Summary for tl;dr: This is not a whine. I don't make accusations of imbalance. Blizzard appears to have crafted the Zerg air to be support units for ground troops. A quick look at the options available to the three races demonstrates that, overall, Zerg have less choices and more specialist (limited) units. I don't think we're supposed to dominate the skies. Not saying I like it, just appears to be how it is and I'm going to keep playing without whining anyway. ----------------- A quick Comparison of various air units. I'm not trying to compare unit for unit - this is just a look at what each race's air has to offer. Not calling OP or UP at all. Just take a look and think about it. Terran: Vikings - ATA xor GTG - Can land and avoid getting hit by Corruptors or fly and dodge Banshees and Brood Lords. Banshees - High powered ATG with Cloak Battlecruiser - ATA and ATG, Yamato is a nice ability for quickly wrecking vital infrastructure. Raven - detector/support, ATA and ATG - Point Defense and Turrets. Medivac - No attack, Transport, support unit that heals any and all biologicals (including Protoss and Zerg in team games). Protoss: Phoenix - ATA but can pick up ground units and pop them Carriers - ATA and ATG, swarming units easily confuse AI Observer - Not offensive but a cloaked detector Warp Prism - Transport, Support for warping in reinforcements Mothership - No comment. Don't see these a lot but they can do some damage with their cloaked army and other abilities. Void Rays - ATA and ATG, costly, fragile, but insanely powerful when fielded en-mass or early in the game. Slow to build up damage but when they do... ouch. Zerg: Overlord - No attacks, can be transport with an upgrade (and another if you want them to move faster than molasses) and can spread creep. Also our supply unit so bringing them into combat can be very risky. Overseer - Upgrade from Overlord that requires 100 gas. No damaging attacks. Detector, automatic speed upgrade, loses transport/creep ability, gains ability to make changelings - very useful! - and can shut down production buildings. (I love these, actually) Mutalisk - ATA and ATG, fast moving, attack bounces up around but they're quite fragile. Corruptor - ATA only, bonus damage to massive units (Battlecruiser, Colossus), can cast Corruption, and can mutate into the.... Brood Lord - AtG only. Slow as heck, maybe the slowest in the game (Overlords excluded). Needs a bunch of babysitters so they don't get popped on their way to wherever they're going. Can't really be micro'd because they're so slow. Broodlings can cause the AI on the ground to get confused which, I suppose, is nice. Two Zerg air units require the "loss" of a precursor unit, costing additional time and resources. I am NOT saying Zerg are underpowered or the other races are overpowered. Looking at this, I'm certain that Blizzard has intentionally designed Zerg with the thought that they are not supposed to be an air heavy race. I think that's fine! The Zerg... zerg people! Mass ground units, etc. Zerg air units can't really zerg anyone in the mid-game - Mutalisks are driven off by a Missile Turret/Cannon or two and if we want we can go suicide against Thors. There are times when Zerg air can shine, mainly when it's the appropriate counter-tech or a truly sneaky surprise attack against an unwitting (and likely unwise) opponent. Corruptors are great - with Corruption. It almost seems like they were balanced around that ability. Unless they cast it, they can have quite the time dealing with non-Massive air units. My conclusion: I don't have one. Things are the way they are and I'm not going to whine about it. For the time being I will accept things as they are. If Blizzard does the math and decides to change things in my (the Zerg's) favor, so be it. If not, I'm going to keep going anyway. Last thing: I miss Scourges. I'd happily morph a Mutalisk into 3 Scourges if given the chance.
actually, mutalisk swarms are very strong for zerg. muta/ling is a pretty solid, general strategy for most zergs. the thing about mutas over other races' air units are that they're ridiculously fast- perfect for hit-and-run. corruptors are specifically anti-massive- but that's useful enough, because colossi and battlecruisers can cause a lot of trouble for your ground forces. in any case, i think this follows from their ground army as well. they have no real massive ground tech other than the ultralisk, while terrans have seige tanks and thors, protoss have colossi and archons. the zerg really rely on replenishing their army really quickly more than having a big huge unit to counter other big huge units.
Zerg just has less units in general. Make a chart like comparing other races units with Zerg and the picture will be the same. I do agree that there is a gap in Zerg air versus armored (but not massive) ships. Corruptors should deal bonus damage versus armored units, not just massive, IMO.
I raely see any other protoss units then void rays and carriers sadly, so I think mass mutas will destory the void rays at the start and corruptors for the later possibility of the carriers. Brood lords are definitely slow for a reason, if they were fast they could go fast it would be op, they absolutely destroy ground armies. Like the firt replyguy said kinda, zerg is meant for massing armies moreso then power, if they decide to up the air units for zerg god is everyone else screwed lmao.
