So, I was pretty comfortable for about one and a half months sitting at the top 3 in my Platinum League... However, this all changed following patch 1.1, when the Zealot rushes lost favouritism due to their +5 second build time... which in turn gave precedence to the connoseurs Stilton of all Cheese tactics.... the Photon Cannon rush...

It is ironic that, being in Platinum, I was subject to 4 defeats in a row, from cannon rushes. A further 2 defeats later, due to 6 pools, And all in one day? That was me relegated to Gold. Being back in Gold, I was subject to very few cannon rushes, a couple 6 pools... most games deteriorated into lengthy wars of attrition. I also fended off quite a few 5 and 7 roach rushes.

About three weeks of playing at Gold, I seem to have gotten used to this new patch. In the last four days I won 18 out of 22 games and I guess the ~4:1 win ratio was enough to put me back up to Platinum... So here I am, back in Platinum and I'm feeling great... I feel like if I can continue this recent winning spree, I might even fancy myself a low-level Diamond player for a little while!

So, what happens? I play 5 games in Platinum and four of them turn out to be 6 pools and cannon rushes. Why is it that this cheese is lingering around literally, like a mouldy old piece of Stilton? Why were my most enjoyable games ever played in Gold, and not in Platinum?

I play Random... my strongest race is most probably Protoss - since I enjoy Sentry forcefields, Blink stalkers and chargelot micro. Coupling these units with some unique pylon placement and Warp-Prism harassment means I almost always have the upper hand economically, which ends up in a transition to Collosi or High/Dark Templar into Archons. GG.

Second strongest race, I would have to say is Zerg. I almost always play an economic opening - going for a 14 pool, or even 12 at the earliest. I find Zerg to be really underpowered when fighting against Terran and Protoss. I have to resort to Nydus Worms (very costly in terms of Gas) to damage their economy, and that is only to be on a level footing. My favourite technique is creatively using littering banelings around the map behind vision blockers and on top of ramps... It really does wonders to the "attack-move" MMM-BioBall. My record, I think, has been when 7 Banelings killed around 25 Marines and 2 Marauders... Those Medivacs sure looked kinda pointless.

So, Protoss strongest, Zerg second... Where does this leave Terran? I hate playing Terran. I find them far too easy. This is not me being arrogant, I simply do not feel challenged when I get Terran. Three or four barracks, a planetary fortress on Gold, dropping a handful of Mules... a couple scans here and there.. Siege tanks to stop anything getting close... Point-Defence Drones, for the player who doesn't like taking damage... It frustrates me. The two things I do enjoy as Terran, is a delayed Banshee with Cloak, or a delayed 4-strong squad of Reapers. But, this is just to practice my micro - I really do not need the economic advantage that these units give me.

Where has this all been going? Well, I am glad you've read this far - since this where I get bored of recanting my tales of journeying through middle-earth and fending off nazguls... Just checking you're still paying attention... no seriously... Here is what I think:

Hydralisks are too slow and too fragile to be a Tier 2 unit. Roaches have been heavily, heavily nerfed during beta. They went from regenerating really quickly above ground and having two armour... to regenerating slightly quickly underground, one armour and also moving a hell of a lot (30%, to be precise) slower underground... What's more, Burrow is a Tier 2 research now. So my Tier 1 unit doesn't get to have any of it's regenerative bonuses until I after I get my Lair.

The Queen is a goddamn requirement to function as a Zerg player. Not only this, but each hatchery you possess pretty much NEEDS a queen to be a viable investment. And I won't get into the whole APM argument here, since that is not the point I want to make, but it is relevant. Let's compare the Queen and her two abilities Spawn Larvae and Creep Tumors to the Terran and Protoss equivalents, Chronoboost and Mules/Scans/Supply Drops respectively (we will ignore Transfusion, since this is only viable if you have MORE than 1 queen per hatchery).

Spawn Larvae has a cooldown and requires a handful of excessive Overlords to be 100% useful. Mules require no supply, and also, have no cool-down. A mule harvests minerals at 6x the rate at which an SCV does, and can also mine a fully saturated mineral patch - as in, if 3 SCV's are harvesting a patch, the MULE can harvest at the same time. Chronoboost, I will be lenient on, because Protoss do infact need a speed-boost for most of their Tech and Units... But, once Warpgate is finished and a second Nexus is going up - they really are spoilt for choice on what they want to 'Operation CWAL' into completion. Drop a couple Forges, and you can have 3,1,2 or 2,2,2 upgrades in very little time at all.

