Microbial Shroud - Why?

With infestors losing their winfested terrans and now only normally OP, the replaced spell by the dev team is the microbial shroud - but why bother getting this spell?

  1. It requires Hive, which of course is available whenever players begin the infestor spam, yet its cost of 150/150 is rather steep for a spell with 9 range cast. While it does last for 11s, most units will see this spell and just kite back.

  2. The cast range is only 3.5 - this is definitely no BW dark swarm, as units are not only still hit, a hydra clump of 3.5 units is only 9-10 hydras when trying to create a concave, as hydras aren’t going to be useful in a clumped ball vs psistorm or potential tank shots.

  3. This only benefits against attacking void rays and carriers, both of which are better dealt with using fungal for VRs and neural on carriers, assuming no detection while burrowed. A liberator will lose half of its dps, yet the range is so far with its upgrade, it is better to stay sieged. Battlecruisers again can just be neuraled and dealt with there - yes 25 mana more for neural but guaranteed to have the chance to kill the BC rather than it float away.

Devs, please just remove microbial shroud, time should be better spent on either looking into the fungal/neural upgrade, or perhaps overhaul the viper’s blinding cloud as ZvT is more likely to fight mech, or something with utility beyond memes.

I personally don’t think microbial shroud is any good. It needs a buff to make it worthwhile. Perhaps include spell damage and all ranged damage.

Honestly the fix is really to make hydras less a kill everything unit and more specialized (less ground damage, more air damage) in my opinion and just get rid of the spell entirely. Fungal and neural is good enough for a single spell caster. I mean who here is arguing that high Templar should get a 3rd spell despite knowing they are middle of the pack in terms of value as a spell caster.

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Not anymore that restriction was removed.

I think you mean cast radius and 3.5 is one of the biggest spell radius’s in the game.

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True it is rather large but again, it does not take much effort for either your opponent to back up with sky units, and hydras are better not in the clump as either storm or tank shots will end it.

I guess that’s ok that they removed the hive restriction, but its still a steep investment that, in the end, the user may as well be on hive seeing as how infestors are not exactly cheap.

It should just come built into the Infestor.

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It got a massive buff and should have been like this from the start. Just give it a few more tournaments and some pro will start using it then everyone else will start using it.

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That would make Microbial Shroud absolutely broken.

The spell is already very strong for what it does, it is just underutilized.

Have to disagree, man. It’s super underwhelming.

This is true. Maybe ranged ground - splash (like a 50% damage reduction dark swarm).

Zerg: Gets most OP debuff spell short of fungal
Also Zerg: Whines

Other spells make you do -2 or +3 dmg. Microbial shroud can make your libs do -45. Its OP beyond comparison, yet Zerg tears still flow.

No, Microbial Shroud would be broken if it affected any ground units. The combination of Microbial Shroud and Blinding Cloud would be ridiculous; and the way that Microbial Shroud is designed it doubles the effect of armor; rendering many units useless.

It also forces them to fight into those same clouds (basically making a bullseye target for storm/disruptor).

Think about it. AAM is the most useless spell on the most useless caster in the game, yet still we see that joke of a spell more often in the pros than we ever do microbial shroud.

Because all Raven spells are joke. You can at least cast some.

As for why microbial shroud isnt used so often? You simply have so much better spells, why bother.

And seeing where you will be isnt that much of a problem when shroud has over 2X radius of storm. So unless they spam storms into it, they will never cover it. Not like you should use it preemptively anyway, throwing one or two at army already under air units is enough to cripple their DPS.

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Hahaha microbial shroud the most OP debuff spell. Your bias is insane and opinions useless

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That was one of the points I already brought up - just remove it and focus on developing other spells rather than trying to make it more effective for how little it is used in any level of play diamond and higher.

This is true, yet there are tanks and fighting in liberation zones vs bio is not about focusing down the hydras, more so picking off banes which will still be one shot. Yes it would be highly effective to help ultras but then ghosts and tanks already handle this.

The theme of microbial shroud appears to help range units in ZvT or P, simply kiting back counters the spell, it’s useless - choosing to fight a ball of hydras under this cloud???

nailed it

I believe that would make the spell far too strong. The numbers would have to be tweaked. I like the idea though.

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I went into this thread expecting some Terran player to call Microbial Shroud overpowered. Not disappointed.

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At +3 armor, Microbial Shroud reduces damage from Carriers by 80% or 90% depending on whether or not the target unit has at least one base armor; and it only stops at 90% because the minimum damage that can be dealt by units is 0.5.

The effect on Battlecruisers gets up to 68.75% for units with 0 base armor and up to 81.25% for units with 1 base armor under those same conditions.

Yes, Microbial Shroud is one of the strongest debuffs in the game, despite the fact that most Zerg players refuse to use it; and at a 3.0 radius it is far too large to be considered a “bullseye” like you are making it out to be.

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It is legit too op, delete it from the game.

I now play all 3 races tho. Compared to other 2 simmilar spells? Its beyond OP. Not saying others are not bad, they pretty much are for anything but bio, but Shroud got buffed in hotfix, others stay irrelevant for years now.

Nobody thinks they can use it to fight with 200/200 Hydras, but its hard counter for one of Ultra’s counters: Libs. Tanks dont have damage output to put down Ultra. Meaning only option is now ghost, which needs different infrastructure to build and can be easily countered by same caster.