Patch 1.4.0

Neural Parasite no longer affecting massive units is by far the dumbest balance change since the game has been released imo. I quit playing zerg a few months ago and switched to terran cuz I was sick of zerg being such a harder race to win with, and now this... seriously? WTF is the point of neural parasite if you can't control massive units. That is pretty much its primary function.

What now? Neural parasite a stalker? Maybe a zealot or a marine... seriously wtf blizz. At least it's just PTR so hopefully that doesn't make it to the actual ladder. Again, I don't even play zerg anymore so I'm not ranting cuz I feel cheated, I just genuinely think it's a horrible balance change. They need to stop making drastic changes to fix very specific, pidgeon-holed problems. There's always a better solution.

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Originally Posted by Jabber Wookie

Neural Parasite no longer affecting massive units is by far the dumbest balance change since the game has been released imo. I quit playing zerg a few months ago and switched to terran cuz I was sick of zerg being such a harder race to win with, and now this... seriously? WTF is the point of neural parasite if you can't control massive units. That is pretty much its primary function.

What now? Neural parasite a stalker? Maybe a zealot or a marine... seriously wtf blizz. At least it's just PTR so hopefully that doesn't make it to the actual ladder. Again, I don't even play zerg anymore so I'm not ranting cuz I feel cheated, I just genuinely think it's a horrible balance change. They need to stop making drastic changes to fix very specific, pidgeon-holed problems. There's always a better solution.

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Maybe it wasnt a great change, but it was NESSISARY for half the massive units.

Really, and I play zerg against Grandmaster players on my EU smurf account.. you could literally JUST go infestor/ling and beat almost any protoss every time. Infestors were WAY WAY WAY too good, shuts down every protoss unit and strategy in the game. So honestly, while I dont think this is the right change, I personally think infestors need MORE nerfs if anything. Infested terrans have one of the highest DPS in the game, and can spew out like 30 of them to take out a nexus + 5 cannons, all able to be gotten within 8 minutes??.. THEN add fungal growth ontop of that (basically storm + rooting in one ability) and being able to Parasite motherships and carriers?? geez.

Zerg has been the best race for awhile now, if you can deal with terran. Honestly, Zerg is the easiest race to win with right now (for past 3 months), you build infestors and a-move basically. Try playing Protoss at a high level and not even being able to leave your base, use any air units for harassing or even take a 2nd expansion thanks to all 3 infestor spells dominating protoss. Lings are overwhelming meat shields which protoss requires AOE to fight, but you still have 15 infestors behind that and laugh as you A-move win. Forcefield just makes your units easily clumped up for fungal and infested marines.

If it wasnt for ghosts with EMP's crazy size, infestors would single handedly beat terran too (esp once broodlords are out)

Zerg players need to stop listening to idra and actually start learning how to play the game, their race has always been insanely strong (fruitdealer and Nestea won the first two GSL's remember).. Take a look at Destiny, a low-masters player normally, who is beating top korean pros going ONLY infestors. Once infestors are nerfed, he will be back in low-masters. Thats not balance, thats called something being broken.

#1 zerg tip for getting better - Dont listen to IdrA's whine, and dont copy his builds. If you do that, and look at any other pro zergs, you'll be winning your way to GM in no time.

The neural change was needed, but isn't neural going to be completely useless now, considering how good fungal is in comparison? The only units I can come up with, that are worth the energy cost are siege tanks and maybe immortals.

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The neural change was needed

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They probably should have just increased the energy requirement or something. That way, it would nerf the strategy instead of getting rid of it completely.

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Originally Posted by TychusFindlay

They probably should have just increased the energy requirement or something. That way, it would nerf the strategy instead of getting rid of it completely.

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but its not "rid of completely".. its still very useful, for example you can still take HTs and storm the protoss's own army.. take ghosts and EMP their own army. take voidrays, ravens, banshees, immortals, tanks (main use) and etc..

how was it fair for a protoss to have to spend over 1000/600 to get a mothership, only to have it taken by a 100/150 2supply unit?? And you need an infestation pit anyways to get tier 3, so it was already on route with your tech choices, where getting a fleet beacon (retarded cost and build time) is virtually useless to get as protoss (carriers are even worse than motherships)

Without this change, you would NEVER see a mothership or carrier in any pro PvZ game, just as we havent seen one since HuK (which was before people knew how insane infestors are)..

They should have just cut the range of neural from 9 to 7. Makes infestors that neural more vulnerable. If that's inadequate then reduce the time the unit is neural'd.

Fungal and infested terrans are too damn good. They should nerf them slightly and buff zerg's anti-air units; the hydra and corruptor. Right now zergs rightly feel that queens+infestors is much better as anti-air than using hydras or corruptors.

