Thanks to ArtMagix for this wonderful piece of art, to Existor for slight adjustments
First of all, let me excuse myself for the title. But i really felt like it sums up pretty good what this thread is all about: A discussion about whether or not the swarm host in its current state is actually any good to put into the game. Since this is afair the first thread i create and i'm not that good with fancy pictures and thread design, please bear with me for the sake of the discussion. Oh, and even though it does not look like it at first glance, it IS a ton of text to read. But please read it all if you want to actively take part in the discussion about the swarm host, or do not post at all. Thank you very much
The idea behind the creation of the swarm host: + Show Spoiler +
At the very first presentation of HotS and the Zerg units at BlizzCon 2011, the swarm host was presented as a siege unit, that both allows the Zerg to be aggressive even when the opponent is turtling, and presents a strong enough danger so the opponent shall be forced to move out of their fortress and deal with it directly. To make it feel "zergish", Blizzard decided that this would be best represented by a neverending stream of free units.
Later on, in the Battle Reports for the HotS Beta, the actual role of the swarm was less that of a direct siege unit as more of a support siege unit, that would add free units as a buffer to other high-damage-dealing ranged units of the Zerg arsenal.
The swarm host is a unit that is available with the infestation pit. It is a unit that can burrow without burrow upgrade researched, and when burrowed, will spawn locusts, which are like brood lings. Those locusts die after 15 seconds (25 seconds with an upgrade that costs 200/200), and new locusts will be spawned every 25 seconds. Each swarm host creates two locusts at once.
In its first iteration, the locusts that spawned had according to Dustin Browder around 90 hp. When the first numbers were publicly available, they had 110 hp instead, and it is probable that they did so in the presentation video at Blizzcon as well, judging from them being able to tank at least two direct hits plus AoE fire from nearby tank hits. My guess would be, that they had even more hitpoints back then. Also, they started with being melee units, so they were basically brood lings on steroids.
In the battle report, the locusts had changed already. The flaws of a melee unit were obvious, as they are to every Zerg player when going mass Zergling while forgetting Zergling speed. Also, locusts could attack air units. For the HotS closed Beta, the locusts are already in the third publicly shown iteration, having only 65 hp, but slightly more range and attack to boot. (not sure about the damage though, since in the battle report they did two-shot probes. Might have been upgrades). Plus, the locusts could not hit air anymore.
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 trying to talk about what is wrong with this unit besides raw numbers. I will probably mention numbers a few time, where i deem it necessary to reiterate my point, but raw numbers are never the target of my discussion argument.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fifth, 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.
Sixth, 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.
Seventh, 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.
Reasons why the swarm host does not fulfill the roles it is meant to fit: + Show Spoiler +
As i already pointed out, the locusts suffer the same problem every low-ranged unit suffers: It will do nothing if it either cannot reach its target or gets shot down before it does. This already highly limits its use as an actual siege unit. If used against a small ramp, forcefields will completely deny the locusts, although on ramps with more than one forcefield required to wall off this is not always endurable. Furthermore, if the opponent is set in a defensive position, it cannot be broken by swarm hosts, as the locusts have only 65 hp now and will die to any siege tank or colossus fire without doing damage at all. Therefore under the condition that siege tanks or colossi hit the field already, the swarm host is sure to not do much damage while sieging a base. Second, the locusts cannot be used for much of a buffer for the army anymore for the very same reason: They get swiped out by a single volley of 2+ tanks/colossi, and do not even allow other units to close the distance, let alone retreat unharmed.
Also, since locusts cannot hit air units, and anti-air pre-hive has not become any better at all for Zerg, any air-to-ground-unit will shut down the swarm hosts without resistance.
This leaves only the following niche for the swarm host: - in ZvT the time before siege tanks are set up and no banshees are out - in ZvP before colossi are out with thermal lense and no void rays are out - in ZvZ when there are no Mutalisks (and Brood Lords) out, and only when turtling behind a wall of spines or when having a huge army advantage (since the Zerg army is highly mobile, and if not used behind a wall of spines, the swarm hosts will just get overrun along with everything else by superior enemy forces) - in any matchup when harassing bases/positions that are too spread out and do not have the heavy defensive focus of the opponent
To go into Detail for each of those situations: ZvT: Currently, besides the rare case of pure Bio play only (in which case Zerg might want to get Banelings/Infestors/Vipers instead of swarm hosts) pretty much every other unit combination Terran goes for includes rather fast siege tanks. Plus, a huge portion of Terran openings include getting a fast Banshee. The only situation where swarm hosts should be able to do any damage is when the opponent is way too greedy, in which case the swarm hosts do come way too late into play, are too immobile, plus they do not punish weaknesses fast enough when opportunity presents itself. The nibbling-away-at-the-opponent seems to not be viable once the opponent is set up.
