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| spbelky United States. September 15 2012 01:50. Posts 611 | Profile Blog # |
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/8/8b/Infestor.png/200px-Infestor.png)
Infestor - Liquipedia
The infestor has always been a controversial unit, but didn’t get much attention until its fungal growth buff in patch 1.3 (reduced duration, increased dps, increased damage to armored). One of the biggest complaints about fungal is its rooting mechanic, which completely immobilizes its victims, allowing for chain fungals to be cast until all the trapped units are dead. The range, aoe radius, instant cast, low energy cost, rooting mechanic, high damage, and ability to hit air has made fungal growth the single most powerful spell in Wings of Liberty.
Other things that factor in to the strength of the infestor include infested terrans, its size (larger, so less susceptible to aoe), speed (2.25, standard speed), ability to move and cast infested terrans while burrowed, and synergies with other units (amazing paired with any combo of units, but particularly the broodlord).
One might argue that the infestor is OP and needs a nerf! Or that the design is poor and should be changed! While there is some validity to both of these arguments, the fact is that the infestor in its current state is necessary in order to keep zerg on par with the other races.
Luckily, with the new units coming in the HotS expansion, there is the opportunity to redesign the infestor and its abilities, and make up for the losses with the new units and/or mechanics. Please keep in mind that there is the possibility that with new Terrand and Protoss units, the infestor might lose some of its strength without any changes to the actual unit.
There are many WoL units that could use some tweaking (Colossus, Siege Tank, Carrier, insert your favorite here), and definitely every HotS unit needs tweaking, but I’d like to keep our focus on the infestor and its current role in WoL and its future in HotS.
Some Polls
+ Show Spoiler +Poll: Should the Infestor recieve balance changes with the HotS release?Yes (364) 75% No (121) 25% 485 total votes Your vote: Should the Infestor recieve balance changes with the HotS release? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
Poll: Will we see any infestor changes in HotS?No (281) 83% Yes (57) 17% 338 total votes Your vote: Will we see any infestor changes in HotS? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
Poll: How should Fungal Growth be changed? If at all.It should not 100% root units. (304) 61% It should not be changed at all. (113) 23% It should not hit air units. (22) 4% The dps should be reduced. (20) 4% A combination of the above. (18) 4% Other (Start post with *OTHER* and then explain) (14) 3% The range should be reduced. (10) 2% 501 total votes Your vote: How should Fungal Growth be changed? If at all. (Vote): It should not 100% root units.
(Vote): The range should be reduced.
(Vote): The dps should be reduced.
(Vote): It should not hit air units.
(Vote): A combination of the above.
(Vote): Other (Start post with *OTHER* and then explain)
(Vote): It should not be changed at all.
As the discussion evolves, additional polls may be added.
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| Existor Russian Federation. September 15 2012 01:53. Posts 3122 | Profile # |
| Use EMPs, snipes, feedbacks - all of these skills counter infestors nicely |
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| SC2John United States. September 15 2012 01:54. Posts 918 | Profile # |
I think the infestor is perfectly balanced the way it is. It's not going to change any in HotS.
HOWEVER, I think in many cases the viper will entirely replace the infestor. If anything, infestor is going to become more of a midgame unit with limited abilities, and perhaps become mostly a harassment unit in later parts of the game (4-infestor hit squad). |
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| Qikz United Kingdom. September 15 2012 01:59. Posts 6694 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 01:54 SC2John wrote:
I think the infestor is perfectly balanced the way it is. It's not going to change any in HotS.
HOWEVER, I think in many cases the viper will entirely replace the infestor. If anything, infestor is going to become more of a midgame unit with limited abilities, and perhaps become mostly a harassment unit in later parts of the game (4-infestor hit squad).
The infestor would be perfectly balanced if Fungal was just a slow and not a root. Chain fungals are so easy to pull off and if you accidentally clump your air units once, you lose all of them for free. |
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 Wombat_NI Northern Ireland. September 15 2012 02:01. Posts 5145 | Profile # |
The infestor was so strong in WoL because it filled a lot of roles that Zerg kind of needed filled, especially in terms of anti-air units that weren't useless outside of that role.