Infested terrans need to be directly nerfed or have the energy increased (maybe doubled). Just watching Destiny do his infested terran rush to snipe Protoss' expansion......that shit is scary. All zerg needs is zerglings then 4 infestors. Protoss needs observers for detection then high templar to feedback the infestors long before they reach the expansion. That's the best thing to do as Protoss. Rush two tech paths for an attack by zerg that isn't even all-in (typically zerg expands twice behind it).

Would be nice to reduce the cost of infestors and just make fungal a snare spell. Think about how infestors deal with drops now. Fungal fungal drop dead. No running from it at all. No units put at risk at all.

Remember how terrans used to complain about HT storm when dropping. Those days it was storm and if the drop didn't move then it died. There were opportunities for a terran with good multitask to run out of the storm. So Protoss left some zealots and a high templar. Even if Protoss perfectly sees the drop unloading there's still a risk of losing some units.

Zerg, which is the race that's basically designed to throw units away, is the only race that can deal with drops without putting any units at risk at all. Does that seem right?? Terrans complained enough for KA to get removed when storm is a spell that doesn't do full guaranteed damage.

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Originally Posted by TychusFindlay

They probably should have just increased the energy requirement or something. That way, it would nerf the strategy instead of getting rid of it completely.

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It would possibly still be an issue, given how people tend to get a fuckton of infestors. Energy simply doesn't matter all that much once you reach that critical amount.

Well Kiwikaki uses motherships defensively for recall. But ya neural parasite is retardedly good against Protoss high tech armies.

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how was it fair for a protoss to have to spend over 1000/600 to get a mothership, only to have it taken by a 100/150 2supply unit??

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I'll agree that that is unfair, but Motherships are so rare I completely disregarded them. I'm talking about Collosus.

As for the "energy requirement" nerf, I said "or something". I just said the first thing off the top of my head. My point is that there's probably a better way to go about this than making it unusable against Collosus, I just don't have the desire to figure out what.

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Originally Posted by TychusFindlay

I'll agree that that is unfair, but Motherships are so rare I completely disregarded them. I'm talking about Collosus.

As for the "energy requirement" nerf, I said "or something". I just said the first thing off the top of my head. My point is that there's probably a better way to go about this than making it unusable against Collosus.

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Hence my suggestion. Reduce the range of neural to make infestors more vulnerable. Reduce the time that the unit is under neural parasite's effect.

Other nerfs include nerfing infested terran. Making fungal a snare spell and maybe just do a small amount of damage like it did before. Compensate by making the infestor cheaper.

Damn fungal. I remember Tyler and iNcontroL talking about it in SotG that back in BW it was considered good to research a snare spell that didn't do damage because it was so useful for clumped up units. But here in SC2 you can get it quite fast and it snares and does pretty good damage.

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Maybe it wasnt a great change, but it was NESSISARY for half the massive units.

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And it is necessary to work on the other half of the massive units. I just don't get it why don't they make that you can't control Mothership, Archon, BC and Carrier, just like they made it with Ultralisks, those are or Ships with thousand people, or it is Archon, that is made of energy. I mean, it does make sense lore wise anyway, and would be good for balance. On the other hand Neural is completely needed for Colossi and Thors, it was primary made against them. Archons with MC immunity would be pretty good for countering Ling/Infestors.

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but its not "rid of completely".. its still very useful, for example you can still take HTs and storm the protoss's own army.. take ghosts and EMP their own army. take voidrays, ravens, banshees, immortals, tanks (main use) and etc..

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Yeah, Ravens and Banshees aren't even present in this match up at that stage of the game, HTs hardly can be MCed because they will snipe your Infestors even before you spot them. Neural Parasite and Feedback has the same range, one has flying time, one is instant, which one will win? Not even mentioning how hard it is to really pick up HT from the rest of Protoss army.
You can do with Ghosts what you have described, but the problem is same as HTs, you just can't click on them when you are fighting.
So, the only real use this ability has in match-up, when it will matter a lot, and where it isn't hard as fuck to do, will be vs. Siege Tanks and Immortals, where half of them will be sniped down before they even manage to come close to the Siege Tanks.

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Hence my suggestion. Reduce the range of neural to make infestors more vulnerable. Reduce the time that the unit is under neural parasite's effect.

Other nerfs include nerfing infested terran. Making fungal a snare spell and maybe just do a small amount of damage like it did before. Compensate by making the infestor cheaper.

Damn fungal. I remember Tyler and iNcontroL talking about it in SotG that back in BW it was considered good to research a snare spell that didn't do damage because it was so useful for clumped up units. But here in SC2 you can get it quite fast and it snares and does pretty good damage.

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So, reduce the range of the Neural, so you can snipe them all. Like they aren't vulnerable enough, big sized, armored unit with only 90 hp. Everything that does bonus damage on armored kills it in 2-3 shots. Maybe Infested Terrans need nerf, Fungal is nerfed, and it is pretty ok now in my opinion.

