Force Field, a bit ridiculous, and harmful to game design

[Wankey]

Not sure how it will solve zerg problems now but the zerg arsenal definitely needs more diversity.

Hmm solutions lets see.

Both Terran and Protoss has a defensive tactical advantage. Lets say I setup a line of siege tanks, I can always fall back to that line if I need to. After I force you to stop the engagement, I can quickly heal up my forces with flying medivacs, harass you using drops and heal up my mech with scvs.

Protoss has a better solution, they can advance and have very mobile 9 ranged units hit your units, and if you take the advantage they can retreat and force field you to stop you from hitting their retreating units. They can also blink away, and not only that, they regen shields while away.

In fact, Protoss has it even better than Terran in the fact that they can offensively use force field to stop your mobility.

But for Zerg, you cannot do any of this. You cannot fall back to a safer defensive position because you do not have siege units. You cannot fall back and quickly repair your forces. Unless you micro the queen easily, a force that has retreated is easily still a very weak force. Tactically, you must use resources to spend more food and money to replenish those forces, but what you really want is that same force but with more health. Burrow roaches solve this problem a little bit but not much.

The problem with this thinking is that Zerg isn't a massable race. They don't have a single 1 food unit you can mass. In original Starcraft, this thinking was good (even then Lurker was there) where you don't really have a siege unit but you can easily remass your race back up since hydras were 1 food. Now your forces get obliterated, he a-moves and you'll want to pray to god that he doesn't kill your overlords because one dead overlord is 4 dead roaches.

Now add in the lurker. You can run in with lurker, put a few of them down, in a line or anything, attack with your regular forces, and retreat to your lurker line or at least pressure the toss so that a-moving into your base HAS some kind of risk associated to it (just like a-moving into a line of siege tanks) You can throw a few lurkers at your base to deter and further agression or at the same time, drop lurkers at their base forcing them to retreat.

Lurkers STOP harvesting, even if you don't kill that many probes he is forced to go back and kill that lurker. With a baneling drop, it's very slippery, as if it's successful you can kill a ton of probes, but in the long run doesn't create any tactical advantage other than resources (which usually a good protoss stockpiles)

At the moment, Banelings either win the battle or are completely useless, they don't hold ground. You're forced to retreat all the way back to your base because Zerg have absolutely no way to hold ground and with easy picking off creep, zerg is always on the defense.

Even still once you get brood lords, your blood lords only realistically help with offensive maneuvres, adding path blockers and DPS to your ground forces, however on the defense, they again are easily picked off since they have an abysmal speed and actually have DPS worse than that of a hydralisk. Blink Stalkers and Stim marines or Vikings (usually terran will easily switch to these) will make one shot deaths of broodlords.

In my opinion:

Lurkers should a ground holding AoE units, banelings should not be a hard counter to light but more of a force multiplier against armored and buildings. (this will make early game zvz much less mundane and boring)

Hydralisks need to be redesigned for a different role. Roach seems to be in a good position in my opinion. They're can do everything type ground unit.

[JackhammerIV]

You have the infestor though that is a unit that says "You stop moving NAOW!!!!" How about reducing the time it takes to research the energy upgrade?? Say by 10 secs then removing Armored tag on infestor (should have been done ages ago).

Infestor/lurker/overseer has the potential to be insanely good. I'm still unconvinced that every playstyle/tactic/option/etc for zerg has been fully explored. Zerg should still get the lurker though. Although possibly zerg might get nerfed if lurkers prove too strong. But still lurkers are freaking awesome.

EDIT: In terms of harvester harass infestors are insane. Just two fungals in a row and all harvesters dead. And every harvester caught is pretty much guaranteed dead.

[sandwich_bird]

What can do that though??? Lurkers that can move while burrowed??? Cheaper and faster to research overlord drop and speed?? Cheaper nydus worms??

For the sake of change I don't want lurkers back. They were a great unit but I want new stuff. Anyways, they would end up being T3(since hydras are T2) so that wouldn't help the early FF problem.

They need to add a new T1.5 unit/ability to help zergs with this stuff. Maybe a leap ability for the roaches (something that would work like blink for stalkers)? A spell casting unit that can lock down spell in a target area? Allow queens to be transported by zerglings so that they can bring their long ranged attack to the battlefield more easily? Make zerglings fuse with roaches to create a massive unit that can break forcefields! I don't know but they need to do something to help zergs!

[Twilice]

I have killed a protoss death ball that is larger then mine. So that argument is invalid. I might have had a little bit extra upgrades but not much. But I also had ultralisk and neural parasite so forcefields would have been to no use.

[GnaReffotsirk]

I'd rather banelings be able to do some damage to FFS. Not directly attack them, but take damage from splash.

