Patch 1.4.0

[RamiZ]

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

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.

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..

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.

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.

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.

[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.

[RamiZ]

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.

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...

[Aldrius]

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.

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.

[Todie]

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...

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.

[RamiZ]

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?)

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.

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.

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.

maybe HOTS is the only way to fix it.

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.

[Todie]

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.

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.

[RamiZ]

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.

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.

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

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

... 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.

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.

[JackhammerIV]

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.

[Aldrius]

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.

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.