How is Spawning Larvae to contend with these two (completely free) abilities? People often tell me, that Zerg are cheap since they get map-control and therefore more bases easily. The 300 cost for a Hatchery is less than justified, since a Hatchery only gives 2 supply - a Command Center and a Nexus both give +12 and +10 (respectively, I think). So, you factor in the Overlord cost, and let's not forget about the mandatory Queen... This means that a Zerg expanstion requires 550 minerals to be on par with a Terran or Protoss Expansion. And, our hatcheries do not continually build up energy to unleash a storm of MULES on a Gold Expansion for example... Neither do they give us the ability to speed up our Lair>Spire>Hive>Greater Spire>Corrupter>Broodlord (which is just a ridiculous tech path, in my opinion)...

I often complain that Hydralisks are far too slow, when I mention that Stimpack completely destroys the viability of Banelings in a head-on encounter.. people tell me to spread creep... spread creep? Are you joking? I'm too busy trying to play here! I find it VERY interesting that Blizzard have given massive health bonuses to all Zerg buildings, but our little Creep-Tumors are still 25 hitpoints (I think). This leads me on to my next complaint about Detectors. Terrans already get their Com-Sat scan-sweep... They get Ravens too! With their point-defence drones, your slowdralisks can pretty much nuke themselves... The Protoss Observer, although a Starcraft 1 Classic, gives far too much advantage to an already powerful race... Starcraft 2 is very much about information, scouting, countering and knowing what your opponent is up to.

What do the Zerg get? An Overlord, costing you 100 minerals, and then let's give this Overlord, and ONLY this overlord Detection. For another 50 minerals and 100 gas. So that's 150 Minerals and 100 Gas for our detector, which also gives us our 8 supply. Okay, we get 'Spawn Changeling'... Any player with eyes can tell that that Marine, Zergling or Zealot doesn't belong to them. So, for Zerg, the most reactionary race in Starcraft 2, we have the most penalties incurred for attempting to scout. Losing a 50 Minerals and 100 Gas (I think) Observer is a no-biggie for a Protoss Player. What's more, their invisibility pretty much garauntee's them to harvest some valuable scouting information. Most units are dying for a chance to blow an overlord or overseer out of the sky and supply block the Zerg.

Right, I've reached my limit of 1400 word limit for this topic. I'm going to wrap it up now...

I would like to see ATLEAST 25 to 50% of the following things implemented in a Patch BEFORE Heart of the Swarm:

• Infestors - can now cast Neural Parasite while Burrowed / alternatively, casting Neural Parasite causes the Infestor to burrow again afterwards, retaining control of the target unit.
  
• Hydralisks - now have 100 hitpoints / alternatively, start with Range 6 attack and get a Speed Upgrade instead.
  
• Burrow - is now a Tier 1 upgrade from the Hatchery.
  
• Overlords - gain +50 hitpoints and +1 armour
  
• Overseers - gain +75 hitpoints and +2 armour
  
• Lairs - Have a limit of 7 Larvae produced naturally (without Queen)
  
• Hives - Have a limit of 9 Larvae produced naturally (without Queen)
  
• Alternatively Queens now cost 100 or are produced from somewhere other than a Hatchery/Hive. Maybe Spawning Pool?
  

If you didn't read all of this, please do not comment. I am not trying to be arrogant or whatever, but a TL:DR comment is not conducive to the health and vitality of a discussion I hope to create. If you think this is a wall of text, i suggest you leave. Do you read a book and think, nahh wall of text after the first paragraph? I have tried very hard to punctuate and keep this structured. Furthermore, I may only be a Gold/Platinum level player and you may (by all rights) retort that Blizzard beleive Zerg to be optimally balanced at the Diamond level... But, why then is there such an animosity against Terrans? Why do Terrans hate it when someone 6-pools them? Why does a photon-cannon rush end in Idra-esque cursing and swearing?

