Episode 8: Nydus Swarm Host Rush, "Foggy Munster"

**Space Camel** (0:00)
Hey, welcome to the StarCraft Cheese Academy. Oops.
Hi, welcome all you StarCraft Cheese lovers. Yeah, today it is I, Space Camel, and I'm joined here by Battling Bard.

**Battling Bard** (0:38)
Huzzah!

**Space Camel** (0:39)
And your name is Professor Phi, welcome.

**Professor Phi** (0:46)
He he he he he he.

**Space Camel** (0:49)
Well, great for you to have all three of us on the podcast today. This is going to be awesome. We're going to be talking about a really, really stinky cheese. But first, let's start off with some news. Professor Phi, do you have any news you want to update our listeners on that they should know about?

**Professor Phi** (1:18)
Just that the new patch has come out a while ago, and it seems to have definitely buffed Taron. It's kind of seemed to brought Zerg back to a moderately competitive level, and it seems to have slightly, believe it or not, actually buffed Protoss, even though people don't agree with that.

**Battling Bard** (1:43)
What buffed Protoss?

**Space Camel** (1:46)
What way did it buff Protoss?

**Professor Phi** (1:49)
Well, it slightly did, I would say, in certain situations.

**Battling Bard** (1:54)
What does that mean?

**Professor Phi** (1:57)
Well, in certain situations.

**Space Camel** (2:00)
Do you have an example of your favorite buff, way that it's buffed Protoss?

**Professor Phi** (2:05)
Oh, absolutely.
I'm not trying to sway the balance council. I am not. But what I am trying to do is just make things clear to everybody on what is happening to the state of the game. One change that they've recently made is the observer has a longer vision when it goes into its stationary mode, like an increased vision, like a way more increased than it used to be. And then most players are critical, though, that when it does that now, it becomes visible. It's no longer invisible. Does that make sense?

**Battling Bard** (2:47)
Makes sense, yep.

**Professor Phi** (2:48)
Yeah. So honestly, I felt it was already a bit too... Like, as long as you got an observer into the enemy's area, their base, you can have fairly good vision without them having any chance of knowing they're being scouted. But now, at least you can see it, but now, if you're slow pushing with Protoss, and you have an army under your observer, you have very lovely access and vision to your opponent's army. So that's all I'm trying to say. Right.

**Space Camel** (3:21)
Providing you can plop it into observer mode. But how far of a vision is it? Like, much further than a Tempest can shoot, for example?

**Professor Phi** (3:30)
I believe so. It used to be like what's called 13, and now it's 15 It used to be like 13 and a half, and now it's like 15.2 or something. Which that's radius, right?
So if you do a bit of math and the surface, total surface area on that, if you do the math on it, it is significant.

**Space Camel** (3:52)
I thought that was a nerf, because it's one of Battling Bard's favorite things to do, is to stick an observer in your face.

**Battling Bard** (3:59)
Oh, I know.

**Professor Phi** (4:01)
I know. In that regard, again, what I'm saying is kind of moving things sideways. I wouldn't say it's up or down. It's like moving it to the left or the right. And I appreciate I'm talking along. Battling Bard certainly has a different opinion as a Protoss player. But one other one is the new High Templar Storm is less damaging in the instant moment, but it actually does more damage over time. It just, instead of doing, I don't have the actual numbers. I don't have them off hand. But instead of doing like 120 damage over three seconds, it does like 150 over six seconds. So people are saying, oh, you just move out of it. Well, if you're a siege tank or if you're a lurker, it's difficult to move out of that. So it's actually very effective against those units now.

**Battling Bard** (4:49)
Yeah, but both of those units, yeah. Okay, let's take them one at a time. Like the observer thing, the reason they did that is basically people play Protoss because we don't want to micro. We don't want to have to mass manage. So we'd put the observers in the observer mode and forget about them. And then you could F to your army. So now you can't do that. So you have to be a better Protoss player to play Protoss. So it's kind of it's a nerf, I think, for the average Protoss player. And like in the scenario you're talking about with a slow push. Well, that might work, but you still have to micro and toggle back and forth and switch between the two units and like creep up and creep up and creep up. So I don't think it's that big of a buff. And it also doesn't cost energy. You don't even have to have any special type of unit necessarily to catch it. So it's made it harder to play Protoss. Maybe under that scenario that you're talking about, maybe it's easier, but I don't think so.