EPT[D] Swarm host is bad - Page 2
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TaShadan
Germany1981 Posts
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Tuczniak
1561 Posts
Make locusts go underground or very fast with a lot of hp and change their attack. Maybe just let them suicide with splash or single target dmg. edit: or what about 3x more health and 3x less dps? that would make them tanks for other units. | ||
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MoonCricket
222 Posts
On September 07 2012 19:27 TaShadan wrote: Iam no fan of units that cost nothing... but maybe thats only me. Well, a unit that only produces units is worthless in and of itself, i.e. the Carrier or the Reaver, so they aren't exactly free. Maybe making the Swarmhost the Zerg descendent of the Protoss Carrier and the Reaver is the way to go? Trade 25 minerals per Lochust and balance the Lochusts accordingly? You just dump your minerals to instantaneously spawn units with a short duration? Edit: Or just make it a Zerg Carrier and replace the Flying aspect with the Burrowed aspect and change the Lochusts to Interceptors? | ||
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Nekovivie
United Kingdom2599 Posts
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TaShadan
Germany1981 Posts
On September 07 2012 19:45 MoonCricket wrote: Well, a unit that only produces units is worthless in and of itself, i.e. the Carrier or the Reaver, so they aren't exactly free. Maybe making the Swarmhost the Zerg descendent of the Protoss Carrier and the Reaver is the way to go? Trade 25 minerals per Lochust and balance the Lochusts accordingly? You just dump your minerals to instantaneously spawn units with a short duration? Edit: Or just make it a Zerg Carrier and replace the Flying aspect with the Burrowed aspect and change the Lochusts to Interceptors? yes thats what i meant carrier and reaver are a good example for the way it should be in my oppinion | ||
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Hryul
Austria2609 Posts
Note: I do not really care for the actual numbers, as they can be changed easily. Tomorrow swarm hosts might cost 100 minerals less, or more, who knows. I am just talking about what is wrong with this unit besides raw numbers. then stick to it. + Show Spoiler + First of all, a unit with an attack that can be denied without cost already directly contradicts the concept of a siege unit. Sure, siege units can counter siege units, but they should not be able to deny completely all damage when giving the right conditions (which are easily met in this case). It takes away the whole concept of your opponent having to come out of his fortress to deal with you. first point: that's a numbers thing. If you gave the spawning units 1000 hp they surely would do damage. Furthermore you don't have to damage units to damage the enemy. If the swarm hosts prevents the enemy from moving out (and taking an expansion) it did its job. + Show Spoiler + Second, locusts are short ranged units, which again leaves them with the problem to connect with the enemy. Added in the factor that they can also be killed completely and them having only 65 hp (and light armor if i'm not mistaken), Blizzard has to make up for those fundamental flaws by giving them an overpowered strength in return, in this case the attack damage. It is over the top, which makes the swarm host even more of a hit-or-miss one time one trick pony. Either your opponent shuts it down mostly/completely, or he suffers great losses. And due to the easily abusable fundamental flaws of the locusts, there should be hardly any cases of the locusts doing massive damage before they get shut down. just numbers tweaking. also having 65 hp is not a fundamental flaw. + Show Spoiler + Third, the locust adds to the death ball concept. While area-of-effect units like the lurker forced to split the death ball, the locusts get exponentially stronger the more you stack them, and exponentially weaker the more your opponent stacks his AoE defense. Unfortunately the power of your opponents AoE grows way faster than the power of stacked swarm hosts, and soon they do no damage at all. Which makes you think about why you build them in the first place. maybe. but the second argument is wrong. banshees are also rarely seen in the lategame but built in the midgame to harass. so maybe they are built in the midgame just as intended. + Show Spoiler + Forth, the swarm host is a huge investment, and will mid-game drain a ton of gas. But since one of its obvious weaknesses is its lack of anti-air and except for Queens all mobile anti-air costs a lot of gas for Zerg, you are bound to lose in case of your opponent opting for flying units. Yes, it does get created by the same building that allows you to build infestors, but you will have to get the upgrade for the duration of the locusts (they will travel at