One who would ignore the spore. If you can snuff it out and, get a free rain to destroy Zerg. Unless you move over to find a free spot and wait to see If Zerg try to move it and get an easier kill.
But that’s the problem unlike other two races.
Terran doesn’t have do massive anti air cover and doesn’t effect the economy because mule is counted for at least worker. On top of that they never in hurry to because how long Zerg air takes. Plus’s majority units do ok against air.
Toss again one worker can fill in massive cannons so they can massive at one time or go slow and doesn’t effect mps.
Zerg sadly has two options build slowly and hope place good spot and don’t effect drones on mineral line. But this only good pre planning. Pros only build one spore stealth detection use queens for actual attack.
Other per from mineral line or gas that would hurt more economy because mine rate would drop.
I think spores should be cheaper and build faster so and instead damage buff range would be way better.
It’s situational. A spore will be better vs an oracle but 3 oracles will be better at sniping spores. So you’re probably going to see a return of mass oracle between the spore HP nerf and the energy pit stop ability. During the “neeb mass oracle” era of sc2 protoss would make 3-4 oracles, catch a queen out of position, then dive bomb them onto spores and then kill the spore and all the drones at a base. This would happen surprisingly easily because a single spore can’t protect the full mineral line. If the oracles hit the outer edge, a queen has to respond and then the queen is too far forward and can be hit. After it’s dead they go for the spore.
Basically you’re gonna be seeing a lot more low queen mass hatchery styles with double spores. I don’t think the energy ability will affect phoenix play or offensive sentry play. It might affect blink into templar play.
Actually, come to think of it, they start doing the single phoenix into mass oracle strat where they lift a queen. We haven’t seen that one in like a decade.
Mass oracle play should be fine because the oracles are so fragile that they can’t scale well at all. They will simply die to a fungal and a few hydras. The question is if you can get that far without taking eco damage when 3-4 oracles can now insta-delete a spore crawler.
It can work if they take a good engagement. Oracle with chargelots for example. But it’s a lot harder to take that engagement than if you just do immortal chargelot.
Protoss economy is actually faster than zerg in many cases, (especially when you know to both pressure and macro at the same time, which with protoss is actually not hard to do) and being that most fights are more cost efficient to the Protoss player, toss will win the straight up macro game, most times.
In a void type scenario, no fights etc. zerg is the fastest, yes, but in reality you can see in tournaments it is almost always either same exact supply (which most times automaticaly means toss has better army) or even a bit higher supply than zerg sometimes, which was even un heard of like 4 years or more.
Yeah spore clusters will probably be stronger in most situations but it will definitely be stronger in the situation where the zerg has about 10 queens and infestors for microbial. The queens would soak damage via transfuse and microbial while the spores annihilate any interceptors. The result is that protoss can’t displace spore clusters without either disruptors or tempests. Zerg will go corruptors. So they will add on void rays to help vs the corruptors.
This is where things get interesting because ultras are being buffed and immortals nerfed. The zerg needs a way to kill the disruptor ball and so he will go ultralisk corruptor queen infestor. Might put 10 lurkers in a double nydus and nydus the main or a side base anytime protoss is out of position, too.
Lurkers are ironically terrible units as long as the opponent knows how to micro and position and rotate. Lurkers are fantastic if the opponent can’t move aka they are amazing vs buildings. If you get a nydus off in their main and unload 10 lurkers, it’s just game over.
Also worth noting that the queens will benefit from armor upgrades too. I suspect zergs will go armor upgrades only because the ultras have decent damage output without upgrades vs ground and you are relying on corruptors and spores for your anti air damage so missile attacks won’t do much.
In the GSL, Dark was always behind in workers. I don’t think it’s possible to dispute that chronoboost is better than inject when it comes to making workers, but chronoboost also speeds up upgrades.
This annoys me a bunch because you need 3 hatcheries to keep up drone production vs a 2 nexus toss. He comes out equal in eco but ahead in tech, so you’re still behind and have to take the game longer and later. Translation, 1 and 2 base allins are totally non viable, protoss simply outscales, some 3 base styles are viable but they are super allin and rely on the toss making a scouting mistake, and the only valid, non-gimmick way to play vs toss is a 4 base macro game with hive. He can win at any point from square 1 with proxy 4 gate to an adept allin at 6 minutes to a skytoss army at 40 minutes. But zerg’s only way to win is to play the 40 minute game.
It’s an extreme lack of strategical diversity on zerg’s side. You basically have to wait for protoss to leave the game willingly while you turtle on creep & occasionally counter attack with some lings.
In my vision of the game, each race would have valid 1 base styles, 2 base styles, 3 base styles, etc, and would have a 50% win-rate at each stage vs an equally skilled opponent. This would create maximum diversity in the game outcome and would be very entertaining to play and to watch. Chronoboost is the primary issue here because 1 base toss outscales 1 base zerg and 2 base toss outscales 2 base zerg and as long as that’s true zerg will never have 1 and 2 base styles.