Hi Starcraft 2 players
Since the beginning of broodwar, balance is always something we were discussed about and I believe it’s like a crafting the perfect product, where consistent adjustment make the not perfect formula looks almost equal.
Today I want to talk about a Zerg unit in 1v1 mode. Hydralisk. without doubt we all know that it’s one of the unit sacrifice all essence to maximize mobility and damage out put. where low hp low armor is mostly accept. And in most situation it performs perfectly balance in the starcraft games,
- excellent resource trade value for 100/50/2
for example against lower tier terran units such as marauder, still countered by adept but the existence of baneling can simply flip the results and hydra out range adept when they can’t shade in worrying a ling bane surround.
- mass production potential and outrun nearly anything counter them on creep.
Zerg units can’t be too powerful as if both party lost entire army, zerg win with faster production. but giving the ability to all zerg units a choice to disengage anytime they like allows zerg player always have a choice to tactical retreat and morph injured units to more powerful one.
to put it all simply,1) trade just below average is good 2) not too strong overall
I believe this two factors are the core of battle resoucse exchange system.
however, late tech units always deserve more benefit and a reward. We often find that in BC, Thor, ultralisk and Carrier colossal. Hydra trade performance is dreadful. (Siege tank, lurker are be overwhelmed if severely out numbered by hydra and have almost 0 micro potential so i find that fair enough, disruptor is just a plain spell caster and i dont want to make the discussion too complicated )
in both large or small army size, micro or without micro, hydra always lost completely without causing enough damage for it’s price. you often see one bc or carrier toy with 5 hydra and slowly killed them all. and large amount of them destroy same supply amount of hydra with less then 1/4 of it’s total army value, late tech unit have a slower production rate so they can pretty much manage to snowballing to victory like that. But there are already mechanic benefit them already. High hp pool and regen method like shield regen, repair transfuse. All in favour of large hp pool units anyway. This also give them extra micro potential, if they stay alive, they are always as good as new.
I think of the best result is give hydra a damage buff against massive units, small like 1 or 2 and only comes with upgrade. This should adjust balance scale of resource trade against hydra. However I think the colossal and tempest unfortunately have massive tag as well but their interaction against hydra is fine for now, and that damage buff is gonna make this two units even less chance to be produced after this change. Maybe experiment it by remove their massive tag? not sure if that change Thor corruptor against them by too much. Any ideas? Do you agree that Hydra is trading too poorly against most massive unit ? What do you think the best adjustment will be in the next patch ?