StarCraft® II

Hi. Plat Zerg here. I'm kinda tired of Zerg and am not really feeling like trying to hit Diamond, so I'm switching to Random. Last week or so all my SC2 has basically been P or T custom games. It kinda gave me a different perspective on the game. Some stuff surprised me, some didn't. Here are a few observations, if someone finds it interesting:

1) Injecting larva is not that bad. I always thought Zerg were the ones hit with the boring menial task, but in truth constantly building stuff from various structures without queuing is much more APM-intensive and exhausting. You need to spawn larva in 30 second cycles, but as T or P I feel the need to check my production buildings constantly, which feels incredibly intrusive for me coming from Zerg background. Long story short - harassing with hellions/zealots while keeping up with macro is much harder than you would believe.

2)Zerg map awareness is better than T or P by an order of magnitude. I always thought Z got screwed over with scouting. Truth is, as Zerg it's much easier to have huge map awareness than with T or P. Each game for me as T or P felt much more claustrophobic, and I don't really know how the hell T and P defend from good drop play since there's really no good way to keep watch on the edges of the map. On the upside, a non-detected observer often feels waay too good, as close to maphacking as you can get without actual cheating.

3)Marines OP I thought marines are OP before, now I'm sure marines are OP. Ridiculously OP. They are waaay to good for a mineral dump unit. T is my worst race by far, yet I've managed to win games I played abysmally solely by throwing more Barracks and spamming marines. It's not only they are cheap as hell and that their DPS is incredible, the rate at which you can produce them late-game is mindblowing. If you chose Zergs because you wanted to overwhelm your opponent with swarm of cheap units, you chose the wrong race. Bottom line, I feel marine needs to be heavily hit with a nerf hammer, for such a cheap mineral dump unit to be so crazily effective makes an otherwise really well-designed race feel too one-dimensional.

4) Colossi are fragile As Zerg, I always thought Colossi are incredibly difficult to kill. As Protoss, I feel like they are incredibly difficult to keep alive. They are prohibitively expensive, they love to choose there own pathing and split away from the group, and I never felt indestructible with my deathballs as I always though Protoss does. It seems to me that the perceived problem with Colossi might be that Zerg really doesn't have a counter for them - melee units don't cut it from obvious reasons, Roach range is too short, Hydras die to fast from them, Infestor NP don't make me laugh and Corruptors are too expensive to be serving just as Colossus counter and nothing else. But one thing is for sure - if Toss is making Colossi, he is not making a lot of other stuff he might be making, and the loss of every single Colossus really really hurts.

5)Every Zerg should offrace for at least a season. Seriously. Since Zerg is a reactive race, it's incredibly useful to enter T/P skin and figure out how they see the game and why they make certain decisions. Also it would make you appreciate T and P players more. They really don't have it as easy as one might think. The biggest problem with those races as I see it is that some of the mechanics and design decisions make it so it's much easier to be a bad player and still be effective as T or P than it is with Z. But this doesn't mean every T or P player is bad, just that there's a greater chance he is bad than if it was a Z player.

1) Injecting larva is not that bad.

First of all I think because you're offracing as the other races, their mechanics seem harder than they actually are while injecting feels second nature. If you were to give it time I think you'd realise T and P mechanics aren't that hard.

2)Zerg map awareness is better than T or P by an order of magnitude.

Well, yes, but they need it...

I mean T and P don't need to choose when to make drones or units so they don't really need map vision except to know when something is coming.

3)Marines OP

Not particularly to be honest. I think they're too strong in drops but apart from that I think they're manageable.

4) Colossi are fragile

This, again, is lack of practice on your part - if you actually get good, you won't lose colossi easily.

23/04/2012 12:13Posted by Anchor

1) Injecting larva is not that bad.

First of all I think because you're offracing as the other races, their mechanics seem harder than they actually are while injecting feels second nature. If you were to give it time I think you'd realise T and P mechanics aren't that hard.

2)Zerg map awareness is better than T or P by an order of magnitude.

Well, yes, but they need it...

I mean T and P don't need to choose when to make drones or units so they don't really need map vision except to know when something is coming.

3)Marines OP

Not particularly to be honest. I think they're too strong in drops but apart from that I think they're manageable.

4) Colossi are fragile

This, again, is lack of practice on your part - if you actually get good, you won't lose colossi easily.

How do you know? You've never played protoss or terran in 1v1.

Why don't you try another race for 50-100 matches?

As a player who plays both protoss and zerg (mostly zerg these days), I think his points are spot on (with an exception of marine perhaps).

How do you know? You've never played protoss or terran in 1v1.

As a player who plays both protoss and zerg (mostly zerg these days), I think his points are spot on (with an exception of marine perhaps).

I also think he is spot on(the terran and zerg part though....haven't played much protoss, not that I think colossi are a probem when i play as zerg, i find archons and templars a bigger problem to deal with).

