With news that Hero is quitting Protoss versus Zerg (for now) and Terran players like Clem moving onto ZeroSpace (he is one of the top ladder players at the moment), I think a lot of people think Zerg is too strong. The main problematic unit Zerg has is the Baneling which completely negates the value of Zealots in PvZ and even is not bad at overpowering immortals. In theory Archons should counter Banelings but don’t really do it so well because you can just run your Banelings past the archons while hydras focus fire your Archons down. Banelings also pretty much negate the effectiveness of Marines and Ghosts, which means Terran Bio is not really viable without a critical mass of Marauders around. Banelings are also very strong against Battlemech (Cyclones/Hellions) and render Hellbats totally useless in the later stages of the game so long as the Zerg has enough gas. So Banelings need a nerf.
Another unit which is a problem for Zerg is the Roach which is too strong in the early to mid-game and not very useful for their supply cost once Tier 3 units of Protoss and Terran hit the field. This is mostly because the roach has only range 3 so they attack a unit which then scoots away and then the roach dies to splash damage before really doing a significant amount of damage. Their tunneling claws uprade in theory should make them useful for hit and run attacks, but nowadays both Protoss and Terran have virtually unlimited detection available to render stealth units like burrowed roaches, dark templar, and ghosts ineffective later on in the game. In the Patches mod, there is an upgrade to make roaches 1 supply which I think is a bad idea because comparing a 1 supply roach to a 1 supply marine does not equate as well as the fact the problem is not the supply of the roach, but the functionality of the roach in late game battles. So the roach needs a late game buff to address the fact they don’t do any damage and then just die (Ghosts have a similar problem, not because of their range but their low health and light armor tag).
For the baneling, they should not do 80 damage to buildings and bonus damage to light units. Right now they do 16 + 19 light damage to units and I think this should be changed to 22 damage flat and the building damage bonus removed until they get a late game hive upgrade for getting building damage back. So in other words, Banelings do 40% more damage to non-light units but significantly less damage to zerglings, hydras, zealots, adepts, marines, hellion/hellbat, and ghosts.
As for improving the Roach, the way you deal with non-melee units that have problems staying target locked on other units due to either slow speed or poor range is to add a damage over time bonus to their attack to compensate for their poor DPS if they happen to die easily in battle. So I would give the Roach a Hive upgrade which gives them a DoT attack bonus that works on units and buildings (call it acid spray or something like that). This type of ability would be super overpowered in the early to mid-game but later in the game it would make roaches a viable option to the current mass ling/baneling/ultralisk meta. You might want to consider making this ability only affect the armored unit type as it would be too strong against lings in ZvZ and be too strong against zealots, but would be very useful for dealing with mass blink stalker builds which can be frustrating as zerg if the backbone of your army is roaches.
By “they” you mean Banelings? I don’t think so. The idea is that the Banelings would be better as a general AoE bomb. Maybe they get a little more health for the reduced damage. I also forgot to mention that for the hive upgrade for Banelings which increases their building damage since it would be initially nerfed, that the upgrade simply triples damage against buildings. So a +3 attack Baneling would do 22 + (3 x 2) total damage as its base assuming the Baneling gets a +2 bonus attack per upgrade and do 28 damage total which multiplied by three would come out to 84 damage which is about what it currently is at 80 damage (why only 5 banelings kill a supply depot). Kamikaze type units are always hard to balance but right now Banelings make it so any unit with the light armor attribute is useless against Zerg while Zerg can build tons of Zerglings without any good counter to them for the other races. In theory Hellbats and Adepts should be good against Zerglings but they get evaporated by banelings too easily in the early to mid-game and then in the late game ultralisks destroy them almost as easily which is fine because the ultralisk is a Tier 3 final boss unit analogous to a Carrier or Battlecruiser, whereas the threat of a tier 1 unit such as Banelings should not completely eliminate half the ground units in the game from being useful, and especially not the Tier 2.5/3 Ghost.
As for Roaches, the DoT attack bonus would not stack and maybe you could have it work like SC1 plague where it only damages health up to 1 HP left which means it would ignore shields on Protoss. If the DoT attack stacked, you would have to make ALL of the damage a roach does be converted into a DoT attack in order to balance the ability and obviously allow for the DoT damage to kill units whose health gets too low. Either situation would be fine, but the first one would be more practical. The amount of damage for a DoT attack bonus which reduces health to 1 and does not stack would be something like Bonus damage over 5 seconds. So the roach has a base damage output of 16, so you might have a 6 damage per second bonus for 5 seconds where the poison leaves the unit at 1 HP (i.e. the poison can’t kill a unit) and ignores shields. If this is too much, then obviously these numbers can be reduced and remember this would be a Hive upgrade.
The idea here is so that Roaches don’t get kited so easily and function as a general anti-kiting force in an army since you take more damage from running away from them as you essentially get stung whenever you engage them. A lot of Zerg’s complain about Battlemech because Roaches just get kited forever by Cyclones so this would make it so Roaches would still be viable in the late game because they would act as a deterrent to this tactic which causes Zerg players to not even bother with roaches and almost always go hydra/ling/bane/ultra instead.
