Neural is “broken”, and I don’t mean balance wise. There is an unusual yet surprisingly obvious interaction between the carrier, widow mine, and the infestor that makes neural far more potent than intended.
Normally, neural takes control of a unit, giving the Zerg player control over the unit and causing it to automatically attack it’s allies. However, the controlled unit’s allies don’t automatically attack it. This is actually good for the player who’s units are being stolen, since usually you want your army to prioritise the Zerg units over the units you can get back if you kill a path to the infestors. And in the cases where the neuralled unit is too much a threat, you can target fire it down instantly.
So what’s different about the carrier? Well, the carrier comes with 8 interceptors attached, and the Zerg gets control of those too. The problem is that while the game does tell the protoss army to not attack the carrier, it does not remember to tell the protoss army not to attack the interceptors. Thus, the entire protoss army ends up focusing all its effort on attacking it’s own interceptors, and because of the interceptor’s 2 range, it attacks them before almost anything Zerg. This is especially bad for void rays, since interceptors are light. It’s also why focus fire from protoss can make the difference between Zerg losing 20 supply and Zerg losing 120 supply.
So what about the widow mine? Well, again, neural tells the allies of the controlled unit not to attack it. However, the widow mine doesn’t have an attack in the normal sense. And so, as you may have already guessed, the widow mine will attack friendly units when those units are under the effect of neural parasite. With all the massive friendly fire splash damage that comes with firing at a unit in the middle of the terran army.
These two bugs are a pretty big deal. Fixing them would be very large, but justified nerf to infestors. And it would probably fix PvZ lategame overnight. And now, with the end of year patch around the corner and the infestor in particular getting some close attention, this is the time to do away with these bugs.
Indeed it is. I just double checked to be 100% sure, but I have naturally checked several times before.
It is because of this bug that while 10 carriers will obviously annihilate 30 hydras, 25 hydras + 3 neural parasites (0 infested terrans) will defeat 10 carriers unless the infestors are target fired.
If you neural a thor next to a widow mine, the widow mine will attack the thor. This is inconsistent. I’m guessing though that what you understood was that the widow mine was being neuralled, in which case yes it would make sense for the widow mine to fire at terran units.
I tested it in the unit tester and it does not work how you describe.
A unit that gets hit by neural parasite will be attacked by its allied units near it but they will not change targets to it if they are already targeting something else.
If you attack move two stalkers toward an infestor they will have infestor as target. If you NP stalker 1, stalker 2 will still keep attacking the infestor. But if the infestor is out of range and uses NP on stalker 1, then stalker 2 will fight it.
Not sure how you tested it, but I could not replicate your results.
Stalker A and Stalker B a-moved, burrowed and undetected infestor neurals stalker B, Stalker B fires at Stalker A and Stalker A walked on as if nothing had happened.
The Carrier bug I found just by game play and noticing something didn’t seem right when I was playing ZvP and somehow almost none of my hydras died. Naturally I investigated.
The widow mine bug I noticed when watching a twitch clip from BeastyQT’s mass infestor to GM series, where he neuraled a ghost, sniped 2 enemy ghosts with it, and then while he was running the neuraled ghost into his army it blew up to a widow mine. Which was unusual because the widow mine shouldn’t have fired at the ghost under normal neural rules.
Carriers are really strong in a vacuum. The biggest reason they fall flat in practice is because of neural. If this bug were fixed, I think the PvZ lategame probably would be very close.
