And damn right. Baneling Busts should become a significant issue. It'd force a Terran player to be a little more conservative with his walling technique. Maybe building where his mineral patch is and keeping units where his harvesters are...

Banelings die to Concussive Shells + Stimpack. Which is the bread+butter of 99% of Terran players.
Siege Tanks (used creatively) completely nullify any attempt a Baneling has.

These things together mean that the Zerg player has to spend precious 50 minerals + 25 gas per Baneling - and you'll need a lot if the Terran player is defending his wall properly... Just to knock through a wall? Even then, the mass speedling wave is going to get munched by Marines and the aforementioned siege tank.

While I do like to see a player using Banelings. I encounter it rarely. Three times I have seen them used to great effect 1) burrowed between a high-yield expanse and where the Command Center goes.. The Terran in this situation flew his Orbital Command to this spot and unloaded like 6 Mules. These Banelings pop up and annihilate his dreams of wealth and economy. He GG'd.

The other time Banelings have been used creatively was through a Nydus Worm. And hell, 1 Baneling with no Melee attack upgrades cant even kill a Probe/Scv/Drone? What's up with that?

Uh, the roach range basically nullifies the advantage that reaper / helions have against them early game, because before this, reapers and to an extent helions could kite roaches so effectively even though roaches are supposed to be a viable counter to them, this helps alleviate that problem. It was very common for Terran to either do a reaper opening (not as much anymore) or a reactor factory opening for double helion, which basically forces the Zerg to get either roaches or more spine crawlers. Making the tech lab require factory in my eyes would not be a good idea. That means the only thing the Terran has early game to defend is just pure marines then. Keep in mind that even though both Zerg and Protoss require a tech structure to build more units, the Roach Warren and Cybercore only require minerals, while a Terran player would need to get both a Factory and Tech Lab going to produce one marauder. I don't think it'd work, it'd basically kill all the 3 rax, 4 rax openings by Terran. I do agree on the VR nerf though, did not like that one bit.

EDIT: You need to watch way more pro games then, banelings are heavily favoured in ZvT to combat the bioball, it's probably the most effective way to counter it, and in ZvP, it's effective against a zealot-sentry army. Banelings have been used to great effect to also kill Planetary fortresses too, because the only other effective Zerg unit for this kind of task is the ultralisk. I honestly think you need to watch more pro games before you start dismissing banelings or making any rash suggestions.

Just for reference:

A Roach moves at 2.25 and 2.925 on creep.
A Hellion moves at 4.25.

This means that a player who knows what he's doing with a group of Hellions can completely run circles around, and into a Zerg players base. Roaches are (and Hydralisks especially) too damn slow. The only real effective counter to the Hellions that a Zerg player has is Spine Crawlers. Which in themselves cost 150 minerals and sacrifice the Zerg players worker count.

And any ranged unit effectively counters a Reaper. Which is why I am against Blizzard continually nerfing Terrans early game harass unit.

Back on topic. Okay, maybe not a Factory requirement for a Tech Lab. Maybe an Engineering Bay?

Hellions never had anything against Roaches.


You're aware there's a Roach speed upgrade? And a decent Zergling surround completely shuts down Hellion micro?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ078P-m2K0#t=4m26s

Good example here of good helion control basically forced the Zerg to overproduce roaches in response, if you notice, even with 8+ roaches the helions were still able to pick off enough to force the Zerg into producing units.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htYrUKryZFM&feature=fvst#t=11m27s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO_JWqogRNc&feature=channel#t=5m08s

Before the Reaper nerf, they were basically the opening to do against Zerg. Morrow probably does it the best, notice how he manages to snipe roaches on creep with Reapers. Notice how the Terran basically contains the Zerg for a good 5 minutes with just mass Reapers, even though he has roaches. Easily allows him to expand and transition into a marauder counter to the mass roaches.

Basically, this Roach buff nullifies any sort of reaper/helion harrass, which I think is good.

You are aware there's a big ol' post at the top of this page I wrote?

Hellions are a hard counter to zerglings, so a zergling surround is completely unviable (economically). It's akin to 'Oh, my opponent is building Bug-Spray... I know, I'll create mass-bugs.'

All this patch has made me do is play Zerg/Protoss instead of Random. I never liked Terran in the first instance and now they are just nasty to play.