ZvP: What are the current unit compositions the Protoss players aim for? Stargate harassment, (fast) colossus (into push or late game), sentry/immortal two base play, blink stalker two base play. This leaves you with the following options: - you will face a defend-or-die situation when barely finishing saturating your three bases against a two-base-allin, in which scenario infestors tend to come too late (and swarm hosts for that matter). Plus, swarm hosts are aweful for defending any of the two-base pushes, as forcefields wreck locusts, colossi do as well, and blink stalker can either blink on top of swarm hosts or just blink elsewhere and keep on killing you. - the Protoss will somewhat turtle. If he really goes for a third without colossus, you can try to punish him with swarm hosts, but then again this is the same scenario as in ZvT vs a very greedy Terran: About any other option to punish too much greed will be more effective than slowly nibbling away at the opponent. - you go one/two base yourself and try to attack the Protoss. In this case, it plays out similar to the Destiny Ling-Infestor bust on two bases, with the slight differences that you cannot throw your units over your opponents wall, plus you are only chipping away at the wall. Slowed down due to forcefields (which the Ling-Infestor bust circumvents using the range of IT), your opponent should be able to hold out long enough for colossi to come out, in which case he will have superior economy an be ahead in tech, effectively losing you the game. I am fairly certain that the upgrade for the locusts will cut too heavily into your swarm host count, and without it, your locusts will do only about a third of their potential damage (if you substract travel time). Which makes braking walls hard. Again, i theorycraft, but for me it all comes down to the conclusion that this is not really a viable strategy. And against FFE into Stargate or really fast colossus you are screwed anyway.
- In ZvZ, the currently used strategy at lair tech is often about getting out a couple of Mutas (~6-10) to clear the map of overlords, then switch to infestors to help in roach vs roach battles (as key fungals + infested terrans from infestors with much energy give an incredible boost to army strength). Against mutas, building swarm hosts first will auto-lose the game, since Queens will be the only affordable anti-air along with Spores (no Gas), therefore forfeiting any map control while leaving you with units that are only useful when constantly nibbling away at your opponent. Against infestor-based openings, your opponent will have more burst power than you have (his roaches and infestors will kill your ground force, and the locusts do not give you immediate burst but constant free small fries). So if you did not get miraculously ahead, you forfeit either the map and/or direct combat strength, which will in direct return lose you the game by economy or in combat. Therefore, swarm hosts should in theory be only not game-losing when you are either way ahead and use them to keep your opponent down, in which case you might as well just go steamroll, or in a situation where you can get a ton of static defense in front of your opponents base (to make up for your lack in direct engagement power). Which is cute, but highly unlikely, since your opponent should see your spines and swarm hosts wiggle over the map once they leave your base. And he will laugh. Later on, Brood Lords should be prefered over swarm hosts anyway, due to attack range, being a flying unit, moving while attacking, creating free units more frequently, brood lings being faster etc, you know
This leaves us for the last possibility of use for swarm hosts, the case where your opponent is spread too thinly. In this case, again, other units might be way better at punishing this (as a Ling runby costs less and will probably do more damage than few locusts trickling in now and then, and an infestor hitsquad will also give you more bang for your buck while being more mobile themselves, plus costing less), and if you commit too many swarm hosts while being spread out yourself you just make sure to lose them the fastest way. Sure, swarm hosts CAN perform this role, but there are other Zerg units in the arsenal that can perform this role way better.
To give a short summary of my statement that is up for discussion, i think the swarm host has a design that does not fit into this game at all. It is not a numbers game, its concept simply cannot make for a balanced, useful Zerg unit. I dearly wish for Blizzard to remove this unit and to instead try something else. It does not have to be a lurker, it could be a flame-spitting monkey for all i know. At least i hope that something gets done.