However, Zerg have got a tonne of new, seemingly useful units to go with their pre-existing ones receiving buffs. Hydras are better, although still melt to collosi. Swarm hosts and vipers look to be very strong units. In the HoTS I've watched I've often felt the only thing stopping Zerg domination is the streamers are actually trying out all this new stuff.
Once Zergs go back to trying to win at all costs in HoTS, and augment their existing insane Bl/Infestor lategame composition with the other options open to them, they're going to be pretty scary.
We'll see how this develops, as it stands I want the root fucking removed from fungal though, it was ridiculously aggravating to play against when you could justify it by saying that Zerg's weaknesses in other areas required such a strong spell. When they don't have to rely on it as a crutch anymore, there's a reason to tweak the ability again. |
| | 'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - McBengt Also anyone with any questions or desires to help the Irish scene, PM me! |
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| Zheryn Sweden. September 15 2012 02:12. Posts 854 | Profile # |
| They need to increase the range on neural parasite. Other than that I think it's ok. |
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| SC2John United States. September 15 2012 02:24. Posts 918 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 01:59 Qikz wrote:
Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 01:54 SC2John wrote:
I think the infestor is perfectly balanced the way it is. It's not going to change any in HotS.
HOWEVER, I think in many cases the viper will entirely replace the infestor. If anything, infestor is going to become more of a midgame unit with limited abilities, and perhaps become mostly a harassment unit in later parts of the game (4-infestor hit squad).
The infestor would be perfectly balanced if Fungal was just a slow and not a root. Chain fungals are so easy to pull off and if you accidentally clump your air units once, you lose all of them for free.
I just don't see this problem at all as long as you're constantly spreading your units. I guess, from a terran player's perspective turned to protoss, this is a really easy solution. I'm used to constant splitting that it's natural and doesn't bother me. In addition, splitting off 4 marauders or blinking forward with 4-5 stalkers to snipe the infestors is an easy option that automatically spreads out your army and pushes the infestors back. As for air units such as mutas or phoenixes, they're so mobile and fast that, unless your mechanics are failing, you should be able to easily avoid fungals or split them off into groups, etc.
I think it was really scary when it first came out, but it's quite easy to deal with as long as you have a little bit of micro. Perfectly balanced as is. |
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| Patate Canada. September 15 2012 02:25. Posts 338 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 02:12 Zheryn wrote:
They need to increase the range on neural parasite. Other than that I think it's ok.
Keep your bias out of this. The infestor is an harassing (infested terrans), anti-massive (neural parasite), anti-mass, anti-air and detector (fungal). It is currently way too good,
If only you could spread out the units that are fungaled, I'd be ok with it. Make it just an ensnare +dmg, it would be a well better design. |
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| Wombat_NI Northern Ireland. September 15 2012 02:32. Posts 5145 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 02:24 SC2John wrote:
Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 01:59 Qikz wrote:
On September 15 2012 01:54 SC2John wrote:
I think the infestor is perfectly balanced the way it is. It's not going to change any in HotS.
HOWEVER, I think in many cases the viper will entirely replace the infestor. If anything, infestor is going to become more of a midgame unit with limited abilities, and perhaps become mostly a harassment unit in later parts of the game (4-infestor hit squad).
The infestor would be perfectly balanced if Fungal was just a slow and not a root. Chain fungals are so easy to pull off and if you accidentally clump your air units once, you lose all of them for free.
I just don't see this problem at all as long as you're constantly spreading your units. I guess, from a terran player's perspective turned to protoss, this is a really easy solution. I'm used to constant splitting that it's natural and doesn't bother me. In addition, splitting off 4 marauders or blinking forward with 4-5 stalkers to snipe the infestors is an easy option that automatically spreads out your army and pushes the infestors back. As for air units such as mutas or phoenixes, they're so mobile and fast that, unless your mechanics are failing, you should be able to easily avoid fungals or split them off into groups, etc. I think it was really scary when it first came out, but it's quite easy to deal with as long as you have a little bit of micro. Perfectly balanced as is.
