First of all i would like to stress out that this is purely a design question and not a balance whine, i am aware of how a few zealots and an archon can kill a vast amount of lings no matter the upgrades in favorable positions.
What i want to discuss is ling/zealot runbys after 3/3 and adrenal glands.
In the current meta in late game pvz you basically have 2 armies, a ground one and an air composition, with your air you try to pressure the zerg while with your ground one you try to abuse the slow speed of broods in order to find windows to do dmg, killing bases,drones and try to have favorable trades.
This brings the question of why 30 lings with 3/3 can take on 10 zealots with 3/3 after adrenal glands? Zergs already have both spines and banes against zealots why should lings be able to fight them too straight on with same upgrades and less cost/supply?
The other question is while as toss you try to out maneuver them, they also try to slip ling runby’s to your new bases and zealot warp ins simply do not cut it unless you leave expensive gas units like archons for defense and cannon/batteries.
Is this a good design when thematically protoss units are supposed to be more expensive but better?
Please remember to be constructive.
6 Likes
New Charge is a bad upgrade because it messes so much stuff up.
Now you have less tanky (indirectly) Zealots who deal less damage but can run away and as a result, things like Cracklings handily shut down Chargelots whereas before, they didn’t.
I want the old charge back, with some of the +8 locked behind Ground Attack upgrades OR for new Charge to have a longer range and grant +3 armor/shields while Charging.
Either way will result in the same end goal.
4 Likes
Not sure if they should revert the +8 dmg but a late game upgrade that boost the survivability of zealots could be tested for sure but what i am more interested on is the design issues if there are any.
I mean design wise why it is ok for lings to counter zealot with uneven supplies and why the most expensive race needs to have pretty expensive units to defend against tier 1 units which do not have any support.
Marines for example need medivacs to trade cost efficiently but lings do not need any high tech unit and they can already counter zealots if they morph into banes.
2 Likes
Zealots in BW used to have 100HP and 60 shields
Zealots in SC2 have 100HP and 50 shields.
1 Like
I think the design issue exists solely because charge was neutered and nothing replaced it.
I think the design issue exists solely because charge was neutered and nothing replaced it.
Buff Adepts without gimmicks and stop beating Observers to death with the nerf bat
2 Likes
For every Protoss buff the balance team issues, there must be several nerfs. Don’t ya know by now?
5 Likes
Oh god, terran would whine like crazy. And, honestly, justifiably so.
3 Likes
Eh, it would be fine because the +3 would only apply when charging. Outside of that, they wouldn’t have the +3.
I don’t know. It would wreck tank marine pushes and do little to nothing to solve the lack of usefulness of zealots in PvZ except in niche situations.
1 Like
They’d tank more damage for maybe 1 second? Tank Marine allins are dumb anyhow, no loss if they get wrecked by fast charge again. Unless you find 2 Siege Tanks abusing ledges with a handful of marines riveting gameplay…
In PvZ, they’d still tank more damage as they zipped into position. Zerg can’t really kite them since the Charge nerf so not too much changes there. Hydras and Roaches wouldn’t kill them as fast. That’s about it.
What friendlyTOSS is saying is that against melee units +3 armor while charging doesn’t do anything, this will buff zealots vs ranged units.
For the record the rate that zealots die vs roaches,marines and hydras is perfectly fine.
1 Like
Eh, I disagree, they die a lot faster than before and it’s entirely because of the 33% damage nerf when Charge was changed. This means they kill stuff faster which means tanking more damage.
To preserve the tankiness, you need a buff…because right now Charge is a pretty trashy upgrade and Zealots went from a front liner to a skirmishing, weak harass unit.
They still lost to Zerglings, but not as hard because of the pathing differences.
Well, it wasn’t considered a design issue before charge was buffed; and if it “is” a design issue then reverting charge still isn’t the right fix. The right fix would be to increase the Zealot’s late-game damage so that it consistently 2-shots Zerglings.
No it actually wouldn’t. If you are focused on “fixing” the interaction between Zealots and Zerglings then armor while charging would do absolutely nothing because Zerglings don’t have range to attack Zealots during the charge. That change would almost exclusively affect PvT.
2 Likes
Actually I think zealots lost even harder to zerglings in BW. Zerglings are not as strong as they were in straight up damage compared to before because it would be OP in SC2. The big differences are:
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As you said pathing/AI differences. All units but even zerglings were pretty derpy.
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Speed difference. It took longer to get speed for zerglings due to the lower eco in SC1 and even after speed, speedlings are relatively much faster than unupgraded zealots in SC2 compared to SC1.
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The biggest one by far is larva availability. Larva were so scarce in SC1 that simply forcing them to build lings was a win in and of itself. Much more so than in SC2.
1 Like
Brood War Zerglings did have a significantly faster attack rate, so they would perform better in cases where the same number of Zerglings and Zealots are in range and attacking in both engines.
However, that rarely happens because of the pathing differences. Zerglings require more surface area than Zealots for an “even” fight; so the SC2 pathing changes disproportionately benefit Zerglings over Zealots. This effect will usually outweigh other factors.
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it could be a numbers problem.
Example: a few marine vs ling-> ling win the more marine it will be the better the marine trades.
has something to do with the surround behaviour in larger armies.
that brings us to point 2.
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the positioning. open field wins the lings, but if you fight on a narrow spot the Zealot have an advantage and are more efficient.
i test it in “SorteKaninsUnit Test” 10 Zealot wins vs 30 ling. on ramp zalot trade well and open field the zalot wins with 2-3 units. fun fakt: the 2 zealot low life kill 2-3 queens with 0/3.
I want to point out that Adrenal Glands is a hive upgrade.
toss has no photon cannon?
zealots are op, buff zerglings and marines!
It wasnt in hots, its a lotv thing, so zealots work as intended since wol, even buffed with the speed