The above post represents my humble opinions alone, and is of course subject to discussion, as long as you have read the entire post. If you feel like this post represents your opinion as well, feel free to link to it or copy/paste (but you have to mention me as the sole author) wherever you like, especially since for some unknown reason i cannot post anything on Blizzards Forum :/
TL;DR: There is no TL;DR; only reply if you have taken your time to think about the subject at hand and fully read my post. Thank you and have a nice day
Wow this guide is really long, but I totally agree with what your saying here. Swarm host certainly does force opponents to group units together (because they work better against less enemies).
this is not a guide, but rather a discussion. I lay out in detail why i think the swarm host does not belong into the game. But i want to know if there are major flaws in my theory and if the swarm host actually is a good unit that adds to this game, mabye just not in the angle i looked at it from. And the part about forcing units to clump up is only one piece of my puzzle
Swarm host, brood lord, and infested terrans are 3 units that spawned out of a similar design concept that Blizz took up with WoL. Essentially they are units that at no min/gas cost trade with armies.
Rather than engaging with the respective principal units, you're forced to deal with the spawned units first and in every case, fungal growth can snowball the engagement. The combination is poor design and hard to balance.
Protoss don't have effective aoe to deal with spawned units without eventual attrition and are forced to eventually engage. Only storm deals enough damage and that is limited.
Neither can terran put out enough aoe to deal with spawned units (although that might have changed with battle hellions, but attrition / fungal applies).
Personally I dislike the design. It's the opposite of fun.
Edit: Haha came here after seeing swarm hosts on idra's stream. Seemed kind of weakish against tanks, and didn't seem to work out too well when his opponent used it against him either. Kinda sad, coz I thought it looked like quite a cool unit to play around with when I first saw it. Maybe we just haven't found out how to properly use it.
On September 07 2012 16:45 Big J wrote: I disagree with everything apart from 4. Locusts really should provide AA. Especially as hydralisks still suck hardcore.
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.
On September 07 2012 16:45 Big J wrote: I disagree with everything apart from 4. Locusts really should provide AA. Especially as hydralisks still suck hardcore.
I disagree with Locusts having AA. I mean it was ok in Battle Reports, but they got buffed enormously. From 1.2 attack speed to 0.8, and range from 2 to 3. Their damage is damn amazing, and having them attack air would be close to having Warhounds attack air in the current stage. Don't get me wrong, Swarm Host is my new favorite unit, it is great positional/micro intensive unit, but I don't want it to be able to counter everything or to be good against everything.
And with new Nyduses implemented soon(I just hope it won't be Blizzard's soon), Hydras won't suck because Creep Towers will provide Creep wherever you go, or you can go for Mutas/Corruptors as Dimaga and Sheth have been doing in every game.
On September 07 2012 18:15 Ramiz1989 wrote: Swarm Host is my new favorite unit, it is great positional/micro intensive unit.
Excuse me, but how a siege unit can be micro intensive? Or you stutter-step with locusts?
Micro/good use of units doesn't just encompass stutter-stepping. Tanks for example require micro and good positioning and target-fire to use effectively. Swarm hosts look interesting in this regard, albeit a bit wonky in the current build. I like the concept behind the unit which is more than I can say for a lot of the other things I've seen. There are choices to be made too, for example, burrowing at different times to get a constant stream of weak buffer units, or send them in waves, that kind of thing.
On September 07 2012 11:50 wangstra wrote: Swarm host, brood lord, and infested terrans are 3 units that spawned out of a similar design concept that Blizz took up with WoL. Essentially they are units that at no min/gas cost trade with armies.
Rather than engaging with the respective principal units, you're forced to deal with the spawned units first and in every case, fungal growth can snowball the engagement. The combination is poor design and hard to balance.
Protoss don't have effective aoe to deal with spawned units without eventual attrition and are forced to eventually engage. Only storm deals enough damage and that is limited.
Neither can terran put out enough aoe to deal with spawned units (although that might have changed with battle hellions, but attrition / fungal applies).
Personally I dislike the design. It's the opposite of fun.
i disagree , protoss can fight it from range ( tempest/oracle combinations)
and terran can fight it by just holding off/defending till ravens seeker missile come. Its very do-able ( the raven was slightly buffed in hots) If the swarmhosts arent backed by hydras or infestors, then simple banshes will kill them.
