Should Guardians replace Broodlords?

General Discussion
1

This isn’t as much of a ‘‘serious’’ balance suggestion since im not a super duper GM player with 300+ APM. But I just want people to think about it.

Now sure the Winfestor is currently a bigger problem. However as I see it, Broodlords are the second biggest problem with Zerg because it’s almost impossible to counter them with ground units.

That’s because one the free unit problem:

  • Free units are generally unhealthy for the game, Broodlords don’t spawn strong units but the units they spawn do something very strong and that’s blocking ground units from accessing the Broodlords altogether.

This is bad because this ‘‘blocks’’ counterplay from ground. Bio can’t reach BL, Hydra can’t reach Broodlords, and don’t let me get started with Thors and Archons. Sure a lot has to do with the synergy with the Winfestor, but I think Winfestor nerfs are something other people should talk about, though I’d like a cool new ability for the Infestor.

  • However another problem the Broodlord has is the fact it’s comes from the Corruptor.

And this is problematic because you don’t ‘‘really’’ have to commit to Broodlords, sure you have to make a Greater Spire, but once you’re pumping out Corruptors it doesn’t matter what happens if some units die.

So for example you’re against toss and you have 10 Broodlords and 10 Corruptors and some other stuff (just use your imagination), For some reason all your Broodlords die because of some reason but you got all your Corruptors still. You just go back to your base and morph the Corruptors into Broodlords, now you have 5 Broodlords and 5 corrupts. Going Broodlords is just a really safe play to make as a Zerg player.

Now what if we replace the Broodlord with the Guardian? The Guardian has the same total mineral and gas and supply requirement as the Broodlord and deals the same damage, Though I think the weaponspeed could be slightly higher to compensate for Broodlingdamage, but in general the Guardian is stat-wise equal to the Broodlord.

Now 2 things will happen.

  1. The free unit problem is just gone. You have to invest in Zerglings even though at this point they are mineraldumps anyway. It’s still a investment to make and they still take time to make unlike the Broodlings

  2. you really have to ‘‘commit’’ to Guardians. So lets go back to my example and say you have 10 Guardians and 10 Corruptors and some other stuff. If the toss manage to snipe your Guardians there is nothing you can do but to type ‘‘GG’’ The reason for this is because it takes time to morph new muta’s and it takes time to morph them into Guardians. You have lost the game. and 10 muta’s aren’t going to do anything.

  3. NosTAlgIA bOoSt!

So maybe it’s cool if we think about the scenario. Guardians instead of Broodlords will fix a big part of what’s so strong about zerg (the free units) and it requires way more thought if you want to make more Guardians or more Corruptors. There is no ‘‘lets see and morph scenario’’ anymore.

Also it will honour the name of the Mutalisk once more :slight_smile:

4 Likes
2

I suspect this won’t be an issue after the patch. Hitting Broodlords from the ground is going to become a distinctly Protoss problem.

2 Likes
3

Well, Guardians would have to be updated for SC2.

Guardians were cheaper than Brood Lords, so I am going to assume you are readjusting it to the Brood Lord’s cost and supply.

No.

Brood Lords work because they cans tore up to 2 attacks and because the Broodlings compensate for their missing damage (dealing around 52 total damage if they are not killed, and soaking damage otherwise).

If you were going to rebalance the Brood Lord without Broodlings, the new attack would have to hit significantly harder (at least 60 damage per strike). Otherwise the “Guardian” would not be worth making.

3 Likes
4

I do like that Idea. But replacing a unit and a tech path is to drastic and it will lead to frustrating interactions. However changing the broodlord atack or maybe even their role may be nice. Maybe they can have a single target puke atack, or maybeee the broodlords can release an anti air kamakazi units like the scorge in scbw hahaha

5

By your logic they could still make the Blord not spawn broodlings jsut splash them into the enemy as a missile. I dont think game wants to go that far in changes

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I don’t think it will to be honest. Fungal and Blidingcloud still exist and as such ling/bling can also be used if needed.

Yeah, Broodlords are 150/100 2 + 150/150 + 2 so 300/250 4 in total. Muta cost 100/100 2 + 50/100 + 0 in BW making them 150/200 2 in total. So Broodlords are 150/50 more expansive and also cost + 2 supply. However Guardians used to have 150 hitpoints and Broodlords have 225 hitpoints.

However im not so sure into number tweakering since better players and devs have a better understanding about the game. If the Guardian have 225 life it should be more expansive and should cost more supply and resources. I just want to pitch the idea rather than discuss numbers that are probably wrong anyway.

That is a valid point indeed. However I’d personally fasten up the Guardians attackspeed since the Guardian will likely have a problem with overkilling. So speeding up the attackspeed might ease the missfire pain and make them more microable. Personally I don’t feel overkilling with Broodlords is that bad since the Broodlings will still spawn regardless of overkilling or perfectly rounding it up. 10 Broodlords killing 1 stalker still spawns 20 Broodlings.

