Excuse me?! We Zerg are very emotional and caring beings, we do not like the term "bugs" used by you Racist Terrans! We prefer the term Otherworldy Immigrants.
But only for ZvT, which, to be fair, the Ghost honestly seems to be more IMBA than even in PvT. That said, what's completely taken over the meta in recent years is Ghost-Lib, not pure Ghost, and the patch still has that crazy double-buff to Libs, so I'm not sure how much this change to Brood Lords really changes that dynamic.
Terrans having an existential crisis that Broodlords might actually be the first good Zerg T3 unit. Seriously though, this change is good, regardless of how broodlord gets balanced later. This makes the unit way more predictable and consistent which will make it easier to balance now that you don't have to take into account that weird ass artificial delay. The more stable a unit's behavior, the easier it is to balance.
Post patch: broodlings are paying attention and hit the gas when the light turns green. Cars behind them get to go faster. Prepatch: broodlings are on they phones and not paying attention.
it's also got a snowball impact - as there are more broodlings earlier there is more chance of them surviving to get some hits in (increasing the DPS both by the extra impact and extra broodling attacks), meaning more chance of killing enemies, meaning decreased enemy DPS so more chance the following broodlings get to attack even if they arrived at the same frequency by then. So the sustained DPS is underselling the impact.
Correct, just watch the videos that PiG was showing. Pre-patch, the stalkers took out 46 Broodlings in total while Post-patch, they only got 19. More sustain + faster speed/less delay adds up big time, making it harder for the stalkers to knockdown broodlings
Most importantly it is an outsized effect on poor brooding killing forces. IE a few stalkers vs hellbats. Makes brood lords much better against small groups.
It is simpler to say Ghosts counter everything Zerg has apart from zerglings. Completely OP unit right now for 2 population only that can be healed and jump in medivacs.
@@Talentaire Ghost Auto Attack has bonus dmg vs light. They fair quite well vs lings. Also they got cloak. Contrast that to a high templar who can only panic storm themselves in response. 😅
As a viewer of sc2, this is an excellent change. Ghosts are one of, if not THE most boring unit in the game. Anything that makes them worse and less good against everything is great. Ghosts having a counter? Hell yes.
As a viewer of sc2, this is a poor change. Zerg is one of, if not THE most A click species in the game. Anything that makes them worse and less good against everything is great.
If you need to replace or nerf the ghost through strategy, terran just loses due to lack of other viable options. Whatever happened to buffing the race the world champ plays as? Or is that a zerg only rule? Zerg Cabal is real.
Zerg has a billion ways to dominate and win the early and mid game. Just cuz ur not skilled enough doesn't mean Zerg is not op. If you buff Zerg late game, maybe compensate by nerfing Zerg early game? Like they do with Protoss?
@@bobyy6557 Why are you pointing the finger at him? And why fucking Protoss up makes it right or good to do the same to Zerg? If you're gonna lose your shit and be dumb, at least don't type it out.
Broods beating Ghosts 1v1 is perfectly fine. Conceptually, Ghosts are a support unit, they should be weaker alone. Over all balance wise Ghosts are already the strongest unit in the game and are long overdue for nerfs. And from a unit cost perspective Broods are the more expensive unit.
Keep in mind that tempests and vikings are also getting buffed this patch, so brood really does need some love. Whether this is too much love remains to be seen.
Also, the extra burst of the initial broodlings kills off the first stalker faster, so there are fewer stalkers killing broodlings, and so there's some extra sustained damage from more broodlings being alive on average
Ghosts can still cloak. I think the "bug fix" itself is a good change as it forces an army composition on both sides, rather than Terran just massing Ghosts to easily overwhelm broodlords. Prepatch zerg have to try land a good fungal on Ghosts and still need to rely on follow up combo attack to defeat the Ghosts. As for the damage and health increase it is debatable.
@@lucretius8050 I agree. The bug fix makes Brood lords more micro-able which is good. I do not like the idea of buffing the health of the broodlings though. It makes them too tanky. I am ok with keeping the attack speed buff, because honestly the main damage is from the swoop, the broodlings nibbles doesn’t do that much, it should be buffed. The brood lord is one of the few units that benefit from air and ground upgrades which is kind of cool.
@@ZergIingLover That's the thing; right now you *absolutely can*, and you see it happening all the time at the pro level. Ghost-Lib *is* the meta for late-game ZvT right now at the pro level, and is why you rarely see ZvT get to very late game scenarios these days, other than Rogue with his new mass Overseer-Nydus play, with the Overseers acting as a Snipe umbrella for Lurkers and dropping changelings to soak up APM and get vision for Nyduses: usually in these scenarios the ghost army is leading any supplemental ground units because they can alpha-strike anything larger than a baneling. This change would give a bit of counter-play to the current strategy of getting 20-30 ghosts and just waving your magic eraser over the Zerg army, and I think that's a great idea.
@@user-nh2bf4to7g Fair. I was just meaning that, even after the patch, they’re not really that great of counters, in that Terran has more than enough tools to keep their ghosts safe.
@nustada even the baneling being a counter to Ghosts is a stretch as Ghosts are not light units. It takes 3 banes to kill a ghost. With proper splits, banes aren’t all that efficient vs ghosts either.
I was also “told” about the dps increase, it was playing it that felt insane. More to the point, I simply dont want a world where both players are incentivized to turtle forever. Just nerf terran, leave the broodlord where it is.
I find the change to Broodlord / Broodling refreshing. The big issue for people now seems to be that with the new patch the BL counter Ghosts better since the broodling can interrupt snipe. So... a swarm of Ghosts cannot take on a swarm of Broodlords now without some support. It USED to be that Broodlords couldn't take on a pack of Ghosts without support. This surely polarizes the situation, but I fail to see how it's universally so shattering that arguably the best unit in Terran arsenal (The Ghost) now has a unit that somewhat counters it. I say somewhat, since we all know the be-all-end-all math depends on the encounter itself. Encounters don't exist in a vacuum. Brood Lords used to need support from infestors, banelings and/or other units to engage Ghosts without taking heavy losses. (Preventing the ghosts from disengaging or outright killing them) Now, the Ghosts need some form of support to avoid getting their snipe interrupted by the Broodlings. (Like hiding behind tankier units that screw up targeting) If it requires the zerg player to individually target EACH ghost to interrupt the snipe I don't see it as a big problem. If you have a dozen ghosts and a dozen Broodlords, you'll see that about 60% of the ghosts will still get the snipe out during non-targeted autoattacking. If there are things shooting at the broodlords in FRONT of the ghosts just about every snipe still lands. ... While it is a change for sure, I'm not sure it's a game breaking one. Players will adapt. If it boils down to a question of deploying suitable meatshields in an encounter, I'm not too worried.
I mean we just had a top level zerg player use mass changelings and overseers to visually block a bunch of lurkers and screw up targeting them. Also it seemed to work just fine. Soon enough top terrans will adapt and start hiding their ghosts in the middle of clunkier units and mixing in other stuff while relying less on mass ghost. If it looks super dire, they could likely balance it out by buffing snipe a little bit. ;)
"Fixed the bug which prevented Brood Lord from dealing full damage while shooting from the maximum distance." To be fair this sounds to me like the initial impact damage of the broodling was less than it was supposed to be at max range. I guess they just meant the broodling delay but then why not put that as the note? Something like "Fixed the bug which delayed initial Broodling volley from Brood Lord while shooting from the maximum distance." They could definitely be better at wording some of their notes. This isn't the first time vague/unclear patch notes have led to confusion.
"If they are both attacking each other, the brood lord will never attack it in time to interrupt the snipe" THAT SETTLES IT, THIS CHANGE NEEDS TO STAY.