Also, Tyler and INcontroL talking about Fungal from SC2 and comparing it to the Ensnare from SC1 is pretty ridiculous. Ensnare was good only in theory, nobody even bothered getting the Queens, I saw few Korean pros using Ensnare and one of them was Jaedong. The Ensnare itself wasn't useless, but it wasn't cost-effective at all because you could get a lot better stuff. Defiler is one of them, just to remind you, with Plague that did 300 damage and Dark Swarm, and not running out of mana at all because of Consume.


In the end, as I said, they should let you MC the Colossi and Thors, in my eyes, that it the only real use of Neural Parasite, where you get it to counter those units. It is situational in every other aspect.

I hope it won't be long until neural parasite is nerfed again and while it has been nerfed good enough it will be castable from underground to make up for all the nerfs.

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Originally Posted by Twilice

I hope it won't be long until neural parasite is nerfed again and while it has been nerfed good enough it will be castable from underground to make up for all the nerfs.

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That won't make up for anything, Terran has scan and Protoss has observer at the time you have Infestors, and even if they don't have those to reveal you, there won't be much units that can be MC'd...

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Hence my suggestion. Reduce the range of neural to make infestors more vulnerable. Reduce the time that the unit is under neural parasite's effect.

Other nerfs include nerfing infested terran. Making fungal a snare spell and maybe just do a small amount of damage like it did before. Compensate by making the infestor cheaper.

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Nobody would bother getting Infestors with these changes...

They had 7 range neural parasite before. The things died before you could mind control anything.

And just being a snare would make Fungal Growth pretty useless. Like I said, give it that corruption effect, increase the damage the units take, then the emphasis is on your units and you can't just use Infestors for anti-air.

I dunno if Infested Terrans really need any changes, though. I think the fact that you can attack them before they burst out of those eggs, and their slow speed is compensating enough for however OP they may be. Though being castable while underground always struck me as a little odd.

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Originally Posted by Jabber Wookie

Neural Parasite no longer affecting massive units is by far the dumbest balance change since the game has been released imo. I quit playing zerg a few months ago and switched to terran cuz I was sick of zerg being such a harder race to win with, and now this...

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im in a similar position, and though i rarely got in psitions to assert ataht much dominance ZvP with infestors, i can still see this nerf chaning the game in a positive way, however, the two infestor nerfs in a vacuum makes zerg look pretty terrible.. the inability to neural colossi or even archons pretty much shuts down ling+infesotr play as far as i can tell; the zrg cant stop the colossi from fiering so they'll just smelt all the lings before they can deal enough damge and move on o teh infestors before enough fungals to kill can be landed.

roach infstor can still be OK though, if the roaches are allwoed to get closee noguh / have good enough concave..

if i had to go play back to palying zerg after this i'd feel very limted in terms of my options ZvP; feeling forced to eitehr go for drop play (and be sck awesome with it) orgo corrupters, when faced with any colossi play. I never viewed infestors as a stand alone fix vs col-play but without ability to NP themm, it really becoems too gas heavy to even go infestors before having that otehr more relliable answer to the colossi...

As for ZvT, Thors not being able to be NP'd is interesting; NP was always my main weapon of choice vs Thor timing attacks., but really, Roach + baneling (vs supporting marines & scv's) does well enough especially if there are no / few tanks supporting. Outside ass-thor timings, this change makes spearheading any mid-lategame pokes with a thor or two an interesting prospect, significantly less rsiky than previously. an opens for more mech heavy compositions overall later in the game TvZ; i mgiht get some more mech armor and try to make some Thors & even heliosn buffer some damage from swrming ling/roach while most marines tries to stay the fuck away from baneling/fungal. This also makes BC's quite good TvZ though i already considered tehm decent, neural was the main thing holding them back as raven+viking nicely mitigates any corrupter threats.

from the zergs POV of TvZ the neural change might make utlralisk tech a tad more atractive compared to Broodlords, to the extent that the change results in thors being an increasing nuisance that is. (i THINK ultras perform better vs Thors than BL's does?)


zerg might have amazingly high potential played right at the highest level, but jabberwookie is not wrong in saying they're hard to win with; it mgiht be relatively easy to reach that basal level of macro that might yield some easy wins at a low/medium level of play, but when players start to become clever and apply some actual rational unit control, despite lacking multitasking-ability & mechanics, as i guess is the case on EU platinum-diamond level of play, playing zerg is very demanding. tactical plays lke mutalisk harassment and drops on armies are highly volatile, and best-case of many sorts of battles is some form of army-trading, that requires efficient reinforcment to be effective.

... i agree that the game should be balanced for competitive play but if that acutaly requires stirahgt up nerfing zerg that is a problem

maybe HOTS is the only way to fix it.

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from the zergs POV of TvZ the neural change might make utlralisk tech a tad more atractive compared to Broodlords, to the extent that the change results in thors being an increasing nuisance that is. (i THINK ultras perform better vs Thors than BL's does?)