[Todie]

Not sure outmass works so well when the protoss deathball is stronger than a zerg army that is larger in size. How do zerg 2-3 base timing pushes fare?? It feels like in general in PvT and PvZ, the later the match goes the stronger protoss can get. Protoss have really strong maxed armies.

unless i can react extremely well to the exact composition the enemy moves out with; like by making just the right amount of corrupters to ensure i kill all colossi, facing the ball will be hard. but if i cut enough corners on my waythere-and arnt punished for it -i can saturate a 3rd base fast enough to let me afford to face the ball in several steps.

it often feels inevitable that the ball will brake my primary line though, and what follows is often chaos; "organizing" the reinforcments to stop the ball before it gets in position to wreck econ (or tech) depends much on who initated the battle, and where (and not least, where? is my 3rd even in a defensible position?)

[JackhammerIV]

Roach leap ability......so you mean faster burrow movement speed??? Burrow move roach timing is common in ZvP i would think. How easily can a safe playing protoss defend zerg 2 base timing pushes??? Burrow move roaches. Speed roaches. Ling baneling. Hydra drop. Roach drop. And whatever else you can think of.

[Wankey]

You have the infestor though that is a unit that says "You stop moving NAOW!!!!" How about reducing the time it takes to research the energy upgrade?? Say by 10 secs then removing Armored tag on infestor (should have been done ages ago).

Infestor/lurker/overseer has the potential to be insanely good. I'm still unconvinced that every playstyle/tactic/option/etc for zerg has been fully explored. Zerg should still get the lurker though. Although possibly zerg might get nerfed if lurkers prove too strong. But still lurkers are freaking awesome.

EDIT: In terms of harvester harass infestors are insane. Just two fungals in a row and all harvesters dead. And every harvester caught is pretty much guaranteed dead.

4 seconds (3 seconds in real life) is no way compared to 15 seconds of Force Fields. Fungal is a DPS spell and is designed for that now, sure it immobilizes, but during that time you should be attacking, it's purely an offensive spell and incredibly hard to use as a defensive spell (this is why IMO, the original fungal infestation was far superior).

No zerg units HOLD ground. A lurker in your base, no matter how many probes i kill you are FORCED to move your probes away.

a) forcing you to go back and look at your base because unchecked lurkers will obliterate your base.
b) forcing you to counter that tactic in some way
c) forcing you to lose economic resource

With infestor / banelings, I can kill your probes, and that's it. I can't hold that ground. Your probes are dead and that's it. You dont' even need to go back to base 'cause there was little you can do against a dropped baneling anyway. And going back to base against infestors usually isn't that great as you can only just protect your expansions. For lurkers, they can actually destroy your nexus / production facilities if you don't stop them.

The problem is further intensified with the fact that Protoss can reinforce on a whim, with zero lead in time. And the fact that if he doesn't like the engagement, he can say FU, cast a bunch of force fields and retreat.

You as a Zerg player can either fight on his terms and win or get your army obliterated, sure you can produce a mass amounts of reinforcements but they are still running from your base. There is no retreat mechanism for Zerg other than a 3 second fungal that is incredibly tough to do (your infestors are usually out of mana very quickly)

Even if you do retreat, often times you don't have enough forces due to the fact that you missed an inject or he picked off a overlord. Again he a-moves into your base and ROLF stomps you (after warping in a few extra reinforcements)

It's just that ease of play vs the huge amount of work just trying to muster up forces for Zerg and the sheer uselessness of certain combos against a Toss force.

[JackhammerIV]

Probably can't use probe analogy....both zergs and protosses hate double medivac drops. Reinforcements for protoss are on a whim when prepared in advance. Additionally if you want an option to force the army back...that would be drops and nydus worms. Infestors/baneling drops on workers are purely economic damage not to force armies to react to it. The economic damage will serve to weaken the opponent's army in the long run.

Fungal vs protoss and to a certain extent terran can be defensive. It can delay pushes till damage is healed and the time it holds you in place. The only thing holding it back from being defensive is your infestor's energy amount and its position. Theoretically you can have infestors slowly fungal an army to slow down and damage it as it tries to reach your bases. Some time ago i said i always believed zerg was a race that wanted to engage as close to their opponent's base as possible. The closer to the opponent's base that the zerg can prepare an engagement the better it is for zerg. Nyduses are a retreat option only rivaled by recall.

The inject and overlord portion doesn't contribute to your argument since those are things everyone can agree is a side problem.

[Wankey]

Just played a game, and again seriously need more units versatile units.

The Terran guy spawned pretty close to me. I stopped him from expanding so many times. Yet he was still able to push out with a sizable siege tank / marine force. EVen though I killed most of it with lings (sniping siege tanks as we were moving out) I still lost a war of attrition even though I had 3 bases going against his 2.

You just can't do anything against mass marines when he's got tons of siege tanks. I had ling / baneling mix and mutalisks.

Roach / Hydra?

Infestor / Roach?

What deals with that? I thought mutas and lings work best against siege tanks but that's not the case. You can no longer pile your mutas into one and snipe individual marines.

When I try to harass with mutas all he needed to do was plop down a missile turret and frigging REPAIR IT. How ridiculous is that? Banshees get cloak and 6 range, Mutas get 3 range and a counter that can be easily repaired long enough for your marines to move in.