But again, i’m not really into numbertweaking. I just want to pitch the idea.

Well they did remove the Mothership Core and ‘‘replace’’ it with the Shield Battery.

The problem with making the Broodlord into a Guardian (that might morph from Muta’s) and giving it a Guardian attack it will just undermine it’s fantasy.

7

Just for comparison, the Guardian morphs from a Mutalisk for 50m 100g and no additional supply (requires the Greater Spire, of course). In effect, it’s a unit that costs 150m 200g 2s. Its attack was a 20-damage acid spore that could outrange static defence. Dragoons were sufficiently tanky to be able to take them down, Zerg could use Hydralisks under Dark Swarm (Defiler), while Goliaths had an upgrade that allowed their anti-air attack to out-range them.

Like with the Brood Lord, Guardians were slow moving, but they were also relatively fragile, only having 150 HP.

One of the issues with the Brood Lords is that they morph from Corruptors, a unit that is a pretty good general-purpose anti-air unit (something that the Mutalisk is much weaker at). Only Void Rays can really stand up to Corruptors in a head-on fight. In Brood War, you could morph a Mutalisk into a Devourer, which greatly buffs Mutalisk attacks against targets afflicted by corrosive spores, but you have to choose between the Devourer and Guardian.

I don’t think the Brood Lord is going to be removed though, and is here to stay. In PvZ, the only ground unit that can really deal with them are Blink Stalkers, but this gets tricky if there are Infestors or Roaches supporting them.

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Thing is both vipers and broodlords will have to move in range of thors to attack/use abilities (Vipers can technically cast at 12 range accounting for the radius of the spell, but then it’s less effective). Thor AA in high impact is hitscan if I’m not mistaken and fungal has no effect on the interaction with broodlords. Even if thors are fungaled broods have to move within range in order to attack on the new patch (which they do not on the current patch), so are vunerable during their long attack animation and terrible turn rate, not to mention the Thors also get the first and last shots (if the broods retreat) in a trade due to having longer range. The DPS on those new Thor guns is no joke, stuff dies fast, even if its not massive. Its obviously not going to be only thors either, hellbats, tanks, libs, a usual thor lib compsition to protect them, heck maybe even vikings will viable after hp buff (doubtful).

Time will tell, but if you think its going to remain as it is now where broodlords just hit thors for free then I’m afraid I disagree, they will have to trade, and they trade very poorly from what I’ve seen in the Wardii tournament and on various streams.

I think we will see more Vipers though as you said, but they are 3 supply, have very expensive spells (important if you consider a longer fight where consume is less relevant), are themselves expensive units and aren’t “risk free” either. That was the real crux of the issue with Broodlords and Thors before imo; the risk free nature of their trades when using the target fire trick. This will not exist anymore.

Its obviously difficult to say, but I think the dynamic on the whole for TvZ will be healthier, for Mech at least. Both sides can do strong stuff and I think thats a good thing.

2 Likes
9

Agree with what you wrote here OP. Broodlords screw up micro in big engagements so even if they are balanced, they still suck for fans

10

Considering the supply difference, an increase from 150 to 225 hit points is reasonable, but only if the total DPS is close to double or there is some other advantage. In this case, Broodlings provide a buffer and make up for the difference in damage if they are not killed.

The Brood Lord itself actually has lower DPS than a single Guardian if you ignore the damage from Broodlings.

The old Guardian’s attack rate was about 1.1857 in LOTV’s faster units.
The Brood Lord would need to deal about 40 damage if it retained the Guardian’s original attack rate, or the Brood Lord would need 3x its current attack rate to work with 20 damage bursts.

11

I think broodlords should explode broodlings upon death. Much like how Zerg buildings do. The broodlords are already chalk full of broodlings anyway for combat.

12

I think they gave the guardian to the protoss and now call it a tempest.

1 Like
13

I feel like a possible fix to the unit problem is to remove the broodlings, but still have there be a broodling as the attack animation, then it does damage, then poofs away in a cloud of blood or something. I don’t think people would feel confident in broodlords without broodlings to block pathing, however.

14

I don’t know, that seems like it could be too big a nerf to broodlords. Remember that not only do broodlings block pathing but soak up damage of auto-attacking units.

I think the current design philosophy is nerf the range of Broodlords a tiny bit and buff the range of Broodlord counters a bit until a sweet spot is reached where counters can’t be prevented from shooting by a brood wall. I like it this way.

Just my 2 cents.

1 Like
15

I think that the most logical way is to make the broodlor shoot spores like the guardian and only broodling when the unit dies

16

Yes it should ,

17

Yea corraptors not enough we need more air too air counter corraptors beat vr and here the bonus also