I don't see any strategic aspect within this unit which zerglings don't have. You can buffer the first shots of siege tanks with either infested terrans or just a handful of lings. No need to use a swarm host. I don't think that this unit is very helpful against what terran and toss have to offer
On September 07 2012 11:50 wangstra wrote: Swarm host, brood lord, and infested terrans are 3 units that spawned out of a similar design concept that Blizz took up with WoL. Essentially they are units that at no min/gas cost trade with armies.
Rather than engaging with the respective principal units, you're forced to deal with the spawned units first and in every case, fungal growth can snowball the engagement. The combination is poor design and hard to balance.
Protoss don't have effective aoe to deal with spawned units without eventual attrition and are forced to eventually engage. Only storm deals enough damage and that is limited.
Neither can terran put out enough aoe to deal with spawned units (although that might have changed with battle hellions, but attrition / fungal applies).
Personally I dislike the design. It's the opposite of fun.
i disagree , protoss can fight it from range ( tempest/oracle combinations)
and terran can fight it by just holding off/defending till ravens seeker missile come. Its very do-able ( the raven was slightly buffed in hots) If the swarmhosts arent backed by hydras or infestors, then simple banshes will kill them.
Also, Dimaga played vs. some Terran that went mech, but battle after battle, Terran started to transition into more of an Air play with Banshees and Ravens, but still had like 6-7 Siege Tanks. Needless to say, Dimaga had ~20 Swarm Hosts, and none of the Locusts could reach the Siege Tanks, they just disappeared from Siege Tanks fire. So that statement Protoss or Terran can't deal with them isn't true.
I don't see any strategic aspect within this unit which zerglings don't have. You can buffer the first shots of siege tanks with either infested terrans or just a handful of lings. No need to use a swarm host. I don't think that this unit is very helpful against what terran and toss have to offer
That is not the purpose of the unit. The unit purpose is to pressure the turtling opponent, not to suicide your units so that your other units can attack. Roaches and Lings are support for Swarm Host, not the other way around, since Locusts do tons of damage.
I strongly disagree. Swarm Host is a very interesting unit, since it brings more sophisticated positional play and is very fun to watch. To me it seems similar to tanks in many aspects, and tanks are awesome!
p.s. Blizz, plz remove/rework the warhound instead. Swarm Host concept is cool.
I appreciate how much thought went into writing this out, but I feel that one fatal flaw is the assumption that the Swarm Host is supposed to fill the role of the Lurker. I think it's fine that they have different roles and that the Baneling remains a separate and useful tool.
I don't think the Lochusts should be able to shoot up, 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. In actual game play, I found myself being able to defend my Swarmhosts with my Queens from Air, as long as you micro your Swarmhosts into a line instead of into a group Raven Seeker Missiles aren't much of a threat. The only air that can really challenge you cost effectively are Banshee, Mutalisk and Phoenix squadrons.
I like the unit as a whole, the difference between the Swarmhost and the Infestor is that the opponent can waredown the Infestor's energy and exhaust your ability to produce Infested Terrans, and Infested Terrans can attack/defend vs air and be lauched across the screen to draw friendly fire from Siege Tanks onto other Siege Tanks. I think there's sufficient diversity between the two units spawning sub-units IMO. But I agree that the Broodlord and Broodlings are just unecessary, I'd trade Broolords for Guardians any day of the week.
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?
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!
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?
yes thats what i meant carrier and reaver are a good example for the way it should be in my oppinion
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
I actually like the SH. It seems like a unit that is easy to use at first glance. Place it and let it do it's thing, which is what low level players will be doing. But if you want more out of it, as is required at highed levels, you have to move it around, burrowing and unburrowing it constantly and spreading them out (in engagements against splashheavy armies the locusts melt instantly if all the SH's are placed together). It really shines in the early-mid game and gets kind of obsolete in the later stages, but the zerg already have the deathcloud, so it's not like we really need more lategame potential.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
While I agree with everything you said, I still think they could change the stats a bit and get a good siege unit out of it that isnt overpowered. What they need to do is lower the DPS (right now its insane how hard they hit if given the chance), and make the locusts immune to splash damage or vastly higher hp/armor. If you cant compleatly kill the locusts before they start dealing damage (even a small amount of damage each time), then they again enter the role of a siege unit. I would prefer making them immune to splash damage, as it would mean no matter how many tanks/colsi they have I can still siege thier entrenched position. Really those two units are the reason that entrenched positions exist, and if the swarm host is meant to be a "entrenched position" breaker, it needs to counter the splash damage units (not have the splash damage units counter the swarm host). Then if the DPS is reduced (right now each swarm host if actually allowed to do damage is one of the highest dps in the game), to a reasonable level (where one can ignore the damage a little bit from a few swarmhosts, but not too many), it becomes a real siege unit.