Good points, but at 8:20 because the extra damage is coming from the faster second shot, it's not correct to say that because you killed a CC 10% faster with 5 BLs, there's a 10% dps increase. Imagine for example that you scaled your example up and used just enough BLs so the second BL strike kills the CC. In that case you would kill the CC by a percentage faster equal to however much faster the second strike comes in post patch, right? eyeballing it, it looks like somewhere on the order of 30-50%, so you'd get an even greater apparent dps increase when in reality you're just scaling the burst damage increase by the number of BLs. If you redid the CC test with 1 BL, I suspect you'd get a number closer to the 2-3% sustained dps increase that OmniSkeptic cited. Still though, reducing BL initial recharge by 30-50% for a two shot volley is MASSIVE because of how they are used. Rarely can you just stand and let them do their thing since they'll get sniped, viking/tempest volleyed. Being able to do 100% more damage simply by staying in a vulnerable spot for half a second longer is amazing. If the change goes live, you'll see top zergs doing two-shot BL stutter steps (flaps?) for sure
I hope they keep the behavior change and figure out how to balance the damage numbers to compensate. Looks like it makes Broodlords far more usable and microable similar to the Tempest changes.
Just a correction on the initial burst damage buff, pig says it is 10%. If the time goes from 16 seconds to 15 seconds that is 6.6% so generously rounding up it is 10% to the first 2-3 seconds of firings, which would promote more micro to the skilled players.
@@PiGstarcraft can’t wait for the ghost video. Love your content man! I wish the ghost did a color change to the units effected by emp and were only able to be hit once ever 10 seconds or something.
Terran perspective here. Brood lords needed a buff. It might be too much overall powerup, but I think it's manageable. Zerg needed a better solution to late game ghost, and thors needed a better reason to exist. I wonder how much this will affect the stalker/Brood lord matchup. Will protoss have to think twice about blinking in on the Broodies?
I for one welcome more microable and responsive units, same as they did for the Vikings and now the Tempest. That attack delay for the Broodlord has always felt bad to play with.
PiG you didn't have the time right when they started firing... It was 2:52 and all of a sudden your delta is 0.5-1 second which is a huge margin of error considering the lack of precision in the measurement methods.
at 2:52 the broodlings are are expeled to the target, but it happens about 1 second after the broodlord starts the shooting animation. Thats the whole point of the "bug fix"
Even after this change, broodlords won't counter ghosts that hard. In a 1 v 1 sure, but when there's a dozen ghosts with marines etc supporting vs 12 broodlords with lings and whatever else, those snipes are still going to go off and shred the broodlords. Ghosts aren't going to be in front in almost any scenario unless they're caught out, so the broodlings will be hitting tanks, or marines, or hellbats most of the time. With the ghosts sniping around max range in most scenarios. Every attempt to launch broodlings will result in 2-4 getting sniped to death. Especially since there's no downside to snipes failing with the free energy refund. Now in more unique situations where the ghosts get caught alone the broodlords may have the advantage, but I think punishing terrans for mistakes harder is a good thing. Too often it feels like Terrans can make multiple crushing mistakes but get out safe on the other side due to massive cost efficiency and the nature of tanks and liberators making it so safe at home, so curbing that by making it less forgiving is a good thing imo.
this disallows terrans to punish zerg for being out of position though. if a bunch of ghosts find brood lords out alone they wont be able to mass snipe them unless an overseer isnt present
also there are lots of interactions you might not be thinking about-before the cooldown change, if terran tries to snipes an overseer and zerg defends with brood lords, the overseer will still be sniped (but broodlings will attack the ghost as it goes off). with this change, terran cannot get any snipes off outside of a full on engagement as long as brood lords are present.
With top level micro the broods will be stutter stepping back. Needs thorough testing but i think they'd still do pretty well since they can stack up and won't block each other whilst broodlings will block the terran from getting in range
@@PiGstarcraft There's always Thors and vikings. Thors will still straight up outrange them. Vikings with 9 range can easily micro in and out away from corruptors and zerg's non-existent ground to air. I can't quite remember snipe's sticky targeting range, is it 14? but cast range is still 10, so that's an even range, but that's also assuming the ghosts are being targeted specifically, which can be the case but won't be 100% of the time. Ghosts are small after all, and potentially cloaked. but so long as the snipes start and aren't damaged, even retreating broodlords would catch strays doing their pokes. Not saying it won't be much harder to handle broodlords with the same efficiency as before. But it will probably require a more concentrated response from Terran than just the Bio they already built. Which I also think is a good thing. Much like how liberators generally demand a response of air to handle them, broodlords, being Air to ground only should also, ideally, trigger an air response. Of course a complication here is how it affects protoss as well. The "ideal" response on paper is Void Rays to handle broodlords, but we all know how that is. So carriers may be the most optimal solution? Which I don't mind so much as thats a T3 vs T3 matchup. Not sure off the cuff. Though a few sharking void rays may be ok depending on how much the broods are on their own vs in the pack. Maybe bring back the Scout XD (I kid, I kid)
It's literally just the wind-up animation from the first attack that's beeing removed. In your test on current patch you time it from 2.51-3.09 (gametime), however, to 2.51 is not the time when the broodlords release their broodlings, it's the time you give the attack command and the broodlords are in range. The extra 1,5 seconds is the wind-up animation (broodlings floating from the back to the front). Sure its 10% on a CC, but if you were to surrong the broodlords with 20 thors and shiftclick them all down the wind-up animaiton would still only play once (assuming all the thors are in range). Which means that 1,5 seconds is FAR less than 10%. Also, claiming that it has something to do with broodling recharge is technically not incorrect but, I would frame it differently. Like "Recharge of broodlings starts upon broodling release, that's always been the case. In the new patch the sequence is [target aquired->release->recharge]. In the old patch it's [target aquired->wind-up animation->release->recharge]." TL;DR It's not a dps increase if you time you dps test from broodling release, rather than target aquired. If you DO time it from target aquired, it always results in a 1,5 second faster kill time.
Oh no, one zerg unit can actually deal with ghosts! Ghosts can't counter every late game zerg army now? Outrageous. Better increase the area of EMP, range of snipe and the liberator area again!
@@canacana6484guardian is straight up just worse tempest at least broodlord has the broodling mechanic that makes it look unique so i can forgive it not ahving any ATA attacks but guardian is just tempest without ATA attack
Fascinating. Great followup to yesterday's video. Personally, I like that detected/unguarded ghosts will have a harder time sniping BLs, that may be all the nerf they need. They still have options with protection or sniping Overseers first. Might be worth removing one of these three buffs to Brood Lord.
So, 2 things: 1. The attack CD might not start until the broodling actually fires - this would be a significant sustained DPS buff, as the unit will actually be firing at an effectively shorter interval. 2 .The Brood lord's initial damage delay being much shorter at max range is a huge buff to how easy it is to micro them. The biggest problem with the brood lord has always been the broodlings blocking pathing, making massed broodlords just impossible to fight with ground units aside from the ghost and thor with their extremely long range. If broodlings could just be pushed aside by other units, Brood lords would be much easier to balance.
I'm halfway through the video and kind of dying a bit because I haven't seen this mentioned yet: in the 3 Broodlord vs 9 Stalker fight, a large portion of the DPS increase is coming from the increased broodling health - going from 20 to 30 HP means that broodlings take 3 shots instead of 2, meaning each broodling does more overall damage because they survive longer. Rewatch the stalker video and count how many broodlings are actually killed by the stalkers vs just having their durations expire and you will immediately spot the difference. Forgive me if this is addressed later in the video, I'm just going crazy that you're going through the minutia of the attack animations without having mentioned this.
Pig: I respect that you’re able to admit when you’re wrong, and that you’re willing to test and be wrong. That being said, I haven’t watched the whole video yet
IMO, mostly going on feels, keep the behavior change for behavior consistency sake. The strange edge of range behavior is unintuitive. But don't keep the other buffs to the unit.
It totally shifts left the first and second attacks, thus speeding up the whole battle in favour of BLs. In addition, I'd dare say that with good micro, engaging, staying for under a second, and retreating, duplicates the amount of damage in a halved time, that a BL can do by kiting a little bit.
The bug fix makes Brood lords more micro-able which is good. I do not like the idea of buffing the health of the broodlings though. It makes them too tanky. I am ok with keeping the attack speed buff, because honestly the main damage is from the swoop, the broodlings nibbles doesn’t do that much, it should be buffed. If you let them nibble away then you should be punished, but the counter play should be there. Make some hell bats or something. The brood lord is one of the few units that benefit from air and ground upgrades which is kind of cool.
