On several occasions it was mentioned Terran ghosts could reach the potential of being as good as templar if they could tap fully into their potential. The zerg themselves absorbed the Terrans they could get because they needed defenses against the psychic abilities of the Protoss. The zerg are also notorious for hyperevolving evolutionary strains into something more useful for the swarm. So when I was thinking of possible new units for the zerg one of them involved a replacement of the Infested Terran with a new zerg that is humanesque in physique. This will be an evolution on infested terrans giving the zerg a caster roughly on par with Templar. Name: Doppelganger Ground/Air Attack - Psionic shockwave. 30 normal damage. 3 range. Splash. HP: 50 Armor: 1 Size: small upgrades: Manifestations - Doppelgangers can shape into existence manifestations of the essence of many creatures. Through intense concentration these illusionary beings are made corporeal. But the lifespan of these energy creatures are short and volatile. Eventually the energy used to create them will become unstable and they will explode violently with energy. 125 Energy. Create twin duplicates of a selected unit. These copies recieve full damage from attacks and can deal half the damage of the unit they copy. They cannot mimic special casting abilites. Upon death they explode for 40 explosive damage. (essentially an improved version of Illusions) Unified vision - passive. All zerg units within a 12 unit radius of the doppelganger will be able to prioritize responses better when choosing targets to attack. The second idea I had is to give zerg something really different from what they had before. The Guardien as good as it was had issues being a ranged air unit. Due to these strengths the devs balanced it by making it slow as hell compared to the rest of the zerg army. Name: Coilmang Ground Attack: Toxic Tendrils. 4 range. 15 Damage each. Has 9 tendrils. Air Attack: Toxic Tendrils* Can only attack air units when attacked by such units. (it exists solely as defensive move) Air Range can be upgraded to 5. HP: 140 Armor: 0 Size: Medium Note: Each tendril attacks seperately. The tendrils attack ground units in a consecutive order instead of simultaneously. This order can be broken if counterattacking against air units. Each tendril is on a seperate cooldown and air counterattack and ground attack are on the same cooldown. Meaning if an air unit attacks the coilmang and it retalliates with a tendral that same tendril can't be used to harm any unit until the cooldown is up. If 9 enemy ground units are in range of the coilmang it will split up its tendrals to attack each unit relatively at the same time. If there are less than 9 units to attack it will focus an additional tendral on that unit. Ensnare - 100 Energy. Coilmang can ensnare all units slowing down their movement speed. In addition every two unit spaces a unit moves will make them suffer 3 damage. This damage doesn't apply to shields. The last idea I had was to disregard the Devourer and Guardien strains as morphing options and give mutalisks something very different. By throwing out the other morph options Blizzard could create new air units that fill in for what the Devourer excelled at or the Guardien for that matter. They had the right idea of making the zerg siege unit flight capable but Guardiens required to much teching to bother with them as much as they could've been used. Name: Corrupter HP:200 Armor: 2 Size: Large Ground Attack: Succor* range 0, damage 0. Air Attack: Succor* *Succor is an action that has the Corrupter attach itself to any unit. After 7 seconds of being attached to unit the unit has become infested with morphed versions of glave wurms. These units are under your control as long as you have enough Overlords to control them. (this rule was inserted because it's unclear if medics will get restoration. Even if they did protoss currently don't have a formal counter to this unit corruption so making ths rule gives protoss some options in dealing with this issue.[even if overlords are as cheap as ever to produce)
They seem a little too strong and the first seems a little to much like the Templar's hallucinate. The second has WAY too much damage potential since 9*15=135 that's more than the capital ships do. Plus mele ground unit attacking air? That's just weird Also why replace the muta evolutions? The Zerg need something to take care of large air units and bombard bases. Devourer is fine and Guardian only needs better speed or armor Also isn't there a rumor about an infested ghost that can take control of enemy units.
That's because it is supposed to be a new version of hallucinate. The ability was never all that popular. So improving on it and giving it to the zerg who evolved the homo sapien strain into a more capable psionic user makes sense for me. It also still plays into the whole zerg units use lots of cannon fodder mentality. I'm not explaining the dynamics of the tendrils well enough. The first thing I wanted to say that was implied in my section for the coilmang is that it is a flying unit. So think of it like a crosbreed between a medusa with more control of its tendrils like an Octopus. As for the tendrils itself: Say a coilmang is attacking a group of 10 marines. When it attacks it will attack wth each tendril one at a time in rapid succession. When it attacks it must use each tendril to attack a different marine. So the tendrils sort of act like an attack with splash damage but unlike splash have a fixed number of units it can affect. So after the first 9 marines die in 3 hits 1 marine is left in range of the coilmang. Each tendril will then attack the marine one after the other for 135 damage total since there aren't any other groun targets to justify spreading aron its attack. Now here is where things get interesting for a player trying to kill coilmangs. The coilmang can't attack air units directly. It can attack them as a reflexive defensive move. But this reflex uses up a tendril. So in the same scenario 6 vikings attack the coilmang from the air at the same it starts attacking the ten marines. Due to the reflex 6 of the tendrils are used against each viking and three are left to be used to attack the marines on the ground. There's a lot of thought that comes into affect about which is more ecnomical to perform whe you have a mix of air and ground units against a coilmang. Considering how many units from the other races are survining the transition to SC2 I would prefer that the ground army which is great to be left untouched as best as possible and just revamp the air army instead. As good as devo and guardiens were matches esentially revolved around mutalisks and scourge. Banelings is one dedicated suicide unit too many for my tastes so I wouldn't mind if scourge got scrapped. Scrapping that unit would leave more room devos to be used but I wouldn't mind if the devs went back to the drawing board on the way the whole air army essentially worked. Rumors are only rumors. Never even heard of this until now. Still if this unit requires the same creation requirements like Infested Terrans it's going to be stupid to waste time coding it.
that means if you have one unit it will take 135 damage 2 units will still take 67 damage that is alot. you never implied that actually also a melee air unit attacking ground makes no sense it would make more sense it if attacked air and attacking ground was a defensive ability.
erm.. the first one's supposed to be a caster yet it has longer range and the same attack power of the strongest unit in the game.
They are some interesting ideas but they need rebalanced because they are way too powerful at the moment.
Not really. There's no logical explanation to simply assuming one way over the other. One idea that immediately comes to mind in support of mutantmagnet's Coilmang's ability to only attack air as instinctive reflex is that it can only see straight and cannot lookup because of it's natural body shape. When attacked from air, it's tendrils defend by flailing into the air with very good accuracy because of it's sensitivity. If you do think that the Coilmang is too powerful perhaps although it can attack air from reflex, it doesn't have great accuracy and doesn't always hit.
My suggesting was because if melee ground units can only attack ground then melee air units sould only be able to attack air
Yes, Zerg will be really weak, but they will be able to swarm.. So the templar... Well it may not fit Zerg style
While these are interesting ideas and could definitely be submitted for the unit design contest, my advice t any and all posters is that we hold off on Zerg ideas until the Zerg race has been revealed.