The Baneling’s anti-light specialization is one of the things that keeps it balanced. That specialization ensures that Banelings are useful, but that every race has some units that are better at handling them.
In fact, Banelings were problematic in the past when their base damage was 20, and Zerg players were still massing Banelings to kill armored Protoss units such as Stalkers. That was not the intended behavior.
Those are both pretty good reasons to oppose your suggested changes.
Battlemech and mech:
As for Battlemech and Hellbats in particular, you always need some kind of splash damage to lower the Baneling count when you are using light units. That has been the case from the beginning. Hellbats don’t fill the role because they themselves are light units (i.e. countered) that lack the range to attack Banelings without getting hit. Hellbats essentially die to Banelings at the same rate as Marines when you account for the difference in cost and supply.
Terran can either bait the Banelings into Widow Mines, or they can use a large number of Siege Tanks to wear them down.
Battlemech can also kite Banelings off creep as long as they avoid fungal, getting trapped, or getting surrounded. Once that is no longer feasible, it is time to transition into something else (usually a heavier mech style). Hellbats work fine in that as long as you have enough Tanks. This is not to say that you have to completely stop using Cyclones, those are still good with some Hellions as a detached harassment force, the Cyclones just can’t be the your main force anymore.
These are fair points but something needs to be done to the fact they make light armored ground units of all units completely irrelevant right now. If it were up to me, they would be completely reworked or else removed from the game because the SC2 meta was much better when they had less health and were therefore very unpopular among Zerg players. They seem like an impossible unit to balance.
Since completely removing Banelings or changing them into a totally new unit is never going to happen, I think that some attempt should be made to make them not as strong against light units but perhaps stronger against non-light units. Obviously Zerg needs a viable counter in the mid-game to MMM balls, but right now Banelings just beat everything and you shouldn’t be able to just make 20 of them and A-move a Planetary Fortress and destroy all of the SCV’s before you have even bothered to make a Lair. They are probably the number one unit right now to make people rage quit the game permanently.
There are a few things that make Banelings much easier to balance than say, Scourge:
Ground pathing
That extreme specialization.
The fact that as suicide splash units they are explicitly balanced to be inefficient unless they hit a lot of targets.
In this case, if there is a problem, reducing the health again or another change to make them less powerful might be enough. Otherwise, I do think that compositions like Bio, Mech, and Protoss in general have ways of dealing with them.
That said, I do agree with the general point that suicide units are hard to balance, and it is easier to balance RTS games without them.
Removing that anti-light damage makes Banelings harder to balance, not easier.
Maybe there is a case to be made about what the Baneling’s building damage should be. I don’t have an opinion on it though.
They’re already fairly strong against some Armored units (like Stalkers).
Maybe what you are getting at is higher single-target damage (except against buildings) for less splash damage? Like, make it take more Banelings to kill a clump of Marines but less to kill a Thor (compared to the current ones respectively)?
If that’s what you’re going for, I don’t know if that really fits with its identity as a unit - it’s not really supposed to take down high HP units (structures notwithstanding).
I could maybe see reducing its splash damage and increasing its splash radius proportionately - basically this attempts to raise the floor of “how many Baneling hits do you need for a big payoff” while keeping that threshold amount of Banelings similarly strong to how they are currently.
Actually maybe a pretty good idea how to balance this unit. Maybe redesign them a bit and make them really, really slow but give them twice as much health. And by slow I mean like the of a queen off creep while on creep they can have the current speed they have now. This way you at least have to use other units to fix the enemy units into a position where the banelings would do their thing.
This is actually one of the more interesting ideas I’ve heard for the Roach in the late game. It does dampen the benefit lategame Bio receives from Medivacs. One thing to watch out for is Roach wars in ZvZ becoming too toxic. Stacking DoT would likely be too strong but without stacking I imagine they would still not be that useful against lategame Protoss.
My approach is to lean into its identity as a damage soaker. Start with a size increase so it has less damage density when massed, but can more easily block off chokes in ZvZ and is less susceptible to splash damage. From there, if it’s not well-tuned, lean towards tweaking durability up and DPS and/or range down to tune its balance. The result should theoretically be a front-line damage soaker that is tanky enough to still contribute as a front line buffer in the lategame, in exchange for reducing its power when massed in the early/midgame, while increasing its utility in low numbers for blocking chokes (particularly in ZvZ).
Assuming they don’t lose speed on-creep this massively increases defender’s advantage for both sides in TvZ and ZvZ, likely leading to long stalemate scenarios in high-level play.
If they also lose speed on-creep, this massively shifts the balance to Terran-favored in TvZ at high levels because kiting and focus-fire is much better at those levels. The Banelings will never hit their targets against competent competitors. Even if you use Fungal (assuming they don’t dodge the Fungal and don’t counter with Ghosts), Bio DPS is high enough that focus-fire or even just the DPS density itself will stop Banelings that slow before they hit, even at double HP.
I like how forget banelings cost 50/25 and they die.
Helbats make lings pointless, helbats can transform into hellions and can easily micro against banes.
