Remember when there used to be 100 hydralisks+ 100 roach armies? Those were the days.
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Remember when there used to be 100 hydralisks+ 100 roach armies? Those were the days.
Uh, you are contradicting yourself here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sietsh-Tenk
Yes, you did good description of what Roach supposed to be, but they nerfed armor, lower burrowed regeneration, took out above ground regeneration, and make it cost 2 supply. After all that, it isn't as nearly durable as it was before. If it should be support tank, than they should nerf damage, not durability attributes.
The last patch made me think a lot about this and the Roach in general... So here it goes:
(Keep in mind that this is only my opinion on the concept of the Roach and how it plays in general, so it's better to ignore most of the numbers I put here)
To me, the supply increase seems to be a good thing. The Roach is supposed to work as a tank for Zerglings/Banelings/Hydralisk, but in a different way. Not by withstanding attacks because of high HP and armor, but absorbing the damage with their fast regeneration. The Roach could be seen less like a stone wall, and more like a sponge, which forces the opponent to focus-fire it to kill it, drawing the attention away from incoming Zerglings and Banelings. And with the supply increase (which lowers the usefulness of mass-roach), this would be a good time to bring back its above-ground regeneration. Of course, not 20HP/s, but more like 5-8HP/s would already be great. The Organic Carapace upgrade could be more useful, increasing this regeneration rate to about 15HP/s (I think that wouldn't be too OP, being a Hive upgrade..).
Another good point I see in Roaches is their harass potential. The burrowed movement coupled with the regeneration can make some good harassment options: while burrowed, a group of Roaches withstand static defenses and small troops with their regeneration, unburrow when inside the base, kill some workers, then burrow and retreat. The only problem with that is their speed movement while burrowed (which seems pretty patetic now), which I don't quite know why they changed it (was Roach harass such a problem back then?). So the Roach becomes progressively better as a harasser as it becomes more vulnerable in combat because of the bigger armies.
However, there is indeed a good point against the supply increase. The Zerg is a swarming race, and increasing their units supply cost seems to go away from their “quantity over quality” motto. So what if instead of supply, the Roach's damage and HP was nerfed instead? As I said earlier, the strength of the Roach should not be its HP itself, but the ease with which it heals it. 145 seems a bit of overkill (oversurvive?) to a T1 unit with this kind of regeneration, so a nerf to something along 135 or 125 would be fine. And while the Roach still needs to deal some damage to represent a threat and be a viable tank, there could be a speciation of the attack instead. What if instead of flat 16 damage, the Roach has something like 14 (+2 vs. Biological) and reduce the attack speed a bit? Not only it keeps its threat-ness while being a little worse overall, but it could create a better synergy with the Hydralisk if we consider giving it a bonus against armored (but this is different issue...).
There is a big problem though. All this would let ZvZ degradate to its original state, where the regeneration and bio-bonus forced both players to go Roaches because lings are useless against them. I sincerely don't know what could be done to avoid this, but I wonder if the answer could be Spine Crawlers... With their burst like damage, they would be great to kill the Roaches. Their movement speed could be an issue, but I think it's nothing that a good creep highway can't solve. The damage could be increased from 25 (+5 vs. Armored) to 25 (+10 vs. Armored) so (considering a change to 125HP) there'd be need for only 4 Spine Crawlers to one-hit Roaches. But there is the root time... maybe reducing it to 9 seconds would solve this?... Maybe the defending player should be using the Spine Crawlers defensively, like the Terran Tank push? Well, I can use some opinions here...
...So putting it all together, it could be something like this:
Roach:
Attack damage decreased from 16 to 14 (+2 vs. Biological).
Attack speed increased from 2 to 2,3.
HP decreased from 145 to 125.
Increased above-ground regeneration to 5HP/s.
Organic Carapace now improves above-ground regeneration to 15HP/s.
Burrowed movement speed increased.
Supply cost decreased from 2 to 1. (optional)
Spine Crawler:
Attack damage increased from 25 (+5 vs. Armored) to 25 (+10 vs. Armored).
Root time decreased from 12 to 9.
I'm going to stop here before this turns into a wall of text (it already did, didn't it?...-.-).
I do think the uniqueness of their regen is important.... and since when was microing your units to focus fire 'random'?
Perhaps with their Supply at 2, the above ground regen can be restored, either innate or as part of the T3 upgrade.
But I wouldn't make it more than 10 hp/sec at T3 and no more than 5 hp/sec aat T1. It shouldn't require a major amount of focus firing.
I would love to see an obscenely high rate of regen on the Roach, even if it meant that its armor and total HP had to drop considerably. There needs to be differences between the Roach's tanking methods and the Ultralisk's tanking methods. Ultralisks should be about high armor and HP. Roaches should be about high regeneration. The only effective ways to kill Roaches should be one-shots and super-high dps.
Blizzard considered not doing this "random". IMO, it would work if roaches had fewer than the 80-90 hp they had in their first incarnation.Quote:
and since when was microing your units to focus fire 'random'?
Let's ignore the issue with randomness that the Regen-based Roach had. The simple fact is this: if the Roach doesn't have enough Hp, then it is easily killed by the exact same things that easily kill Ultralisks: Siege Tanks, Thors, Marauders, and Immortals.Quote:
I would love to see an obscenely high rate of regen on the Roach, even if it meant that its armor and total HP had to drop considerably. There needs to be differences between the Roach's tanking methods and the Ultralisk's tanking methods.
I previously stated I agree with the nerf. While I still do, if the point was to make the Hydra be used more, then this wasn't necessary. There were already plenty of games where the Hydra came out because the opponent went air to avoid Roach damage in his/her attacks.
What's next? Double Zealot harass in 2v2 seems OP so Zealots get a nerf to 3 psi? Overall I feel Blizz is doing a nice balance job, but I think this is a case where the nerf is wrong. I agree that the Roach needed a nerf to make it harder to get, but this is the wrong nerf. Its intent and result are good, but it seems, on further review, this is too much. I would rather see them remain at 1 control and morph from drones rather than larvae.
I support the regen ability. I find it that roaches have became a tier 1 version of the hydra minus the air attacking ability as of the recent patches. As a terran player, I've found it quite easy to kill roaches without many losses these days.
The +1 armor is fine i feel, Id want the regen, but that is wishful thinking.