Zergzes! Microbial Shroud Needs Buff?

There are several other uses, such as protecting Zerg ground units if they need to fight or move near Liberator Zones.

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yeah okay, i see. but still, its a spell, which is only usable in certain situations. compare that to any other infestor/viper spell. its still the worst spell of all and tbh, against a lategame terran with liberators, i would prefer vipers with abduct over shroud every time.

Maybe that’s the problem rather than Microbial Shroud. You are so used to having spells that you can use in almost any situation that you just cannot accept a spell that has a smaller niche.

IM, AAM, EMP, Feedback, and Steady-Targeting are all very powerful in their own niche; but all of those spells are far more niche than the spells you are used to using.

All those spells have one thing in common: they are flat out BETTER than Microbial Shroud.

Microbial Shroud’s problem isn’t that it’s too “niche”… it’s just straight up too weak.

I’d add to this Fungal… or Neural… or straight up Corruptors. Microbial Shroud is simply not good enough to be considered at any point in the game. An Infestor using its energy on Shroud is 150 gas and 3 supply thrown out the window for that engagement.

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That ability seems like really lazy way to balance out infested Terran removal. It adds additional meme “attack from air units” - this is the last thing you want. It’s like adding this “heroic” unit caveat to NP just to cover mothership (single unit that has this modifier) Also the fact that hydra is the only AA ground unit zerg has… I mean can devs at least show some effort. I mean total redesign of infy would be much better.

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Guess which unit has its unique modifier too.

False

When did they make it 3 Control, mister whiner?

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emp, feedback are powerfull in almost EVERY game, since there will be always spellcasters ingame. so you will use them in almost every game. heck, emp is like the strongest spell has against toss.

snipe from ghost is also frequently used in terran lategame against units like broods or ultras, which the zerg will ALWAYS build in lategame. so again, you can and will use snipe in every game.

aam is also really really good in every fight. a single aam can change the whole outcome of a fight, or buy you some time to prepare for a fight (since the opponent most likely will back down, if he get hit by an aam)

IM is common and REALLY powerfull in tvt. its a common strat to build a raven and push, when you can disable 2 of your opponents tanks.

again, every of these spell is - compared to MS - really strong and usable in like an entire mu atleast. MS you can use in 2 situations 1.) zvt if the terran has mass libs
2.) against mass air toss, if the toss forgets storm

its not like you could say “yeah ms is really good in zvp” - no, it isnt. its specific designed to counter exactly 2 scenarios in the whole game. thats really bad design.

and tbh, its easy to get some extra value in that spell. like i said, make it so that spells casted in that shroud only do f.e. half dmg. this way, it could get used in every mu as a defensive spell for your army. or give us the dark swarm back by reducing ranged dmg in half or so. one of these two and you suddenly have a good spell, which would be commonly used.

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No, they are not.

Microbial Shroud provides more than 50% damage reduction (because of the order that armor and the damage reduction take place). That is extremely powerful, especially compared to spells like AAM and Guardian shield, which both have much smaller radii and much weaker effects.

In rare cases AAM tops out as a 50-60% damage increase in a smaller area–It would need to be 100% to have the same net effect as shroud. Likewise, very few ranged units deal the 4 base damage they would need for Guardian Shield to be as powerful as shroud (less powerful technically, because the order that armor and the reduction applies makes shroud more powerful than a 50% reduction).

Direct comparisons with EMP, Feedback, Steady-Targeting, and IM are much harder to do, but doubling the effective durability of units in a huge area is generally better than disabling 1 unit or attempting a cast that is easy to cancel.

That is not correct.
EMP’s use outside of TvP has always been very limited, because it is a fairly unreliable way to deal with casters (one that is hard to pull off, easy to mitigate with pre-splitting, and requires multiple casts to actually prevent a caster from using spells) and because killing the casters with another unit (Thors, Liberators, Vikings, Tanks, etc) is usually much easier and more reliable.

Feedback is used a bit more often, but that is partially because Protoss already builds the HT for Storm and Archons and partially because it only takes one click (which cannot miss) to drain all of a caster’s energy.

Have you watched TvZ recently?

No, Steady-targeting is not used that often, mostly because it is far too easy to cancel.

AAM “can” be very good for Marines, Liberators, or Battlecruisers against very durable units like Roaches and Ultralisks. It is usually crap for everything else; and no the effect of AAM is not nearly as powerful as shroud, both in terms of its effect on individual units and on the actual area/number-of-units it affects.

Sure, IM is very powerful in small engagements. In larger engagements its power starts to drop off a cliff. This is why Terran rarely continues to use Ravens for IM outside of early-game pushes in either TvP or TvT unless the enemy army is mostly comprised of Battlecruisers.

You can say the exact same thing about EMP, IM, and Feedback. Each of those spells also only has about 2 cases where they are useful.

Steady-targeting has only one case: Enemy is Bio and doesn’t have the sight, range, or speed to reach the Ghost.

