The decrease in zerg players recently SHOWED that recent big balance update didn’t make game balanced. Microbial shroud are proved not helpful---- High resources, High mana requires and limited applicable situation. Anti-air had become a major issue for zerg players.
For the SC2 sake, infested marines had proved itself over decade. For late games in anti-air and absorb damages. Now that Protoss had enhanced air-force and defenses. Infested marines are better suited for zergs in these situations.
And massive infested marines in Z V T are reasonable. It add dramas between Zergs and Terren.
Zergs are dying, give them some fangs please.
microbial shroud has a massive difference against survivability, but its not deathball vs deathball difference. especially because the protoss final deathball includes templars, so microbial shroud pretty much is just a bullseye for “here’s where to storm”.
for microbial shroud to be truly useful, pretty much the only thing you need to tweak is its effect on splash damage. ie, that it should have one.
Or some way to move the cloud, aura or something. The spell itself is not bad, is pretty good, but if you stay quiet inside all the advantage disappears.
Freaking lambo just nearly missed dh finals. He played super well true…but for me its the proof that a zerg who prepares well and plays well still can achieve everything. The game is balanced but true its not in the healthiest spot designwise. But at least it is balanced.
Clem showed how MS is useless by Storming and Purifying the units inside MS.
Now Zerg that solved the Carrier Problem want an easy way to complete victory.
They know that Protoss if goes Air has a very weak ground component (HT’s and maybe some Archons). With MS negating Splash that ability would be so OP that IT would be considered a joke…
The problem with the spell, which has been repeated over and over again, is that it does nothing against the real threat against Zerg’s ground AA units. Which is Spell based AoE, particularly storm and disruptors in less measure, honestly IT without the rocket ability would be a much better spell. I even think that it would be more useful if we changed the Air to ground damage reduction for a spell damage reduction.
But as it stands I have to disagree, it is decidedly a bad spell, and we are already a year and a half in and it is as useless now as it was back then even with the buffs it received, which are a nerf in disguise since you can now accidentally cast it since it does not require an upgrade anymore. There is no potential to this spell since it does not address the main issue
Carrier problem has not really being solved yet outside of allining Protoss players who try to rush into them, which we should all be thankful that Queen march has proven to be a reliable solution to that cancerous game style. Late game ZvP still forces the Zerg player to fight defensively over spores (artificial army supply) to beat the Toss army. As of now it is a don’t let them get there situation which all of us should agree is simply poor design. I agree that MS reducing splash would be broken, that is why I think it should either replace the air to ground damage, or simply give us infested terrains back. It has been in the game for over a year and a half, it had a bit of a boom when Skytoss patch came in, but it quickly proved to be utterly useless and there is really no potential in it as long as Toss late game AoE is as strong as it is.
Like, I don’t think anyone would mind a powerful Protoss late game army, IF that army required even an iota of skill to use. There is nothing fun about using 2x the APM and 10x the strategic skill for a 5% chance at beating an apetoss who f2+a-clicks his sky army and wins from a 40 supply deficit before the battle and a 100 supply surplus after the battle.
For all intents and purposes, after seeing this spell in action since the last patch, I’d reduce the duration from 11sec to 8 sec and I’d make it a sticky AOE, simliar to parasitic bomb just instead of targeting an enemy unit, a player-owned unit must be targeted. This could be used on ultralisk for example or Hydras.
Note that Zerg population seems to be getting critically low.
The upcoming few balance patches my be the last ones. I don’t like that any race feels like the “loser” in these final patches. So I hope that Blizzard, instead of nerfing any race, buffs the races that require it. So that all races end their patch career with a tasty buff. Wouldn’t that be a nice?