Regarding mass Mutalisks - they can be great! Of course a Lair and a Spire ( 350 minerals, 300 gas total, I believe) and if you really want to mass them you're going to need an expansion quickly to keep the gass flowing. Got to spread yourself very thin if you want to field a number of them early game, and you'll be relying on them and some Zerglings to hold off... Stalkers and Zealots, or Void Rays, perhaps an MMM build? I prefer Hydras and Roaches for defense if I'm massing air but every one of those I make takes/away the resources for air. You've also got to be careful about tipping your hand regarding those Mutas because otherwise up go the turrets and cannons, more stalkers, etc. Not saying any of our units are useless, believe me. They just serve more of a support role throughout the early and midgame. By the time you would be able to get out those brood lords your enemy should be on the ropes or the game should be over. Just my observation. Zerg air is far from useless. But it is a little more support/harass oriented than other races. You can go for the throat with banshees or void rays but enemy ranged ground units can generally handle it unless they're really slow and didn't see it coming. But whatever the situation, that's the way it is and we'll still work to better our play.
okay seriously i know i've said this before on another post but the only Zerg units that can shoot air is Mutalisk - Hydralisks - Corrupters (and Infestors but thats allmost never used as anti air) and protoss has: Sentries - Stalkers - Archons - Voidrays - Pheonix - Carriers thats dubble the zerg units (not to mention the mothership but that doesn't really count) and terrans also have alot...... so i think the zerg needs some more anti air.. or tell me what you think about it
not really, hydras are a staple unit, whereas sentries are spellcasters that hapen to be able to shoot. archons are more emergency units that you make when you run out of psi storms. a good zerg army should always have hydras in them, and probably roaches to soak up damage because hydras are pretty fragile. but for protoss, choosing voidray/phoenix means you're probably not getting colossi, and both suck against hydras anyways. if a protoss wants to get both colossi AND void rays, his army will be spread so thin you can probably just kill him with waves of roaches or something.
Sorry for going way off topic, but why dont terran have that cloaked flamethrower turret? What happend to that? I mean we have a missile turret, Protoss have the photon cannon, zerg have the spore and spine.... I want a ground turret
okay i think that you're looking at this the worst possible way. Each race has air units that are supposed to make up a specific role in the overall army composition. You picked a specific role that air units CAN take, and have decided that it is the role that air units SHOULD take. I typically split the possible roles as harass, support, and combat oriented. If you look at it that way then you have an extremely strong harass force for zerg with the very fast mutalisks, the long ranged brood lords (they out range towers) coupled with the corruption ability of the corrupter and it is difficult for the other races to deal with that kins of pressure, even if you limit it to just mutalisk pressure early on. as far as support is concerned, the overseer/overlord combo includes drops,detection, scouting and the ability to shut down key structures in a package that comes from a unit that every zerg HAS to have. as far as combat is concerned, the Brood Lord is one of the very few units that you can just plop in the back and not worry about at all if you just stick some leftover corruptors with it. Mutalisks are fast and excellent for focus firing down key units during the battle (medivacs, tanks, marauders if it is early enough in the game, high templars, void rays, motherships, sentries, carriers etc.) Hopefully you will notice that there were units that could fill multiple categories which just shows that zerg units are more multi-purposed while the other races have much more specialized air units. Vikings are good anti-air, and moderately good harassment but once there is no air to kill they lose a ton of usefulness. Corroptors though can be changed into brood lords once they have destroyed the air units, thus making them useful for longer. Did your overlord drop fail due to some dark templars hiding around their base? Overseer on the way! Your mutalisks sure did a great job harassing, but now there is a ton of tanks at your expo! Mutalisks to the rescue. please do not confuse having a lot of options with being dominant in the air, especially when many zerg air units serve as swiss army knives
It's not really confusion. All Zerg air units are support units, with Mutalisks being able to harass as well. They don't really form the core of an army. Corruptors need something to hang with them so they don't get taken down by ranged ground. Brood Lords need something with them so they don't get take down by air-to-air units. You've got to bring Mutalisks along with either of those units or you're too easily countered. Zerg air is all about support. Not saying that's bad, but that's the way it is. And that Terran tossing up tanks at your base - he's not going to have just tanks. At the very least he'll bring along Marines and he might even have a Thor or two - which tear up that light Mutalisk armor. There are counters and then counters to those counters ad nauseum. The entire point of this post was to get people to think about why their mass Mutalisks are dying to Marine/Medivac/Marauder or Void Rays. (I personally think of Void Rays as support units but hey, rushing them seems to work well, particularly against Zerg which have only two AA opportunities at T1 - Queen and Spore Crawlers.) Again, not saying there's anything wrong with it. People should just keep it in mind.
"They don't really form the core of an army." For the other two races, does air form the core of an army? The original post implied that zerg are worse off in the air than other armies, and this latest follow up aims to further prove that by saying that the brood lord cannot be left alone and neither can the corroptor etc. It is interesting to note that the other two races are in the same exact position. You cannot have just vikings/phoenixes because they get taken out by ground to air, you cannot just have banshees because they get taken out by air to air and that goes on and on. If you consider air superiority being an army of just air units being a reasonable core of an army, then you will be disappointed to find that no race has that kind of air superiority. Granted you can always find examples of Mr.Jones who massed void rays and won or Mr. Smith who massed battle cruisers and won but I am saying reasonable core in the sense that it would be a standard thing to do, like get marines or stalkers for the other races.
oh i see now... but i still think its a bit annoying when someone is going mass viking/banshee for example and you dont really have much to counter it of course it depends on the situation and the scouting but thats just me ^^
There's a reason why zerg air is a little worse. It's because zerg can just switch back and forth between air and ground force production at will. Imagine if terran could build a 200 mineral + 200 gas structure that, when built, allows him to instantly turn all his barracks into starports and back again, whenever he wished. Sounds really overpowered right? But that's exactly what zerg can do by building a spire. They don't have to build 3+ buildings to start massing huge air armies, they can just do it whenever they want, and when they think it's going to get countered soon they can just switch all production back to ground units. Whereas with other races, if you build nothing but stargates or starports, you end up committed to air attack, and if that fails, you are done for.