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Nope, sadly, Ultras are just worse in every possible way than Brood lords(except if your enemy is already behind). Thors are getting bugged by Broodlings, also do very little to Brood Lords, while they kill Ultras pretty fast, with or without their 250mm cannons.
Ultras just aren't cost effective in comparison to any other unit. Their reduction on building time helped quite a bit for tech switching in the late game, but if you go straight for the Ultras, and lose that fight(with 6-7 Ultras dying) chances are pretty high that you won't be able to come back, where 5+ Brood Lords won't do any damage only if enemy has Vikings/Void Rays, and you don't have anti-air at all.

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And just being a snare would make Fungal Growth pretty useless. Like I said, give it that corruption effect, increase the damage the units take, then the emphasis is on your units and you can't just use Infestors for anti-air.

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That is actually pretty damn good idea. That will make Infestors what they are supposed to be, support units, just like Defilers of SC1, where you shouldn't mass them. Too bad that Kerrigan already has that ability in HotS. :/
But I certainly can see that they can introduce it into the Multiplayer.

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maybe HOTS is the only way to fix it.

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If you think of that, maybe they are nerfing some units for the incoming buff to Zerg when they introduce HotS, even though it does sound strange.
I think that HotS will be better balanced after all, but only time will tell I guess. ;)

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Originally Posted by RamiZ

Nope, sadly, Ultras are just worse in every possible way than Brood lords(except if your enemy is already behind). Thors are getting bugged by Broodlings, also do very little to Brood Lords, while they kill Ultras pretty fast, with or without their 250mm cannons.
Ultras just aren't cost effective in comparison to any other unit. Their reduction on building time helped quite a bit for tech switching in the late game, but if you go straight for the Ultras, and lose that fight(with 6-7 Ultras dying) chances are pretty high that you won't be able to come back, where 5+ Brood Lords won't do any damage only if enemy has Vikings/Void Rays, and you don't have anti-air at all.

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Making ultras owqrk is a question of building enough momentum and supprting properly; if you can fungal shit in place and support with ling(+bane) an ultralisk-centric force can often quickly crush the bulk ofan enemy army; somethign taht is harder to do with BL's, and even if it happens, the BL's move around so slow that he momentum such a battle-win gives is often hard to use. as for Ultras vs thors, ultras will generally have the upgrade advanatge and in taht situation the ling support is ciritical. things get ugly if you arnt able to get at any supporting marines with banelings and/or fungal .. its all about the marines, i cant imagine a situation where Thors alone make a cost-effective stance vs Ultra+ling; Thors only chance vs lings is to be clustered up to reduce surface area, but that will let ultralisks ravage them with their armor-bonus AoE. only at a chokepoint with very good upgrades will thors alone stand a chance.

.. when i made the last post i forgot about the utlralisk build-time buff.. that acutally plays a role here.

... what i meant about BL vs Thor compared to ultra, is that though THors arnt good vs broodlords per se, they can help slow the BL approach down and force them to attack Thors to buy time for vikigns to come out, and also elp cover vikings from getting attacked by muta/corrupter, and now maybe even cover from infestors somewhat sicne they cant be NP'd.

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Originally Posted by Todie

Making ultras owqrk is a question of building enough momentum and supprting properly; if you can fungal shit in place and support with ling(+bane) an ultralisk-centric force can often quickly crush the bulk ofan enemy army; somethign taht is harder to do with BL's, and even if it happens, the BL's move around so slow that he momentum such a battle-win gives is often hard to use. as for Ultras vs thors, ultras will generally have the upgrade advanatge and in taht situation the ling support is ciritical. things get ugly if you arnt able to get at any supporting marines with banelings and/or fungal .. its all about the marines, i cant imagine a situation where Thors alone make a cost-effective stance vs Ultra+ling; Thors only chance vs lings is to be clustered up to reduce surface area, but that will let ultralisks ravage them with their armor-bonus AoE. only at a chokepoint with very good upgrades will thors alone stand a chance.

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Actually, Brood Lords are doing even better, because Ultras are so god damn big that they are constantly bugging with Lings and Banelings. And there aren't many maps with so wide open area where Ultras won't be bugged.

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.. when i made the last post i forgot about the utlralisk build-time buff.. that acutally plays a role here.

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Yes, with some timing attacks, or as I say, with tech switching it helps.

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... what i meant about BL vs Thor compared to ultra, is that though THors arnt good vs broodlords per se, they can help slow the BL approach down and force them to attack Thors to buy time for vikigns to come out, and also elp cover vikings from getting attacked by muta/corrupter, and now maybe even cover from infestors somewhat sicne they cant be NP'd.

