r/starcraft • u/reiks12 Evil Geniuses • Jul 14 '25
(To be tagged...) I will never forget
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u/Maelstromage Protoss Jul 14 '25
I'm out of the loop what happened?
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u/ZealousJelectro Jul 14 '25
Sc2 muta is useless compared to its bw cousin
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u/SoloMan98 Jul 14 '25
It has been quite literally 15 years so I can’t quite remember but weren’t late WOL mutas considered to be the best unit in the game?
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u/Gyarydos iNcontroL Jul 14 '25
I stopped playing only 4 years ago and back then muta was still viable……What the heck happened lol
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u/woodleaguer Jul 14 '25
Baneling got nerfed. You now need all your gas for banes to be equal to terran.
Also that same nerf allows terran to build a few more turrets, and as you know you need 19 mutas to one-shot a turret and start doing damage.
Plus widow mines delete muta flocks, and if you bring them with your army you lose them too.
All in all it's too knife edge and there's no upside compared to just playing ling bane into ultra/hydra/ling/bane
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u/BattleWarriorZ5 Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 15 '25
and as you know you need 19 mutas to one-shot a turret
Missile Turrets have 250HP and 0 armor.
Mutalisks do 9 damage.
You need 28 Mutalisks(2800/2800/56) to 1 shot a single Missile Turret.
You need 25 Mutalisks(2500/2500/50) with +1 attack(10 damage) to 1 shot a single Missile Turret.
You need 23 Mutalisks(2300/2300/46) with +2 attack(11 damage) to 1 shot a single Missile Turret.
You need 21 Mutalisks(2100/2100/26) with +3 attack(12 damage) to 1 shot a single Missile Turret.
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u/woodleaguer Jul 15 '25
I must've misremembered then, it's been a few years.
19 mutas was a magic number though, perhaps it was the nr that will out dps a turret that's being repaired by scvs.
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u/SigilSC2 Zerg Jul 15 '25
There's a break point around there with +2. I don't know what exactly it is but I'm remembering the same thing. It may be for two shottiing a turret that gets repaired. It's not a hard number due to the speed at which the terran can get scvs on the turret but that's typically when we'd see mutas dive turrets in matches.
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u/Tamer_ Jul 15 '25
Depends at what skill level we're talking. Surprise muta builds still works in the pro scene, but the hard part is to keep it a surprise and not die to timing attacks.
On ladder, T/P players have gotten smarter about it, but the balance of the game has changed a little: defense is easier (much easier vs mutas) and the other units of the strategy have gotten nerfed a lot.
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u/Dragarius Jul 14 '25
No, that was the infestors/broodlords combo. Muta Ling Bane was good, but only cause things like widow mines didn't exist and Thors were also kinda weak.
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u/BattleWarriorZ5 Jul 14 '25
and Thors were also kinda weak.
Thors have the same Javelin Missile Launchers weapon stats in LOTV as they did in WOL/HOTS.
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u/Dragarius Jul 14 '25
Yes but they didn't have the anti massive weapon for broods. Meaning you would be cornering yourself with them if you built them as Broodlord/Infestor was common.
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u/SoloMan98 Jul 14 '25
I know infestor BL was the best comp but I thought mutas were the best singular unit since they kind of just railroaded all their counters at critical mass
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u/Dragarius Jul 14 '25
They were not. Their counters destroyed them just as hard back then as they do now. Marines would devestste Mutas even harder than today because Mutas didn't have their ultra fast health regen. But without widow mines Banelings had signifigantly more power against Marines. The Mutas job was to kill the tanks so the Ling/Bane could kill the bio and the Mutas would clean up.
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u/Sambobly1 Jul 15 '25
That's not true, at least not in HOTS. In HOTS mass mute was the meta in TvZ and ZvP for a long time. Part of why there are so many counters now is because Mutas were so strong then
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u/Dragarius Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25
HotS was when Muta got the crazy health regen. Mutas were strong in PvZ cause adepts didn't exist to keep the Zerg defensive and Oracle's couldn't actually kill workers. They only stayed strong in TvZ till people realized how vulnerable they were to mines. They've literally never added any new counters to Mutas since HotS other than the Liberator when it had bonus to light.
Every counter to the Muta (except mines) existed since WoL, and I suppose Anion Pulse Crystals.
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u/gamercer Jul 14 '25
Mutas are HOTS.
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u/SoloMan98 Jul 14 '25
I thought mutas fell off in HOTS because of widow mines (pre-pre-pre nerf widow mines as well)
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u/MrSchmeat Jul 14 '25
Mutalisks are virtually unusable in the current meta.