Even with the marines. If you can get to lategame against zerg with loads of barracks producing marines 3/3 you normally are in very solid position.

Larvae injecting i found far easier than the harrassing while macroing that I have to do with terran.

Same with the map awareness. Cheap fast lings, overlords and creep spread gives a lot of map awareness...it is the very early game scouting to prevent cheese that is a bit of a problem.

23/04/2012 12:13Posted by Anchor

I mean T and P don't need to choose when to make drones or units so they don't really need map vision except to know when something is coming.

This is not really true. It is more the other way around. If as a terran you are moving around the map with your army and you don't know where the zerg army is at all times you will get counter attacked, caught unsieged, get run over by banelings, lose expansions and all that. It takes relatively long to react to zerg units moving around the map if you have tanks, thors or even a bio force. Only exception is helions but they are very specific units.

It is zerg that needs to know when something is comming so that they can stop droning and make army.

Good job for giving it a go.

23/04/2012 11:53Posted by McFly

3)Marines OP I thought marines are OP before, now I'm sure marines are OP. Ridiculously OP. They are waaay to good for a mineral dump unit. T is my worst race by far

This made me smile.

Let us know when you start beating the crap out of the other races as T.

Clarification:

I don't think marines are imba. They are not. You can counter them. You can deal with them. The problem I have with marines is that they are too much of a good thing - a great mineral dump, a good failsafe, a good counter to almost everything, a terrific complement to mule and medivac, and - worst of all - a way for bad players to win against players who outplayed them completely.

I just feel that in a good strategy game such a great go-to unit shouldn't exist, especially since it's the very basic unit Terran is given. I mean, I was eager to play Terran just to dispell the "marine OP" myth - and realized marines are even better than I thought they were. In each game as Terran, however badly you screw up, as long as you have some Barracks leftover, you can come back and win. There's nothing even remotely similar with Toss or Zerg - there's an obvious point of no return with both of those races, when you royally screw up it's gg. But Terran can shrug off the unshruggable, and then some. As I said, T is by far my worst race - yet I won games I would be ashamed to show replays, in fact couldn't even bare to watch them myself for how badly I played in them.

Oh, and btw - every Terran player knows how good marines are. There's, like, no way that they don't. So whenever a Terran player says marines are fine, he is lying to your face and laughing inside. :)

23/04/2012 13:45Posted by Neneu

How do you know? You've never played protoss or terran in 1v1.

I have a smurf.

23/04/2012 13:54Posted by Widdly

This is not really true. It is more the other way around. If as a terran you are moving around the map with your army and you don't know where the zerg army is at all times you will get counter attacked, caught unsieged, get run over by banelings, lose expansions and all that. It takes relatively long to react to zerg units moving around the map if you have tanks, thors or even a bio force. Only exception is helions but they are very specific units.

Yes you do need to know where his army is but you have scans for that. It is true that zerg have good map vision but they are the only race who really needs it - all I'm saying is that its a bit of a moot point, they only have it because they need it.

23/04/2012 14:44Posted by McFly

I don't think marines are imba.

23/04/2012 11:53Posted by McFly

I thought marines are OP before, now I'm sure marines are OP. Ridiculously OP

'Overpowered' and 'Imbalanced' mean the same thing.

23/04/2012 13:54Posted by Widdly

Larvae injecting i found far easier than the harrassing while macroing that I have to do with terran.

But larvae injecting isn't all the macro you have to do as zerg. All you did was compare the entirety of terran macro to a portion of zerg macro.

I don't think marines are imba.

I thought marines are OP before, now I'm sure marines are OP. Ridiculously OP

'Overpowered' and 'Imbalanced' mean the same thing.

Whatever. What I meant is based on whether you compare race-to-race, or unit-to-unit.

Marines do not make T imba towards P or Z. But marine as a unit is OP, or imba if you wish, compared to other units - judging by the bang for your buck you get out of it, its place on the tech tree, how well the unit synergizes with other units, how well it performs in various game stages etc. To avoid using "troll trigger" buzzwords and say it another way - this unit simply shouldn't be giving you so much while requiring so little.

23/04/2012 13:54Posted by Widdly
This is not really true. It is more the other way around. If as a terran you are moving around the map with your army and you don't know where the zerg army is at all times you will get counter attacked, caught unsieged, get run over by banelings, lose expansions and all that. It takes relatively long to react to zerg units moving around the map if you have tanks, thors or even a bio force. Only exception is helions but they are very specific units.

Yes you do need to know where his army is but you have scans for that. It is true that zerg have good map vision but they are the only race who really needs it - all I'm saying is that its a bit of a moot point, they only have it because they need it.

Scans aren't really enough and they cost a lot of money depending on what stage of the game it is. Also you give up much needed base defence...well actually I give it up because of the APM required to defend all the expansions...

