Brood Lord

I just hate the Brood Lord.

Ok, the idea's cool.
Ok, the effect is good.
At least initially.

Now, whenever the Zerg player gets the Brood Lord, the match is basically there's, especially when up against protoss. I've only seen one match in which the Zerg lost after getting them.
In other words, I want them to be nerfed.

Nerf possibility; give the Brood Lord mana (200? I dunno), and whenever a mantaling or whatever spawns, it deducts 10/15 mana from the Brood Lord. When the Brood Lord has insufficient mana, it still attacks but nothing spawns after the attack.

 

what would it attack with? The broodlord itself doesn't have a weapon, it just throws broodlings. The only thing thats op about it is the broodlings affecting ground unit AI.

For toss, I would suggest getting Void Rays, they're supposed to be good against armored air.

 

No. When the thingy lands, it does 20 damage the the target. In the beta patch 7;

Only after the hit will the thingy spawn and attack with 5(I think) damage.

Massed void rays take too much time to make and are easily destroyed my hydras/ corruptors anyways.

 

Void Rays sound like the way to go, and maybe a Colossus in tow to take care of those pesky Broodlings. Another strategy might involve some intense Blink micro with Stalkers, who could dance around the battlefield to avoid getting swarmed by Broodlings. The latter however would take quite a bit of skill to pull off IMO.

 

No. You can get void rays out a lot sooner than brood lords, just look at the tech trees. Also, chrono boost. So if Zerg doesn't produce a lot of units but relies on crawlers and teching to spire then mutalisk and brood lords are what they're probably after. And I don't see the relevance of the hydras and corruptors here; the intial situation was that void rays should be chosen to counter lords. Even if they go for a combo of the two/three you can use void rays to destroy overseers and lords and dark templar to slaughter hydras - and most probably Zerg would wait to get a group of lords before initiating the attack, so you have time for templar even though hydras comes earlier, I think.

 

And they got buffed in Patch 7 xD
They can't attack air.. BUT the OP thing is the AI gettin screwed when broodlings spawn.. But then again.. it's a higher tier unit.

 

i think im in to brood

 

Broodlings do 6 damage a hit (as an independent unit).

While brood lords don't need to move in groups of 11 or 12 like guardians did in StarCraft I, they still need to reach a "critical mass". If a zerg player can create a critical mass of brood lords, the protoss player should be able to create a critical mass of void rays.

However, brood lords are tough enough that even void rays take a bit of time to kill them, and that's time they're messing up your ground forces; it's not like you're popping them with Vikings or StarCraft I-style Scouts.

 

I think the only problem with brood lords may be their ridicilous amount of hp+armor. I am willing to give them the benefit of messing up all the AI on the ground by spawning those little suckers but it would be nice not to be forced shooting them 5 minutes with a bunch of vikings.

 

What's ridiculous about those figures? Brood lords cost a lot. In comparison, yes a battlecruiser or carrier cost more, but then they're even tougher. (A battlecruiser has literally double the hit points, and I rarely see complaints about that.)

The only problem I can see with their cost is, maybe, the low control cost.

Comparison of BC vs Brood Lord
BC cost: 400/300/6 BL total cost: 250/250/2. The BL costs a bit more than half the BC's cost (virtually same vespene cost) but has a low supply cost.
BC attacks: Air and ground, medium range. No crippling vulnerabilities. Weak vs heavily armored opponents.
BL attacks: Ground only, siege range. Cannot target air at all (crippling vulnerability). Somewhat weak vs multiple weaker opponents, but broodlings counteract this.
BC hp: 550. BL hp: 275 (exactly half)
BC armor: 3. BL armor: 2.

(Okay wow, these comparisons are actually kind of boring. Someone want to take over?)

 

Kay.

Brood Lord>Battle cruiser in terms of messing ground AI.
Uglier.
More despicable.
Zerg (kidding).
No hard counters except for Vikings, and maybe Void Rays. However, a group of 10 hydras will take care of that.

 

Frankly, BC attack vs air are not that impressive (6 damage). BC are decent vs ground (10 damage) and needs Yamato vs almost every single air unit and are dependent on its large hp to fight. A better comparesion between Brood Lords and any Terran Unit would be the Banshee. Banshee has less hp, armor and damage than Brood Lords and attack does not spawn extra attackers and eats 3 supply.