Heck, AAM is only useful if you are using specific low-burst units and the opposing army is relatively tough, otherwise its effect is weaker than just about any form of splash damage in the game.

infestor/marine should be pretty good in team games

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Its pretty obvious the root problem is Zerg only has one ground to air unit, the hydra, and they clump up really badly for splash damage. Its the whole reason ITs were ever in the game.

But my guess is all decisions at blizzard are made by whoever uses the current buzz words and talks the loudest. If they have people who understand game design, they arent in positions to make decisions.

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I feel that it is not directly an issue of the spell being too weak, it is more of a problem of it not synergizing with correct situations in which to use it. Let me elaborate.
Lets take vs protoss first because it is faster. The best way to deal with hydras is basically storm. Shroud does nothing to help there. The only real scenario I can think off that is it usefull is some mass queens + infestors vs pure skytoss, as all the splash damage that protoss uses to remove hydras is not affected by shroud.

Against terran it is a bit more difficult, but I feel the point stands. Dealing with liberator zones has to be looked at with the context of what is behind the liberator zones and when to move under them for a zerg ground army. Basically, it is useless to try to actually beat liberator zones in the vast majority of cases. You either have a definitive advantage over them in terms of a way to deal with them (say vipers, corruptors) or are moving while swarming the opposing position. In either case, the point does not tend to be stay under them with hydras and fight them off (in my experience). Liberators still one shot the fast things that get on top of whatever is behind them, and if you have enough of that mass of cheap fast things you can swarm the opposing position regardless of microbial shroud. If you HAVE to fight liberators, staying behind them to shoot them with hydras tends to only make those hydras blow up to tank fire or outdpsed by bio regardless of the microbial shroud. So basically, if you are running past them you care little about the damage reduction, if you fight them you want a way to deal with them that is safe from the support they have behind. I hope I made sense.

Anyways, the point is not that the spell itself is bad, it is more that it doesn’t synergize with the actual ways in which zerg deals with the problems microbial srhoud helps dealing with.

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It’s not that microbial shroud is particularly bad, although it could honestly be changed to a lair tech requirement and be fine. It’s moreso that zerg only has 1 ground to air unit in the hydralisk, and no units that deal aoe to air on auto attacks. In addition, t/p usual counters to hydras, i.e: tanks and storm, are unaffected by the shroud and are usually made in conjunction with t/p sky armies anyway. So while microbial shroud is a powerful ability, it’s not actually very impactful because hydras are not losing straight up fights to air units, they’re losing them vs aoe.

Honestly with the amount of hate the infestor has been getting, I’m in favour of a total redesign at this point. Like think thematically about what the “infestor” is supposed to do, it’s supposed to “infest” stuff, right? Yet its currently abilities fit moreso with the “defiler”, like growing fungus on enemies fits more so with a units that “defiles”, as does a temporary mind control and sending tiny microbes to shield zerg from air units.

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Shroud doesn’t have to help against Storm, and it would be overpowered if it did.

However, shroud covers 4x as much radius as Storm, so it takes about 4 Storms to eliminate 1 shroud as a safe-zone against air units (temporarily, since the shroud lasts almost 4x longer).

You have limited creativity then. Shroud can also be used to protect ground units that cannot shoot air, such as Ultralisks as they go after whatever ground units Protoss is using to support its air army.

Ok people zerg got a meme ability, nothing to get up in the fences really every race has them(blink dts,Nuke etc).

As i have said multiple times races should fight mass air with air units, making hydras be able to go toe to toe with mass air is going to be broken especially if their cost stays the same(100/50)

The ability is very good when facing carriers but calling it a safe-zone is an exaggeration :sweat_smile:

Blink DTs are dope, what are you talking about. Playing Shadow Stride on BlizzCon Classic relieved us from ZvZ semifinals that I was hoping for.

No, calling Microbial Shroud a safe zone against air units is not an exaggeration.

The reduction applies before armor, so most air units deal significantly less than 50% damage through it.

At +3/3 against +3/3/3, Microbial Shroud will reduce damage from Carriers by at least 80%, Battlecruisers by at least 68.75%, Void Rays by at least 59% against armored units (that is when charged against 0 base armor otherwise the reduction is much higher) or 75% against non-armored units, and Liberators by about 53.3%.

Even if Microbial Shroud applied after armor so that it always reduced damage by 50% like its description states, it would still be an extremely powerful ability.

It is what it describes reduces damage 50%, the ability does not have to “know” that your units have armor. It really is the only thing that makes the ability really useful against carriers. Even against BC there are better options

You are blind if you provide this video as a proof of Microbial Shroud failure. In a proper engagements with it 26 Hydralisks vs 15 Battlecruisers Zerg killed 7 BCs and lost 9 hydras while it lasted. 31 Hydralisks killed 3 out of 10 BCs while lost 3 hydras showing total 72% damage reduction.

The only problem here is Microbial shroud should last longer. Otherwise you need too much infestors and you are doomed to use suboptimal firepower per supply.

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