marines in place which prevented them from evacuating in the medivacs. You still take heavy losses to the tanks on the lowground, but you can actually keep your main alive because a doom drop is suicide vs infestors.

They’ve gutted every interesting ZvT mechanic in favor of medivac drop spam and it’s obnoxious. A zerg is not allowed to challenge terran’s air supremacy.

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Game 1: Zerg can’t establish a 4th base, is behind 2 upgrades and army supply. Why? Because he went mutas, aka exactly what I’ve been saying for years.

Game 2: Zerg absolutely cannot defend doom drop / elevator mechanics on this map pool, exactly as I’ve been saying.

Game 3: No clue, I stopped watching this crap-shoot.

I was able to predict the current meta literally years in advance. Zerg’s best unit is the zergling because of its mobility. But, zerglings can’t beat bio globs so you have to include banelings, and they don’t shoot up so you have to include queens. Zerg’s higher tier units are such absolute garbage that they’d prefer tier 1 zerglings, which trade at a third the efficiency of marines, because they can pray they squeeze some into a mineral line like Life used to do 24/7.

Terran has literally every advantage from tech to upgrades to economy to range to air control to splash to efficiency, EXCEPT that the zergling has a slight mobility advantage. Top zergs are expected to beat all that using the zergling. Lmao. What a flipping joke.

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Then you missed Clem getting dunked on when Serral stopped building ling bane and started making other comps like roaches into a fast lurker timing.