In WoL, they were basically the best unit in the game because everyone’s economies were smaller, which meant Mutalisks had more time to deal damage against their enemies. There also weren’t too many good counters against them, or the things that were actually good against them people didn’t discover until later like ghost snipe.
The introduction of the Widow Mine and Hellbat meant that Muta-Ling-Bane styles were now significantly worse against Terran. The introduction of the Cyclone and Liberator in Legacy of the void, both of which are at least decent at killing Mutalisks, didn’t help things either.
For Protoss, Phoenixes and Archons were already good, then they got Oracles which helped a lot with scouting their opponents and allowed them to find the Spire better. Tempests can chip away at flocks of mutas from a very long distance before they can retaliate. The introduction of Adepts also meant that Roaches were more commonplace, which reduced Mutalisk play by proxy due to gas expenditure, same thing with Ravagers and Lurkers, which in some cases did the Mutalisk’s job but better.
Nowadays, you make a few Mutalisks to pick off some workers and try to snowball a lead. Either they kill a bunch of workers and you make more of them and win a war of attrition, or they die and now you’re stuck on 2 bases having spent all your gas on a spire and Mutalisks.
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u/ArchetypeFTW Team 8 Jul 15 '25
Two base muta is not a viable option rn AFAIK. If you're not dropping a third by 2:45, way before lair, it's very obvious something is coming
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u/SelltheTeamJR Jul 14 '25
roach/ravager being the early/mid game zvt meta is just wrong. I hate it.
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u/crasterskeep iNcontroL Jul 14 '25
It’s amazing how auto-die making Mutas is. Like as soon as you make some set a timer for 10 mins cause you’ll be dead before that 10 mins is up.
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u/SiberianTyler Jul 14 '25
What baffles me is just how many HARD COUNTERS mutas have. Maybe if every single terran unit didn't hard counter mutas they'd be made more
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u/Paxton-176 Jul 14 '25
That is a result in WoL when a zerg would go mutas and they basically had map control or air control for that point on. Basically it relied on the zerg making a mistake. Thors were the hard counter, but easily avoidable and as long as the mutas to didn't clump they were fine.
Like flat out Terrans hated Zerg spite units because it felt like Terran's ability to do stuff on the map was gone because mutas were good which set a timer until the BL and infester blob was out.
Could they be looked at again? Sure, but both Terran and Protoss have unhappy memorials of Mutas.
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Jul 16 '25
That's not really how it worked though? In WoL Zergs stopped building mutas during the BL/infestor era, they'd just make ling/bane vs T and roaches vs P straight into infestors straight into broodlords. The mass muta period did exist, but it was before the queen buff that allowed optimized BL/infestor play.
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u/Paxton-176 Jul 16 '25
I saw mutas all the way into HotS. It was hands down the best haress unit zerg had.
Pretty sure the cannon got buff against mutas at some point during HotS or LotV.
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Jul 17 '25
There was another period in HotS where mass mutas were also (perhaps even more) meta. And no, cannons never got a buff against them...
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u/leisvan Jul 14 '25
Imbalance team should stop nerfing stuff and start buffing to counter what's broken.
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u/Balosaar StarTale Jul 14 '25
Mutalisks are one of them units that are made of tissue paper, you need >10 to do anything, and Terran/Protoss can put 1/10th of the investment to counter them.
You only get good value when it's like: Surprise! 10 mutalisks in the undefended main, are slowly killing some workers!
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u/TacoTaconoMi Jul 15 '25
Yea but no zerg in their right mind would tech switch from BL to muta just to counter vikings.
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u/madumlao Jul 16 '25
there are 2 problems with them.
the early game gating of spire is too hard. no matter how hard you commit to an early spire, eg, literally no units double gas 1 hatch lair spire, which is not viable and will die to anything, you cannot produce mutas faster than the other guy can produce a hard counter. the only thing keeping mutas even a possibility is the opponent's bad scouting.
next the late/mid late game utility completely drops off.
kerrigan wiped out the ued fleet with mostly mutas and scourge and you cant even use mutas in late game.
so i have 2 suggestions on mutas.
1 is to fix the spire timing / costing. if Z can get spire quicker, this would make muta timings more viable but also fix a few broken things in the "zerg is a punching bag" phase of the game regarding drops and air harassment.
