I’m sorry but I need to address this. Diamondbacks IMO are the one of the most perfect coop units.
They are very powerful, cost efficient, mass produced and extremely versatile.
Here are my proposition to balance them
Fungal snare traps air units for 10 seconds.
They need to halve this time (5 seconds) so the players are more motivated to use Infested Liberators (which needs a buff).
Caustic Mucus this ability is too powerful not only it does 20 per damage, stacks infinitely (the mucus does so much damage to the train, it does stack without end) and slows both attack and speed by 75%! (Heroes gets -20%).
Would be better if attack sepped decreases to 25% while movement decreases to 50%.
Set the resource cost as same as Infested Tank, 75 Gas is the main reason why Diamondbacks can easily be mass produced (mineral price are high but when your base is fully saturated mineral expenditure almost doesn’t matter).
At least that’s how I think. Some can stay but Caustic Mucus stack is just too OP.
God no, Diamondbacks are fun units to micro with. They spent years being either trash in terms of stats and abilities, or so buggy as to be an unplayable mess. Given Stukov’s lack of Factory options, the two units he has there should feel good to play with, especially given the focus of P1.
In my opinion, Infested Liberators suffer from being way too specialized, since, you know, they lack the iconic feature that Liberators were designed around. If they want people to make use of them, they should be revamped and given some unique, infested version of Defender Mode.
Quite honestly, I find Infested Liberators really boring to use, and a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of fun gameplay ideas. (Infestor Mode using a tentacle to mind control enemies within Liberation Zone, anyone?)
The thing is for a mass produced units, ID are blessed with so many useful abilities. They are practically Stukov’s A-moves in virtually every situations.
Infested Liberators are still incomplete for following reasons.
Scan duration. Infested Liberators scan area is short, IL disengage their cloud form even when their enemy is close by (5 ~ 6 range)
Cloud dispersal. IL revert into its original form within 1 second when it thinks the enemies are dead (Although like I said enemies are close by, they are just outside its scanning area).
This make them dangerously vulnerable to counter attacks and hit and run tactics extremely difficult.
On serious note, are they even good? I mean 20 dot damage in wide area good and all but without the stack they just become inferior version of High templars/High Archons.
But if that slime stacked low HP units would die instantly after stepping on it. And I clearly remember that even zerglings survive a bit. How is that possible?
And as for the topic - NO, Diamondbacks is the only reason anybody ever builds mech units with Stukov instead of braindead infantry spam.
Before prestiges I was the only one who player mech on a regular basis. Literally every random Stukov just spammed bio.
They just deal good damage to armored with autoattack. And thats because you can just run them in after defenders are dead. When dealing with waves you can’t just run them in because you’ll get rekt. You need to micro them constantly to be on the edge of the range, so only first lines can shoot. Also, slime exist for too short period of time to be nerfed.
Hmm, I somehow never noticed that attack speed is also reduced
Well, its all P1 and just because everybody is levelling and Bunkers are not that good without the mastery for bio duration.
Bunkers are actually extremely good on Oblivion Express where you can just spam it on main base, change a rally point once in a minute and do nothing else. The infantry stream is literally endless.
Over the last two weeks it’s gone from being mostly diamondbacks to about even with bunker builds, so that might be due to the best bunker build being P3.
Nah I think they are fine as is. Skilled players can keep them alive and use them properly. Bad players will keep losing them and cause their ally to carry them. The prestige kind of helps with that but at the same time doesn’t if you don’t know how to use them let alone play Stukov right. Diamondbacks do have another small weakness, and that is they can’t attack the shuttles in Void Launch. Will have to build missile turrets to compensate.
I’d rather they just buff stukov air, its not like anyone actually uses Stukov mech in difficult brutations, so although it might seem good in regular brutal its not actually very good in brutal+++ and above
Stukov anti air is fine. It has two of the strongest spellcasters under its disposal. 1. Liberators that deal air splash both with primary and spell. 2. Brood queens that can fungal growth ground amd air units, locking air units in a clump for liberators or freezing ground armies to easily mop up terran bio, or melee units. The reason most people struggle including myself is the redicilous amount of micro stukov actually needs for a commander that seems to be designed around a disposable army you just have to a-move. Diamondbacks whilst good, are also very flimsy. Without constant micro and the added slow from goop they are quite vulnerable. 75% is a bit much, but I’d hardly say the damage stacking is an issue with other commanders having high archons. And let us not forget the durable vile roaches that can employ similar tactics with step micro kiting.
Well pure air is trickier. Because banshees are prone to clump and die. (And they lack AOE making them inferior to other ground options) But air to air is very strong. I run infestor brood queen on void launch. Snipe the shuttles with liberators and split waves with fungal. Then I have just a couple diamondbacks and bunkers to mop up the ground. Or I have my partner do ground whilst I take down air.
Why in the world do you want to force people to use infested libs? They have their niche use, and if the developers decide to fix the Scyth of Amon shard bug, they will be even more useful. But nerfing diamondbacks when there are other way more broken units (i.e. Abathur’s ultimate, Shiitman’s infestors) is just focusing on the wrong issue.
Btw, diamondbacks, for all their strength, are glass cannons and heavy on mineral costs.
Yeah, mucus doesn’t stack. They just reworked how train take damage last year. So multiple cars will contribute damage to the train instead of ignoring which is why nova airstrike can deal 2k damage, a well-placed p3 nova or tychus nuke nuke can oneshot a train, Glevig is best vs train in p&p, and Karax can deal a total of over 2000 damage with solar lance (actually it’s closer to 4000) to train.
All I can say with confidence is that even stukov players who use this build have admitted it’s a bit over the top when I talked to them about it.
I’ve tried it myself. It seems like it’s very easy to get very good results, if that’s any metric of balance. But the same can be said about many other prestiges.