The broodlord patch fix improved its long-range DPS by removing a bug that caused delays in Broodling attacks. This we know. Previously, attacking from max range caused a delay in Broodling recharge, slightly reducing DPS. After the fix, Broodlings now fire consistently from long range, giving Broodlords a roughly 12% increase in DPS based on testing. This doesn’t double the damage, but it smooths out the attack cycle for more reliable output. So in short: we get more attacks within the timeframe inside of combat when firing from max range. So the benefits are only gained while in max range because the bug didn't happen when firing from ranges less than max.
The test used to determine the impact of the Ghost vs. Broodlord being a 1v1 fight seems a little unrealistic. With a hitsquad of ~5 ghosts, they still seem to be able to get some snipes off. 1v1, you're 100% right. They get wrecked every time.
Make the broodlings cost either energy or minerals. Broodpod = 10 broodling ammo, can stack up to 5 broodpods. I just don't understand why Protoss Tier 3 capital ship (carrier) has to spend minerals on its ammo. Terran have BC's that cost energy the Yamato, but we never see them in high level play because Tier 1 / 2 are just so cost effective. Broodlords (and Carriers) are one trick ponies that need more cool features, as their mechanics are very one dimensional. Broodpods can be spent to send out a disruptor like Anti-air drone like the zerg air banelings in SC1 (forget their name). Carriers need another trick.
The unit changes are in line with the dev comment and that is what counts: BLs will perform better in lategame scenarios. In ZvT the lategame scenario that involves broodlords will allways involve the ghosts. The argument of one ghost cannot land a snipe against a brodlord changes drastically when you have multiple ghosts sniping multiple BL because only the frontline will be hit. At the moment the "ghost vs any zerg army" situation is the most unfun to watch. I think that the salvage ability and the new orbital repair to full are a big deal, and are in direct opposition of the devs intent. Hopefully terrans will take some time to realize that you can wall off entire parts of the map by building a frontline of salvageable turrets (zero control cost bank) and play tower defense with tanks and libs. Maybe that is something worth exploring
Something else that isn't being mentioned is that having a higher alpha strike is MUCH better because the brood lord does the most damage when there are too many broodlings to kill and they are able to close the distance and do damage, it also increases the chance of doing permanent damage (i.e. killing units or doing unrepairable damage). This is a big big balance change and needs to be really closely examined, imo it's going to make late game Zerg really difficult to deal with.
Every single test will take about 1.5s longer because that's the delay of the old BLs firing their first shot. Everything is just delayed by that amount. It's the same as if you took the updated BLs and just ordered them to attack 1.5s later.
I think there's one more bug that needs fixing, you can't target broodlings in the air before they land. Since ghosts aren't a counter any more, make marines the counter.
Zerg needs a solid counter to ghosts. Looking at the current situation, ghosts are such a one-dimensional play for Terran. I think pushing for more varied strategies is the most important thing. Broods countering ghosts create situations where mass snipe isn't a good choice. Caviot though, brood infester would be really strong against terran
Brood-Infestor gets panned a lot by commentators, but the two units weren't the problem; it was the passive play invoked from players not wanting to move away from their Spore-chards that was the problem. This version of the Brood lord won't bring us back there, but the upgraded Spore crawler very well might. That worries me a lot more than the Brood Lord buffs.
@user-nh2bf4to7g I agree, just wanted to highlight how fugals with this version of the broodlord will be strong specifically since ghosts are how they are countered. It's a bit more nuanced then that, but something to be kept in mind
A counter existing to Ghosts ? Next balance patch is gonna make Broodlords a ground unit ... For real though, Ghosts are the biggest outlier in the rock-paper-scissors balancing in SC2. They are always good and the actual investment to get them is not that high. Airtoss and Broodlord armies need air upgrades specifically for them. Terran Mech needs upgrades and a bunch of factories, Ultras and Lurkers need their upgrades to matter. Ghost can just be sprinkled into any Terran comp and will always perform well because they don't necessarily need upgrades and most of the time they even have those, because most Terran early games are bio already. Snipe is always good against Zerg. EMP is always good against Protoss. EMP is also the only real aoe anti-caster ability in the game. Ghosts need some sort of counter and it can't just be "Keep Terran off 5 bases"
Careful Piggy your not supposed to notice this, keep focusing on the more obviously broken Terran things that were totally ever going to make it past PTR.
So increasing hp of a broodling by 50% could mean more damage per broodling life, sometimes a little (they die quickly vs tankshots) sometimes a lot. Weapon cooldown=> 0.57/0.46=1,239x more efficient. So it is much more likely under extreme conditions to have 2 hits from the broodlings rather than 1 and sometimes even 3 or 4 hits before they die.
I'd agree in a vacuum, but right now Liberators and Tempests are both getting significant buffs this patch too. If winding back on the Brood buffs then the Lib area and transformation speed buffs in particular need to go too.
I personally don't realy see that much of an issue. The ghost can still use cloak in order snipe them. Which is already enough imo. Every other mage is toast if they encouter units alone. With going in, shooting 2 lings and retreating being still the best usage of broods anyway, I see this mostly as a metal league buff, where ppl might eat 3 and 4 before retreating.
You trying to tell me that Zerg has a counter to ghosts in the late game? Neat! This just means Terran will have to cosider building the actual counter to Broodlords; Thors. Can’t just build one unit to counter every T3 unit in ZvT anymore; what a travesty!!
Wow as a Zerg my ultimate unit can finally counter a unit that Terrans can get relatively easy and I have no good counter for. The brood lord should be scary, if that’s a huge issue maybe give Terrans a biking buff or something to help zone out the BLs.
I know you said this at the end but if this now kills ghosts, then maybe this is the way to down power the ghost without actively nerfing the ghost. If people have tools to managed the ghosts in some form then surely this gets around the lack of nerfs in this patch.
So the fact that an end Tier Zerg unit can interrupt a Terran unit which is used to counter everything is a problem ? Is this the only reason that those changes can't be implemented ? Do Ghosts attack alone ? Don't they have cloak ? Don't Terran have other units to counter Broodlords ? How the frack do Protoss to counter them without Ghosts ? This is why people are angry : because you cannot touch Terrans units. Broodlords are supposed to be used to breakdown sieges and that's why they are buffed so we have something to use other that throwing 30.000 ressources in a 30mn game.
So before a ghost would always have enough time, now it can land the snipe but only if the broodlord is caught off guard or if the ghost is cloaked. In itself that does sound quite reasonable.
This change is interesting because it makes more of an impact on lower levels, which is the opposite of what they're planning to do with P. Maybe the solution is not to nerf P, but buff T and Z's usability on lower leagues.
Pig, Thanks for being honest about this and for admitting your mistakes. That tells me you have in heart the interest of the well being of the game and its playerbase. It's a shame most the rest of the balance council doesn't have your humble attitude and honesty.
I don’t think the broodlord stoping snipe if it’s a 1 vs 1 is a big issue because ghost do really well vs brood lords right now and when fighting it’s very common for the ghost to be further back anyways to prevent them from getting fungaled.
Increasing micro-ability, attack point reductions, movement speed increases, I would argue that all of these are working towards the goal of reducing turtle positions. The "Sporechard" mid-map broodlord siege is a symptom of these characteristics, the new broodlord might not require all of this setup to work properly, which would achieve the goal. Nvm I finished the video and you mention this. Well I'm not deleting this I already typed it!
So I like this change even more now. Ghosts are supposed to be high risk reward; they are also supposed to hard counter Protoss, not Broodlords. They had almost no risk, running them against Zerg with huge payoffs as they happily take out extremely expensive units - something they shouldn't be able to do with impunity. This provides at least some single target counterplay. If the ghost isn't cloaked, it should die from being breathed on. This already applies to infesters and High Templar, the latter has barely any defences other than positioning.
My issue has always been, despite tournament results, if zerg ever gets anything its seen with disdain because zerg wins a lot of tournaments. Zerg cant have a tier 3 unit that can actually contend with ghosts. Thats my biggest issue in the game right now. Zerg is forced to take a massive beating from turtle ghost strategies that aim to just slowly choke you out of the game. Thats suppose to be what zerg does! Yet nothing zerg has is a direct counter to the ghost, like how the ghost counters everything we have. Let the broodlord be the counter to the ghost. The thor is suppose to be the counter to the broodlord, let it actually be.
