StarCraft II has officially released their first major patch to sort out balance issues between the races; however, lead Blizzard developer Chris Sigaty has been raising a concern to Zerg lovers.

"We have fewer Zerg players overall. I avoid playing Zerg as much as possible because I find them to be just more complex in general. Zerg, or rather larvae management is harder for me to deal with, so I don’t enjoy playing them as much," stated Sigaty.

Regardless of Sigaty's unfavorable stance towards the Zerg in patch 1.1 there has been minor improvements for them, and in patch 1.2 it should address further issues, but not appease everyone. Sigaty continued on to say that although there will be additional improvements for the Zerg in patch 1.2, the race will not be perfected.

This "is an ongoing process that, honestly, will take a year of longer to do. Even after Brood War was released we still patched and continued to drive towards a really solid final balance."

As the game is played and more strategies are commonly adopted by top players, StarCraft II developers have found an increase in discussion on their forums over these particular balance issues. One of the possible reasons that Zerg are used less may also be due to their lower number of units and abilities.

Zerg only have nine offensive units, while Terran and Protoss have 12. The unit production time to obtain the only anti-air offensive unit (corrupter) is also incredibly long in comparison the first in flight options for Terran and Protoss. Some individuals have claimed that these major imbalances on the Zerg are due to the developers distaste to use them.

In patch 1.1 all races received some balancing, but the Zerg was spared for the most part.

"You can go up and read on the forums at any one time and there are a bunch of different theories about balance and imbalance. We’re being very cautious about making large swinging changes right now because at the highest level things are actually very strong," stated Sigaty.

In one-on-one games where rush strategies are less common, StarCraft II developers feel that massive balance changes will alter this gameplay, especially for the Zerg. They base most of their changes on the ability for a single player to play against another. Sigaty also feels that the high level unit tree is well balanced. As more players are introduced into the game, rush type strategies are often employed.

From a personal standpoint, Zerg are actually my favorite race to use while rushing opponents. Zerglings are one of the easiest units to mass produce and send short waves at enemies. After drilling down on the enemies resource gathering units, I skip the technology upgrades and go right for the spire. Mutalisks are one of the easiest air-to-ground offense units to build, even though their defense is not great. Clearly this won't be effective against many other rush strategies, but there are still some perks to using the Zerg.

What is your experience with balance issues in StarCraft II? Further, what is your favorite strategy?

Source: PC Gamer