Protoss balls just function differently from bio so it's not a fair comparison. Protoss balls largely need to be left intact with few gaps so that the units that actually deal good damage (Collosus/Templar/Immortals/Archons) are zoned out from everything. In a bio ball, the damage dealers ARE the bio units so spreading mitigates losing too many of them.
You can do this as you say vs certain compositions, especially infestor/roach and it's effective. Against infestor ling spreading out your stalkers is a death sentence because they'll get through gaps and it'll maximise their melee DPS. Likewise it zones everything out and allows broodlings to annihilate everything on the ground if you spread out and give the broodlings more space.
It's more of an issue vs airtoss, given that air units naturally clump up. I'm not saying Protoss should have free reign to go VR/Collosus deathball all over again either, but Zerg are better served in terms of anti-air than in WoL and vipers with abduct make lategame seem even scarier. We'll see how they move on from here I guessLast edit: 2012-09-15 02:37:17 |
| | 'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - McBengt Also anyone with any questions or desires to help the Irish scene, PM me! |
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| Belha Italy. September 15 2012 02:35. Posts 2350 | Profile # |
The only issue with Infestor is that it just denies micro badly.
So it should be reworked a bit to take the root out and balance it out (not with pure dps as the "geniuses" that create the roaches, warhound, marauders, and such would prolly do) |
| | Please Blizz buff speevacs for TvP! |
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| SC2John United States. September 15 2012 02:47. Posts 918 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 02:32 Wombat_NI wrote:
Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 02:24 SC2John wrote:
On September 15 2012 01:59 Qikz wrote:
On September 15 2012 01:54 SC2John wrote:
I think the infestor is perfectly balanced the way it is. It's not going to change any in HotS.
HOWEVER, I think in many cases the viper will entirely replace the infestor. If anything, infestor is going to become more of a midgame unit with limited abilities, and perhaps become mostly a harassment unit in later parts of the game (4-infestor hit squad).
The infestor would be perfectly balanced if Fungal was just a slow and not a root. Chain fungals are so easy to pull off and if you accidentally clump your air units once, you lose all of them for free.
I just don't see this problem at all as long as you're constantly spreading your units. I guess, from a terran player's perspective turned to protoss, this is a really easy solution. I'm used to constant splitting that it's natural and doesn't bother me. In addition, splitting off 4 marauders or blinking forward with 4-5 stalkers to snipe the infestors is an easy option that automatically spreads out your army and pushes the infestors back. As for air units such as mutas or phoenixes, they're so mobile and fast that, unless your mechanics are failing, you should be able to easily avoid fungals or split them off into groups, etc. I think it was really scary when it first came out, but it's quite easy to deal with as long as you have a little bit of micro. Perfectly balanced as is.
Protoss balls just function differently from bio so it's not a fair comparison. Protoss balls largely need to be left intact with few gaps so that the units that actually deal good damage (Collosus/Templar/Immortals/Archons) are zoned out from everything. In a bio ball, the damage dealers ARE the bio units so spreading mitigates losing too many of them. You can do this as you say vs certain compositions, especially infestor/roach and it's effective. Against infestor ling spreading out your stalkers is a death sentence because they'll get through gaps and it'll maximise their melee DPS. Likewise it zones everything out and allows broodlings to annihilate everything on the ground if you spread out and give the broodlings more space. It's more of an issue vs airtoss, given that air units naturally clump up. I'm not saying Protoss should have free reign to go VR/Collosus deathball all over again either, but Zerg are better served in terms of anti-air than in WoL and vipers with abduct make lategame seem even scarier. We'll see how they move on from here I guess
Oh, I just make a few zealots to deal with that.... Seems to work well most of the time!