Hey @PiG I heard you've started playing Mechabellum in your last video. I've been interested in the game but don't really enjoy the youtube videos other creators have put out. Do you plan to release some videos on one of your channels for it? Would love to watch you play and learn with you.
The fact there's a specific animation for the broodlings to move forward on a max range attack and that behavior is how BLs have ALWAYS worked, tells me it's not a bug. It's the intentional design of the unit. It's removing multiple counters and weaknesses to the unit, while buffing it. Calling this change a bug fix is extremely dishonest at best.
Im not convinced this brood lord behaviour was a bug to begin with. I believe blizzard implemented it this way, to promote the attack pull back behaviour, as if someone is throwing tons of brood lordlings, the other army will never be able to move forward as there will be too many broodlings.
The problem is that it seems that the ceiling for each race different. Protoss being easier to get to GM to should not be taken into account. Terran maxes out so much higher than Protoss in the current meta and that is the problem. It feel like no matter what, PvT comes down to how good the Terran is, vice which of the two people are better. If both human players maximize their skills, the match up is Terran favored. As for the Brood Lord, I like this change. Brood Lord is a tier 3 unit and should act and feel as such. Now it feels like there are way too many couenters for it and I think it'll be nice for Terrans to realize that the ghost doesn't counter every unit in the game.
I am not sure about the "broodlords now counter ghosts in the lategame" statement. You shown that 1 broodlord counters 1 ghost. I think mass broodlord vs mass ghosts in a bio ball is different.
Your argument that broodlords now counter ghosts is reductive. This is is similar to the argument that a zealot can kill a roach 1v1 so zealots counter roaches. But this is not the normal state of play in a game and removes many variables such as the ability to move and micro your units and how they fare in greater numbers. If given the choice of a pack of roaches vs a pack of zealots id rather have the roaches. I think the change would be hard to actually evaulate without seeing some late game z v t compositions against each other to see how it plays out. Does a swarm of broodlords do well against a pack of ghosts in a normal game ? Maybe, but the logic of saying 1 broodlord can now interrupt one ghost is the wrong mindset to view the change from. Love your content but this one still isn't hitting for me.
your argument does exactly what you're critiquing. roach/zealot is not equivalent to ghost/brood because 1) it's not a dps thing like the former 2) it's one specific ability (snipe) with one specific counter (do damage to interrupt it). it's more like saying high templar counter ghosts due to feedback because on paper, feedback range > emp. Does it play out like that in all games? no, because feedback is tricky to land. but it doesn't change the fact that with good micro HT do indeed counter ghosts *to some degree*. zealots are unmicroable by comparison, so it's not a good analogy.
@@PraiseYeezus You make a fair point and have expanded on this better than I have. I think what we are both saying is that it takes gameplay situations featuring these units to see how it will actually play before being able to draw conclusions.
Efectivelly the brood lords stopped being brood lords and started being guardians. I still think this was never a bug, but fully intentional behaviour.
As long as snipe and EMP cost less than 200 energy, and as long as ghost attack range and HP is >1, all buffs to units countering ghosts - no matter how OP - are completly justified.
Remove 2s delay before it starts attacking -> kills a target 2s faster. I am not sure what is surprising about that. Could the bug have been introduced in patch 4.11.0 ?
old broodlords you do not have to have the broodlings on the “correct side” to spin, you only had to press H (hold) then instantly back out (spin). Man I hope they dont nerf broods
There needs to be something that counters ghosts, which is not Zerglings, ultralisks, lurkers, or hydras. The extremely weak damage of the fungal doesn’t do anything (edit: by itself), unlike ghosts awesome light bonuses on their auto attack, their snipe ability to pick of anything of value, and their emp to make inferiors and vipers extremely expensive bystanders in the fight.
I would be ok with something extreme on the snipe ability, if it hits armored units it switches to 50-75% damage but is AOE, due to the shell ricochet. That might be crazy would need some testing though.
@@konnichi1wa that would be good heads up play on the Terran. Plus Muta vs ghost is pretty uncommon. I specifically said against armored units. This would hurt the zerglings running around the ultras though. It was just a thought.
opinion of a man who used to watch everything comp SC2 over the last 8 years (minus the last 2 or so): Anything that nerfs Ghosts = good (given Terren mech and other tools if they need it, ghost was such a catch all end game comp particularly in TvZ.) God give protoss a chance to win any worlds title or bring up some new hungry tallent to dethrow the big boys (All Terrans and Zerg), revamp Protoss if it needs it Increasing Protoss buff timers "just so they can bring them back with chronoboost" seems to totally irrelegate chronoboost. I'd like to see a price chance or refactoring the whole system rather than just nerf the time of an upgrade and then say "use chrono". One way to make this asymmetrical, 3 race game into a 2 race game with fancy skins. When something can be solved without putting it in whack or out of whack with a simple numbers change from another race that opens up cool possibilities and keeps each race unique. Disruptors are fun for the spectators to watch and can turn around a game. If you're nerfing their balls you have to go big on something else showy (like DTs, STORM, some other AOE). Not going to start on the other two races because from what I've heard Protoss needs it the most right now (and let's be honest, at the highest level they always have).
It might be a behavioural modification but it's *also* a bug fix. Zerg are bugs. This fixed it.
This is 5head ngl
thats what i thought! xD
Excuse me?! We Zerg are very emotional and caring beings, we do not like the term "bugs" used by you Racist Terrans! We prefer the term Otherworldy Immigrants.
I shall now refer to all Zerg buffs as Bug fixes.
@@NofirstnameNolastname frankly I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive
Indirect ghost nerf? Neat.
But only for ZvT, which, to be fair, the Ghost honestly seems to be more IMBA than even in PvT. That said, what's completely taken over the meta in recent years is Ghost-Lib, not pure Ghost, and the patch still has that crazy double-buff to Libs, so I'm not sure how much this change to Brood Lords really changes that dynamic.
@@user-nh2bf4to7g but why would the zerg council want to nerf ghost vs protoss?
Only 1 on 1. Zerg cannot click on each ghost faster than the repeat action of hold down the snipe key.
@@user-nh2bf4to7gso what you're saying is that we should nerf EMP and then the unit will be in a good place?
Terrans having an existential crisis that Broodlords might actually be the first good Zerg T3 unit.
Seriously though, this change is good, regardless of how broodlord gets balanced later. This makes the unit way more predictable and consistent which will make it easier to balance now that you don't have to take into account that weird ass artificial delay. The more stable a unit's behavior, the easier it is to balance.
i drink terran tears - instead of coffee
@@DedesFewscres Your kidneys hate you.
Terran tears are MY coffee
lol Zerg players, pretty soon there will only be Zerg. You all can play this looser game while we all switch to Stormgate.
As if vipers dont exist or infestors
Post patch: broodlings are paying attention and hit the gas when the light turns green. Cars behind them get to go faster.
Prepatch: broodlings are on they phones and not paying attention.
NOW I get it!
This is unironically a good way to put it
it's also got a snowball impact - as there are more broodlings earlier there is more chance of them surviving to get some hits in (increasing the DPS both by the extra impact and extra broodling attacks), meaning more chance of killing enemies, meaning decreased enemy DPS so more chance the following broodlings get to attack even if they arrived at the same frequency by then. So the sustained DPS is underselling the impact.
Correct, just watch the videos that PiG was showing. Pre-patch, the stalkers took out 46 Broodlings in total while Post-patch, they only got 19. More sustain + faster speed/less delay adds up big time, making it harder for the stalkers to knockdown broodlings
Most importantly it is an outsized effect on poor brooding killing forces. IE a few stalkers vs hellbats. Makes brood lords much better against small groups.
StarCraft having Broodgate in 2024 is something I was not expecting
only from the point of view that were are actually talking about
I know how you feel. I didn't had Lowko, PiG and JuggernautJason asking for stronger Protoss buffs on my 2024 bingocard either.
So ghost ONLY now counters ultras, lurkers, infestors, and vipers in the late game?? 😱
Don't forget all protoss units with EMP :)
what do u mean?
EDIT: o w8 the caps rly threw me off on the emphasis 😅
kek
It is simpler to say Ghosts counter everything Zerg has apart from zerglings. Completely OP unit right now for 2 population only that can be healed and jump in medivacs.