The answer I beleive answers many of these questions is that Blizzard have created too much complexity in the Zerg gameplay mechanic and now regret it. Their current stance is that "Zerg are Balanced for 20% of our player-base" (ie. in Diamond). What this translates to me as, is this: Zerg will only have major balance changes when Heart of the Swarm is released (and if you bought it). But let this final paragraph not influence the discussion here either. I do not want to flame blizzard more than necessary. Starcraft 2 is a simply awesome game, and is set for great things - balancing such a unique and vibrant game in a saturated genre such as RTS, is bound to be difficult.

Your turn, let us discuss, like men, what you think and feel are the current problems in Melee. Please reply to my thoughts and comments in a constructive way, and feel free to point out any errors you think I may have made.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 5 2010, 1:52 am by Cardinal.

You're just raging because you played 14 hatch and got rushed. On some maps you should never 14 hatch, on others it's MU dependent. It's great of you to post such a huge post, but all I got from it was that you lose a couple games in platinum to "cheese." Look man, if its in the game its a valid strat. Play safer openings and you won't lose to rushes. Lastly, you're in platinum/gold, if you're in those leagues your problems are more than balance related. You need to work an macro and micro, on fundamentals. If you do that you'll be diamond in no time and might be taking games off players who were mopping the floor with you before.

@Crazed: I don't think that's the point of his post...

He's trying to give constructive criticsm about the mechanics of Zerg both by comparing it to Terran and Protoss, and by its concepts.

I totally agree about the Queen. I've also advocated against the queen. The whole concept behind it is flawed. It is a Zerg "Hero typed" unit that costs as much as a spawning pool and roach warren (i.e. costs a whole fucking lot) but has zero abilities in the battlefield. It is a completely unidirectional unit that is both worthless offensively, as well as defensively demeaning.

While it certainly covers the macro-ing boost that every race has, it does it with a huge potential penalties against the Zerg player. Any ball of tier one bio units can EASILY snipe out the queen. Not only is it a big target, it is weak and cannot do a lot of damage. It is completely worthless in defense. But the worse part about the queen is that it has become the crux of zerg macro. You simply cannot go without a queen, and killing the queen is as good, if not better, as overlord harass. So now you have to protect both units, both being extremely vulnerable. Moreover, queens are expensive, and take a long, LONG time to build.

I think a better queen would, as you've said, cost less (~100 min). It should also be created MUCH faster (maybe 20-50% faster) but be weaker somehow, and only should serve as a last resort for defense (which even now, before this theoretical nerf, cannot keep up). It also need to not move like a freaking snail with a 20ton anvil as its shell when outside of creep. This way, the penalty for losing the queen will not be as high, and multiple queens can become a viable strategy, rather than a clutch that zerg players just have to go through when expoing.

The one and only advantage that the queen has above all else is its ability to attack air, making it harder to harass. But still, two phenoixes will just laugh at the queen.

Yes. I do think you (Cardinal) is being arrogant. I highly dislike it, but I don't really disagree. Except for the fixing part. Anyways. Besides that, I think leagues are pointless. They're useless at determining a player's skill level and they mean nothing. You could take two same Diamond players and see first hand that their skill level differs like God to an insect.

On the other hand, I disagree with everything UnholyUrine said. Queens are not useless. If you're getting them killed every so often, then I find that fact very funny. And I would like to imagine you being very horrid. No offense, but I have no idea whether you are a talented player. It seems to me that horrid players have a tendency to complain rather than to find a way to fix their problems themselves.

If you've ever player BW melee seriously, then you should realize SCII Zerg is child's play and should not complain about its difficulty at all. It is also very strong at high level play, (possibly the strongest), and that fact made it guarantied that Zerg won't change anytime soon.

Funny thing is I don't play much at all... I'm saying that they get killed so often because from every game I watch they always get sniped off
And I'm not saying that Zerg isn't strong or is a low level play or whatever.. I'm just saying that the whole concept behind the queen is unidirectional and.. honestly.. feel very boring for me.

Anyways.. if u want to grill me, you got me, because I suck at melee (anyone who knows me knows that I suck at melee) but from a design POV, the queen's concept is bad also.

Wow. I posted this like 21 days ago, and it's only getting replies now? I had to re-read the OP to learn what I was talking about haha...