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They will slow down Brood Lords? But you are supposed to kill Thors, not avoid them. I mean, we are taking the situation where you can't Neural Parasite the Thors anymore, so you want to kill them asap if he has more than 4-5 of them. And while Brood Lords would kill the Thors and probably will be killed by Vikings, Ultras would die for nothing, just running around, trying to get the spot from where they can attack, and would be sniped easily.
It really depends from positioning and some other factors, but I've seen Ling/Ultra combo getting killed so many times by smaller force just because Ultra and Zerglings couldn't attack at the same time.

All I want to say that yes, Ultras can work, but most of the time it is better to get Brood Lords, harder to counter, and a lot more cost-effective, that is for sure.

So would changing fungal to be more a corruption spell mean no more snaring capability?? That would make blink and phoenixes vs zerg extremely good.

Infestors are becoming the damage dealers of the zerg army in the mid game. It feels like the infestor was made too strong and useful in pretty much every situation because the other zerg units aren't that good.

Thing with the fungal nerf is it's directly related to marines healed by medivacs. They fare better now. But it's still the same number of fungals to kill every Protoss unit.

Once one fungal hits all those units are dead. I guess mass hallucinated zealots can tank fungals but that's a lot of energy and a lot of gas considering Protoss would only be on 2 base.

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So would changing fungal to be more a corruption spell mean no more snaring capability?? That would make blink and phoenixes vs zerg extremely good.

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I was imagining it as being a snare + corruption instead of snare + damage.

Then chain fungaling doesn't mean anything, and I think chain fungaling is the most ridiculous thing about fungal growth.

This way at least you need nearby units to kill the things. Even if it's just infested terrans.

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Originally Posted by Aldrius

I was imagining it as being a snare + corruption instead of snare + damage.

Then chain fungaling doesn't mean anything, and I think chain fungaling is the most ridiculous thing about fungal growth.

This way at least you need nearby units to kill the things. Even if it's just infested terrans.

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This so so much. But them zergs love their chain fungals that do damage. If this actually gets implemented they'll whine then stop using infestors completely.

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Originally Posted by RamiZ

They will slow down Brood Lords? But you are supposed to kill Thors, not avoid them. I mean, we are taking the situation where you can't Neural Parasite the Thors anymore, so you want to kill them asap if he has more than 4-5 of them.

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I think you're nitpickign here. i didnt metnion anything about mroe than 4-5 thors, esp not in this context.

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It really depends from positioning and some other factors, but I've seen Ling/Ultra combo getting killed so many times by smaller force just because Ultra and Zerglings couldn't attack at the same time.

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i think this is also a atter of unit control. ligns are faster and so the CAN get out of the way to a large extent if put in another group and moved in furhter before told to attack, or if told to attack from another angle when possible ofc.

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All I want to say that yes, Ultras can work, but most of the time it is better to get Brood Lords, harder to counter, and a lot more cost-effective, that is for sure.

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we agree on his: Broodlords has typicaly been the safer rout, im just sayin, at the very least the patch changes will make it a closer call between ultra & BL for the chocice of first hive-tech.

Zerg has exactly two units that are cost efficient. The brood lord and the infestor. If they nerf the infestor then they will have to buff something else to keep parity.

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Originally Posted by Todie

I think you're nitpickign here. i didnt metnion anything about mroe than 4-5 thors, esp not in this context.

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Well, maybe I misunderstood you, but didn't we start talking about this because mass Thors will be a problem now that NP isn't usable on them? I mean, if we aren't talking about mass Thors, what is the problem, you can kill them with Roaches/Lings chained with Fungals and Infested Terrans anyway. You don't need Brood Lords nor Ultras if we are talking about lower number of Thors, and higher number of some other units like Hellions/Marines.

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i think this is also a atter of unit control. ligns are faster and so the CAN get out of the way to a large extent if put in another group and moved in furhter before told to attack, or if told to attack from another angle when possible ofc.

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I agree, but again, good part of that army won't attack at all.

I dont know where this whole "infestors are overpowered because rest of zerg sucks" theory is coming from.. another idra quote maybe??

Roaches are insanely good, 2nd to only marines for best tier 1 unit. Lings are insanely good also, requiring protoss to get AOE to deal with them (which protoss AOE comes out soo late, you easily die if you miss one forcefield) - and lets not forget Hydras, the unit every zerg player says is "useless" yet if the protoss doesnt have collosus, Hydras can single handedly take out every gateway unit in seconds, they have one of the top 5 highest DPS in the game.

Oh, thats not including the baneling; make 50 of them and attack-move into any army or nexus and its instant GG.

Really, until you play random and see how fragile Protoss units are in comparison to zerg units, when you consider how expensive protoss units are and how you can't just "throw them away" like Z units; You'll change that opinion of "all zerg units suck".. When you have a 200/200 army of zeal/stalker/collosus/sentry/immortals evaporate to MMM + mass ghost EMPs, you'll understand what weak units really look like.

Or obviously, when your 200/200 "deathball" gets owned by pure infestor's fungal growth. Thats really demoralizing; when one SPELLCASTER unit can take out every fighting unit a race can make, from zealots all the way to mothership/carrier.

