As many people know, Serral has been on a bit of a rampage since losing Katowice. dropping just 2 series in the last 58.
Serral has been showing us time and again in every matchup the power of Roach Ravager. Sometimes Serral will even skip ling speed in his quest for quick Roaches. This is always followed up by Lurkers and Hydra. In fact the only ling/bane game Serral played was a loss at the ESL.
No longer are Zerg the fast, fragile, glass cannon race that we use to know, Roaches are slow, hard to kill and low damage units alike the protoss units. Zerg have lost their identity this patch.
Terran is out Zerging the Zerg with mass marine rushes while Zerg is out Protossing the Protoss with mass roach, meanwhile Protoss have stopped existing in high level tournaments. Something needs to be done.
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+1 This sentence perfectly describes the SC2 meta right now.
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Blame Erik for popularizing the hatch and pool before overlord build (and walling the natural in zvz) it was the kick that caused ling speed skippable. So we have 2-base lair before third fast tech zerg.
Roachs are not low damage they are actually stronger than zealots in most cases (and rightfully so as they have same cost but roach need gas that is considered a resource of higher value). The counter is anti-armor (marauder, immortal or voidray, hydralisk+roach or ling).
Terran has the easiest time because marauders hard counter roaches and these are tier 1.5, while other races do not counter them as hard and they are tier 2.
I think zealots had been nerfed too much they should gain back 10 shield to line up with their BW stats (that is 60Shield and 100HP). It is very strange that they removed the charge damage with no compensation and leave us with weak zealots that are worse than BW, while zerg have increased speed on creep and marine got HP boost for free and for a cheap upgrade.
Lair is still taken at normal times in Serrals no ling speed builds.
they have just 11-12 dps, the only zerg units they beat on DPS is the Drone. A zealot has 18-20 dps.
While that being true the roach is still the counter to zealots. Its the same but reverse for zerglings and zealots. While same cost zerglings have much much more dps (or you could say dps per resource cost) the zealot is still the counter vs zerglings.
EDIT: Ah, yeah now i read your thread/your point and yeah i kiiiindaaa agree. Tho we have to consider that the roach is a very basic and spammable unit. Considering we dont have the same infrastructure cost for zerg and also a better eco (while not really true in early game) and with mass larvae a zerg can crank out a massive amount of roaches in no time i would still say its pretty swarmy. Zerg would lose their true identity if they stopped expanding that much and needed a real specialised/spellcaster army for midgame.
But yeah in contrast to before its less swarmy.
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but it’s not because of roach, it’s because of the range-melee interaction.
i understand your thought, but do not fully agree.
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Yeah but its No Secret that roaches crush everything p1 of protoss. Thats why the whole Desaster of the void Ray era even existed in the First place. Now its OK because protoss can safely Go Air (it basically shuts down roach pushes more or less) without fearing a Queenwalk.
The roach is a pretty good unit for early and midgame but completly and brutally falls Off after that. Thats how the unit is balanced.
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maybe if you survive the early game well. but otherwise it’s a pure number thing or tec. good example ZvZ: if you don’t have enough roach you can be stopped by pure ling.
the problem was that for no reason void got a buff.
and this has made void a cheap all rounder with early access.
No? Even blizzard acknowledged that the problem of pvz always was that protoss doesnt have an equal footing early to midgame. It was actually implemented in the patch notes and pros even agreed. Even lambo himself confirmed it back then. The void ray buff was the last desperate attempt to fix pvz. which it kinda did but it was now a pretty garbage matchup. the pro players reversed the buff and nerfed queen walk ensuring that protoss has a safe early/midgame and it doesnt get so boring and toxic with airtoss.
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read this first:
and this:
what do you see… void buff was unnecessary, thanks.
and i don’t think anyone said this void buff changes the game positively in any direction.
Are you trolling? i actually explained what happend. pros reversed the void ray buff BUT nerfed queen walk.
To say that pvz was in a fine spot before void rays and void rays got a buff for no reason is a MASSIVE lie.
How toxic can someone be?
Hello: yes
typical sentry, proof that 2 years of void usage influences your thinking.
what do you see?
right, if you had made queen change at the beginning… you could have saved 2 years in which people lost interest in sc2.
→ unnecessary void buffs.
Meaning most changes are in the end unnecessary because they get fine tuned over time? Wow. what a logical and critical thinking you are displaying here 
I dont know if you are trolling right now or not. You cant be serious. But hey…zerg whiners…
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want another example of unnecessary changes?
release of SB → is exploited for cheese, what is changed? SB or the units that interact with SB?
right immortal was changed instead of sb, → unnecessary.
2 years… for a change that was not necessary. several tournaments.
but if you think patch 5.0.2 is better than the current ok.
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you mean like nydus in 2019? at least the void ray change didnt really win protoss any tournies. cant say the same about 2019 nydus. tho void rays werent exactly overpowered (at least not in pro play) they were just a pain in the a$$. again, cant say the same about nydus.
but you can see the difference, can’t you? nydus and void.
You know what solves this problem?
Reverting the Charge nerf a few years back but making it scale with upgrades instead of being a BAM +8 damage right out of the gates, just make it +4(+2) damage.
I knew this was eventually going to happen, the loss of the chargelot’s front-loaded burst damage hurts real bad early on vs a Zerg who want’s to RR allin you on 2-3 bases.
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yes. the one thing got buffed out of desperation because pvz is a mess and the other one got buffed for sh!ts and giggles. which resulted in some very back and forth patches (even for cheaper overlord speed because protoss only did 2 base all in because they knew it was hopeless; got reverted after they nerfed pickup range (?)) and then they knew they messed up hard and completly reverted the nydus buff. again: there was 0(!!) reason to further buff zerg but there actually was a reason to buff protoss. this is a very very huge difference.
Agreed. Protoss is known as the beginner’s race, but it lags in comparison at high level now.