In my opinion the only really dangerous thing about engaging zerg and dealing with infestors is just that your sentries will die so fast to a chain fungal. Other than that, no reason why you can't just skew your composition towards a few more zealots and zone out areas around your stalkers with FF. Focus fire with colossus/blink stalkers/feedback and chain fungaling is much less of a danger.
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| Wombat_NI Northern Ireland. September 15 2012 02:58. Posts 5145 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 02:47 SC2John wrote:
Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 02:32 Wombat_NI wrote:
On September 15 2012 02:24 SC2John wrote:
On September 15 2012 01:59 Qikz wrote:
On September 15 2012 01:54 SC2John wrote:
I think the infestor is perfectly balanced the way it is. It's not going to change any in HotS.
HOWEVER, I think in many cases the viper will entirely replace the infestor. If anything, infestor is going to become more of a midgame unit with limited abilities, and perhaps become mostly a harassment unit in later parts of the game (4-infestor hit squad).
The infestor would be perfectly balanced if Fungal was just a slow and not a root. Chain fungals are so easy to pull off and if you accidentally clump your air units once, you lose all of them for free.
I just don't see this problem at all as long as you're constantly spreading your units. I guess, from a terran player's perspective turned to protoss, this is a really easy solution. I'm used to constant splitting that it's natural and doesn't bother me. In addition, splitting off 4 marauders or blinking forward with 4-5 stalkers to snipe the infestors is an easy option that automatically spreads out your army and pushes the infestors back. As for air units such as mutas or phoenixes, they're so mobile and fast that, unless your mechanics are failing, you should be able to easily avoid fungals or split them off into groups, etc. I think it was really scary when it first came out, but it's quite easy to deal with as long as you have a little bit of micro. Perfectly balanced as is.
Protoss balls just function differently from bio so it's not a fair comparison. Protoss balls largely need to be left intact with few gaps so that the units that actually deal good damage (Collosus/Templar/Immortals/Archons) are zoned out from everything. In a bio ball, the damage dealers ARE the bio units so spreading mitigates losing too many of them. You can do this as you say vs certain compositions, especially infestor/roach and it's effective. Against infestor ling spreading out your stalkers is a death sentence because they'll get through gaps and it'll maximise their melee DPS. Likewise it zones everything out and allows broodlings to annihilate everything on the ground if you spread out and give the broodlings more space. It's more of an issue vs airtoss, given that air units naturally clump up. I'm not saying Protoss should have free reign to go VR/Collosus deathball all over again either, but Zerg are better served in terms of anti-air than in WoL and vipers with abduct make lategame seem even scarier. We'll see how they move on from here I guess
Oh, I just make a few zealots to deal with that.... Seems to work well most of the time! In my opinion the only really dangerous thing about engaging zerg and dealing with infestors is just that your sentries will die so fast to a chain fungal. Other than that, no reason why you can't just skew your composition towards a few more zealots and zone out areas around your stalkers with FF. Focus fire with colossus/blink stalkers/feedback and chain fungaling is much less of a danger.
Probably didn't make this clear enough but I really feel fungal is only 'broken' in conjunction with lategame infestor/bl/spine walls. You really cannot engage that army without mothership support, vortexes or if your opponent really screws up.
With other compositions fungal is incredibly annoying, but it's possible to deal with good positioning and control. Infestor/Ling is fine for example because lings are pretty squishy and storms/feedbacks work pretty well. Likewise most other ground comps can be dealt with if you play well |
| | 'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - McBengt Also anyone with any questions or desires to help the Irish scene, PM me! |
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| Decendos Germany. September 15 2012 03:09. Posts 912 | Profile # |
| even if fungal is changed to a slow (combined with a buff on other part of zerg site) it needs to prevent blink. |
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| ZenZombie United States. September 15 2012 04:24. Posts 58 | Profile # |
I *love* fungal growth.
It seems powerful, and would be stupid powerful, if it was cast automatically perfectly.
Try and go play zerg. Go try to micro lings, corruptors, macro, and then cast fungal. Go ahead.
I still can't do it that well.