REMEMBER: the "difficult" part of zerg is the balance between droning, making units and teching. and knowing when to do which. THAT is why most zergs feel their units suck, is they are either A) not prepared for the incoming attack and are still droning; which leads to having far less units than you should, or B) making units too early and not getting the nessisary tech up to keep in the game (ie if you made 50 roach without seeing any indication of an attack, and he comes in with 5 voidrays, duh.) - - - When you are good enough to know how to scout properly and stop droning and make units when you see the opponent gearing up for a timing attack, you should never lose the battle. That is where 99% of pros lose the game, they are caught droning too hard and get surprised, Or they dont get any upgrades and stay on pure 0-0 roach when their opponent has 3-3 collosus (thats how IdrA loses every ZvP, no other zergs are that stupid though, hence the massive ZvP winrate in korea or even from Euro zergs like Stephano)

The units themselves are great. If you scout properly, you can literally a-move zerg and win almost any fight, even ZvT. Its that balance for zerg that is hard.

I find it way harder as protoss to know when I can strike the zerg. And I play random. For me it's easier to scout a terran or protoss and see "ok he got this and this then he can't have this" but vs a zerg "ok he got no army, lets expand" and in the next few seconds you get overwhelmed by lots of zerg units.

I mean people were using the zerg units before they started to use infestors.

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Originally Posted by Twilice

I find it way harder as protoss to know when I can strike the zerg. And I play random. For me it's easier to scout a terran or protoss and see "ok he got this and this then he can't have this" but vs a zerg "ok he got no army, lets expand" and in the next few seconds you get overwhelmed by lots of zerg units.

I mean people were using the zerg units before they started to use infestors.

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Exactly.. Nestea won 3 GSL's without using mass infestor destiny-style.. and Fruitdealer won 1 GSL code S. Then add in the Code A's with Losira, and many tournaments outside of korea have been won (MLGs, etc)... This was ALL before the mass infestor style, this was actually without the massive warpgate nerf also.

So with warpgates and zealots being so much later, and infestors having such a huge buff last patch, this is why PvZ is like 25% win rate right now. Neural Parasite nerf isnt going to change that at all.

Where are you getting these win rate percentages from?

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Originally Posted by Skyze

I dont know where this whole "infestors are overpowered because rest of zerg sucks" theory is coming from.. another idra quote maybe??

Roaches are insanely good, 2nd to only marines for best tier 1 unit. Lings are insanely good also, requiring protoss to get AOE to deal with them (which protoss AOE comes out soo late, you easily die if you miss one forcefield) - and lets not forget Hydras, the unit every zerg player says is "useless" yet if the protoss doesnt have collosus, Hydras can single handedly take out every gateway unit in seconds, they have one of the top 5 highest DPS in the game.

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Don't really know what to say, reading all this, you have some valid points, but you are also biased as hell at some other points.

Roach is good units, but far from one of the best at tier 1. Marauder is a lot better than Roach, Stalker also if you count things you can do with Roaches and with Stalkers in mid/late game, where Burrow movement isn't as useful as Blink. Not to mention that Roach has the worst dps from all Zerg units.

Lings are also good, but also aren't as good as you think. I have yet to see on pro level that good Zerg beat good Protoss early game using only lings. If Protoss see mass lings, he add more Zealots instead of Stalkers, and together with FFs, your lings don't do as much damage as you think they should, even if you have perfect surround. And that is vs. Protoss, about Terrans, don't even wanna talk about, Marines just eat them for breakfast.

Hydras are quite good, they aren't useless for sure, especially combined with Nydus to reduce their immobility. But Hydras are glass cannons, that is the fact, and I don't really see the point of Hydras costing 100/50, when two Marines are better than one Hydra. They are too expensive for how easily they die.

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Oh, thats not including the baneling; make 50 of them and attack-move into any army or nexus and its instant GG.

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What the hell is this!? I mean, sure, you can make Banelings really cost effective, they are great units, but you can't say "just make 100 of them, and you win!", I mean really? That isn't even an argument.
"Hey, just make 10 Colossus, and a-click into Zerg army..."

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Really, until you play random and see how fragile Protoss units are in comparison to zerg units, when you consider how expensive protoss units are and how you can't just "throw them away" like Z units; You'll change that opinion of "all zerg units suck".. When you have a 200/200 army of zeal/stalker/collosus/sentry/immortals evaporate to MMM + mass ghost EMPs, you'll understand what weak units really look like.

Or obviously, when your 200/200 "deathball" gets owned by pure infestor's fungal growth. Thats really demoralizing; when one SPELLCASTER unit can take out every fighting unit a race can make, from zealots all the way to mothership/carrier.