@@Talentaire Ghost Auto Attack has bonus dmg vs light. They fair quite well vs lings.
Also they got cloak.
Contrast that to a high templar who can only panic storm themselves in response. 😅
@@Broockle also ghosts have such an insane amount of hitpoints
As a viewer of sc2, this is an excellent change. Ghosts are one of, if not THE most boring unit in the game. Anything that makes them worse and less good against everything is great.
Ghosts having a counter? Hell yes.
As a viewer of sc2, this is a poor change. Zerg is one of, if not THE most A click species in the game. Anything that makes them worse and less good against everything is great.
If you need to replace or nerf the ghost through strategy, terran just loses due to lack of other viable options. Whatever happened to buffing the race the world champ plays as? Or is that a zerg only rule? Zerg Cabal is real.
Brool lord metas, historically, not great viewing.
@@Lightwolf_VR non brood lord metas in wol and hots bot way more viewings. btw that's when the game was at its apex.
@bobyy6557 exactly. Brood lord infestor was a damaging meta.
I said we let this through. At least now Zerg have 1 late game unit to fight with lategame Terran
Zerg has a billion ways to dominate and win the early and mid game. Just cuz ur not skilled enough doesn't mean Zerg is not op. If you buff Zerg late game, maybe compensate by nerfing Zerg early game? Like they do with Protoss?
@@bobyy6557 Why are you pointing the finger at him? And why fucking Protoss up makes it right or good to do the same to Zerg? If you're gonna lose your shit and be dumb, at least don't type it out.
@@bobyy6557 They did nerf queens.
@@aomafura3374 you call that a nerf jajajajajaja. To quote the great Pig, "You won't even notice that 25 minerals."
@@bobyy6557spotted the Terran main. Go SAD
"Are we okay with brood lords now defeating ghosts in head to head?"
YES A MILLION TIMES YES WHY IS THIS EVEN A QUESTION
A Sniper Unit to counter a Sniper that heavily counters Short Range Units.
I say YES!
Broods beating Ghosts 1v1 is perfectly fine. Conceptually, Ghosts are a support unit, they should be weaker alone. Over all balance wise Ghosts are already the strongest unit in the game and are long overdue for nerfs. And from a unit cost perspective Broods are the more expensive unit.
“More expensive” is an understatement, BL costs nearly twice as much as a ghost
dont forget they are also tech heavy and research heavy to have maxed Broods u need 3/3 air attack amor and ground melee and armor
Keep in mind that tempests and vikings are also getting buffed this patch, so brood really does need some love. Whether this is too much love remains to be seen.
@朕是神 the tempest buff/nerf also further shaves off its range advantage.
Also, the extra burst of the initial broodlings kills off the first stalker faster, so there are fewer stalkers killing broodlings, and so there's some extra sustained damage from more broodlings being alive on average
"Brood Lord is the hard counter to Ghost" was NOT on my SC2 Bingo Card. Yet, here we are.
Ghosts can still cloak.
I think the "bug fix" itself is a good change as it forces an army composition on both sides, rather than Terran just massing Ghosts to easily overwhelm broodlords. Prepatch zerg have to try land a good fungal on Ghosts and still need to rely on follow up combo attack to defeat the Ghosts.
As for the damage and health increase it is debatable.
@@lucretius8050 I agree. The bug fix makes Brood lords more micro-able which is good.
I do not like the idea of buffing the health of the broodlings though. It makes them too tanky.
I am ok with keeping the attack speed buff, because honestly the main damage is from the swoop, the broodlings nibbles doesn’t do that much, it should be buffed.
The brood lord is one of the few units that benefit from air and ground upgrades which is kind of cool.
Oh no zerg can now have one unit that can counter ghosts. That's concerning.
Counter in quotation marks. It’s not like broodlords will ever really be fighting ghosts alone.
@@ZergIingLover That's the thing; right now you *absolutely can*, and you see it happening all the time at the pro level. Ghost-Lib *is* the meta for late-game ZvT right now at the pro level, and is why you rarely see ZvT get to very late game scenarios these days, other than Rogue with his new mass Overseer-Nydus play, with the Overseers acting as a Snipe umbrella for Lurkers and dropping changelings to soak up APM and get vision for Nyduses: usually in these scenarios the ghost army is leading any supplemental ground units because they can alpha-strike anything larger than a baneling. This change would give a bit of counter-play to the current strategy of getting 20-30 ghosts and just waving your magic eraser over the Zerg army, and I think that's a great idea.
Ghosts can still just erase the broodlords. BLing are still the only counter.
@@user-nh2bf4to7g Fair. I was just meaning that, even after the patch, they’re not really that great of counters, in that Terran has more than enough tools to keep their ghosts safe.
@nustada even the baneling being a counter to Ghosts is a stretch as Ghosts are not light units. It takes 3 banes to kill a ghost. With proper splits, banes aren’t all that efficient vs ghosts either.
I was also “told” about the dps increase, it was playing it that felt insane. More to the point, I simply dont want a world where both players are incentivized to turtle forever. Just nerf terran, leave the broodlord where it is.
Nerf terran coming from Sal? Enough is enough he said! Been eating too well for too long xD. Much love.
god tier coment i agree just nerf all the turtle styles and make maps with big ramps to be able to make agresive play
I find the change to Broodlord / Broodling refreshing.
The big issue for people now seems to be that with the new patch the BL counter Ghosts better since the broodling can interrupt snipe. So... a swarm of Ghosts cannot take on a swarm of Broodlords now without some support. It USED to be that Broodlords couldn't take on a pack of Ghosts without support.
This surely polarizes the situation, but I fail to see how it's universally so shattering that arguably the best unit in Terran arsenal (The Ghost) now has a unit that somewhat counters it. I say somewhat, since we all know the be-all-end-all math depends on the encounter itself. Encounters don't exist in a vacuum.
Brood Lords used to need support from infestors, banelings and/or other units to engage Ghosts without taking heavy losses. (Preventing the ghosts from disengaging or outright killing them)
Now, the Ghosts need some form of support to avoid getting their snipe interrupted by the Broodlings. (Like hiding behind tankier units that screw up targeting)
If it requires the zerg player to individually target EACH ghost to interrupt the snipe I don't see it as a big problem. If you have a dozen ghosts and a dozen Broodlords, you'll see that about 60% of the ghosts will still get the snipe out during non-targeted autoattacking. If there are things shooting at the broodlords in FRONT of the ghosts just about every snipe still lands.
...
While it is a change for sure, I'm not sure it's a game breaking one. Players will adapt. If it boils down to a question of deploying suitable meatshields in an encounter, I'm not too worried.
I mean we just had a top level zerg player use mass changelings and overseers to visually block a bunch of lurkers and screw up targeting them. Also it seemed to work just fine.
Soon enough top terrans will adapt and start hiding their ghosts in the middle of clunkier units and mixing in other stuff while relying less on mass ghost.
If it looks super dire, they could likely balance it out by buffing snipe a little bit. ;)
"Fixed the bug which prevented Brood Lord from dealing full damage while shooting from the maximum distance."
To be fair this sounds to me like the initial impact damage of the broodling was less than it was supposed to be at max range. I guess they just meant the broodling delay but then why not put that as the note? Something like
"Fixed the bug which delayed initial Broodling volley from Brood Lord while shooting from the maximum distance."
They could definitely be better at wording some of their notes. This isn't the first time vague/unclear patch notes have led to confusion.
"If they are both attacking each other, the brood lord will never attack it in time to interrupt the snipe"
THAT SETTLES IT, THIS CHANGE NEEDS TO STAY.
Good points, but at 8:20 because the extra damage is coming from the faster second shot, it's not correct to say that because you killed a CC 10% faster with 5 BLs, there's a 10% dps increase. Imagine for example that you scaled your example up and used just enough BLs so the second BL strike kills the CC. In that case you would kill the CC by a percentage faster equal to however much faster the second strike comes in post patch, right? eyeballing it, it looks like somewhere on the order of 30-50%, so you'd get an even greater apparent dps increase when in reality you're just scaling the burst damage increase by the number of BLs. If you redid the CC test with 1 BL, I suspect you'd get a number closer to the 2-3% sustained dps increase that OmniSkeptic cited.
