Zergzes! Microbial Shroud Needs Buff?

Yes, of course, in a dream situation where the terran does not make siege tanks or any other unit could work. The issue is that we already have things that work in real situations. Beastyqt was totally trolled to the point that someone as bias as he said he doesn’t believe the ability works vs bc

So you are one of the gang “Zerg don’t use stuff until it’s broken”. I see.

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I love the ability and how it looks but you have to be realistic. When I see a game of pros where this ability is used to counter bc, I will give you the reason. Maybe it could be used with roach/ravager/infestor or with hydra/viper, but only with hydras… I see it complicated

BCs are designed to kill ground. Thus getting close to them with something other than Hydra/Infestors is bad idea.

Zerg’s anti air has always been its biggest weakness.

The ability doesn’t need to “know that the units have armor”. That is an absurd statement.

If Microbial Shroud actually worked as described (reduce damage by 50%), then it would apply after armor, not before it. This would consistently reduce damage taken by 50%.

Applying before armor effectively doubles the effect of armor against the attacking unit and makes the reduction significantly stronger than 50% in most cases

Zerg usually takes a long time to use stuff that is broken too.

Brood Lord + Infestor was pretty much broken since its inception. Zerg players just didn’t start using it until late in WOL.

If I tell you that the carrier has a damage of 8 and I tell you to reduce it by 50% how much do you have left? You don’t need to know the armor of any unit to make that calculation

You absolutely do need to know the armor for that equation.

If the unit has 0 armor, then the damage will be 4.

If the unit has 1 armor, then the damage will either be 3.5 or 3 depending on whether the armor applies before or after the damage reduction. The result of an ability that actually reduces damage by 50% will be 3.5, whereas an ability that reduces damage before armor would result in 3 damage for more than a 50% reduction instead.

Likewise, for an ability like the scrapped Hardened Shields ability from WOL and HOTS, if the ability applied before armor then the maximum damage to an Immortal with shields and +3 shield armor would be 7, not 10; as any attack that actually deals more than 10 damage would be reduced to 10 first and then lose 3 more damage.

You propose how to nerf a ability that is not too strong. :thinking: I have no doubt that the ability can be made more useless but that is not the idea.

No, I am proposing that the ability be changed to do exactly what it says it does; just like Hardened Shields did (reduce damage to a maximum of 10 because it applied after armor) when it was still around.

If Microbial Shroud is too weak then it’s damage reduction should be increased above 50%; not designed so that it scales up to 80% against some units and 53% against others.

Yes, why not, it would be nice to be able to use the microbial shroud against liberators. The damage reduction should be something like 75%

Well, if it needs to be that strong after testing that’s fine, as long as it is a consistent 75% reduction against all air units with non-spell attacks.

It’s just my opinion considering the current characteristics of ms.

agree zerg was favored in late game…but zergs whole strategy is to survive until the late game. now it’s survive then die.

because ins early/mid WOL, zerg was dead before the lategame.

maps were HEAVILY in favour of any non-zerg at that time. remember maps like steppes of war or lost temple? a normal macrogame wasnt really possible on such maps, since it was so unbelievable hard to take even a 3rd base… something that is the absolute standard nowadays.

because of that, some strats were unbelievable strong against zerg (4gate hi). it took until the end of WOL, before the game was actually playable for zerg, because especially maps have gotten better then.

Shroud + hydras is worst than mass corruptors + vipers, and corruptors/vipers isn’t a good counter vs skytoss/skyterran, that why mass infestors was played. So there is currently no real options to beat T/P lategame.
It’s less a problem in TvZ, because it’s harder to get skyterran, while skytoss is really easy to get.

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at lower leagues? yeah maybe.

on higher leagues? hell no. recent pro matches show that zerg is favored or at least on even ground lategame. reynor vs zest for example.

Does shroud need a buff? Yes
Does zerg need a buff? Meh…

I don’t even think it really does, we are just so used to spells being overpowered thatwe assume they all need to be. Nerf neural, nerf para bomb, fungal, emp, snipe, and storm. That way we can have a dynamic paced late game rather than turtling behind massive armies that can’t engage because splash will obliterate them.

If we nerfed all the aoe spells tho, across all races, we would have a game nearly 100% focused on macro, where people would turtle up until they maxed on army and upgrades and have only one big push then gg out. Spells create comeback mechanics and specific tech advantages that may or may not win the game depending on how/when they are used.

Shroud specifically is underwhelming given its teching requirements and energy cost compared to its actual capabilities. Something has to give or it will be the most underused spell available because no one will use it ever. Now i do think zerg had other tools available, so i wouldn’t call it a need, but it at least needs some realistic utility.

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