@Crazed - it appears you read the first 2 or 3 paragraphs and jumped to reply. Or you skim read the whole post and didn't let any of it sink it. You miss the point entirely. I am not 'raging' that I lost to perfectly viable 6-pool and cannon openings.

@BeDazed - the whole point about a queen is that it is a fucking liability. You completely disagree with what Unholy says? Why? Can't you see the fundamental difference between a Queen and say a Nexus? or an Orbital Command?

A Zergling rush is completely denied by a simple wall. A cannon in the mineral line, two to three zealots in the mineral line, a handful of marines or a bunker. What's more, a Zergling rush cannot suicide to knock out something vital of your opponent, maybe a pylon? Big deal... Whereas, 8 marines or 4 zealots can consistently suicide and take out a queen.

Once your queen is lost, you are behind in terms of economy, army and everything else you planned to do. You can't reproduce your queen while you are using upgrading your hatchery into a lair, nor can you produce a queen while you are researching any of the three fundamental researches available from a Lair (Burrow, Overlord movement, Overlord transport). And this basically means that a one-base Zerg strategy is not on a level footing with one-base Protoss or one-base Terran.

So, as Zerg you go economy into Zerglings, try to damage your opponent, take an expo if its safe. Then you're effectively playing blind unless you want to sacrifice overlords. If your opponent attacks in the window between your Tier 1 and Tier 2 transition, you will lose a queen, a hatchery and a handful of overlords. All depending on your ability to defend. That is a big risk to lose is it not? Sure 20 speedlings can deny a nexus which has been put up with no defence. But that's all they lose, the nexus. An orbital command can just lift off, or a planetary fortress denies pretty much any ground assault until Tier 3.

What I hate most about it is this Roach and Hydralisk bullshit. Hydralisks cost 100m and 50g. A Roach costs 75m and 25g. Hydralisks have 80 hitpoints and no armour.

A Marauder (for comparison) costs 100m and 25g, does x2 damage Vs. Armoured units and gets Stimpack and Slow. Also, great synergy with Medivacs and Marines. On top of this, a Marauder has 125 hitpoints and 1 armour.

The damage output per area onto a point (size of enemy ball, average range and damage per second) is the highest for Terran. Sure, Zerg have a high damage output simply because of Hydralisks, but they are so slow and so fragile that they desperately need Creep to fight effectively.

Furthermore, the Creep Tumours are completely temporary. A Zerg Player can spend 20 minutes building a creep-highway connecting bases and leading to the enemy. One scan sweep or Raven/Observer will knock out all creep-tumours and the creep fades away. All Zerg units move 30% faster on creep.

One final (rant) about Terran is the ridiculous range on their units. Siege Tanks and their flying counterparts Vikings are beyond a joke. No other race gets this sort of advantage. Sure, Blink-Stalkers and Chargelots have ways to cope with minimizing the range, but doing this anywhere near a Ball is destined for failure. The Collosi comes close but that requires an expensive upgrade, takes a lot of time, and is easily countered by 2 to 4 Vikings.

This. Mostly the hydralisk rant. Hydra should not fucking cost more than roaches for how much balls they suck. There is literally no point in them except for anti air, which they are only medicore at. I'm diamond zerg, and most of my losses are from me getting amnesia, and forgetting how much fucking balls hydras really do suck "Eh, I'm 2 bases up on him! I have all this extra cash that I couldn't get rid of even if I used every larva on roaches. Hydra's can't be that bad!" (CAFG has been eliminated)

Ont he flip side, I can win every zvz by just showing muta ling, causing them to invest in the god awful unit, and rolling over them with 9000+ 2/1 lings, and like 3 mutas. Hydras are such a fucking joke.

@Cardinal.
Sorry. But if someone kept suiciding Marines and Zealots just to kill a queen, I'd rather be thankful.
And yes, I can tell the difference between a Queen and say a Nexus. And I for one find it weird that you worry about that. There's something fundamentally wrong with your game play if you are indeed worrying about your Queen. It's not a liability. It's how the game works. You live with it. Sure, Zerg is a 'tad' harder than Terran or Protoss. But in the end, you're only ranting about something that you suck at. It only proves that you indeed suck.

