Patch 7 Notes

[n00bonicPlague]

Eh, must have misread it. I dropped out of that zerg game when I was told I required more mineralssszschczhcshczschzcshczhschzcshzcs.

[Hammy]

That turret upgrade is way over the top imo. Turrets already dealt TONS of damage Besides, a base with turrets and some vikings was already out of bounds. Now all it takes is a couple of turrets to throw off a bunch of muta.
The thor upgrade makes sense though. Now they can do their job against my precious muta.

I'm not a big fan of the static upgrade, but whatever.

The roach change... To be honest, in over 200 games I've never researched that upgrade, but I don't really get what warrants that nerf. Making T1 units viable in lategame is a great thing!

I think they should be trying to fix ZvZ asap instead of seemingly random stuff here and there. There's a lot to do for that match-up.

[Nicol Bolas]

I think they should be trying to fix ZvZ asap instead of seemingly random stuff here and there. There's a lot to do for that match-up.

There's nothing to fix. There's already a strong debate between people who believe that Roaches dominate the match and a small but vocal minority who think that mass Zerglings with early attack upgrades own Roaches. Now we have this huge buff to the Spine Crawler's damage output; this rewards 1-base turtling, as well as extra Queen play (to move the creep and keep Crawlers alive.

One-base Nydus into someone's main and flood them with +1 Zerglings is potentially a legitimate strategy now. To stop this, simple Roaches won't do; you need to do a Baneling-bust, ZvT style.

ZvZ is ever-so-slowly starting to open up.

[Xyvik]

Wow, so Protoss get nerfed again...please excuse me as I pick my jaw off the floor in utter amazement at this completely unexpected development!

...So now there's no way for a toss player to assault a terran base with Colossi anymore, and the deadly banshee gets buffed even more.

Seriously, are they throwing out these patches just to screw with us? I LOVE the static defense buffs, except for the missile turret ones, because I like defense. But a psi storm nerf? That's one of the only ways to deal with hydra/roach.

[Aldrius]

There's nothing to fix. There's already a strong debate between people who believe that Roaches dominate the match and a small but vocal minority who think that mass Zerglings with early attack upgrades own Roaches. Now we have this huge buff to the Spine Crawler's damage output; this rewards 1-base turtling, as well as extra Queen play (to move the creep and keep Crawlers alive.

Or doing the famous FE->triqueen build!!

Okay, so it's not famous... or well-tested... and it probably sucks...

...what was my point again?

One-base Nydus into someone's main and flood them with +1 Zerglings is potentially a legitimate strategy now. To stop this, simple Roaches won't do; you need to do a Baneling-bust, ZvT style.

ZvZ is ever-so-slowly starting to open up.

Hm, that thought had never occurred to me. I knew +1 Chargelots were good against roaches, certainly. But never thought about applying the same principle to the Zerglings.

Certainly adds a new flavour to it all. I'll have to try this out.

But a psi storm nerf? That's one of the only ways to deal with hydra/roach.

It's still going to be good against Hydras. It's not like they can move out of the field at all... unless it's on creep.

...So now there's no way for a toss player to assault a terran base with Colossi anymore

Wait, why? The missile turret got nerfed against colossi not buffed. Or is there something I'm missing here? Or are you just speaking generally?

[Skyze]

Protoss already owns. What im pissed about is the major zerg nerfs!

How the hell do you win ZvT? Any good terran knows about baneling busts and wont fall for that.. and now that mutas were nerfed bigtime (turrets + thors buff) theres literally nothing zerg can do to stop terran.. Once the MMM army is up, they will still cut thru any zerg army like butter, even sunkens wont do crap with their "buff" against Marauders..

Im very dissapointed with how they are balancing the game so far, seems they nerf the weakest races, and buff the strongest.. I loved the balance in the first 3 patches, but each patch its getting significantly worse.

(for anyone to bash me on my balance opinions, im top 15 platinum div 8 in 1v1, so hope you are close to that or you dont know how top players play. Terran/Protoss is dominating at the top level, you barely see any zergs cept DIMAGA in any tournaments, and hes been losing lots since patch 6 too.)