I still think that the map awareness that comes from zerg is very nice and easy.

23/04/2012 13:54Posted by Widdly
Larvae injecting i found far easier than the harrassing while macroing that I have to do with terran.

But larvae injecting isn't all the macro you have to do as zerg. All you did was compare the entirety of terran macro to a portion of zerg macro.

Larvae injecting is the bulk of the APM required of zerg macro. The rest is creep spread and good descision making and scouting.

The big difference between the two I find is that with zerg it is easier in the early game as long as you scout properly. The injects keep you busy but not as close to as busy as what terran needs to do with placing buildings, deciding on what too build and playing simcity.

In the lategame though terran don't need to do all that anymore but zerg still have to keep up those injects.

After I played a lot of zerg now I can safely say it took me a lot less games to get with zerg on a slightly higher level than wth terran. Ofcourse knowing the game already added a lot.

I hit a wall with terran because I am bad at micro and at multitasking(this was only a problem for me against zerg). I am now at the same level with zerg as I used to be with terran and it still doesn't feel like I hit that wall. Will see how it goes...

I don't know how far you got with that terran smurf you have but I am interested to hear your opinion anyways...

23/04/2012 16:06Posted by Widdly

I don't know how far you got with that terran smurf you have but I am interested to hear your opinion anyways...

If this was aimed at me - I don't have a smurf. I want to switch to Random on ladder on this account, but I want to even out my skill across all races first so my MMR wouldn't be completely lopsided. Until then I play customs with random people from chat, or against Very Hard AI when I cannot find anyone.

I think that right now I am roughly Plat Zerg, Gold Toss and Silver Terran, although with T I am the most inconsistent - sometimes I lose to Silvers, and sometimes I win against Plats. It is also the only race for which I absolutely do not know any build orders or timingsl, which is something I definitely need to work on.

its nice to see someone being somewhat objective =)

marine op? im laughing at you, look how op storm is.

You do know that cracklings have by far the highest DPS/cost and the highest health/cost of all units in the game, right?

It is just a shame they cannot shoot air :).

Guys, chill out about the "OP" units. If you watch any pro match, and some units appear to get the player who was losing to a winning position, you'll realize that EVERY race has a unit or group of units that are really cost effective. Even in the pro scene. Now, I'm no pro, so anyone of those units is going to be A LOT more cost effective, it increases it's value because of my own micro/macro mistakes. Any AOE, for instance, can be considered OP because micro and positioning are involved.

I know Starcraft is not chess, but it kinda reminds of ppl asking me about the values of the pieces. I used to say that a queen is worse than two rooks. (btw, Queen is 9ish value, rook is 5ish --» http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_piece_relative_value). But it's only for the Master guys, I'll probably lose to a queen player! Get the idea?

Hope you get that Diamond promotion, or better:D

OP offraces after playing Zerg for a million years, finds other races hard.
Maybe, you know, you don't have enough practice with the other races?

OP offraces after playing Zerg for a million years, finds other races hard.
Maybe, you know, you don't have enough practice with the other races?

Thank you for your valuable insight, oh enlightened one. Next time however try to actually read the thread before posting, so your contribution can be even more useful.

23/04/2012 23:16Posted by McFly

Thank you for your valuable insight, oh enlightened one. Next time however try to actually read the thread before posting, so your contribution can be even more useful.

Erm that is basically what I said too. He's right.

OP offraces after playing Zerg for a million years, finds other races hard.
Maybe, you know, you don't have enough practice with the other races?

How about me then. I've played more protoss matches than I've played zerg, yet I find zerg macro far easier than protoss every time I play it.

3)Marines OP I thought marines are OP before, now I'm sure marines are OP. Ridiculously OP. They are waaay to good for a mineral dump unit. T is my worst race by far, yet I've managed to win games I played abysmally solely by throwing more Barracks and spamming marines. It's not only they are cheap as hell and that their DPS is incredible, the rate at which you can produce them late-game is mindblowing. If you chose Zergs because you wanted to overwhelm your opponent with swarm of cheap units, you chose the wrong race. Bottom line, I feel marine needs to be heavily hit with a nerf hammer, for such a cheap mineral dump unit to be so crazily effective makes an otherwise really well-designed race feel too one-dimensional.

yeah, i always say that the real swarm race is terran when they start tp produce mass marines:D

23/04/2012 18:20Posted by Fruttis

marine op? im laughing at you, look how op storm is.

Of course it's OP. Imagine if marines didn't die to storms lol... what would they die to then?

That's why McFly said that the marine is OP as a unit but T is on par with P, because P can deal with the marines via good storms.

Anyway on the topic. I wish more players would do the random thing. Crying X is OP without seeing the other point of view is plain stupid. Not to mention that you get to know your opponent's tactics and timings by trying them out yourself. This certainly improves your game sense and skill. GJ man.