least 5-10 seconds to the opponent, leaving them with 5-10 seconds to attack. The upgrade will double or triple the effective time your locusts hit the enemy, which makes it a crucial upgrade to get. Not to forget, increased action range if you so desire). That is 200 gas +100 for every swarm host you get. As has been pointed out, they suck alone, they do better when stacked. And the same way you cannot go mutas and infestors at once right now, you will not be able to go infestors and swarm hosts at the same time off 2/3 base. Which is like the only time you would prefer those over Brood Lords. costs are just numbers tweaking. also you get them from infestation pits. infestors have aa. you are missing number 5 + Show Spoiler + Sixth, the swarm host does not allow for control of space on the map, it just forces your opponent to take control of said part of the map to collect your gas heavy units and go. To put it in other words: The swarm host is not a shield, it is lika a sign that says "hit me here". The locusts do not put up much of a fight in a direct combat situation if there is AoE present, and even without AoE there are easy ways to shut them down (air, forcefields to keep locusts away, kill locusts then swarm hosts, or just attack when they time out and new ones aren't there yet). In any way, the swarm host was concepted as an inferior direct combat unit, which would be okay if it would fulfill its other roles. Also, the swarm host has limited mobility and will therefore hardly escape, plus you cannot really afford to lose them. Which makes them a unit that has to be defended with all your strength, while at the same time not adding much of firepower themselves. Assuming no huge gaps in macro ability between your opponent and you, he should be coming out ahead of this just because you have invested too much in "dead supply". They are like corruptors with no Air unit on the field - they can corrupt, but they won't win you any direct fight. random rant why you think the swarm host won't be used. again tweaking numbers might solve it. + Show Spoiler + Seventh, the actual unit design of the swarm host is redundant. Its concept was to give Zerg a Brood Lord pre Brood Lord, which had to be worse than the Brood Lord to compensate for earlier availablity. This lead to problems that were not forseen (as in siege units with zero range and no jump/throw ability to get to the enemy? Back in 2011 at Blizzcon i was already sure that this should never work in a real game, but did not care enough to make a thread about it, as it was only a sneak peek. And now that the first iteration of Beta started, i expect the units to be thought of by Blizzard as viable to be implemented in release, but it is still early enough that major changes can be made, as in replacing a unit completely), that are not and never will be cleared by just slightly increasing the range of the locust. For constant siege and mobility, the Brood Lord far surpasses the swarm host. For raw damage, the Brood Lord has more dps assuming the opponent does get colossus/tanks (which there is no reason not to, as they are the hard counter), because Brood Lords get at least damage done with the initial Broodling attack from the BL itself. That in itself is not that surprising, but the direct comparison with the infestor shows the flaws of the design of the swarm host once again: For sieging up pre-Brood Lord infestors are better because infested terrans still have more range and can be launched across a distance, plus infestors have way more burst potential due to the energy mechanism. Also, they are more mobile and posess other spells of which at least one is useful as well (probably one one of the best spells in game), when it is less useful to just get a few free units, and more useful to get AoE entangle + damage. And they can hit air. the colossus is redundant! protoss already has the ht as an aoe attack. also: sh is intended to be midgame where you neither have bl nor mass infestor with infinity energy. + Show Spoiler + Eigth, (is it really spelled that way? My english sucks, i have no clue ^^) they do not fill the last gap in the Zerg arsenal no one talks about. I am not speaking of a lack of a direct damage AoE unit, nor for map control units or siege units. I am talking about a unit that needs instant detection to be dealt with. This is the thing i honestly miss most from Zerg in WoL, a unit that deals damage while cloaked. Any continuous damage from cloaked Zerg units right now can be mitigated by simply parking your army on top of it (i said continuous, you see what i did there? ). Some burrowed roaches? Send half your army in your main, half your army in your natural, wait for scan to be ready again. Infested Terrans? Shoot them down. There is no Zerg unit that deals damage that cannot be mitigated while cloaked. A dark templar can still do damage, even with 30 marines sitting on top of it. So can Banshees and Ghosts. But park your army over burrowed Zerg units, and they won't be able to lift a finger. A lurker could. haha. "what zerg needs" really? We have three different races. Why should all races have acces to the same features? + Show Spoiler + rogues can't heal! TL,DR: don't claim fundamental flaw when numbers tweaking might suffice and don't write pointless walls of text. nobody likes that. | ||
