EPTI hope blizzard gives it some more versatility in the future, something to give it an exciting edge (like hold position lurkers).
[D] Swarm host is bad - Page 3
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Novalisk
Israel1818 Posts
I hope blizzard gives it some more versatility in the future, something to give it an exciting edge (like hold position lurkers). | ||
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Ballistixz
United States1269 Posts
my original idea that i thought the swarm host would be when they first released the silhouettes is a launcher type unit. i thought that you would load banelings or something into them and then they would launch those banelings or baneling type artilery towards enemy units from a range of 13. that would have been great. however that isnt the case sadly. the way locust spawn makes it pretty hard to get to an opponent because A) there range is insanely short and B) there stupidly slow. this makes it to where u need a LARGE number of hosts. at the very least 20 of them. anything less than that doesnt seem very effective. because of that reason alone i think that the locusts needs to either be faster on the ground or swarm hosts themselves launches the things instead of spawn them. | ||
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Fig
United States1324 Posts
And then, when fighting against swarm hosts, since they only hit ground now, you can use micro with quick units to try to avoid the locusts and get in close, or make air units to take them out. I saw Thorzain use ravens for detection and auto turrets to take out a group, which is just awesome use of a currently underused unit. I think they are a really interesting and unique unit to not only play with, but to play against. | ||
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archonOOid
1983 Posts
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Zanno
United States1484 Posts
Compare what happens when you move unstimmed marines into a siege line to stimmed marines. It doesn't even matter that the stimmed marines have a faster attack rate, because the unstimmed marines normally won't get a single hit off. That is assuming the problem you have with the unit exists. But so far it does not seem to be the case. | ||
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KingLumps
74 Posts
It'll be a good unit for the early-mid game as zerg will be able to access their tier 2 quicker, but I think zergs just thought they were getting an ultra broken unit to use. It still spawns free... free, once again free units... if you kill anything with a free unit its good on your part. | ||
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
Would be nice if they would make the swarmhost a bit more tanky in terms of hp and the locust, well more a damage tank. Right now it feels as if the locust die to fast, and the swarmhosts soon after. (being burrowed is no issue in sc2 as detection is everywhere for every race). And maybe add an upgrade where they can speed up the locust build time, but constantly lose health. Digesting itself to create locusts faster ! I like the swarmhost anyway, burrow bugs away, unburrow and reposi. Feels like as if you control a submarine. | ||
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BaDMannerS
Bulgaria57 Posts
I've never seen more imba unit in my life. :D Now watching Daisey. They guy got bored after winning a few consecutive games making swarm hosts. They own the terrans with mass hosts+mass queen creep very ugly.  The range idea for the locusts and having AA at all is as stupid as all recent fails by Blizzard | ||
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Nosferatos
Norway783 Posts
*EDIT* MStephano vs ROOTDrewbie was a great back and forth ~40 min long ZvT, it was very fun to watch and worth a peak. | ||
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BaDMannerS
Bulgaria57 Posts
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Hryul
Austria2609 Posts
On September 07 2012 23:52 Cirqueenflex wrote: + Show Spoiler + 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  First, I must admit that I hate splitting posts into pieces and to hack at single arguments b/c it rarely ends in a nice discussion but I did it b/c you had such a nice list. I admit that this antistyle tends to overlook the grand scheme of things. The point I was trying to make was that many of your arguments why the unit is fundamentally flawed are just numbers that may be changed. I'm not trying to argue that the SH is good or bad b/c I don't know Z well enough to make such a statement but you could have made your OP a lot shorter without losing argument why the SH is fundamentally flawed. Which would encourage more people to actually read what you have hidden in the spoilers  | ||
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gedatsu
1286 Posts
But when locusts are primarily damage dealers, it instead becomes a question of sacrificing your lings so that the locusts will have time to do damage. It feels completely opposite to natural. Not to mention that zerg already has two kinds of free units that are for dealing damage. High dps locusts makes the SH overlap immensely with the BL. Let the BL be the damage dealing siege unit and let the SH be the protective siege unit. | ||
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a176
Canada6688 Posts
On September 08 2012 03:48 gedatsu wrote: Swarm Host took a step for the worse when the locusts from being primarily a damage soak to being damage dealers (less life, range, higher dps). As a damage soak it works beautifully with zerglings which have a high damage output if they manage to survive on their way to their target. It should not worry you if all your locusts die before they're even halfway to their target yet - because it still means that those tanks didn't shoot at your lings. You have a much better shot at wearing down that tankline now. This is a really good role for the SH. But when locusts are primarily damage dealers, it instead becomes a question of sacrificing your lings so that the locusts will have time to do damage. It feels completely opposite to natural. Not to mention that zerg already has two kinds of free units that are for dealing damage. High dps locusts makes the SH overlap immensely with the BL. Let the BL be the damage dealing siege unit and let the SH be the protective siege unit. this is exactly how the lurker works. you run in lings to absorb+distract which gives time for lurkers to burrow and attack. the lurkers provide all the dps to basically instakill marines, tanks, zealots, whatever is in their way. though the swarm host is not so instant, the locusts now also absorb damage, which if anything i feel this will make the hydra even more scarce as the 'rear' unit in the zerg ball. | ||
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awesomoecalypse
United States2235 Posts
I think SH hate basically comes down to Lurker nostalgia--"its not the same old BW unit, therefore it sucks! Things being new and different is bad!" | ||
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emc
United States3088 Posts
These are the kinds of applications we haven't seen yet, so the SH could very well be this amazing trapping unit, or it could be a unit we only see to pressure expansions while the main army does something else. We'll just have to keep watching | ||