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".
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".
good write up, for the most part I agree. Since playing with the Swarm Host and at blizzcon i havent been a fan. I dont like the way it functions. way too similar to using infested terrans. make swarm host then burrow swarm host, watch it attack every 10 seconds...i dunno seems boring to me. Everyone wanted the lurker back and now this is blizzards answer. I simply dont like the unit and its design.
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?
Strongly disagree. I'm enjoying the robustness of Zerg midgame now, applying pressures or light contains with roach/ling/host. I also enjoy the "leap frog" nature of host unburrow / burrow play as you advance. Focus-fire with locusts (whether versus buildings or units) is also highly effective and (for me) incredibly fun.
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.
Having watched a few of the pros play around with them, I'd say that the Swarm Host is actually filling the role of mid-game siege unit very effectively. Proper use of the Swarm Host has the potential to completely alter the way timings work in PvZ. Consider the current PvZ metagame. If Protoss fast expands (gateway or forge), Zerg is left with the option of either taking a fast third base or attempting an all-in. In WoL, there's no tech option available to Zerg for a pressure build. However, the Swarm Host provides that early mid-game pressure that will allow Zerg players the option of delaying the third base in favor of a tech build with pressure. A few Swarm Hosts and a handful of zerglings can force out force fields and unit expenditures to keep Protoss on a smaller army size while the Zerg player takes a much safer third base. Without mobile detection, early Stargate play can't do much more than sit at home and kill locusts, which again leaves the Zerg player with more options back home, such as teching into Hydras or Infestors.
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.
not sure about the design but one thing's for sure, the swarm host right now is really overpowered, too much damage and that +10 seconds upgrade could probably be removed
i like the general idea and concept behind the locusts, but like u said its not really a "sige" unit since it lacks that power a siege unit does and because its "shots"(the locusts) can be denied. it needs tweaking, but i do beleive it can work in the game.
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.
I think the swarm host is designed really well. It fits much better with only ground attack, since the locusts can actually be effective (how powerful will be balanced, so no worries about that.) But the coolest part is that they are fundamentally different than siege tanks in how they work. They can burrow and let out a wave of locusts, which preoccupies the enemy. Also, in combination with your other zerg units, you can push the opponent back during this wave, and hopefully only lose your free locusts. While this occurs, you unborrow your swarm hosts and move them up during the wave cool down. That way you are able to keep pushing forward into even an entrenched position. There is so much more micro and strategy available than people are currently looking at.
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.
i read the OP and it's a lot of theorycrafting but have you seen any of the hots stream to observe how they are actually used? I've seen some successful uses and give it time to see the full potential of the swarm host.
There is a way to address the problem that you have, and that would be to increase the move speed of the locusts.
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.
I think it'll come down to more timing pushes, locusts before enemy has good aoe and maybe contain outside natural while trying to take more expos and tech to something better than swarmhost. I mean I thought it was kinda just realized that once the enemy has a decent amount of aoe swarm hosts would not be that good but look at this way, at least for toss he has to get tier 3 to have aoe soooooo I can't see how anyone can be bitching about that (oh no tier 3 is taking down tier 2) terran maybe a different story with siege tank vs swarm host but I don't know enough about hots tvz.
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.
wonder why the locust became so high damage and the swarm host a paperbug. Its really easy to snipe them currently, while the locusts really hurt, rather then tanking for other units. 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.
Lol, 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
Couldn't disagree more. The Swarm Host is an excellent job of combining the core Zerg "feel" of having huge numbers of expendable units, without simply being yet another a-move and surround unit--using it properly requires timing and positioning, something the Zerg army badly lacks.