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Kuni
Austria765 Posts
On September 07 2012 19:47 Nekovivie wrote: Need to spawn more quickly, or make the unit that spawns a bit more robust. They just seem to get annihilated and then you have a swarm host sat there looking pretty....or in their case, ugly! Not so sure about that. Have you watched Stephano playing HotS this week? Yes it's only been out a few days and opponents may not have adapted at all to it, but the swarm host is a unit that's average when not controlled properly, but insanely good, if you can micro it to the maximum of it's abilities. Stephano dances the hosts around, buring them when the next spawn is close, unburrows them have them not get killed when the spawn is on cooldown and moves them around with his army during that time. Burrow right as the cooldown is over to have additional units to move around, scout out areas or deal a bit damage without cost and before engagements, he burrows to create a stronger first wave of units or to draw fire away from his real army. If the enemy chases the hosts and he just had a spawn wave, then the little broodlings take out a lot of units and combined with lings or roaches, the enemy has to decide whether to continue chasing the hosts and suffer huge dmg, or kill the broodlings, which would die a few seconds later anyway. | ||
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Alex1Sun
494 Posts
On September 07 2012 19:26 MoonCricket wrote: I think the Swarmhosts should require a Hydralisk Den instead of an Infestation Pit, that way you can immediately transition away from Swarmhosts into Hydralisks vs Air and people would actually have a reason to A) build a Hydralisk Den and B) get Hydralisk movement upgrade at Hive tech. That makes a lot of sense! I fully support this idea! | ||
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Ramiz1989
12124 Posts
On September 07 2012 20:05 Kuni wrote: Not so sure about that. Have you watched Stephano playing HotS this week? Yes it's only been out a few days and opponents may not have adapted at all to it, but the swarm host is a unit that's average when not controlled properly, but insanely good, if you can micro it to the maximum of it's abilities. Stephano dances the hosts around, buring them when the next spawn is close, unburrows them have them not get killed when the spawn is on cooldown and moves them around with his army during that time. Burrow right as the cooldown is over to have additional units to move around, scout out areas or deal a bit damage without cost and before engagements, he burrows to create a stronger first wave of units or to draw fire away from his real army. If the enemy chases the hosts and he just had a spawn wave, then the little broodlings take out a lot of units and combined with lings or roaches, the enemy has to decide whether to continue chasing the hosts and suffer huge dmg, or kill the broodlings, which would die a few seconds later anyway. I got the feeling that most of the players saying that Swarm Host is a bad unit, didn't play with them how they should, or just didn't watch at all pro players play with them. They are really really good, and if anything, Locust damage needs to be toned down a bit. | ||
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Leetley
1796 Posts
On September 07 2012 20:11 Alex1Sun wrote: That makes a lot of sense! I fully support this idea! Or they could just revive the lurker. | ||
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sweetbabyjesus
Denmark168 Posts
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Cirqueenflex
499 Posts
On September 07 2012 19:54 Hryul wrote: Note: I'm just going to talk about your points why the swarm host is flawed b/c I found them quite bad and didn't bother reading more. then stick to it. + Show Spoiler + First of all, a unit with an attack that can be denied without cost already directly contradicts the concept of a siege unit. Sure, siege units can counter siege units, but they should not be able to deny completely all damage when giving the right conditions (which are easily met in this case). It takes away the whole concept of your opponent having to come out of his fortress to deal with you. first point: that's a numbers thing. If you gave the spawning units 1000 hp they surely would do damage. Furthermore you don't have to damage units to damage the enemy. If the swarm hosts prevents the enemy from