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It worked the same way in SC BW, Protoss units are expensive but stronger, and Zerg is weaker but cheaper. I meant you are contradicting yourself by saying "You are all whining how Zerg unit sucks, they don't, they are strong" but you are also whining how Protoss units are weak. You are saying that vs. Hydras you need AoE, but I feel the same too, if you have more than 2-3 Colossi, If I don't have Infestors, I am dead. And no matter how cheaper my units are, I can make waves and waves of units, they just die before they even can touch you, so please don't tell me that Protoss is at disadvantage.

Let those guys that says that Zerg units are weak and sucks, every unit has its own purpose. The only unit I feel is a bit weak for its cost is Ultralisk, and that actually isn't about his weakness, but how easy is to counter them. And seriously your death ball get killed by pure Infestor play? Don't know, last time I played vs. Friend, he killed half of my Infestors with one shot of his 6 Colossi. And no, I am not bad at controlling, I have pretty good unit control, it is just that he focused fired before they could even cast a spell. And trust me, I feel the same way when 5 HTs kill my entire army of Hydras/Roaches/Banelings/Infestors/Lings...

In my opinion, except for some timing attacks, the game is quite good as it is now. And this change will certainly help in both PvZ and TvZ if they even implement it. Just wait and see for yourself.

Well like I said, when you watch someone like Destiny, a low-masters player (Who I beat consistently before infestors came around) is now beating top korean protoss players like Puzzle, as if its no problem.. using ONLY infestors just chain fungalling whole armies and "brofester hitsquading" expos.. There is a MAJOR problem with that unit.

If you let any protoss get 6 colossi, you already lost, or you should have 4k/4k with the entire map in creep/expos. Protoss just doesnt survive at all until 6 colossi, without a third (you can't get a third vs infestor marine/lings) - Besides, afew corruptors and you have 6 units that are 300/200 all down the drain. I always stop at 3-4 colossi, especially if I dont have a third (which you wont have if you dont get HT to stop infestors)

Anyways, I play more zerg than protoss right now and despite my severly lacking mechanics, Im still beating high master/GM protoss with ease with infestors. I mean, anyone who is in masters could probably beat a GM protoss just using infestors right now like Destiny, and its the reason why so many zergs are suddenly at the top of the ladders.

Basically; at this point; The Infestor is a broken unit that gives you a significant edge. Take out the infestor completely (like I play right now) and you can STILL beat any opponent just like a normal game. That is the issue; so many bad zerg players are relying on infestors to pump up their win rate right now (like Destiny) and once the patch comes (and honestly, this patch wasn't enough to fix fungal/infested terrans) they need to learn a whole new playstyle; thats why they are saying "OMG zerg sucks again" yet uhh.. Zerg has been dominanting before the infestor with the likes of Losira, Leenock, Nestea and etc and will continue to dominate even if the infestor was removed from the game.

So I dunno how you "send waves and waves of units" and still lose.. Do you send them all in a straight line? Move command?? I mostly play ZvP without infestors because I know they are gonna be nerfed even harder soon, and I still can take out colossi/HT armies with just roach/hydra/corruptor/ling. Its not an issue if you can micro.

Watch the GSL, look at the ZvP winrates or even just watch the games there and you'll see how many issues there is when a code B zerg can take out MC (unquestionably best micro/macro/overall player in the world after MVP/Nestea) -

Zerg is fine just the way they are, if anything they need a significant nerf, way more than the weak infestor nerfs in this patch. The ONLY thing that beats zerg hardcore in this game, is the Ghost, which both races are having issues with. But as far as Protoss goes, the metagame is just too messed to win against any zergs without some sort of new unit from HOTS (an AOE before tier 3 is required, else I definitely will keep playing only zerg)

In case you need more proof that infestors/zerg totally dominates protoss... Morrow (an average pro, not in the top 10 of foreigners) beat SlayersPuzzle (top 5 protoss in korea) 10-1 in a showmatch! Of course, He used the infestor/ling abusive combo every game pretty much. THAT is messed up! How is this possible?? Destiny also beat Puzzle in a showmatch, doing the same exact abusive strategy.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2913212193

Yeah I remember I started to try and use infestor strategies before their first buff and I had a nice succes. But after the buff double dps and increased vs armored my infestor strategy just bloomed so strong it wasn't even fun. (I wonder if that had something to do with me getting into masters xD, and now after not playing a for a while all others are also using the infestor strat and I seem to lose all the time, also I never understood what the 1 1 1 strat was all about until I encountered it xD hence my bad w/l ratio right now)

I've never said that Infestors weren't strong, they are the strongest casters in this game in my opinion, the thing is, I said I really can't win with just Infestors/Lings/Roaches vs. Protoss Death Ball. Infestors/Lings/Roaches is transition strategy used to beat mid-game Protoss, you can't beat Death Ball of 4+ Colossi with Void Rays and mass Sentry/Stalkers only with it, you need Brood Lords, Corruptors and maybe some Hydras.