[Hammy]

That's what I thought until I started owning masses of zerglings with my roaches. ZvZ is evolving yeah, but really slowly. Very small things, like now I get my upgrades faster, and expand later. But I still mass-up roaches. Even against zerglings, if both go +1, your roaches will dominate because it'll only take them 2 hits to kill lings. That means that the ling-player needs +1/+1 to fight +1/0 roaches on (perhaps) equal grounds. Though with appropriate micro (keeping your roaches in a tight pack at all times) the roaches still come on top from what I've seen.

The only advatage (though it's a huge one) that ling can have, is their mobility, but that's pretty much only helpful on scrapyard.

Besides, if your opponent all-ins lings, all you need is ONE baneling to kill most of his army in one blow (I have no idea why you're talking about banelings "busts", which makes no sense in this context). Sometimes I got a couple of banelings just to be safe, but that hardly seemed necessary. And as soon as I had my Bling nest, he just tried to make roaches because he knew it was over instantly.
Maybe I haven't been fighting the right people though, but today was a pretty sucky day because I played tons of games, and half of them were ZvZ... and despite many attempts, zerglings were only a problem once (scrapyard, got out-microed because I left my base too early, he had killed everything by the time I could catch up).

One base turtling play is what most Zs are doing now, but it's still easy to scout if necessary, so it's not like there are that many surprises in ZvZ.

The problem with ZvZ isn't that there's no counter to roaches, it's that a counter to roaches takes AAAGES to build up (because it'll be a very soft counter, so you need tons of them), but all of these soft counters can be obliterated very quickly once you bring out their hard counter, even in much smaller numbers (lings<<<banelings, muta<<<hydra).

I've been hoping for ages that zerglings would somewhat beat roaches, because that would open up the whole matchup! It would be the most dynamic match-up if that were to happen, but I just haven't seen it yet, and I've seen a bunch of people try and fail...

[Xyvik]

Wait, why? The missile turret got nerfed against colossi not buffed. Or is there something I'm missing here? Or are you just speaking generally?

oops, read it wrong! thought it said it changed from 7+7 armored to 12+7 armored. My bad!

...still, the banshee buff and psi storm nerf were uncalled for.

[Skyze]

I never thought ZvZ had any issues.. I've won multiple games vs top 5 platinum zergs using speedlings and using roaches.. Both were viable options.

Nerfing roaches to balance a mirror match is stupid, because now roaches are even more useless vs P and T, which zerg is already struggling to fight. At least buff zerglings or something to stop the lame MMM or early zeal/sentry rushes with 50 force fields.

Forcefield needs to have its mana cost at 75, so your first sentry can only cast 1 when it first comes out..

[Hammy]

Protoss already owns. What im pissed about is the major zerg nerfs!

How the hell do you win ZvT? Any good terran knows about baneling busts and wont fall for that.. and now that mutas were nerfed bigtime (turrets + thors buff) theres literally nothing zerg can do to stop terran.. Once the MMM army is up, they will still cut thru any zerg army like butter, even sunkens wont do crap with their "buff" against Marauders..

Im very dissapointed with how they are balancing the game so far, seems they nerf the weakest races, and buff the strongest.. I loved the balance in the first 3 patches, but each patch its getting significantly worse.

(for anyone to bash me on my balance opinions, im top 15 platinum div 8 in 1v1, so hope you are close to that or you dont know how top players play. Terran/Protoss is dominating at the top level, you barely see any zergs cept DIMAGA in any tournaments, and hes been losing lots since patch 6 too.)

It's true T and P (especially P) are starting to get their timings down, which is a huge problem for Z, but still I definitely wouldn't say there's any imbalance. I think the metagame is evolving too quickly to say that "P are owning". I know that when I lose a bunch of games against a certain race, just switching up my timings and/or strategies can put me back on a winning streak. It's really easy to blame losses on the game because it's in beta.
And yeah, plat player bla bla bla. It's not like being top20 plat means you're any good , it just means you're better than silver and 99% of the gold players (believe me, I'm not fooled by my own rank: I get owned by anyone who's name I've already heard when I play zotac/GGL/etc...)