Banshee stats: 3 supply, 140 hp, 0 armor 12*2 damage ground only. Dependent on cloaking to dish out damage. Costs 150 mineral and 100 gas.

Brood Lord stats:2 supply, 275 hp, 2 armor, 20 damage ground only. Spawns extra ground attackers. Costs 150 minerals and 150 gas + a Corruptor.

 

Its a bit pointless comparing stats considering the only reason broodlords are considered OP is that if they are not flying over ground or out in the open, marines, stalkers, hydras etc have no opportunity to fire at them so you have to hard counter them with air to air (Attack range 9...). If you miscalculate and don't build enough vikings its gg as you desperately push your ground forces to the edge of land to get in range with the broodlords.

If you go for BCs to counter them your base will be destroyed before you take any out. I am really surprised the zerg got 2 air units with huge amounts of health and fire power. I'd prefer if they cut the cost and made them weaker since that seems more zergy (i know dustin has said they don't want the races to fall into set categories).

However with that said i have rushed my whole army of stimmed marauders and marines straight into their base when i sniffed the armada of broodlords on my door step and destroyed all of his builds before he destroyed mine

 

All you need is some freaking air attackers, and scout it so you would know their coming and you can get the counters coming out. Hydras in you're way? Psi storm all the way! Broodlords eating you for lunch, laz'em up with some void rays, if you can scout this then you can easily stop it.

 

i think the broodlings are more overpowered than the brood lords themselves. seriously, these things are only slightly weaker than zerglings. that's like maybe 40 minerals worth of units for free, every time the brood lord attacks. talk about a sweet deal.

distracting ground AI isn't the problem. it's how LONG they distract them. one brood lord can distract 5 marines for two attacks. in that time it can toss out another two broodlings and do it again. 30HP is way too much for broodlings. they should be sitting at half of that- they're FREE UNITS, guys! a pair of 30hp units with 6 damage each might have been justified in SC1 because you needed to wait and generate 150 energy. this time it's every friggen attack.

these things need to be sitting at 15HP or less. ground units like the marine and stalker should be capable of clearing away broodlings and get one attack on the brood lord before the next wave of broodlings spawn. as it sits right now, a small number of brood lords is pretty much enough to permanently distract the enemy ground forces. cost for cost, brood lords can easily "disable" a ground force of equal value. let mutas and hydras escort the brood lords and provide anti-air protection.

 

Broodlord pros and cons.

Pros

- Nice range.
- Effective against ground units.
- Versatility: Corrupters that MAY already be in the field can be evolved in to Broodlords.

Cons

- They're expensive.
- They're at the VERY END of the Zerg tech tree
(this means the Zerg player has to make the following before he's even able to turn Corrupters in to Broodlords: Hatchery > Spawning Pool > Lair > Spire > Infestor Lair > Hive > Upgrade Spire. ie. Insane cost / time just to be able to have the ability to MAKE the unit, let alone utilize it).
- They're move slow as hell.
- They're defenseless against air units by themselves.


Now lets take a look at what it takes a Terran to be able to make Battlecruisers (which can attack land and air and also have a special ability which smashes both air and ground units).

Rax > Factory > Starport w/ tech lab > Fusion Core.

 

you forgot to add "spawns 60hp per second" when it throws 2 broodlings.

that's a lot of extra damage to chew through (which the AI auto-targets instead of the broodlord itself.)

 

You don't kill the Broodlings, they die after so long.
So they do not gain extra HP, that's just a dumb argument.

 

Brood Lords are a Tier 3 unit and give themselves the name of one of the best Zerg units because of it's Brooding strike and how powerful it is. It requires a Greater Spire, 150 minerals and gas, well over 20 seconds to build, very slow moving speed, and has many counters to it. The Broodlings are easily killed and have a short life span even without being attacked.

 

no it's not, the AI automatically targets the broodlings. you have to constantly get them to target the broodlord or else they'll keep switching to the broodlings. if you wait until the broodlings just die automatically, keep in mind they do about 6 damage per attack, so that's a lot of extra damage you're taking by ignoring them.