moving out (and taking an expansion) it did its job. + Show Spoiler + Second, locusts are short ranged units, which again leaves them with the problem to connect with the enemy. Added in the factor that they can also be killed completely and them having only 65 hp (and light armor if i'm not mistaken), Blizzard has to make up for those fundamental flaws by giving them an overpowered strength in return, in this case the attack damage. It is over the top, which makes the swarm host even more of a hit-or-miss one time one trick pony. Either your opponent shuts it down mostly/completely, or he suffers great losses. And due to the easily abusable fundamental flaws of the locusts, there should be hardly any cases of the locusts doing massive damage before they get shut down. just numbers tweaking. also having 65 hp is not a fundamental flaw. + Show Spoiler + Third, the locust adds to the death ball concept. While area-of-effect units like the lurker forced to split the death ball, the locusts get exponentially stronger the more you stack them, and exponentially weaker the more your opponent stacks his AoE defense. Unfortunately the power of your opponents AoE grows way faster than the power of stacked swarm hosts, and soon they do no damage at all. Which makes you think about why you build them in the first place. maybe. but the second argument is wrong. banshees are also rarely seen in the lategame but built in the midgame to harass. so maybe they are built in the midgame just as intended. + Show Spoiler + Forth, the swarm host is a huge investment, and will mid-game drain a ton of gas. But since one of its obvious weaknesses is its lack of anti-air and except for Queens all mobile anti-air costs a lot of gas for Zerg, you are bound to lose in case of your opponent opting for flying units. Yes, it does get created by the same building that allows you to build infestors, but you will have to get the upgrade for the duration of the locusts (they will travel at least 5-10 seconds to the opponent, leaving them with 5-10 seconds to attack. The upgrade will double or triple the effective time your locusts hit the enemy, which makes it a crucial upgrade to get. Not to forget, increased action range if you so desire). That is 200 gas +100 for every swarm host you get. As has been pointed out, they suck alone, they do better when stacked. And the same way you cannot go mutas and infestors at once right now, you will not be able to go infestors and swarm hosts at the same time off 2/3 base. Which is like the only time you would prefer those over Brood Lords. costs are just numbers tweaking. also you get them from infestation pits. infestors have aa. you are missing number 5 + Show Spoiler + Sixth, the swarm host does not allow for control of space on the map, it just forces your opponent to take control of said part of the map to collect your gas heavy units and go. To put it in other words: The swarm host is not a shield, it is lika a sign that says "hit me here". The locusts do not put up much of a fight in a direct combat situation if there is AoE present, and even without AoE there are easy ways to shut them down (air, forcefields to keep locusts away, kill locusts then swarm hosts, or just attack when they time out and new ones aren't there yet). In any way, the swarm host was concepted as an inferior direct combat unit, which would be okay if it would fulfill its other roles. Also, the swarm host has limited mobility and will therefore hardly escape, plus you cannot really afford to lose them. Which makes them a unit that has to be defended with all your strength, while at the same time not adding much of firepower themselves. Assuming no huge gaps in macro ability between your opponent and you, he should be coming out ahead of this just because you have invested too much in "dead supply". They are like corruptors with no Air unit on the field - they can corrupt, but they won't win you any direct fight. random rant why you think the swarm host won't be used. again tweaking numbers might solve it. + Show Spoiler + Seventh, the actual unit design of the swarm host is redundant. Its concept was to give Zerg a Brood Lord pre Brood Lord, which had to be worse than the Brood Lord to compensate for earlier availablity. This lead to problems that were not forseen (as in siege units with zero range and no jump/throw ability to get to the enemy? Back in 2011 at Blizzcon i was already sure that this should never work in a real game, but did not care enough to make a thread about it, as it was only a sneak peek. And now that the first iteration of Beta started, i expect the units to be thought of by Blizzard as viable to be implemented in release, but it is still early enough that major changes can be made, as in replacing a unit completely), that are not and never will be cleared by just slightly increasing the range of the locust. For constant