Well, one hellion vs a zergling surround, means that the hellion will only hit like 2 zerglings at a time since hellions shoot in a straight line. You also have to factor in the cost of each hellion when calculating how much net damage was dealt during a harass. A good way to help shut down hellion harass is good build placement. You need to try to place your buildings around your mineral line to constrict movement.

The zerg reacted terribly to those hellions in your VOD, Neki.

Warp rays were the only thing that beat me, and after the tiny everyone's afraid to use them. mass ling = containment, out macro them, get corruptors asap, and then end game with brood lords. Rays raped my corruptors (and still would), but no one gets them anymore cuz they're dumb so I win.

It's Void.... Void Rays, I think you combined them with Warp Prisms there.

My point still stands that Void Rays have been nerfed too much now, I still don't understand how people can't kill a couple of Void Rays even if they are fully charged they are still so fragile. If you somehow let them get to critical mass you deserve to lose since you could have facerolled the lightly defended base with your massive ground army while there were only a couple of them. (I'm not talking about anyone in particular so don't take it personally)

It only takes a couple. And it's not hard to get to critical mass at all; just attack a building.

This patch makes me sad. Marauders still haven't been nerfed (Concussive shell, stimpack, and 6 range: could they make kiting any easier?), and void rays have. They're my favorite unit, and back in the beta when they had 7 range, they were even cooler.
Two fully-charged void rays with a little micro and attention paid to terrain could take out medium-sized groups of marines, hydras, or non-blink stalkers fairly easily, and with three, you hardly even need to touch them. Focus firing with voids on small units would actually even hurt you because of the lack of charging, and the fact that they just kill things fast enough at full charge for focus firing small units to be unnecessary work, wasting time you could be using elsewhere.

Except their counter is situational. Because they attack in a straight line their splash becomes irrelevant during a surround and they're no longer a hard counter.

Terran still has the problem with being able to tech switch on the fly. That's the fundamental thing the game needs to change.

Zerg can tech switch far more easily than Terran can. Protoss also can pump various units from the a Gateway to counter almost anything and so doesn't really have much of a problem in that regard either. I don't think that's much of a problem.

I agree that Marauders are an issue as much as Reapers were, but I really hope they don't remove Stim for them as in the campaign, they'll become useless. A bio-ball is simply too strong and easy to micro, but I don't know how to change that without making it completely worthless. Perhaps make Stim-Pack only increase attack speed, not move speed; or maybe increase the cost of stim to 150/150 (it will hurt a lot more than you'd think), or maybe just lower the range on Medivac heal, forcing attention to be given to them.

Void Rays were too strong, no doubt about that. Units that can micro themselves and still win fights are never good for a skill based game.

Terran tech switch requires a lift off. Zerg or protoss tech switch requires construction of new buildings. I don't see how that's easier.

Also, removing stim from marauders would NOT make them useless; they would still have the slow effect, 6 range, high damage to armor relative to cost (more damage than stalkers for much less money), and 1 natural armor. The only real weaknesses the marauder has right now are that it's a ground unit with not-terribly-fast unstimmed attack speed and that it can only attack ground targets, but those only matter if you're getting absolutely nothing but marauders. Less stims pl0x. >.>

Marauders should just cost more.

I think the problem with marauders is that they're extremely good at base raiding, defeating the heavy armor of any army and slow almost all ground units along with the fact they can combine that with increased movement speed, all of these together just makes them so deadly. I don't know how you could fix any of this without severely hampering them though, maybe units should become immune to a slowing effect after 2 applications, who knows. I honestly find the slow + stim the most annoying part about marauders.

Yeah I don't see the point of protoss air now

Carriers are still good.

Carriers are good, yes, but high tech :S
I want phoenix to have splash damage and the scout back :S or maybe any other air unit which can attack both, air and ground. Nothing special like void rays, though.

Oh and yea, marauders are freaking imbalanced. As protoss you are somewhat forced to tech immortals :S

Immortals are worthless of they are hit with an EMP.

Marauders force the protoss to either outmacro, or tech. You cannot one one base withstand the terran marine and marauder from one base, especially if they get medivacs. You must tech, or out-expand the terran due to MMM (even MM) defeating gateway units.

I really am just thinking that marauders need to cost slightly more than a stalker, since a marauder defeats a stalker, and a marauder defeats a zealot, and a marauder defeats a sentry. Not to mention, two marines have a higher DPS than a marauder.