- \n
- Splash radius is now 1.75. There are no longer 50% or 25% damage zones.<\/li>\n
- Splash damage is now 40 (+40 Shields) for the full 1.75 splash radius.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Thor<\/h2>\n
- \n
- Changed to prioritize their AA weapon over the AG weapon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Mothership Core<\/h2>\n
- \n
- Time Warp duration decreased from 30 to 10 seconds<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Alright so the widow mine got reverted (except it does more vs Protoss now although that doesn’t concern Zerg), the Thor now prioritizes shooting up, and Protoss has had their time warp nerfed. Let’s take a look at it note by note.<\/p>\n
Widow Mine Change<\/h2>\n
The widow mine reversion has made it significantly easier for Terrans to clear out lings and banes during a fight, as these mines simply kill more stuff than the previous ones. They help at every stage of the game, whether a player will widow mine drop early-mid game, build them for all-in or pressure defence, is executing midgame attacks, or engage vs a late game army where lings and banes tend to tightly hug each other with ultras.<\/p>\n
![\"patchzerg1](\"http:\/\/www.cpgaming.gg\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/patchzerg1-Custom.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNow, widow mines can swing the direction of the game, but not just for Terran, but also for Zerg. Remember, these mines have almost the near potential to kick the Terran’s butt as much as the Zerg’s, albeit the probability is much lower for Zerg.<\/p>\n
![\"patchzerg2](\"http:\/\/www.cpgaming.gg\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/patchzerg2-Custom.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAll in all, engagements by Zerg should now be much more carefully taken, as the risk of a misstep is much higher than before. Stray mine shots, and mine shots that are target fired are hard to dodge, but are much easier to deal with and avoid if engagements are taken directionally. An example of a directionally taken engagement is such as the image below.<\/p>\n
![\"patchzerg3](\"http:\/\/www.cpgaming.gg\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/patchzerg3-Custom.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOf course a flank is always best, but sometimes time, position, or whatever doesn’t allow a flank (although keep in mind you should be wary of players that lift and boost away during a flank, and potentially all your lings and banes dying. If you identify that your opponent is lifting, or will lift, or you don’t need all your units to finish the bio, peel away parts of your army that you don’t think are already targeted by mines, and let the small portion of your army eat the mine shots, giving you a much greater cost efficient engagement). In all other circumstances, taking an engagement directionally greatly increases the probability of mine shots going towards the bio which is splitting and stimming in the same direction, hitting reinforcements, ensuring that lings don’t regroup in with the fight (which is what happened in the TLO image above) and bring the mine shots back to the group.<\/p>\n
The Thor buff<\/h2>\n
The change in target priority makes it much more difficult to come out in even standard mid-late game engagements with your muta ball still intact as it was when the engagement started, even if you win the engagement with a “landslide victory.” As the thor numbers increase to numbers of 3 or higher, infestors begin to be mandatory in order to be able to win fights. Muta clouds are easily hammered, and mass banes are much easier to deal with. It looks like zergs are going to have to be splitting both lings banes and mutas now when the thors come in with the bio.
\nBut the bigger issue: mech. Going swarm host muta is now significantly more risky than before. With the thor target fire, mutas get blown out of the sky, any direct engagement is suicide, and harass is now riskier than ever. It looks like brood lord viper infestor, perhaps with some other units will now be more of an option vs mech, or some other swarmhost variant.<\/p>\nThe Time Warp Nerf<\/h2>\n
This nerf decreases the strength of protoss aggression and allins, but by how much? It depends on the situation. In a direct engagement of something along the lines of a gateway based allin, it greatly helps. If your opponent is attacking with pure blink stalkers or zealot stalker, the 20 second time decrease gives you a lot more breathing room and maneuvrability. However, in a scenario such as sentry immortal, time warp aids in securing forcefields. Once your units are stuck or trapped by forcefields, the time warp has done its job and it’s not helping any further. 10 seconds is all they need for this, and hence the nerf isn’t exactly useful here. In large scale engagements, where forcefields tend to be less prevalent as well as useful, the time warp nerf helps moreso. Of course, forcefields can still be used, and to great effect in mid-to-late game fights, the matter of the fact is your army will be bigger, and the time warp will affect a smaller percent of your army, especially if you choose your engagement wisely and fight in a strong positon.<\/p>\n
This has been the new patch and its impacts on Zerg in a nutshell. I\u2019m Samuel \u201cMidday\u201d He, a Zerg player proudly playing for compLexity Gaming. Special thanks to Sound Blaster, Creative, CYBERPOWERPC, Newegg, DXRacer, Corsair, Twitch, Scuf Gaming, and Pwnit Wear.<\/p>\n
Follow Samuel on twitter @coL_midday<\/a> and watch his stream on Twitch.tv\/midday19<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
coL.Midday goes over the latest patch and discusses the implications for Zerg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":3666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2258],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3661"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3667,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661\/revisions\/3667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Time Warp duration decreased from 30 to 10 seconds<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Changed to prioritize their AA weapon over the AG weapon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n