siege and mobility, the Brood Lord far surpasses the swarm host. For raw damage, the Brood Lord has more dps assuming the opponent does get colossus/tanks (which there is no reason not to, as they are the hard counter), because Brood Lords get at least damage done with the initial Broodling attack from the BL itself. That in itself is not that surprising, but the direct comparison with the infestor shows the flaws of the design of the swarm host once again: For sieging up pre-Brood Lord infestors are better because infested terrans still have more range and can be launched across a distance, plus infestors have way more burst potential due to the energy mechanism. Also, they are more mobile and posess other spells of which at least one is useful as well (probably one one of the best spells in game), when it is less useful to just get a few free units, and more useful to get AoE entangle + damage. And they can hit air. the colossus is redundant! protoss already has the ht as an aoe attack. also: sh is intended to be midgame where you neither have bl nor mass infestor with infinity energy. + Show Spoiler + Eigth, (is it really spelled that way? My english sucks, i have no clue ^^) they do not fill the last gap in the Zerg arsenal no one talks about. I am not speaking of a lack of a direct damage AoE unit, nor for map control units or siege units. I am talking about a unit that needs instant detection to be dealt with. This is the thing i honestly miss most from Zerg in WoL, a unit that deals damage while cloaked. Any continuous damage from cloaked Zerg units right now can be mitigated by simply parking your army on top of it (i said continuous, you see what i did there? ). Some burrowed roaches? Send half your army in your main, half your army in your natural, wait for scan to be ready again. Infested Terrans? Shoot them down. There is no Zerg unit that deals damage that cannot be mitigated while cloaked. A dark templar can still do damage, even with 30 marines sitting on top of it. So can Banshees and Ghosts. But park your army over burrowed Zerg units, and they won't be able to lift a finger. A lurker could. haha. "what zerg needs" really? We have three different races. Why should all races have acces to the same features? + Show Spoiler + rogues can't heal! TL,DR: don't claim fundamental flaw when numbers tweaking might suffice and don't write pointless walls of text. nobody likes that. this is exactly the kind of post that makes me hesitant to post at all on a forum nowadays. You are stuck with one sentence that was not as important as you make it to be. Admittedly i might have phrased in another way, and i did rephrase-edit it, so people will hopefully not get stuck there again. Sadly enough, the part that you missed to read was what i wrote first, where i explain in detail in every matchup why i think the swarm host is not viable, and then just tried to sum it up and edited it above to give a shorter overview. Plus you try to respond to every single point of me to make it look like a crushing defeat by logic, which in fact it is not. It is rather just a cheap shot and does not add to the discussion in a positive way. But for the sake of my thread, i will answer to your critics: + Show Spoiler + You respond to most of my arguments with "just numbers tweaking", while the whole point of this thread is my opinion that the swarm host cannot be numbers-tweaked to be a viable, fair addition to the Zerg army. It has crucial flaws, and Blizzard tried to make it up by giving it overwhelming strength in certain rare situations. This is a design gap that cannot be closed by numbers tweaking, and the locusts having only 65 hp is not a main string of my line of argument, but rather just to point out that the design already gets driven into extremes. Banshees are not seen as frequently in the late game, but then again, i never envisioned the swarm host to be used late game anyway. As the Brood Lord does basically just the same, only better. So my post refers to the mid game, where you are on <5 bases, and not open to a lot of tech. Thus my deduction, that even though you get them with the same building, you cannot afford to get both a lot of swarm hosts and infestors when both need crucial gas-heavy upgrades. Can this be solved by numbers tweaking? I think not, as it would again drive the swarm host into extremes (way too strong or way too weak) if you make it dirt cheap or something similar. The idea of it being on lair tech and the general idea about it being a gas heavy unit was right to prevent abuse, but it does not allow for both infestor and swarm hosts at the same time in the early midgame, as that would require some sort of abuse. i did miss number five, thank you for pointing that out. I had have another point prepared, but deemed it not worthy for the sake of the discussion, thus the missing number after deleting it. A