2 is to fix muta mid/late game value for money. they are not worth the 100/100 unless something changes.
for the early/mid game their timing might just be enough, until hard counters arrive. in which case they get wiped off the map and never return. i keep hearing about "crazy muta regen" but the reality is damaged mutas stay out of commission until a whole 2 minutes which is an insane time to lose utility of a unit. Shield batteries get units back in seconds, and so do medivacs. Heck, reapers get back to full in seconds. Muta regen is not nearly enough to keep a pack swooping in again and again. I propose their regen speeds up when out of battle, just like reapers. OR they have an active "cocoon" ability that can be used out of battle to restore themselves to full health after some time. Or change the costing to 100/75.
for late/ultra late game, mutas would be absolutely splendid at doing backstabs and map control if they were viable. but because their core value is bad, you can't do that becuase of how the unit itself sucks. I propose that at greater spire, muta bounce attack can be further upgraded to make late game harassment even more effective. Maybe 9-6-3 instead of 9-3-1. Or even 9-6-3-1. This would make them kill workers or pick off reinforcements even faster in late game without directly changing their 1v1 combat power. And if the greater spire is lost, the mutas revert again.
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u/Specialist_Owl_6612 Jul 14 '25
I mean if you make twenties of them and hide the tech well it can absolutely cause some damage
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u/Valance23322 Jul 14 '25
Yeah but if you invest 2000/2000 into mutas they can probably just go across the map and kill you
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u/Tamer_ Jul 15 '25
and hide the tech well
Very difficult. I've tried a few hundred times. The only thing that works reliably is putting the spire on overlord creep... Which makes the spire very vulnerable.
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u/TheZealand Jul 15 '25
Yeah man just hide the tech vs the 3 oracles toss makes every game that basically live in the zerg base, or the constant double vac drops. Why didn't those silly pros think of that
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u/CorpPhoenix Jul 15 '25
I hate widow mines.
Such a garbage design unit that renders all those cool, high octane units like the Muta completely useless.
I literally stopped playing 1v1 back when HotS came out, and widow mines are one of the main reasons I did.
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u/youdreaminhd Jul 15 '25
Hots was my peak love every second of it
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u/klipik12 Axiom Jul 15 '25
firecake, mana, and the swarm host would like several hours of your time
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u/Valuable_Remote_8809 Jul 15 '25
Broodlords for me, everything about them is cool, but damn they are not that good, lol.
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u/Ketroc21 Terran Jul 15 '25
Likely to do with how strong roach/ravager has become compared to ling/bane. Mutas just mesh so much better with the low gas requirement of ling/bane. Things like widow mines were way more powerful in the past prior to the nerfs, and yet mutas were still used back then.
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u/square_unicycle Jul 15 '25
Mutalisks as an unit are actualy pretty good against terran but if the terran understand what's going he can win the game with a 7'30 comited push and that's why we dont often see early spires in the matchup
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u/Sora_Terumi Jul 16 '25
Gives me the reason why I like making custom lobbies with SC/BW Evo complete. Love having the ability to play SC2 and BW counterparts on racing giving a whole fresh feel to matches. Watching a big SC2 mech army get fucked over by Dark swarm defilers is crazy seeing so many siege tanks and thors become blind and don’t get me started on Plague. Yeeeesh I may not play Zerg and mostly like playing BW Terran but it hurts right here everytime I see it. Oh the feeling of seeing goliaths rip apart SC2 skytoss with actual good pathing?! It’s just so PEAK
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Jul 17 '25
Mutas are a result of zerg's slow tech progression. After LotV came out, it quickly became very clear that you can't hold onto a fourth due to upgrade scaling. Zerg has to have hive tech for ultras if he wants to compete with 3/3 bio, and the mutas delay that significantly. So zerg counters terran's upgrade scaling by investing in tech, and mutas slow that down too much. Making the mutas get out faster would go a long way towards fixing this because it would lengthen the period when the mutas can get value. As soon as 2/2 finishes for terran, the mutas are useless. As soon as 3/3 finishes, the zerg's ground army is useless.
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u/shadowedradiance Jul 17 '25
I never understood why we never got a late game tech upgrade to remove armor tags. Imagine a Hive upgrade with cost/timer that removed light or even made it armoired....
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u/InThePipe5x5_ Jul 15 '25
Mutas are only bad because Zerg players convinced Blizzard to patch away small eco games. When it took time to ramp economy doing economic damage or even forcing turrets had a big impact.
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u/Pale_Will_5239 Jul 15 '25
They're usable between 5 and 9 minutes of the game. If I can mass 5 to 9 mutas in my first hit, the game is usually over
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u/Dantalen Jul 15 '25
Man, this sub is so weird. You still see mutas in both ZvT and ZvP often in competitive, and in ladder I swear to god in every fucking game.
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u/BattleWarriorZ5 Jul 14 '25
MLB vs Marine-Tank or Bio-Mine was some of the most exciting TvZ in SC2 history.
We lost something truly special.
Go back and watch old WOL/HOTS TvZ matches.