What's up with the hydras?

Roaches are only to fight Ground. No Anti-Air capabilities.

 

I think it was a great decision by Blizzard to make Roaches totally gas-free (excluding the Roach Warren). It helps differentiate the Roach and Hydra in even more ways now that both are tier 1.5 (which I think both should stay as). You can afford more teching, upgrading and more gas expensive units if you choose to tech to Roaches. Might make it a great combo together with Muta if you have minerals over (and don't need more Zerglings).

The Hydralisk is not going to be cost effective as a ranged GtG anymore though, now that it costs twice the control and twice the gas. Zerg will basically lack a ranged GtG (Roach range and speed isn't enough for it to suit that role) which is pretty cool IMO. Makes them more different.

 

Well when i play SC the 1st thing i do i pump up my hydras but i don't see the roaches coming to replace the hydras think more of them as augmenting the hydras like before in SC1 were we just built a feck load of zerglings and nothing could pass them and by the time the zerglings die your hydras have no defense and are left bare ass to either luck or just sheer force in numbers to win. BUT these roaches have high regen so they can take some licks and they sound very useful for eliminating early terrans, they have way more life than the zerglings (but aren't as cute) and no pig pileup of zerglings in the enemy base and i love this strategy when they are close to dieing they can just burrow, heal then reappear a few SECONDS later to continue the onslaught. The roaches will go down nice with the hydra and lurker assualt which is like my favorite.... i think i will still build the zerglings(cannon fodder) and banelings(bunker fodder)

 

I think the best zerg ground army for early game would be about 1/2 zergling, 1/4 roach, and 1/4 hydralisk. Hydras from thier range and aa, zerglings for the cannonfodder melee, and roach for basicly acting like a biological tank(that is, hard to kill and good damage dealing ability).

 

If you do that tho, you'll have to build both the roaches and hydralisks den.
Maybe a first push should be ling/roaches and after that put up hydra's den.

But that's subject to the strategy we all go for
OMG i wanna play the game.. lol

 

To be honest I think that Blizzard is going to nerf them this time so they aren't such an effective strategy against ground. That was one of my biggest problems in SC:1 was when a noob could just mass hydras and put up a pretty good offensive strategy with little to no skill at all.

 

yeah you're right

Okay in terms of cost... BLIZZARD IS GOING TO TOTALLY FU%K OUR BRAINS SIDEWAYS ABOUT THIS . If you build the hydra den your getting arguably the strongest and most cost effective unit PFC on the other hand you would not be able to build so much hyrdas as you can roaches. So the best thing to do is (can't believe I am saying this but) build the roaches 1st (damn that was painful i felt as though i ripped my own heart out) think about it this way.
ROACHES: REALLY hard to kill, +damage against biological units which is like every starter unit (zerglings, hydralisks, zealots, marines and other roachies)
and hyrdalisks don't really do so well vs. zealots T.T in early game unless you sped down a couple of lurkers your screwed.

 

lol, basically.
Unless you scout your opponent rushing air

 

hehe, lol, just realized... Its like 6 months (minimum) untill teh game is released, and we are already discussing strategy. And we have been doing that since like, the first in-game movies... omfg... blizz must have huge pressure on them about making Sc2 enough gg to make every1 happy... Although I dont doubt they will do it...

Back to topic:
Hydras + roachers I think will be awesome...

 

Quick comparison of old Hydra vs. new Hydra, where Small is converted to Light and Large is converted into Armored:

Old Hydra: 5, +5 vs. Armored, on an 80 HP body, for 75 Minerals, 25 Gas, 1 Control
New Hydra: 10, +6 vs. Armored Air, on an 80 HP body, for 100 Minerals, 50 Gas, 2 Control
The Old Hydra and to some extent the New Hydra have a faster attack speed than a normal unit, such as a Stalker, presumed to be double normal rate for the time being.

Old Hydra: Damage/Resource* =10%, 20% vs. Armored, HP/Resource=80%
New Hydra: Damage/Resource=13%, 21% vs. Armored Air, HP/Resource=53%

In short, the new Hydra is moderately more effective against Light Ground and Air Units, worse against Armored Ground units, and significantly less durable in combat for its cost.

However, keep in mind that 10% is a good firepower, while 20% is an exceptional one for a unit that is neither the starting unit for the side, nor one with splash damage, nor an expensive finisher unit.

On the other hand, I suspect that the new Hydra does NOT attack twice as fast as a Stalker does, whereupon Hydra is no longer a match for it, and it reinforces the Hydra's role as AA and support, not messy close combat.

 

They only cost 25 more gas and minerals manly for the better ata but they still have the same ground attack like in the old sc1 and will still serve a good purpose in the beginning and much more so in the end.

They also have a greater range then the roach of 6 so they would still serve well in groups of zergs and roaches.

 

They do not have the same ground attack. In the old game, they dealt 10 explosive damage, which is reduced by half against small targets. Now they deal 10 generic damage

 

So there better...

I also don't remember any other kind of damage in sc1 other then regular and aoe damage and i seriously doubt hydras had aoe damage.

 

AOE is not a kind of damage. In Starcraft 1 there were 3 kinds of damage, Concussive, Normal, and Explosive, and 3 unit sizes, Small, Medium, and Large

Concussive deals 100% to Small, 50% to Medium, and 25% to Large
Explosive deals 50% to Small, 75% to Medium, and 100% to Large
Normal deals 100% to everything

 

so there better....(i added one more dot to this one)

 

So the best stategy im gathering from this is to make Roaches 1st and Hydralisk 2nd to defend against air in later game while make Zerglings to backup the Roaches while getting to other units....

 

Sounds about right, Blizzard is trying to make all the units useful afterall.

 

So Starcraft2 is going to have a signifagent number of more groups of 3-8 different units (with the Nullifier armys are going to have a lot more then 10 or a lot less then 10 of each unit) around.

 

I would have to disagree with nothing countering a hydra rush. In fact, you hardly ever see pro zerg players keep hydras anymore; it's all about the lurker/zergling/defiler push with some possible ultralisk appearances. At this point in time, hydralisks are just a speed bump until lurkers or a very desperate defensive measure against air units - namely valkyries. Mutas are good for countering any other air unit.

EDIT: Im gonna eat my words here as I just saw a Jaedong game that used mostly hydras in mid-game against protoss.

 

Some people hydra drop, but true all other people go for muta micro for the miners / ling + lurk + defiler