smiley at the end of your sentence would have been way nicer than to yell at me in bold text, i'm sorry that i did not supply you with another point to spit on. For your statement that the colossus is redundant, i see the irony in your text. But i do not agree with your analogy; while both the colossus and the high templar have their places in the protoss army, the swarm host seems to not have its own. I thank you for noticing by now that my post is actually about the midgame, and that i just point out why the Brood Lord is the better option late game. Yes, there might be cases where the swarm host might not be inferior to the infestor, but those occations seem to be covered by other low-tech zerg units already, which i mention multiple times throughout my OP. And lastly, again, i cannot claim to speak for the universe, but in my humble opinion there is a gap in the Zerg arsenal, that is the fact that there is not a single unit for Zerg that requires immediate detection, which takes away a lot of potential gameplay (besides the rare burrow roach vs two-base-no-detection-all-in and the baneling landmines, but even those do not pose an immediate thread to your worker lines if you have your army just sitting there on top of it). Maybe it fits into your idea of assymetric design that Zerg does not have such a unit, while other races do have it (and even Zerg had in Brood War), but i see it as a gap that i hoped would be filled, even if not by the swarm host. Not for the sake of all races having such a unit, but for the sake of the potential of strategies and a higher value of detection-in-time when playing vs Zerg. Glad to make you laugh though. TL, DR: be bothered to read the whole OP or don't post at all, and if you do post, do so in a respective manner while adding contructively to the discussion. Thank you and have a nice day  | ||
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obsid
United States389 Posts
EDIT: Another option rather then increaseing hp/armor or making immunue to splash would be to vastly increase their speed (while vastly decreasing their dps), if the swarm hosts were much faster they might be able to get in range and at least get a shot or two off. Say more like speed zergling kind of speed. also this change would make the swarm host/hydra mixture really intresting, as the swarm hosts would "tank" for the hydra". | ||
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Piousflea
United States259 Posts
I think they should nerf locust DPS, make them melee range and give them a jumping ability like Leaping Spiders in diablo 3. This would let them break siege tank lines by causing tanks to splash friendly rines/bunkers, and would also decrease the current strategy of "just kite the locusts to death". | ||
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Disarm22
United States151 Posts
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obsid
United States389 Posts
On September 08 2012 00:44 Piousflea wrote: I dislike the current design because locusts are either insanely overpowered (massive DPS) or completely worthless (dead before they get in range). They also do NOT break siege tank lines which was supposed to be one of their uses. I think they should nerf locust DPS, make them melee range and give them a jumping ability like Leaping Spiders in diablo 3. This would let them break siege tank lines by causing tanks to splash friendly rines/bunkers, and would also decrease the current strategy of "just kite the locusts to death". Melee + jump (and lower dps) would be intresting, I like that v terran, the only question I am not sure of is how that would work against toss. Maybe it would work, it depends on the range for the "jump" ability. Are you thinking like 6 range? | ||
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IPA
United States3206 Posts
Stephano, SLush, Idra, etc, are all using hosts with success. I know BLs are also "siege" units, but the host offers a mid-game variant that allows for pressure, containment or outright assault. I am having a blast with them. | ||
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E.L.V.I.S
Belgium458 Posts
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VashtaNerada
United States12 Posts
Once the Protoss siege units have engaged (colossi or tempests) it's time to withdraw and go back home; the Swarm Host has done the job it was supposed to do, and given the Zerg player the ability to pressure. Hopefully you will have used the time wisely to get on a superior economy and tech, taking advantage of limiting the Protoss unit count and base count for a period of time. As for ZvT, I don't know whether the Swarm Host will see much use. I'm ok with that. Not every unit has to be as useful in every matchup. | ||
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ROOTFayth
Canada3351 Posts
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