Still though, reducing BL initial recharge by 30-50% for a two shot volley is MASSIVE because of how they are used. Rarely can you just stand and let them do their thing since they'll get sniped, viking/tempest volleyed. Being able to do 100% more damage simply by staying in a vulnerable spot for half a second longer is amazing. If the change goes live, you'll see top zergs doing two-shot BL stutter steps (flaps?) for sure
100%
Thanks for all the effort, Pig. The community appreciates you.
I appreciate and respect the effort put into this follow-up video. thank you!
Sick can't wait to see Dark on this patch.
I hope they keep the behavior change and figure out how to balance the damage numbers to compensate. Looks like it makes Broodlords far more usable and microable similar to the Tempest changes.
Just a correction on the initial burst damage buff, pig says it is 10%. If the time goes from 16 seconds to 15 seconds that is 6.6% so generously rounding up it is 10% to the first 2-3 seconds of firings, which would promote more micro to the skilled players.
It was more consistently 16.5 seconds, maybe closer to 17 seconds
@@PiGstarcraft can’t wait for the ghost video. Love your content man!
I wish the ghost did a color change to the units effected by emp and were only able to be hit once ever 10 seconds or something.
Terran perspective here. Brood lords needed a buff. It might be too much overall powerup, but I think it's manageable. Zerg needed a better solution to late game ghost, and thors needed a better reason to exist.
I wonder how much this will affect the stalker/Brood lord matchup. Will protoss have to think twice about blinking in on the Broodies?
Never really paid so much attention to the broodlord animations, but damn, balance aside, that looks really cool.
All of this work and drama to avoid nerfing Ghosts.
I for one welcome more microable and responsive units, same as they did for the Vikings and now the Tempest. That attack delay for the Broodlord has always felt bad to play with.
PiG you didn't have the time right when they started firing... It was 2:52 and all of a sudden your delta is 0.5-1 second which is a huge margin of error considering the lack of precision in the measurement methods.
at 2:52 the broodlings are are expeled to the target, but it happens about 1 second after the broodlord starts the shooting animation. Thats the whole point of the "bug fix"
Even after this change, broodlords won't counter ghosts that hard. In a 1 v 1 sure, but when there's a dozen ghosts with marines etc supporting vs 12 broodlords with lings and whatever else, those snipes are still going to go off and shred the broodlords. Ghosts aren't going to be in front in almost any scenario unless they're caught out, so the broodlings will be hitting tanks, or marines, or hellbats most of the time. With the ghosts sniping around max range in most scenarios. Every attempt to launch broodlings will result in 2-4 getting sniped to death. Especially since there's no downside to snipes failing with the free energy refund.
Now in more unique situations where the ghosts get caught alone the broodlords may have the advantage, but I think punishing terrans for mistakes harder is a good thing. Too often it feels like Terrans can make multiple crushing mistakes but get out safe on the other side due to massive cost efficiency and the nature of tanks and liberators making it so safe at home, so curbing that by making it less forgiving is a good thing imo.
this disallows terrans to punish zerg for being out of position though.
if a bunch of ghosts find brood lords out alone they wont be able to mass snipe them unless an overseer isnt present
also there are lots of interactions you might not be thinking about-before the cooldown change, if terran tries to snipes an overseer and zerg defends with brood lords, the overseer will still be sniped (but broodlings will attack the ghost as it goes off). with this change, terran cannot get any snipes off outside of a full on engagement as long as brood lords are present.
With top level micro the broods will be stutter stepping back. Needs thorough testing but i think they'd still do pretty well since they can stack up and won't block each other whilst broodlings will block the terran from getting in range
@@PiGstarcraft There's always Thors and vikings. Thors will still straight up outrange them. Vikings with 9 range can easily micro in and out away from corruptors and zerg's non-existent ground to air. I can't quite remember snipe's sticky targeting range, is it 14? but cast range is still 10, so that's an even range, but that's also assuming the ghosts are being targeted specifically, which can be the case but won't be 100% of the time. Ghosts are small after all, and potentially cloaked. but so long as the snipes start and aren't damaged, even retreating broodlords would catch strays doing their pokes.
Not saying it won't be much harder to handle broodlords with the same efficiency as before. But it will probably require a more concentrated response from Terran than just the Bio they already built. Which I also think is a good thing. Much like how liberators generally demand a response of air to handle them, broodlords, being Air to ground only should also, ideally, trigger an air response.
Of course a complication here is how it affects protoss as well. The "ideal" response on paper is Void Rays to handle broodlords, but we all know how that is. So carriers may be the most optimal solution? Which I don't mind so much as thats a T3 vs T3 matchup. Not sure off the cuff. Though a few sharking void rays may be ok depending on how much the broods are on their own vs in the pack. Maybe bring back the Scout XD (I kid, I kid)
I internalized the first video as the broodlings getting charge. Once it wears off, eh.
It's literally just the wind-up animation from the first attack that's beeing removed. In your test on current patch you time it from 2.51-3.09 (gametime), however, to 2.51 is not the time when the broodlords release their broodlings, it's the time you give the attack command and the broodlords are in range. The extra 1,5 seconds is the wind-up animation (broodlings floating from the back to the front).
Sure its 10% on a CC, but if you were to surrong the broodlords with 20 thors and shiftclick them all down the wind-up animaiton would still only play once (assuming all the thors are in range). Which means that 1,5 seconds is FAR less than 10%.
Also, claiming that it has something to do with broodling recharge is technically not incorrect but, I would frame it differently. Like "Recharge of broodlings starts upon broodling release, that's always been the case. In the new patch the sequence is [target aquired->release->recharge]. In the old patch it's [target aquired->wind-up animation->release->recharge]."
TL;DR It's not a dps increase if you time you dps test from broodling release, rather than target aquired. If you DO time it from target aquired, it always results in a 1,5 second faster kill time.
Good points. Effective dps is massively increased in many small skirmish engagements and it becomes closer to the old brood in a protracted fight
Oh no, one zerg unit can actually deal with ghosts!
Ghosts can't counter every late game zerg army now? Outrageous.
Better increase the area of EMP, range of snipe and the liberator area again!
this is why you don't make overdesigned nightmares like the brood lord to fulfill the function of a guardian with a numbers change.
If you under design everything the game loses all of its cool factor
brood lords are a lot cooler than guardians like jnkinght said
@@canacana6484guardian is straight up just worse tempest at least broodlord has the broodling mechanic that makes it look unique so i can forgive it not ahving any ATA attacks but guardian is just tempest without ATA attack
Did I watch the whole video? Yes. Do I play terran? Yes. Will I ever build a Brood Lord? No.
10/10 video PiG
Did he not mention Broodlings went from 2 shot from stalkers to 3 shot? That makes a massive difference too.
Fascinating. Great followup to yesterday's video. Personally, I like that detected/unguarded ghosts will have a harder time sniping BLs, that may be all the nerf they need. They still have options with protection or sniping Overseers first. Might be worth removing one of these three buffs to Brood Lord.
So, 2 things:
1. The attack CD might not start until the broodling actually fires - this would be a significant sustained DPS buff, as the unit will actually be firing at an effectively shorter interval.
2 .The Brood lord's initial damage delay being much shorter at max range is a huge buff to how easy it is to micro them.
The biggest problem with the brood lord has always been the broodlings blocking pathing, making massed broodlords just impossible to fight with ground units aside from the ghost and thor with their extremely long range. If broodlings could just be pushed aside by other units, Brood lords would be much easier to balance.
I'm halfway through the video and kind of dying a bit because I haven't seen this mentioned yet: in the 3 Broodlord vs 9 Stalker fight, a large portion of the DPS increase is coming from the increased broodling health - going from 20 to 30 HP means that broodlings take 3 shots instead of 2, meaning each broodling does more overall damage because they survive longer.
Rewatch the stalker video and count how many broodlings are actually killed by the stalkers vs just having their durations expire and you will immediately spot the difference.
Forgive me if this is addressed later in the video, I'm just going crazy that you're going through the minutia of the attack animations without having mentioned this.
