A huge balance patch with a bunch of changes and they buff Thor/Hellbat and don’t touch the Ghost, the literal only reason turtling with Terran is strong. Thor now does MORE damage to air units?! It is already the second best unit in the game, wth. Most players I run across on ladder in Grandmaster play Mech because of how strong it is and you’re making it STRONGER?! This balance council is clueless. They seriously only want to touch the balance of the top 10 players and leave everyone else to suffer with a terrible ladder experience.
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haha, Zerg players when they get their widow mine nerfs through and then every terran becomes a defensive mech player. Just play like Rogue and spam changelings, orrrr you could use the new abilities that you’re getting this patch.
FYI here’s the recent ghost changes over 2 patches
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Enhanced Shockwaves upgrade removed.
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EMP radius increased from 1.5 to 1.75.
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Steady Targeting is canceled if the target moves more than 14 range away from the Ghost while casting. (The cast range of Steady Targeting is 10)
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Steady Targeting can now be manually canceled.
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Snipe damage reduced from 170 to 130 (+40 vs Psionic).
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EMP radius reduced from 1.75 to 1.5.
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Yea so…you realize almost none of those changes affect Zerg right?
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bruh the queen cost increase is mildly massive
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I was talking about the nerfs he mentioned the Ghost got.
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You will have your hatch faster which means you can make the queens quicker too. It’s been standard for Zerg players to delay their third overlord and get a faster third hatch, that now has been buffed. The zerg static defense and salvage changes are a nerf to proxy barracks builds so you shouldn’t have an issue there. It also makes it easier to hold off cannon rushes.
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EMP radius and a cancelled steady targeting made so aggressive ghost plays were nerfed but defensively they could still be crazy efficient as long as they were behind a planetary or a thor. The changes make it harder to turtle with Terran.
Not to be pedantic but every standard Z opener goes Hatch Queen Queen Queen Hatch so technically getting your third hatch now comes in 25 minerals later, not 25 minerals sooner
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generally speaking, it’s a no change for 1xhatch+1xqueen are unchanged in cost.
early game is ~6-9x queens 3x hatch, but you only build only 2 hatch, while your main default is. → costs increase.
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Nope. It is the standard way in ZvT to take a third hatch before the third queen, which is the same cost regardless but sooner. h ttps://youtu.be/it9r9FkMm3A?t=85 This is the build that brought 2 rax reaper opening back in the meta. The person even did it wrong because you can delay the third overlord and place the hatch down even faster, at 20 supply.
There are multiple ways the early game can be played out. For example, third hatch before spawning pool finishes is definitely much better now. The limitation for that is it’s hard to have queens out on time to deal with reapers and if you make a bunch of lings it defeats the point of having the economical play. If you go hatch, gas, pool, hatch, queen, queen, queen, the cost is the same & you are allowed to get your third hatch drastically faster.
This means faster larva off the second and third hatch, and then the first round of queens is faster, too. The cost is the same unless you go an extra round of queen production at which point it’s more expensive due to the queen cost. But you have more minerals to work with because your build is faster in general, so it probably balances out, but keeps the advantage of a faster third hatchery.
I’m not a GM level player, but that sounds unsafe. You call this “standard” but what’s the point of getting your hatch faster if you have to spend money on extra lings to defend?
If you go hatch, gas, pool, hatch, queen, queen, queen, the cost is the same
You people seem to forget that you don’t pay for your first hatchery. 2 hatch + 3 queens will not be 25 minerals more expensive.
Then it only becomes more expensive at the point of the third queen, and still probably balances out by the extra minerals from faster drones from faster hatcheries. 25 minerals is equivalent to 5 trips to/from the minerals.
The dangerous part is the drone getting there after the reaper arrives, then it can snowball into hellions blocking the third also. It’s actually safer just to dump the hatch down ASAP. I remember this being the biggest issue for Zergs playing tech strats since they have no ling speed. It was evident in the grandfinals between Serral and Clem at Esports world cup.
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Teching strategies should be stronger as well because you’re skipping queen production on at least the lair anyway so you don’t pay the increased cost. Fast third hatch w/ second 100 gas into lair is going to be pretty good to play out most matchups. Dark’s ling nydus builds come to mind.
The original post I was replying to was this:
It’s been standard for Zerg players to delay their third overlord and get a faster third hatch, that now has been buffed.
Even if I’m not using optimal strategies by making 3 queens before 3rd hatch, in the video trasher linked there’s still 2 queens queued before the third hatch, thus post-PTR the timing of this build in particular would remain unaffected. 2 hatch, 2 queen = +50 -50, drones mining don’t pay off since you get your 3rd before the natural starts mining.
h ttps://imgur.com/a/D0qT9v2
This is the build that I was talking about. I guess the video I linked was a poor example.
Very insightful actually, I often have to walk my queen over to my third to be able to even take it, like this you grab it before a reaper gets there, I’ll play around with this, thanks!
This does seem significantly stronger with the 50 minerals saved indeed.
You have to keep 16 drones on minerals and have 2 mining gas then rally. You will have a 4 minute speed but you’d be balling. It’s countered by 2 rax reaper openings so don’t do it on maps with heaps of ledges or if you see 2 rax wall off at the natural. We’ll have to see how things are shaken up, hopefully less queen spam and more tech plays.
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