You know what's wrong about your gameplay? It's as if you make Queens sound easy to kill. You will realize that against any decent Zerg, it would rather be a loss trying to kill a Queen rather than win it outright. You're trying to make it so it has to be 'easy'. Well guess what. It's not. It's just as hard for anyone to face someone who's doing it right. Even against a Zerg. You completely ignored what I said earlier. You haven't watched GSL. If you have, then you'd realize how powerful Zerg is, and that it's pointless talking about how Queens are a liability.

It also seems that you haven't played BW melee any seriously either. I say again. You would realize how stupid a statement you're making currently. You can't make it so every race is just as 'easy' to play. Then it wouldn't be balanced. And it wouldn't bring 'freshness' to the game play. Don't expect that of Blizzard. Rather, hone your skills further in order to get rid of your disability.

I'm sorry. But all of what you say is so biased toward what you see, and not what others see- it only seems like that Zerg sucks so much. When in reality, it can be strong. Also. I really hate your complaint about Queens. If you have never put up with defilers, then I suggest you have not realized what real pain in the ass is, and don't know what you're talking about.

Finally, someone else who talks sense around here... (CAFG)

Edit: Ninja'd by BeDazed.

I agree entirely with CAFG here... in ZvZ I just goad the enemy into investing into Hydralisks by harassing his economy with a handful of mutalisks. Then I steamroll him with zerglings and/or roaches before he realises that Hydras were a mistake and that infestors and spore crawlers should've been what he invested in.

@BeDazed. It's my opinion, argue with it as much as you like but I find it quite disparaging how you'd rather resort to insulting me than in discussing the balancing act of Starcraft 2. As such I don't really want to reply to your comments any more.

If by balance, do you mean to imbalance more- and ruin what's balanced to something illogical? Sorry. But you're not even 1600+ diamond. Why should anyone have to take your balancing consideration seriously? It could be that your skills are not ready. And that your losses are from your own mistakes, not your unit's. And that it would be better to learn how to cope with this problem, rather than to erase it just by making your units simply 'more powerful'. Do you not see the difference? There are two same Zergs. One being you, and the other being someone more sucky. But the sucky guy kept practicing to 'solve' the problem instead of erasing it. Tell you what, in just a few months- that guy would probably own the hell out of you. Every single possible match up. Why? Because there's a difference between 'solving' a problem and 'erasing' a problem.

You cannot simply call something 'imbalanced' out of your simple 'few hundred game' experience. People play thousands of games in order to determine whether something is balanced or not. And of course, playing that much- you cannot suck. It's insulting to me that you're complaining about something that can simply be fixed out of a few rounds of practices.

Hydralisks cost so much more and require lair tech because they have greater range un-upgraded, greater DPS, and can target air units -they also don't take extra damage from immortals. This makes them a very different unit than the roach, with a different purpose, requiring a different cost.

No they don't, it's fucking 5. Fucking STALKERS start with 6!
On paper this sounds good, but it never feels that way in game cuz they die so damn fast.
I feel like this is blizzard's mentality entirely, "It hits air, STRONG ENOUGH FOR ME!"
But they still activate the dam shields! Better question: Who the fuck get's immortals over collosi? Immortals are as worthless as hydras...
Yes, one is good, the other is awful.
hydra has over roach: air att, +1 range, and slight dps
roach has over hydra: HP, armor, an ability, speed, Tier1

I just want my fucking T2 units to be better than my T1's, especially when they cost more!

CAFG has it right once more.

Except Immortals only have one use and that is versus 100% Stalkers / Roaches / Thors&Siege Tanks... They are hard countered by every races' Tier 1 units. Zerglings, Zealots and Marines.

I just cannot see how an 80 Hitpoint unit, with no armour, less range and no bonus damage can exist alongside a cheaper 125 hitpoint unit, with 1 armour, equal range, an slow-on-attack ability with double damage against Armoured units... Furthermore, the Hydralisk is an entire Tier above Marauders. It's ONLY advantage is that it can shoot air units. This is not even taking into consideration Stimpacks which increases the Marauders attack and movement by 50%.

So, all of a sudden this Tier 1 unit is dealing 13 DPS (26 DPS against armoured units), moving at 3.375 and effectively kiting ground units due to this insane movement and slow-on-attack damage.