Pig: I respect that you’re able to admit when you’re wrong, and that you’re willing to test and be wrong. That being said, I haven’t watched the whole video yet
IMO, mostly going on feels, keep the behavior change for behavior consistency sake. The strange edge of range behavior is unintuitive. But don't keep the other buffs to the unit.
It totally shifts left the first and second attacks, thus speeding up the whole battle in favour of BLs. In addition, I'd dare say that with good micro, engaging, staying for under a second, and retreating, duplicates the amount of damage in a halved time, that a BL can do by kiting a little bit.
The bug fix makes Brood lords more micro-able which is good.
I do not like the idea of buffing the health of the broodlings though. It makes them too tanky.
I am ok with keeping the attack speed buff, because honestly the main damage is from the swoop, the broodlings nibbles doesn’t do that much, it should be buffed. If you let them nibble away then you should be punished, but the counter play should be there. Make some hell bats or something.
The brood lord is one of the few units that benefit from air and ground upgrades which is kind of cool.
Seems like the patch is trying to make BLs more like Tempests? Move into range, pick off a target and run out
Very thorough as usual, great stuff piggy.
The broodlord patch fix improved its long-range DPS by removing a bug that caused delays in Broodling attacks. This we know. Previously, attacking from max range caused a delay in Broodling recharge, slightly reducing DPS. After the fix, Broodlings now fire consistently from long range, giving Broodlords a roughly 12% increase in DPS based on testing. This doesn’t double the damage, but it smooths out the attack cycle for more reliable output.
So in short: we get more attacks within the timeframe inside of combat when firing from max range. So the benefits are only gained while in max range because the bug didn't happen when firing from ranges less than max.
Nothing bad about being wrong. we only learn from mistakes ❤
The test used to determine the impact of the Ghost vs. Broodlord being a 1v1 fight seems a little unrealistic. With a hitsquad of ~5 ghosts, they still seem to be able to get some snipes off.
1v1, you're 100% right. They get wrecked every time.
Make the broodlings cost either energy or minerals. Broodpod = 10 broodling ammo, can stack up to 5 broodpods.
I just don't understand why Protoss Tier 3 capital ship (carrier) has to spend minerals on its ammo.
Terran have BC's that cost energy the Yamato, but we never see them in high level play because Tier 1 / 2 are just so cost effective.
Broodlords (and Carriers) are one trick ponies that need more cool features, as their mechanics are very one dimensional.
Broodpods can be spent to send out a disruptor like Anti-air drone like the zerg air banelings in SC1 (forget their name).
Carriers need another trick.
The unit changes are in line with the dev comment and that is what counts: BLs will perform better in lategame scenarios. In ZvT the lategame scenario that involves broodlords will allways involve the ghosts. The argument of one ghost cannot land a snipe against a brodlord changes drastically when you have multiple ghosts sniping multiple BL because only the frontline will be hit.
At the moment the "ghost vs any zerg army" situation is the most unfun to watch.
I think that the salvage ability and the new orbital repair to full are a big deal, and are in direct opposition of the devs intent. Hopefully terrans will take some time to realize that you can wall off entire parts of the map by building a frontline of salvageable turrets (zero control cost bank) and play tower defense with tanks and libs. Maybe that is something worth exploring
the snipe interrupt is huge. biggest buff that no one noticed
Something else that isn't being mentioned is that having a higher alpha strike is MUCH better because the brood lord does the most damage when there are too many broodlings to kill and they are able to close the distance and do damage, it also increases the chance of doing permanent damage (i.e. killing units or doing unrepairable damage). This is a big big balance change and needs to be really closely examined, imo it's going to make late game Zerg really difficult to deal with.
Every single test will take about 1.5s longer because that's the delay of the old BLs firing their first shot. Everything is just delayed by that amount. It's the same as if you took the updated BLs and just ordered them to attack 1.5s later.
I think there's one more bug that needs fixing, you can't target broodlings in the air before they land. Since ghosts aren't a counter any more, make marines the counter.
watching pig on top of background pig was trippy man!
Zerg needs a solid counter to ghosts. Looking at the current situation, ghosts are such a one-dimensional play for Terran. I think pushing for more varied strategies is the most important thing.
Broods countering ghosts create situations where mass snipe isn't a good choice.
Caviot though, brood infester would be really strong against terran
Brood-Infestor gets panned a lot by commentators, but the two units weren't the problem; it was the passive play invoked from players not wanting to move away from their Spore-chards that was the problem. This version of the Brood lord won't bring us back there, but the upgraded Spore crawler very well might. That worries me a lot more than the Brood Lord buffs.
@user-nh2bf4to7g I agree, just wanted to highlight how fugals with this version of the broodlord will be strong specifically since ghosts are how they are countered. It's a bit more nuanced then that, but something to be kept in mind
I enjoy listening to pig’s good discussions and testing. Great stuff
Amazing video, Pig! You covered basically eevrything and did it well.
A counter existing to Ghosts ? Next balance patch is gonna make Broodlords a ground unit ...
For real though, Ghosts are the biggest outlier in the rock-paper-scissors balancing in SC2. They are always good and the actual investment to get them is not that high. Airtoss and Broodlord armies need air upgrades specifically for them. Terran Mech needs upgrades and a bunch of factories, Ultras and Lurkers need their upgrades to matter.
Ghost can just be sprinkled into any Terran comp and will always perform well because they don't necessarily need upgrades and most of the time they even have those, because most Terran early games are bio already. Snipe is always good against Zerg. EMP is always good against Protoss. EMP is also the only real aoe anti-caster ability in the game.
Ghosts need some sort of counter and it can't just be "Keep Terran off 5 bases"
Never trust a terran on balance 😂
Who is the terran?? PiG is a zerg player as per liquipedia (and common consensus. Albeit he does play all 3 races at a very high level).
@@eshwarprasad9218idk man the guy in the bottom right looks like a Terran to me
Careful Piggy your not supposed to notice this, keep focusing on the more obviously broken Terran things that were totally ever going to make it past PTR.
I love how much effort you put into this, it reminds me of seconds from disaster (the patch being the disaster lelele)
just objectively better for the game, just makes BL less clunky for attacking, and they're in desperate need of any kinda extra power.
So increasing hp of a broodling by 50% could mean more damage per broodling life, sometimes a little (they die quickly vs tankshots) sometimes a lot. Weapon cooldown=> 0.57/0.46=1,239x more efficient. So it is much more likely under extreme conditions to have 2 hits from the broodlings rather than 1 and sometimes even 3 or 4 hits before they die.
I like the behavior change without the brooding buffs since it feels better
I'd agree in a vacuum, but right now Liberators and Tempests are both getting significant buffs this patch too. If winding back on the Brood buffs then the Lib area and transformation speed buffs in particular need to go too.
This change should stay so zerg has a single unit interaction lategame that disfavors the ghost.
I personally don't realy see that much of an issue. The ghost can still use cloak in order snipe them. Which is already enough imo. Every other mage is toast if they encouter units alone.
With going in, shooting 2 lings and retreating being still the best usage of broods anyway, I see this mostly as a metal league buff, where ppl might eat 3 and 4 before retreating.
You trying to tell me that Zerg has a counter to ghosts in the late game? Neat! This just means Terran will have to cosider building the actual counter to Broodlords; Thors. Can’t just build one unit to counter every T3 unit in ZvT anymore; what a travesty!!
Wow as a Zerg my ultimate unit can finally counter a unit that Terrans can get relatively easy and I have no good counter for. The brood lord should be scary, if that’s a huge issue maybe give Terrans a biking buff or something to help zone out the BLs.
I know you said this at the end but if this now kills ghosts, then maybe this is the way to down power the ghost without actively nerfing the ghost. If people have tools to managed the ghosts in some form then surely this gets around the lack of nerfs in this patch.
So the fact that an end Tier Zerg unit can interrupt a Terran unit which is used to counter everything is a problem ?
Is this the only reason that those changes can't be implemented ?
Do Ghosts attack alone ?
Don't they have cloak ?
Don't Terran have other units to counter Broodlords ?
How the frack do Protoss to counter them without Ghosts ?
This is why people are angry : because you cannot touch Terrans units.
Broodlords are supposed to be used to breakdown sieges and that's why they are buffed so we have something to use other that throwing 30.000 ressources in a 30mn game.
