Void Ray Massing

[Mucky]

The biggest disappointment I have with Zerg is that so many of their good units were either nerfed into the ground or removed entirely. They have no Defilers, Lurkers, Devourers, etc. and the Hydralisk costs 2 supply. Not that 1 supply would allow Zerg to mass Hydralisks, because they cost too much gas. Seriously, Roach/Hydra is the most you can sustain on 2 bases with 4 geysers. It's pathetic.

Also, maybe it's just me, but Mutalisks also seem much worse in SC2. In BW, they were great for harassing Terran. 11 Mutalisks was enough to kill a turret in two volleys, which meant the Terran absolutely had to keep marines in his base. Jaedong, the strongest Zerg player in Korea (I might be wrong on this, I haven't followed high-level games in a long time); give him 11 Mutalisks and he would kill every turret the Terran had along with 10-15 SCVs. He would kill Marines by attacking nearby supply depots and hitting the Marines with bounce. He hovered over the Terran's starport to kill their Science Vessel the moment it popped out. Can Mutalisks do that kind of damage in SC2? Hell no. Turrets have more health, more damage, and more range if you get the upgrade for it. Marines also have more health and an upgrade to get even more health. SCVs have... less health, but the Zerg is lucky to kill even a few. Not to mention 11 Mutalisks will kill the Zerg's gas economy, whereas in BW 1100 gas was manageable albeit still a heavy investment.

[IskatuMesk]

Mutalisks suffer from a variety of problems. Their acceleration is fairly slow, so micro is worthless. I think they got +1 damage in sc2 and that was about it, so AA like vikings, thors, even marines scaled considerably higher and Mutas did not. Their cost is also still very high. At 100/100 a pop, you spend 1100/1100 to get 11 mutas that a single HSM will bring into the red or a single Thor will bring into the red unless you abuse the "magic box" which most people don't seem to get yet. Needless to say, they are not cost efficient and it isn't just because you can't micro anymore. They simply did not hitch a ride on Dustin Browder's one-way express to FASTER, MORE INTENSE!

Kind of like Zerglings. Actually, he probably just lined up Zerglings on the railroad for fun along the way.

[Mucky]

Back on the topic of Void Rays... The only thing that bothers me about them is their speed. They're stupidly fast. It would be fine, I think, if everything else in the game weren't so damn slow. Banshees in particular are way too slow for the kind of role they're supposed to provide (harass as if Terran didn't have enough harass units LOLOL). Zerg in general lost a lot of its speed, probably because their design invested a great deal into the creep speed gimmick. Their only fast unit without creep are Zerglings.

[Xenon]

Maybe they should have a speed penalty while charged, so it's actually viable to run from them until they lose it. Won't do any good if they're bulldozing your base, however.

[Krazy]

You know what's stupidly fast?

Reapers.

Seriously, every zerg unit has 100/100 or more for speed upgrades. But reapers speed is 50/50. That's dirt cheap. Why?

[AA7Dragoon]

This is a good point by Krazy. Also the fact that Marauder concussion upgrades are 50/50 too and basically slow down all opposing units hit. It's a combat reverse speed upgrade that's far cheaper than the Zealot speed upgrade, Stalker's blink, and all Zerg speed upgrades.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

You know what's stupidly fast?

Reapers.

Seriously, every zerg unit has 100/100 or more for speed upgrades. But reapers speed is 50/50. That's dirt cheap. Why?

I have no idea. I know that back in the beta, reaper's speed was 100/100 ... which usually I waited for 4 reapers + speed before charging in. Now since it's possible to start it sooner, I usually start my reaper rush hits at 2 reapers with speed researched.

[RazorclawX]

The only reason Marauder concussion is 50/50 is in beta the upgrade didn't exist; Marauders started with concussion as they were trained. The upgrade exists as a (rather poor) way to slow down M&M.


Also in beta most Zerg players refused to build Infestors, so Blizzard scrambled to find a way to make them more useful... and somehow, while they got people to use Infestors (more out of necessity since I don't think they actually changed Fungal Growth that much) they took away Neural Parasite and made it an upgrade, AND made it last an undisclosed short-ass duration.

Even Blizzard doesn't know what to do with it. The way Neural is now I'd rather trade it for Siphon Tentacle (which turns out to be ridiculously good as an autocast channeled spell)

[Mucky]

You know what's stupidly fast?

Reapers.

Seriously, every zerg unit has 100/100 or more for speed upgrades. But reapers speed is 50/50. That's dirt cheap. Why?

Because Reapers cost 50 gas apiece. And the tech lab costs 25 gas. When the upgrade costed 100/100, that was 175 gas just for one Reaper with the speed upgrade. With the cost decrease, it becomes two Reapers with faster timing for the speed upgrade. That was the problem with Reaper rush; it took too long to have enough gas for the upgrade that the opponent usually had a counter by the time it finished (speedlings, stalkers, marauders).

Marauders need to lose something. Either stim or concussive shells, they shouldn't have both.

[Lavarinth]

I always personally thought stim packs for Marauders was an excuse to make stim packs more versatile for Terran by giving it to two units. But with this logic, they might as well give it to Reapers as well, it's ridiculous. I also believe only Marines should have it, just give up trying to make stim packs a big deal.

[DrumsofWar]

As AA7 said, you don't have to nerf Terran, just boost the other 2 races.

Zerg really need 2 main things to help them:

- No more of this Overseer bull. Let Overlords be detectors and auto-generate creep off the bat.

Making the player mutate Overseers and build a Queen is busywork that takes away from the Zerg player's ability to quickly mass and move units, which is basically their main advantage.

- Both Crawlers should be able to cliff climb and burrow anywhere. For the cost, they're a perfect way to give Zerg an edge in anti-air and having high HP units to beef up their lower HP hordes that will be killed by anything with splash.

It also rewards players for having lots of drones or defense and how awesome would it be to have 12 drones be the scariest thing ever for an enemy player?


Protoss just really need 1 thing, a new spell. Call it Gravity Well or whatever you like, as long as it can ground an enemy flyer for 30 seconds down to the ground, and have it castable by a mid-tier unit.

This makes both Colossi and Immortals actually useful not to mention the fact that it discourages whoring air against Protoss when a bunch of Zealots can gank your nice shiny BC.

[tipereth]

If Crawlers could be transported or nydused, that would be pretty nifty. Drone dropping into a dudes base with a queen for a tumor is really dumb, but hilarious when you're up against a guy who doesn't know what's going on.

[Krazy]

Overlords need detection.

I'm not sure about crawlers climbing cliffs or burrowing anywhere. Those things are strong as hell and I think have more range than marines in bunkers.

It's funny how you bring up gravity well for toss considering the phoenix's spell.

[DrumsofWar]

Well, imagine if it had a spell that could make any target air unit a ground unit for 30 seconds. It would completely vindicate all the obsolete land units Protoss has in the late-game without having to tweak build times like Blizzard is doing now.

Edit: Think of it as a Protoss Defiler.

[AA7Dragoon]

Sounds like the Undead Nerubians from WarCraft III.