It is very micro intensive to cast well, you have to time it right to chain it, and infestors die so very easily, and god are they stupid meat sacks. Seriously. One wrong rally or one second of not babysitting the fatties and they wander into enemy fire.
Also they are necessary for every match up otherwise certain compositions would always show up, such as pure blink stalker, pure Marine Medivac Marauder, and in zvz, it would be a game of "who has more roaches today"
Also, up til swarm host, there were so few ways to break an expansion (and it still is a very dangerous attempt) other than infestor hit squad.
Pros make it look easy but microing infestor is hard. Also it keeps things like deathball play from being always a good choice. What reason is there to ever *not* deathball against zerg if you cut back on the infestor? |
| | Live Simply Or Simply Live. |
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| Mephtral Sweden. September 15 2012 04:48. Posts 49 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 04:24 ZenZombie wrote:
I *love* fungal growth.
It seems powerful, and would be stupid powerful, if it was cast automatically perfectly.
Try and go play zerg. Go try to micro lings, corruptors, macro, and then cast fungal. Go ahead.
I still can't do it that well.
It is very micro intensive to cast well, you have to time it right to chain it, and infestors die so very easily, and god are they stupid meat sacks. Seriously. One wrong rally or one second of not babysitting the fatties and they wander into enemy fire.
Also they are necessary for every match up otherwise certain compositions would always show up, such as pure blink stalker, pure Marine Medivac Marauder, and in zvz, it would be a game of "who has more roaches today"
Also, up til swarm host, there were so few ways to break an expansion (and it still is a very dangerous attempt) other than infestor hit squad.
Pros make it look easy but microing infestor is hard. Also it keeps things like deathball play from being always a good choice. What reason is there to ever *not* deathball against zerg if you cut back on the infestor?
Alright, infestor is powerful, and atm it's more or less the thing that makes the race work properly
But you actually cannot say the infestor is difficult to micro
That you have to do alot of things and therefore got problems with microing the infestors at the same time, that's a valid argument, but the micro itself is simply not difficult at all.
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| Novalisk Israel. September 15 2012 05:01. Posts 1769 | Profile Blog # |
| Fungal is the main issue and this isn't a well kept secret or anything. Pretty much everyone would like to see Fungal changed into something that can be micro'd out of. Last edit: 2012-09-15 05:01:59 |
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| Brahoono September 15 2012 05:05. Posts 119 | Profile # |
Imho they should move NP to Hive and buff the range again. Protoss Mothership np shouldn't be a huge concern anymore with the new Oracle and would generally help the spell imho...it's not used that much and very very situational.
Also might solve some problems zerg has with superlategame airterran with lots of ravens etc. and would create interesting microsituations.Last edit: 2012-09-15 05:07:21 |
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| ZenZombie United States. September 15 2012 05:22. Posts 58 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 04:48 Mephtral wrote:
Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 04:24 ZenZombie wrote:
I *love* fungal growth.
It seems powerful, and would be stupid powerful, if it was cast automatically perfectly.
Try and go play zerg. Go try to micro lings, corruptors, macro, and then cast fungal. Go ahead.
I still can't do it that well.
It is very micro intensive to cast well, you have to time it right to chain it, and infestors die so very easily, and god are they stupid meat sacks. Seriously. One wrong rally or one second of not babysitting the fatties and they wander into enemy fire.
Also they are necessary for every match up otherwise certain compositions would always show up, such as pure blink stalker, pure Marine Medivac Marauder, and in zvz, it would be a game of "who has more roaches today"
Also, up til swarm host, there were so few ways to break an expansion (and it still is a very dangerous attempt) other than infestor hit squad.
Pros make it look easy but microing infestor is hard. Also it keeps things like deathball play from being always a good choice. What reason is there to ever *not* deathball against zerg if you cut back on the infestor?
Alright, infestor is powerful, and atm it's more or less the thing that makes the race work properly But you actually cannot say the infestor is difficult to micro That you have to do alot of things and therefore got problems with microing the infestors at the same time, that's a valid argument, but the micro itself is simply not difficult at all.