So before a ghost would always have enough time, now it can land the snipe but only if the broodlord is caught off guard or if the ghost is cloaked.
In itself that does sound quite reasonable.
This change is interesting because it makes more of an impact on lower levels, which is the opposite of what they're planning to do with P. Maybe the solution is not to nerf P, but buff T and Z's usability on lower leagues.
dident armor on the cc change too?
Just planetary I think
@@andrewduan5123 yup:
Planetary Fortress
Armor decreased from 3 to 2.
Yeah but unchanged in all these tests
Pig, Thanks for being honest about this and for admitting your mistakes. That tells me you have in heart the interest of the well being of the game and its playerbase. It's a shame most the rest of the balance council doesn't have your humble attitude and honesty.
I don’t think the broodlord stoping snipe if it’s a 1 vs 1 is a big issue because ghost do really well vs brood lords right now and when fighting it’s very common for the ghost to be further back anyways to prevent them from getting fungaled.
Increasing micro-ability, attack point reductions, movement speed increases, I would argue that all of these are working towards the goal of reducing turtle positions.
The "Sporechard" mid-map broodlord siege is a symptom of these characteristics, the new broodlord might not require all of this setup to work properly, which would achieve the goal.
Nvm I finished the video and you mention this. Well I'm not deleting this I already typed it!
This type of nerdy investigations are so great :-)
we got Pig apology video before tank buff and ghost nerf
Whenever one speculate if some zerg pro is using an obscure tech is safe to assume Scarlett at least alredy tried it.
Biggest thing I learned here, Snipe can be interrupted?!
So I like this change even more now. Ghosts are supposed to be high risk reward; they are also supposed to hard counter Protoss, not Broodlords.
They had almost no risk, running them against Zerg with huge payoffs as they happily take out extremely expensive units - something they shouldn't be able to do with impunity. This provides at least some single target counterplay.
If the ghost isn't cloaked, it should die from being breathed on. This already applies to infesters and High Templar, the latter has barely any defences other than positioning.
My issue has always been, despite tournament results, if zerg ever gets anything its seen with disdain because zerg wins a lot of tournaments.
Zerg cant have a tier 3 unit that can actually contend with ghosts. Thats my biggest issue in the game right now. Zerg is forced to take a massive beating from turtle ghost strategies that aim to just slowly choke you out of the game. Thats suppose to be what zerg does! Yet nothing zerg has is a direct counter to the ghost, like how the ghost counters everything we have. Let the broodlord be the counter to the ghost. The thor is suppose to be the counter to the broodlord, let it actually be.
Hey @PiG I heard you've started playing Mechabellum in your last video. I've been interested in the game but don't really enjoy the youtube videos other creators have put out. Do you plan to release some videos on one of your channels for it? Would love to watch you play and learn with you.
Im addicted haha definitely owning fine content in the near future
@@PiGstarcraft Awesome, looking forward to it man.
The fact there's a specific animation for the broodlings to move forward on a max range attack and that behavior is how BLs have ALWAYS worked, tells me it's not a bug. It's the intentional design of the unit. It's removing multiple counters and weaknesses to the unit, while buffing it. Calling this change a bug fix is extremely dishonest at best.
Im not convinced this brood lord behaviour was a bug to begin with.
I believe blizzard implemented it this way, to promote the attack pull back behaviour, as if someone is throwing tons of brood lordlings, the other army will never be able to move forward as there will be too many broodlings.
The problem is that it seems that the ceiling for each race different. Protoss being easier to get to GM to should not be taken into account. Terran maxes out so much higher than Protoss in the current meta and that is the problem. It feel like no matter what, PvT comes down to how good the Terran is, vice which of the two people are better. If both human players maximize their skills, the match up is Terran favored.
As for the Brood Lord, I like this change. Brood Lord is a tier 3 unit and should act and feel as such. Now it feels like there are way too many couenters for it and I think it'll be nice for Terrans to realize that the ghost doesn't counter every unit in the game.
I am not sure about the "broodlords now counter ghosts in the lategame" statement. You shown that 1 broodlord counters 1 ghost. I think mass broodlord vs mass ghosts in a bio ball is different.
Your argument that broodlords now counter ghosts is reductive. This is is similar to the argument that a zealot can kill a roach 1v1 so zealots counter roaches. But this is not the normal state of play in a game and removes many variables such as the ability to move and micro your units and how they fare in greater numbers. If given the choice of a pack of roaches vs a pack of zealots id rather have the roaches. I think the change would be hard to actually evaulate without seeing some late game z v t compositions against each other to see how it plays out. Does a swarm of broodlords do well against a pack of ghosts in a normal game ? Maybe, but the logic of saying 1 broodlord can now interrupt one ghost is the wrong mindset to view the change from. Love your content but this one still isn't hitting for me.
your argument does exactly what you're critiquing. roach/zealot is not equivalent to ghost/brood because 1) it's not a dps thing like the former 2) it's one specific ability (snipe) with one specific counter (do damage to interrupt it). it's more like saying high templar counter ghosts due to feedback because on paper, feedback range > emp. Does it play out like that in all games? no, because feedback is tricky to land. but it doesn't change the fact that with good micro HT do indeed counter ghosts *to some degree*. zealots are unmicroable by comparison, so it's not a good analogy.
@@PraiseYeezus You make a fair point and have expanded on this better than I have. I think what we are both saying is that it takes gameplay situations featuring these units to see how it will actually play before being able to draw conclusions.
@@lockenheim thanks for the gracious reply. you are right that we'll have to wait and see, but I do think Pig has a good point also.
It 100% needs more thorough testing
So, effectively, buffing the firing point massively and the dps a fair bit.
need to check if the prior command center had armor upgrades tho
Efectivelly the brood lords stopped being brood lords and started being guardians. I still think this was never a bug, but fully intentional behaviour.
As long as snipe and EMP cost less than 200 energy, and as long as ghost attack range and HP is >1, all buffs to units countering ghosts - no matter how OP - are completly justified.
Remove 2s delay before it starts attacking -> kills a target 2s faster. I am not sure what is surprising about that. Could the bug have been introduced in patch 4.11.0 ?
Psionic storm should reduce energy by 20 points too.
I just had a statistics exam this is literally H0 vs H1
old broodlords you do not have to have the broodlings on the “correct side” to spin, you only had to press H (hold) then instantly back out (spin).
Man I hope they dont nerf broods
There needs to be something that counters ghosts, which is not Zerglings, ultralisks, lurkers, or hydras.
The extremely weak damage of the fungal doesn’t do anything (edit: by itself), unlike ghosts awesome light bonuses on their auto attack, their snipe ability to pick of anything of value, and their emp to make inferiors and vipers extremely expensive bystanders in the fight.
I would be ok with something extreme on the snipe ability, if it hits armored units it switches to 50-75% damage but is AOE, due to the shell ricochet.
That might be crazy would need some testing though.
Now imagining an entire ball of 20 mutas dying to 3-4 snipes on a completely different target that happened to be nearby if they got an AOE effect
@@konnichi1wa that would be good heads up play on the Terran. Plus Muta vs ghost is pretty uncommon.
I specifically said against armored units. This would hurt the zerglings running around the ultras though.
It was just a thought.
opinion of a man who used to watch everything comp SC2 over the last 8 years (minus the last 2 or so):
Anything that nerfs Ghosts = good (given Terren mech and other tools if they need it, ghost was such a catch all end game comp particularly in TvZ.)
God give protoss a chance to win any worlds title or bring up some new hungry tallent to dethrow the big boys (All Terrans and Zerg), revamp Protoss if it needs it
Increasing Protoss buff timers "just so they can bring them back with chronoboost" seems to totally irrelegate chronoboost. I'd like to see a price chance or refactoring the whole system rather than just nerf the time of an upgrade and then say "use chrono". One way to make this asymmetrical, 3 race game into a 2 race game with fancy skins. When something can be solved without putting it in whack or out of whack with a simple numbers change from another race that opens up cool possibilities and keeps each race unique.
Disruptors are fun for the spectators to watch and can turn around a game. If you're nerfing their balls you have to go big on something else showy (like DTs, STORM, some other AOE).
Not going to start on the other two races because from what I've heard Protoss needs it the most right now (and let's be honest, at the highest level they always have).