Any aoe can be effective none primary targets but issue with banes they die. So unless zerg massively ahead wasting that much resources lose game.
I would love redesign and remove sucide part and make them reverse hellion leaves trail dot for couple seconds. Or produce aoe sitting still or burrowed.
Lings are already insanely strong at all parts of the game. And Zerg already has 3 very strong alternatives: Fungal Growth, Microbial Shroud, and Blinding Cloud. With shroud now negating 50% of damage, together with fungal and cloud, that is already far more than enough to counter anything that banes were supposed to deal with.
There should NOT be any unit where you can simply a-move into the enemy and wipe out ALL their infantry units instanteously, while being incredible cheap, AND only 0.5 supply (1 total after morphing from lings). Banelings alone completely negate the need for fungal, shroud, and cloud - even if you use them together!
No, tanks do no counter banes. Neither does storm or colosi. The speed at which lings and banelings can close distance makes all of these supposed “counters” useless. Which was never supposed to be the case at all. It was supposed to be the other way around.
tldr: Banes provide far too much value for what little cost they require. Remove them from the game. It’s long overdue.
I said their speed on creep would remain the same, but their speed off creep would be nerfed significantly while banelings get a health boost so they don’t all die to a few tank shots. Maybe changing the AoE dynamics is a better idea as a previous poster in this thread suggested. Whatever the case, Banelings need a nerf one way or another and most people think Roaches need a late game buff to remain a relevant unit (same with Reapers).
i like how complain a move but you have fire forget weapons which is even more lazier then a move siege tanks and widow mines. They both can take out massive units but they dont kill them selves.
cost is only effective when hitting clump so dont clump.
And they have a massive splash radius to compensate. Banelings have a very high damage potential. In fact, only 3 other sources of splash covers larger areas, and all of them belong ot Zerg.
While Hellbats are a strong counter to light units like Zerglings, Zerg can often deal with them with just Zergling/Baneling. The fact that Zergling/Baneling is actually used against Battlemech is further proof of this.
Banelings are definitely worth their cost. Pros wouldn’t use them otherwise.
That really wouldn’t work unless you can consistently get the opponent to chase you, which they just aren’t going to do. This is the kind of thing that might work against AIs, but not players.
That said, I would agree with replacing Banelings with some different unit to fill the anti-light role; assuming someone actually had a good suggestion.
There are many sources of splash in this game that can do just that.
They do in fact, although they are worse at it then Widow Mines when alongside Bio compositions.
Mass Tanks can consistently kill Banelings before they get close, but that is really a mech composition thing. Bio will start to have problems incorporating tanks by the time you get those numbers. You will start to have problems with friendly-fire (as the friendly-fire of tanks is constant and harder to avoid or deal with than the friendly-fire of Mines), and you will start to have mobility problems because Bio is very mobility dependent and Siege Tanks simply can’t function in that playstyle. Abandoning Tanks to die becomes very common after a certain point for Bio in both non-mirror match-ups.
Colossi I can agree with. Their horizontal line splash is not ideal for fighting melee units. Melee units won’t align the way that you want them to unless they are forced to spread out against some kind of wall (whether that is made by buildings or units). By that point, the Banelings are already exploding.
The Colossi’s current damage is also pretty bad for killing Banelings.
Storm can be effective at killing Banelings, although it was probably better when it had higher DPS, despite the smaller area.
That would be a very bad idea. Banelings would become useless against anything that can kite, but at the same time they would become nearly unpreventable for slower compositions, creating numerous problems.
That would probably be a bad idea considering how flexible Corrosive Bile makes them.
And they have a massive splash radius to compensate. Banelings have a very high damage potential. In fact, only 3 other sources of splash covers larger areas, and all of them belong ot Zerg.
banling kind misleading one main issues is that there own body block so every to side and behind is usually dead space. Main reason made so big because baneling only use 25% unless you can overlord drop and burrow mine. So I rather smaller if I can fire 13 range, or guaranteed hit from widow mine.
Banelings are definitely worth their cost. Pros wouldn’t use them otherwise.
They would probably switch to ravagers if they could and if fungal lasted longer then 3 seconds and most of time use low number versus mass them. not really worth cost because they extremely expensive for pop and how many u need to kill. if you kill mass that more skill issue, since terran has tools to stop banes from coming. couple siege tanks take out banes easily one widow mine slow down banes witch would help out siege tanks take out more of them. Marines stim can run faster then banes so that is that. sacrifice one marine couple times. Take two banes 100/50 vs 50
That really wouldn’t work unless you can consistently get the opponent to chase you, which they just aren’t going to do. This is the kind of thing that might work against AIs, but not players.
ideal is that they move like lings, but pack push faster so should be able out run most units. then they burrow leaving big aoe gas while fighting other zerg units.
That said, I would agree with replacing Banelings with some different unit to fill the anti-light role; assuming someone actually had a good suggestion.
I think reduce speed off creep, change splash damage into cone shape splash reduce it size, in exchange give infestors ability burrow and fire fungal and fungal last 5 seconds instead 3. this would allow ravagers be more used and its more skill based vs A move banes.