The Best Brood War Unit Part 4- Best of the Best

The Best Brood War Unit Part 4- Best of the Best

So, it looks like in total I have identified six five star units. The Zergling, The Mutalisk, The Defiler, The Vulture, The Siege Tank and The High Templar. Some would argue others like science vessels, arbiters, lurkers, etc. Mine were heavily based on my subjective opinion after having watching pros play, so take that as you will. I don't see arbiters as often as the others, and I see a lot of science vessels get killed so it's those sorts of things that pushed those down. I'm pretty happy with this list, but if I was going to make a change I'd consider the lurker, but since Zerg already has three tier five units that seems like overkill.

To now narrow it down to the best unit I'll do a series of head to head matchups until one remains. First, the siege tank vs the vulture. Both factory units, but there may only be one. Siege tanks are incredibly impressive in terms of fire power. They literally dictate the pace of games and the shape of the battlefield. When facing off against Terran, it's the opposing players overwhelming priority to just keep that tank count down as much as possible, otherwise they will be overwhelmed. BUT, big BUT here. A vulture only costs 75 minerals. A tank costs 150 minerals and 100 gas. A vulture is super fast at scouting, does decent damage and comes with three spider mines. Just as a value buy, I think the vulture edges out the siege tank. Late game though, siege tank is the GOAT, but looking at the game in its entirety I'm leaning vulture, just by a hair.

Now lets do mutalisks vs zerglings. Mutalisks are a nightmare in the hands of a player with strong micro. Their ability to maneuver, harass, glaive ricochet, etc makes them an exceptional choice against all three races. Zerg vs Zerg boils down to muta fights many times. Zerg vs Terran ends early if the Terran can't keep the mutalisks at bay. And in Zerg vs Protoss mutalisks are great for sniping high templar and other high value units. But, mutalisks have some major weaknesses. Corsairs, valkyries, psionic storm, etc. Also missile turrets are dirt cheap and can zone them out pretty well. Zerglings on the other hand are so cheap that anything that counters them doesn't really hard counter them because you can just make more. And zerglings scale better. Even in the extreme late game, zerglings are still incredibly dangerous, vs at that point mutalisks are more reserved for hunting down specific units, stopping dropships or just for suprise changes. Zerglings win.

Now lets do zerglings vs vultures. Vultures are incredible, but for the price of one you get three zerglings. I'd rather face a vulture and three spidermines than three cracklings any day. Vultures can't level your base in seconds. A group of cracklings absolutely can. Vultures deal concussive damage. Spider mines need to be triggered. Zerglings just need to... zergling. Zerglings win.

Now lets do defilers vs high templar. My initial gut instinct here is to go defiler. As mentioned before, dark swarm is straight up busted. That combined with consume giving limitless energy and plague also being an incredibly potent ability, they are power houses. However, defilers are a late game unit. High templar on the other hand, have utility earlier in the game. Their storms can kill, whereas plague can only get you down to one health. Also, when they are out of energy, they can merge into a heavy combat unit and keep fighting. I'm going to actually go out on a limb here and say high templar edge out defilers. Controversial, sure, but zerg could survive without defliers. I don't think protoss could survive without high templar, unless they were godly good with reavers. So basically Snow, that's it.

Now the finale, zerglings vs high templar. High templar have something zerglins do not, splash damage. Psionic storm can wipe out an entire army. A fully charged high templar can cast three storms, each dealing up to 112 damage. So lets say a storm captures 15 units. Thats 3 x 15 x 112 = 5040 damage. Now that is assuming incredibly accurate storms, so we will say 5000 is an upper limit. Many storms are whiffed, many high templar sniped. Most don't reach full energy before they need to engage. But still, extremely optimistic scenario. A high templar costs 200 resources. A zergling costs 25 resources. Fully upgraded, I think a zergling has a DPS of roughly 32. So 8 zerglings deal 256 damage per second. In 20 seconds they've greatly eclipsed the high templar. And that 5000 figure was wildly optimistic. This whole argument is a false equivalency I'm realizing. At the end of the day the high templar is a glass cannon caster that can be neutralized, vs zerglings are an endless swarm of dps machines. Zerglings can't attack up, but storms can be dodged and don't damage buildings. I'm leaning zergling here.

So zerglings, the cheapest unit in the game, are also the best. This mimics modern developments in warfare, where cheap drones are proving tactically and strategically superior to very expensive legacy weapon systems in many situations.

So there it is, the zergling is the best unit in the game.