The Ultralisk

Seriously, I am pissed off. I will never leave silver league if this stupidity stays. I outplay and outmacro my enemies, and how do I lose?

Because the ****ing Terran masses marauders and medivacs and my tier 3 lings, hydras and Ultras with 2/2 upgrades cannot do **** to them. Seriously, why does Zerg need to build Tier 4 (broodlords) units to counter Tier 1(Marauders) and Tier 2 (medivacs) units?! Mutas I could have built but Thors really destroy those and it is pointless to build them late game.

Ultras need some serious love. And marauders need some serious nerfing. They are too useful late game with no tier 3 upgrades (like lings).
They need to not be able to get into a tight ball like then do (they are better then hydras at this), their range is too long OR remove their stimpack (the loss of health from stimpack means nothing to them)

 

I have played a lot of matches as Zerg, and alot of their units seem to overlap roles, or don't really have a role identity to me. The ultralisk is probably the best example. What can it do that other units, like zerglings, banelings, and roaches, can't? What good is it for? I have never encountered a situation where I felt I could use some ultralisks. There are other units in the zerg arsenal that can do the ultralisk's job, but better. I feel the ultralisk should have never been brought into starcraft 2, and an entirely new unit that could add more strategic diversity to the swarm should have taken it's tier 3 position.

 

What I seem to recall in terms of planning is that the Ultralisk was suppose to be a more efficient tier 1 counter. Also, it is clearly infusion bait imo.

That said, I think Blizzard is well aware of how much of a limp noodle the Ultralisk is right now, and are planning some changes for it, probably in the next patch since a blue poster has stated there are a host of Zerg ability changes slated for the next patch.

 

although, if the ultralisk got some spells, wouldn't that make them more susceptible to high templars' feedback?

i think the ultra always was, and should be, the simple "big HP, big damage, big armor, nothing special" unit.

 

That is what they were, and I think most people can agree should be, asdf.

They were supposed to be the big simple tank unit. They just don't fulfill that role because of all of the +damage to armored units.

 

Well, if you put back the dark swarm spell back to the zerg, its game over for most scenarios when they got hydras, roaches, lings and ultras on that fog..

imo, the zerg needs a ground siege weapon such as the lurker back in their arsenal if they want to change how ground plays are being dictated by m&ms. Im not doubting the banelings exlosive power, but so far it seems that most players fail to own with them. Terran has just got everyting they need compared to zerg. Well probably because this is still beta, we never know if they do add back some more units when they launch the game.

Burrowing skill has yet to be utilized by most zerg players, seems like its hardly use for whatever reason but I wish to see they use the banelings mines 1 time.

Ultras need that surprise factor and perhaps burrowing would suffice for that

 

Give the ultra the abiltiy to walk over small units, and scale cliffs, and it is gold.

Also, I think a cool ability for the ultra is make it spawn a lot of broodlings upon death, like zerg structures.

 

nice buff to ultras, although personally I thought 25+15 if ever could have been way better

wtf happened to the roaches

 

buff? you call losing 25% of its hp a buff?

it does do more damage to armored units, but way less to everything else. front-line units like zealots, zerglings, marines are now even stronger against it... and it usually has to chew through them to get to the stalkers, roaches, tanks, and immortals.

 

sorry shouldn't have said buff when I was also contradicting it in the same post, -150hp is a very big problem for the ultra, now anti armored unit units can demolish it pretty easily, well they can now rape marauders, but then marauders got early stim pack + they are anti armored units as well, bottom line, they rape marauders, but then you need about five of them + a lot of distraction so that at least 3 ultras survive the clash, they're good against FF, but then ultras are tier 3.5, before you can get them out, toss have already abused FF so much on you, + the immortals will slice through 450 hp of ultras

 

Blizzard is looking at in terms of a buff when used with a balanced army, i.e. infestors for frenzy and most likely Queens for transfusion. My understanding of the pre-patch notes/discussion I read is they didn't feel that the ultralisks stats needed much of a boost, but that they needed to change game mechanics (addition of frenzy and ability to crush ff) in a fashion to let the ultralisk be able to do its job (essentially spear head for your other units) without being neutralized and reduced to a big paper weight from special abilities (locking into place with things like fungal growth or force field).

Thus the HP nerf was to prevent its combat potential in check now that it can't be locked down (using frenzy).

 

Sure, it's got a more defined role, but it's still going to get focused fired even faster by +damage to armored units, which everyone inevitably has a few of.

I can see where they were going, trying to make Zerg micro more complex, but honestly none of these changes seem very interesting or useful, with the exception of the Overseers.

I just don't see taking Queen/Ultra/Infestor armies running around, because between the Ultras and Infestors you don't have gas for Hydras, and you essentially need creep all over the map for it to work, and teching up to Ultra, getting the upgrades for it to even be able to do anything, and then making one that will get focused down before it can do anything to sentrys, just won't be worth it.

 

it takes more time for giant blades to kill marines, zerglings and zealots lol what's that about? it should've been 25+15/20+20

 

yeah, it probably should have been 25+15 instead of the other way around. wasn't the point of its super-wide splash to take out masses of light units?

 

agreed, never thought those giant blades do only 3x damage of the zerglings' baby claws, if it's sharp enough to cut armor, then why the **** is it dull enough to tickle light units?

 

Well, obviously the light units are more agile and able to better dodge those giant claws. Duh!

:laugh:

 

duh back, it hits them, hence the damage, if they actually "dodged" the whole thing then there wouldn't be any damage at all am I right?

:laugh:

haha but yeah what do you think? it better around (25+15)/(20+20) right? More sensible even

 

I read your whole argument and ideas here and I for one completely agree. I would love to see smaller units like zerglings be able to walk under the Ultralisks for one.

 

ultras post patch 13 I think gained good synergy with the infestor, but hey they reduced the life by 150 and the damage is just ridiculous, 15+25 makes no sense, now it has a hard time killing light units with low hp

 

Yeah, the +armored ability seems like something just out of no where. Like they were brainstorming ideas and just pulled that out, and said "Hey, no one uses them now, may as well try some wacky ****."

It honestly makes no sense. Ultras cleave. They did good damage vs clumped small units. The problem was with its utility and mobility, not the damage or damage type.

Instead of fixing the problem and letting it keep its role, they changed its role, while still keeping some of the utility from the previous one, resulting in a weird combination.

Most armored units are pretty big, making the Ultras cleave not so great. Most armored units also deal pretty good damage, and could pretty much either kite or just focus down Ultras before they got to do anything.

Hopefully they give it back its old role when they realize how dumb this one is, and just fix the problems it did have, which was mobility/army synergy, not damage.