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babysimba
10466 Posts
While they might seem strong now, we will probably see less of them in future once people figure out how to open up with air units. They came from the tech which has the weakest lair tech anti-air, and diverting resources to anti-air is not what you want since swarm hosts are primarily "deathball" units that grow exponentially stronger in numbers. This is pretty much the biggest flaw of the swarm host. If you want to produce swarm host, you need to make sure you are able to afford producing them to critical mass. Like i said, they still have a place in the zerg's arsenal if the raw stats remain strong so zerg can continue using them at low numbers in the early-mid game for pressure. But at the same time, giving other races tech options to counter swarm hosts in large numbers so as not to make the late game imbalanced and dull (aka long range free unit deathballs which forces engagement) | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On September 07 2012 16:56 Qwyn wrote: Eh? From what I've watched of streams this whole time it the post pretty damn accurate. Locusts can't have AA because of the high dps, and if they take away the high dps (which David Kim projected) then locusts are too slow to kill moving air anyhow, and then they would lose the one feature that makes them good right now. OP cost per cost swarm hosts tear apart roaches with double the dps making it much easier to turtle. But you're damn right that the flawed design of a "proxy unit" means that locusts just evaporate against equal supply of firepower from any other race. And considering that swarm hosts cost 3 supply, equal supply renders your 30 (90 supply) of swarm hosts and other units useless. The spawn rate is pretty low, meaning that there are large gaps where the hosts are vulnerable, and any enemy firepower against them just makes them completely evaporate. I'd rather the upgrade at the infestation pit decreased spawn time instead of increasing locust lifetime, or both. It really is just a weaker broodlord. I've held the same opinion, beta just confirmed it. Unit is really lacking. I can't tell you how the "new stats without AA" of the swarm host plays out exactly, nor can I tell you how exactly the "old stats" would have played out. What I know is, that with the swarm host zerg gets another unit that cannot combat air at all and therefore any noncommited play has to resolve around turtling hard at home, because you don't have map presence until you invest into another antiair. Testing the swarm host on the "custom HotS map" with the AA, one of it's coolest parts was that you could just go for something like a 2base pressure build, without running into a tech blindcounter. And though it's not the only reason why we hardly see zerg pressure builds, lack of anti air on the map plays a big role, hence standard banshee builds and standard void ray or phoenix builds feel like a crazy good counter to anything that zerg cannot protect with queens and spores. So my prognose is, that swarm hosts will be just another thing you can do after you have 70drones, 3bases a lair and double upgrades running, instead of an alternative to hardcore macro. For the broodlord comparison, I have to say it felt extremly different in the Custom Map. -) it could attack air -) it could be left unsupported longer due to burrow -) it could ambush different locations faster, due to faster speed and bigger "range" not to mention, that broodlords barely do 50% of their damage through broodlings. The broodlings are an extra to mess with the opponent that could be replaced with a dmg buff and a slow effect. The swarm host however is a unit that spawns units. | ||
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Decendos
Germany1341 Posts
On September 08 2012 05:52 Big J wrote: I can't tell you how the "new stats without AA" of the swarm host plays out exactly, nor can I tell you how exactly the "old stats" would have played out. What I know is, that with the swarm host zerg gets another unit that cannot combat air at all and therefore any noncommited play has to resolve around turtling hard at home, because you don't have map presence until you invest into another antiair. Testing the swarm host on the "custom HotS map" with the AA, one of it's coolest parts was that you could just go for something like a 2base pressure build, without running into a tech blindcounter. And though it's not the only reason why we hardly see zerg pressure builds, lack of anti air on the map plays a big role, hence standard banshee builds and standard void ray or phoenix builds feel like a crazy good counter to anything that zerg cannot protect with queens and spores. So my prognose is, that swarm hosts will be just another thing you can do after you have 70drones, 3bases a lair and double upgrades running, instead of an alternative to hardcore macro. For the broodlord comparison, I have to say it felt extremly different in the Custom Map. -) it could attack air -) it could be left unsupported longer due to burrow -) it could ambush different locations faster, due to faster speed and bigger "range" not to mention, that broodlords barely do 50% of their damage through broodlings. The broodlings are an extra to mess with the opponent that could be replaced with a dmg buff and a slow effect. The swarm host however is a unit that spawns units. i think swarmhost having a weaker ground but AA attack isnt as nice as a good ground attack only. with the better ground attack it actually cant be ignored by the enemy. regarding your fear of 3 base 70 drone before zerg can do anything: stephano prefers 2 base lair into swarmhost and take a third with roaches and swarmhosts incoming and it works out really nice. i think combined with nydus some queen/swarmhost all ins in zvt and zvp could be quite good but we´ll see. the host turned out a LOT better in its role than i thougt. maybe make it 2 supply and weaker and/or 150 gas and therefore even more swarmy would be nice. | ||
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Mr. Black
United States470 Posts
A few ideas I've had: 1. Drop one swarm host near each opposing expansion to force main army movement/army splitting. 2. Use with Nydus and Queens to spread creep on and secure chokes/remote bases/attack and retreat paths 3. Make an arc of spread out swarm hosts with the locusts all meeting at a focal point; use vipers to pull enemies inside. 4. OMG LOL (I want this to be possible)--burrow swarmhosts in your base and send the locusts through a nydus worm--the expensive pack of hosts is safe at home and the locusts are streaming out to constantly harass anywhere you have vision, and you only risk the cost of the worm. | ||
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IPA
United States3206 Posts
When pros begin using it properly (like Stephano) with dancing / timed burrows when a new cycle is up / etc, they will be seen as fairly OP I think. What about something like... - lower DPS (possibly substantially) - increase burrow speed - increase locus speed - Leave the locust upgrade or make it 5 seconds of additional life instead of 10 I love the unit and would like it to remain strong but balanced. | ||
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