like I said, I don’t think the unit is bad in a vacuum, but rather competition of production facilities.
You link me two videos, but the number of games that lasted more than 7 minutes without raven far outnumbers ones with raven (at least 3:1; I use 7 minutes so we can exclude very early game push/proxies that focuses on T1 units to avoid skewing data against Raven), so at the very least that indicates to me that Raven are not essential, if even important, in the TvP matchup, at least compared to constant reactor-ed production of Vikings, Medivacs, Liberators, and a combination of.
The problem is that BOs are too tight to get Starport on tech-lab making Raven.
In Standard BO when you make Starport you make Viking then Liberator from it (or you make 2 Banshees on tech lab built by Barrracks for it) then you make Reactor with it (for Barraks #3) than you make another reactor than you make 2 Medivacs and go for a push immediately after Medivacs are finished and if you timed everything right you’ll hit Zerg just before Bane speed upgrade is done.
There is no room for Raven.
1-st game - Robo opening. Against Blink openers or SG openers (which 90% of people play) Raven is useless.
2-nd game - same.
That was just dumb luck.
Can we trade Raven for Sentry?
Sentry is the best support caster in the game.
Infestor is also extremely powerful
I dont say Sentry is bad. Its just my list of Spellcasters. But hey. Infestor is powerfull? Did you updated your game? It went from the edge of powerful/op to almost useless except landing lucky fungal.
LOL, fungal in itself is stronger than Storm. Neural is a limited Dark-Archon…
Please don’t exagerate.
Fungal has an area that is twice of Storm and unavoidable damage of 30 (Storm has it 20 and as you go ouside the zone it goes to 30-40 damage). Storm does not slow or hinder units and units-transormation like Fungal.
To say that Infestor is a joke…is a joke in itself.
Check the second game, raven against the infamous blink build.Raven is used to detect obs, to defend the tank, and then is used as a harass tool, I think on the VOD you can’t see it clearly but if you see the minimap you can see the raven harassing the P nat and killing probes while the army is pushing the third.
In vakuum nice teory… but doesnt work. How many times do you see that 1 fungal changed a game direction? … and how many times Storm? So please leave trolling and teory at home and open your eyes
again, that’s because Baneling is better than Fungal for the most part if you are just looking to do splash damage. Fungal isn’t bad by any means, it’s just outclassed most of the time by a cheaper unit, unless you manage to keep your Infesters alive for a long time.
The Raven had two unworkable spells that promoted stacking Ravens:
Seeker Missiles.
PDD.
Those spells were removed and replaced by non-stacking spells for this reason.
Infested Terran had the same problem, so it was replaced by Microbial Shroud.
To be blunt, Microbial Shroud itself is not a weak ability, just a niche one. That’s the reason why it isn’t used often.
The damage reduction takes place before armor, thereby doubling armor’s effectiveness; and the area is 4x the area of Storm or a Disruptor shot so you do have space to maneuver within one or a couple of shrouds, contrary to what most players will tell you.
To allow Zerg ground units to fight better against Terran/Protoss air armies.
On that note, the best use of Microbial Shroud is probably to protect ground-only units (Zerglings, Ultralisks, Roaches, Lurkers, etc) from enemy air units like Liberators or Carriers as they rush in to clean up the enemy army’s ground support.
My reasoning for this is quite simple: Air armies tend to rely on a few ground units (HT, Disruptors, etc) to help protect their air army from becoming overwhelmed by ground units or some air armies. At less than 50% damage, this air force may not be able to protect their ground support; and Protoss in particular may waste most of its Storms and Disruptor shots trying to survive before your anti-air units actually move in. This gives your remaining anti-air force (which may still use the same clouds or new clouds if it is comprised of Hydralisks) a much better chance to engage the enemy air force.
Most ground units are also cheaper to throw away than Hydralisks or Corruptors; so you may save resources on reinforcements.
That is caused by a faulty logic and the lack of understanding numbers. It’s simply an optic-ilusion.
1 Storm causes less damage than 1 Fungal.
The issue is that a Protoss quite never uses just one Storm, he casts the first, second, third and the deadly blow comes with the fourth Storm. People are so stupid that they think that it was the Fourth Storm that achieved that and cry that a single Storm changed the fate of the Battle, which is rarely the case.
Now, tell me how many games you have seen when a Zerg in a single battle (not during a Game) has used 4 consecutive Fungals?
This post is valid for high-level play when Zergs try to micro out of Storms. If we are discussing Bronze/Silver/Gold when people eat the whole 80-damage of Storm, then you are Right.
That’s even worse. An infestor has 90 hp, it is much easier to snipe it than to wait out the shroud, which is dirt cheap to cast anyway.
The problem with shroud is that it doesn’t fit on a race that realistically only has 1 ground to air fighter, and that fighter melts to any sort of splash.
I think increasing the radius a bit and making it a “unit focused” cast rather than static would be the way to go. Sort of like how parasitic bomb works. If it ends up being too strong, nerf the damage reduction a bit rather than the functionality. Zerg is a mobile race unless going broodlords. Static defense spells with a poor radius don’t really make much sense.
(For the love of God don’t make the spell like Dark Swarm. Alongside Irradiate that spell is the most broken spell in Broodwar.)
Infested Terrans were broken. They hard countered all air and promoted mass Infestor play far too often. That was super dumb. I’d only be ok with that if Infested Terran could only shoot air - and that would be kind of silly to look at conceptually.
I think Microbial Shroud could work well if the mechanics around it changed to suit the zerg playstyle better.
It really wouldn’t, in no scenario is zerg ever wanting to go hydras vs air lategame, with or without a static shroud.
Replace rockets with the gauss rifle and problem solved like it had been for the other 2 expansions.
Yea, like the playstyle of swarming players with infested terrans which was very zerglike and fit with the idea of what an “infestor” is supposed to be. “Infestor” does not imply a protection from air. It can imply fungus, parasites, and INFESTED TERRANS, but it does not imply microbial shutstain.
Zerg really doesn’t need more free damage for spell energy.
I get that they are cool - trust me. But Zerg already has Abduct, Nydus/Swarm Host and Broodlord for free damage. Not to mention Fungal Growth.
If you are worried about ground, combine it with Blinding Cloud and a couple of forward Ultras backed with Transfuse. Or just use Banelings to force kiting.
I really don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to go Hydra vs air if they have a 50% reduction in the damage they take from air. They are already not awful at it, they just aren’t cost efficient as far as gas is concerned. That is the real problem. This would probably make that possible. If it’s a mobility issue, combine it with Abduct.
There are sound solutions for each problem depending upon the situation. Removing the abuse of energy/free damage was one of the better decisions Blizzard made. I’m still a little skeptical of the auto-turret for that reason, but I’m really glad they got rid of the OP Seeker Missile of old. Shredder missile is a much better design.
Because they lose too hard to splash investments (storm, tanks) that cost very little supply in comparison. It wouldn’t really help either, one of the big things holding hydras back in the lategame is their abysmal kiting capabilities, for some reason blizzard decided to give the hydralisk a higher damage point than nearly every unit in the game while giving the marine next to none…
Let’s compare hydralisk to marine
twice the health for twice the minerals, 20 less health with combat shields
costs 50 gas
tier 2 vs tier 1
does not have ability to use stimpack
about 2/3 the dps of 2 stimmed marines
And you have terran players left and right saying how insufficient marines are of a counter to air, well IMAGINE how zerg feels with their only ground to air units being the hydralisk and queen…
I agree, if they really want to follow that philosophy they should remove auto-turret as well, but they won’t.
Terran got their auto turrets back, time for zerg to get infested terrans back.