And I don't need proofs for Infestor/Ling, I know it is strong, it is just that we are talking in this thread about Infestors not able to use NP on Colossi/Thors anymore is quite retarded, since that spell is designed for those two units. Ok for Archons, Mothership, Carrier, Battle Cruiser etc. It actually make sense if you can't NP those units, but Infestor/Lings came into play because Roach/Ling/Hydra/Corruptor couldn't beat Colossi/Voids/Stalkers/Sentries Death Ball at the first place.
You will be able to beat Infestors/Roaches/Lings with Archons/Stalkers/Zealots if they disable NP for units that I listed above, but I just feel that disabling it on Colossi and Thors will have huge impact on balance. It won't make Zergs underpowered, but they will have to play against some really tough strategies that is really hard to deal with without NP.

Swap some ultralisk for roaches, I've done it beaten a 200/200 protoss with a smaller army. (I did manage to get a good surround from behind and neural parasite some of his colossi and void rays. I had better scouting and when he went to attack me on my creep highway I ran arround him and smashed him leaving him with a small "lol")

For me it's those early colossus or those +10 colossus that is dangerous that kills ultralisk before they get close. (and you rarely see +10 colossus)

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Originally Posted by Twilice

Swap some ultralisk for roaches, I've done it beaten a 200/200 protoss with a smaller army. (I did manage to get a good surround from behind and neural parasite some of his colossi and void rays. I had better scouting and when he went to attack me on my creep highway I ran arround him and smashed him leaving him with a small "lol")

For me it's those early colossus or those +10 colossus that is dangerous that kills ultralisk before they get close. (and you rarely see +10 colossus)

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I don't have to, I can make Brood Lords in late game, but mid game is what I was talking about. Also, you have done everything perfectly, for example, now you wouldn't be able to NP his Colossi, and the outcome would probably be different, or you would win but with a lot bigger army loss.

I wouldn't be worried about a +4 colossi with void ray + mass stalker/zealot ball in the midgame before I got ultralisk to be honest.

But fair enough forcefields and colossus can be devastating to your army, sometimes a bit to devastating. It's exactly the same if you play terran, it's like you don't really want to get those vikings because they are bad vs ground but you sort of have to.

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Originally Posted by Twilice

I wouldn't be worried about a +4 colossi with void ray + mass stalker/zealot ball in the midgame before I got ultralisk to be honest.

But fair enough forcefields and colossus can be devastating to your army, sometimes a bit to devastating. It's exactly the same if you play terran, it's like you don't really want to get those vikings because they are bad vs ground but you sort of have to.

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Yeah. That's my "f*ck yeah" moment as Protoss.:D Early and mid game just trying to survive, defend and get more bases up at good times. Then late game time to crush some skulls.

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Originally Posted by Twilice

I wouldn't be worried about a +4 colossi with void ray + mass stalker/zealot ball in the midgame before I got ultralisk to be honest.

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I didn't quite understand this. You wouldn't worry before you get Ultras, but you would after? I mean, maybe I misunderstood you, or you made a mistake.

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But fair enough forcefields and colossus can be devastating to your army, sometimes a bit to devastating. It's exactly the same if you play terran, it's like you don't really want to get those vikings because they are bad vs ground but you sort of have to.

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Problem is, Vikings actually do damage vs. ground, but even if they don't, they can successfully kite and outrange Void Rays and Colossi, while on the other hand, you really have to make a huge amount of Corruptors to be able to beat Void Rays + Colossi, which really is a waste of money and population. For the late game, they are useful because they are turned into Brood Lords, but most of the time, they don't survive late game, they are getting killed by Stalkers and Void Rays if you don't have a high number of them. And if you do, you have low number of ground units, and you get overwhelmed by Zealot/Stalkers/Sentries.
I mean, everyone would go for Corruptors if they are better choice, but they aren't, of course Infestor is 5x better. But now, vs. Colossi, it seems like the Corruptors would be the only choice, and you won't have enough gas to spend on both Corruptors and Infestors. This is all theorycrafting from my experience, but we will see. I still think that NP nerf isn't right way to do it. It just makes that spell even more situational as I said in my first post.

Someone on TL spotted a significant ninja nerf, mainly to ZvP

"Transports can no longer unload units into a dense area if the original order was issued on a fogged location. "

Video demonstrating it : http://www.playxp.com/sc2/news/view....cle_id=3383490

thats funny. it kind of makes opsite rules apply fr P vs banedrops now; jsut cluster our shit up and they cant hurt you so bad. of course, fungal sill can.

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Originally Posted by Peanutbutter

Someone on TL spotted a significant ninja nerf, mainly to ZvP

"Transports can no longer unload units into a dense area if the original order was issued on a fogged location. "

Video demonstrating it : http://www.playxp.com/sc2/news/view....cle_id=3383490

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I am pretty sure that wasn't intentional, It doesn't even make sense to do that... ;O