All Hydralisks get is 14.5 DPS, extremely fragile (45 hitpoints less than a Marauder, with no armour) and requires Creep to be present for their movespeed to be of any value in such a comparison.

Edit: Just incase someone makes a smart-arse comment.
30 Seconds to build Supply depot
65 Seconds to build Barracks
110 Seconds to research Stim
50 Seconds to research Concussive Shells
~255 seconds for ability to create Marauders as described above.
With total 350 Minerals + 175 Gas cost

65 Seconds to build Spawning Pool
80 Seconds to upgrade to lair (queen is mandatory before this: +50)
40 seconds to build Hydralisk Den
~235 seconds for ability to create Hydralisks (with no range) as described above.
With total 500 Minerals + 200 Gas cost.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 27 2010, 6:08 am by Cardinal.

Hydras start with greater range than roaches, is the point. They always have greater range.

8 compared to 14.5 is a major difference. 8 (hydras) multiplied by 20 is also a major difference compared to 12 (roaches) multiplied by 8. They never feel good in game because you don't know how to use them.

Whatever. Blizzard, the multi-million dollar studio knows less than the brilliant CAFG.

Okay, hydras attacking an immortal shield do 12 DPS, whereas a roach will do 5 DPS. 10/.83 = 12; 10/2 = 5.

Actually an armoured attribute isn't necessarily good, it's just different. This is because so many units do plus damage vs armoured. You can't treat armoured as a positive aspect just as you can't treat light armour as a positive aspect. Also, it's a great DPS difference, and +2 range with upgrades. The roach has greater speed only when upgraded, and the greatest pro for roaches is their Hp.

Immortals are good not only against armies of pure roaches or thors. It's simply good to make the immortals in your army target fire units that receive the 50 damage output. The true power of the immortal is the shield, so it's good to have siege tanks or marauders firing at it rather than at your stalkers. Immortals are pretty good bolsters to any army, and are also used in drops in high level play. Immortals are also being used in PvT openings in conjunction with sentries.

Also in ZvZ pure hydras aren't as effective as an army with roaches mixed in to soak some of the DPS.

Been watching a lot of high level Terran Vs Protoss replays recently.

Zerg don't even factor into the argument.

Command centers can fucking fly.

Planetary Fortresses are fucking insane. Especially in 1v1 maps where holding your third expansion is crucial. Whether this is 'omg terran are borked' or whether or not Starcraft 2 map design is piss-poor - i'll let you decide.

Terran has three units with insane range: Thor anti air, Viking anti air (and anti-colossus) and Siege Tanks. The highest ranged unit the Zerg can ever really hope to mass is Hydras with a range of 5...(broodlords excluded since all other races can reach the top tier in half the time)...

The only viable way for a zerg player to take out a Planetary Fortress is with an insane number of banelings - either that or going for Air - which takes so goddamn long that a Terran player can easily mass vikings/make thors.

But I was excluding Zerg from this argument because well, I've pretty much explained why.

Okay, so you watched high level players play? So... Where are your links? Your opinion alone doesn't mean much, and you watching games of better players doesn't mean much either. If you make a claim you're better off backing it up with a link or some sort of source, if you want anyone to take your seriously.

e_o the dreaded cannon rush... and I was hoping it got left back in sc1... but I soon figured different when it happened to me about 3-4 games ago.... they REALLY need to fix that somehow, that "strategy" is just completely gay...

PF's aren't overpowered. If you wish to lock the terran down just fungal growth the fuck out of the SCVs at the PF or something. They're really really expensive to tackle head on, but well worth it.

Yeah and Infestors are cheap enough to go around fungal growth'ing SCVs. Besides I wasn't talking about Zerg. With a Fungal Growth you can get at most 6 to 9 SCVs / Mules. While the Planetary fortress can get a couple shots off you've probably not done enough damage to justify getting within its range.



There's just one example. There are more, but really: Command Centers can fly. SCVs can repair. Planetary Fortresses are insanely difficult to take out. Mules repair a hell of a lot. What more do you want? Must I fucking draw you a picture?

Sure, in that replay, Mana should have invested in a few immortals. But when your opponent has his 3rd and 4th expansions with Planetary Fortresses, and about 80 SCVs in total - there is very little that you can do to hope to damage his economy/destroy his bases.