Casting the spell is not difficult, in and of itself, the fact that the infestor has to close/expose itself is. You have to baby sit them. That is where the difficult micro comes from. That you can lose it so easily and it is a high invesment per unit (heavy gas) is where the risk is. This is compounded because it has to be microed with other units. When micros marines, medivacs follow and heal, tanks continue to fire. When one micros roaches, infestors sit in place until told to do anything at all. They will let a zealot walk up to them and beat them to death.
Another balancing feature of the infestor is that when it is out of energy it is essentially useless until recharged, and super vulnerable. Medivacs as a random comparison can fly away and use terrain and speed to get away, and even pick up threatened units.
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| | Live Simply Or Simply Live. |
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| Zrana United Kingdom. September 15 2012 05:43. Posts 674 | Profile Blog # |
I had an idea that i think has some potential.
Fungal currently fills a role of zerg anti-air and anti big deathballs.
What everyone complains about is losing control of your units when they get fungaled.
What if the root was removed and the duration significantly increased? Now what fungal does is put a clock anything that gets hit. Maybe make it so fungal does 50% of a unit's hp over 10 seconds? Currently a marine/tank push gets fungaled, lings or ling/bane or ling/roach runs in and cleans up. With the change to the duration this wouldn't happen but now instead of the terran player just losing control of his units, he's forced to make something happen with them before his medivacs run out of energy and his army is left on low hp. It still helps the zerg deal with the terran army in that now the terran is forced to push more quickly than he'd like to, but the terran still has army control.
Vs Mutas, say the numbers work out so that the mutas will die in 2 fungals (and say the fungals last like 10 seconds). Now the muta-ing zerg has 10 seconds to do damage and get out with his mutas alive, or 20 seconds to do damage and lose his mutas.
Vs Protoss, if fungal does 50% hp then that works out at a unit's shields. So now if protoss takes a fungal they have to retreat to allow shields to recharge (but they aren't rooted so they can just run off). If protoss decides to engage then fungal is a nice dps boost but just as it is currently, you won't win the battle with fungals alone.
Another idea i had was to basically clone the Irradiate ability from bw science vessels (but make it so it's not just vs bio). After all it's fungal *growth* right? It should grow!
This would be anti-deathball and anti-air while still being micro-able against. |
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| FeyFey Germany. September 15 2012 05:47. Posts 4698 | Profile # |
On September 15 2012 01:53 Existor wrote:
Use EMPs, snipes, feedbacks - all of these skills counter infestors nicely
well basically yes, but on the field it the infestor unless caught off guard throw infested terrans out of the distance and then fungal the opponent to force a fight with against the infested terrans. While the infestors retreat behind the spine wall to recharge energy. They can keep the map split that way and fight super cost effective and stay out of the range of feedback snipe and emp.
Atleast this is the current strategy if you want to win easily in the lategame after the map is split.
As for fungal. It works okay its no issue by itself. But it resets units lines of commands, fungaled stalkers will follow their ai and the ai tells them to shoot summoned units first. So basically each fungal will causes your units to go into derpy mode with summoned units around. So you are basically forced to micro your units anew after each fungal + fungal denies issuing some commands, so you need to be there when fungal wears of as well.
Infestors might not be the easiest unit to control (well casting the spells is the easiest though). But the amount of micro they force is brutal for the opponent.
I would love a 99% slow down, so the commands i gave doesn't have to be canceled. Though units on move command will get owned if uncontrolled.
The real problem are infested terrans though + the ability to force a fight against those. Atleast for me it becomes really easy to gain an advantage lategame with this combination. When you have the time to get the energy you are able to have 8 marine like units without the possibility to micro (but buffed stats) that just take up 2 supply.
Zerg can be really supply effective lategame, gateways or mules are not comparable to this. But it is horrible to balance out. If the trend continues we might soon see a change to the infestor. But maybe someone finds a way to deal with this, who knows, thats the beauty of an unexplored game. |
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