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!"
well, I think when pros start really getting used to the game, the SH will phase out, but it will be a meta thing. SH can actually stop auto casting their minions, so we might see some savior play where we see SH traps that don't activate their minions until an army steps right over them, just like lurkers. Or perhaps we may only see the minions be unleashed after an army passes over them, to create an instant flank, and block retreat paths while your main army attacks. I could also see the SH having a niche role in denying hidden bases. For instance, 1 or 2 SH would be great at constantly assaulting far away 3rds or 4th bases, since you only need to tie up supply into those few SH, they would constantly throw pressure at that base, while you keep most of your supply in your real army threatening them elsewhere.
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
As long the the raw stats of locusts remain high, swarm hosts provide the zerg race a unit that can put on early pressure and aggression without being on a huge timer to deal economic damage like other zerg units when you produce them in the early game. They can force the enemy into certain tech choices, but they are not space-controlling units and thus are clearly inferior to lurkers which can perform both of these roles.
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)
On September 07 2012 16:45 Big J wrote: I disagree with everything apart from 4. Locusts really should provide AA. Especially as hydralisks still suck hardcore.
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.
On September 07 2012 16:45 Big J wrote: I disagree with everything apart from 4. Locusts really should provide AA. Especially as hydralisks still suck hardcore.
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.
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.
I wish people would spend as much time trying to figure out creative new ways to use the new units that they are getting to play around with as they do arguing about why they are bad.
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.
I think the Swarm Host is borderline OP (masters zerg here).
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.
On September 08 2012 07:00 IPA wrote: I think the Swarm Host is borderline OP (masters zerg here).
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.
i think ppl are just not finding counters to hosts yet... i mean its been like 1 or 2 days beta has been out? and ppl are already crying OP before trying out all possible counters to it. ive been watching a fair amount of streams and ravent with hunter seeker missles on the terran mech side just tears swarm hosts apart. carfully placed widow mines are also a good ticket to get rid of them or prevent set up.
on the protoss side storm with other splash units is by far the best option. the problem for protoss tho is that 2 base hosts come way to fast so getting the proper deathball for them is hard, but it can be done if scouted, and 2 base hosts are pretty easy to scout... get an observer early and just prevent them from setting up outside of ur base while preparing ur tech. stargate tech is also very good to get rid of them especially with oracles revealing all burrowed units.
that being said if they do nerf hosts then i really hope they increase movement speed of locusts and the hosts themselves. right now there only useful if u have a certain critical mass of them and anything less than that would render them useless.
i find it so painful that ppl, protoss players in particular, are crying imbalance when they are still in WoL strategy mode... i mean no shit ur going to get stomped if ur massing immortals expecting roaches and instead u get 10 hosts that u cant kill because immortals are useless against them. most players that get stomped from hosts that ive seen have like 2-4 immortals sitting there trying to kill locusts (with no observers i might add)... i mean srsly, its beta. trying something new to counter new emerging strats...
this is especially true when ppl match up against stephano. clearly ppl think he is going to roach all in and when he doesnt they blame the swarm hosts instead of there bad decision to make blind immortals.
its funny tho because the irony of all this is that pre beta everyone was saying how sucky swarm hosts were going to be and how lurkers would be better. beta hits, swarm hosts are now OP. i find that hilarious tbh. ppl honestly need to start thinking outside of the box for once.
This isn't directed at anyone in particular, but if your desire for changing the Swarm Host is motivated by a desire to see Lurkers return then your efforts are better spent elsewhere. There is no way Blizzard is going to make a change of that magnitude at this point. You're better off suggesting improvements to the Swarm Host.
Swarm Host is flawed because Zerg shouldn't have and doesn't need a siege unit. It's laughable that Zerg in SC2 has two siege units that outclass the tank.
The unit itself is extremely powerful though, and I suspect further nerfs.
The only good thing about swarm host in my opinion is that zerg can finally two base all-in protoss. heh heh, toss can finally know what it feels like
But also, watching stephano play with swarmhosts, they are actually really really boring to use, especially because of their mobility and slow spawn time...but they are definitely good until real late game armies come out (raven, mothership, etc).
On September 08 2012 09:20 DemigodcelpH wrote: Swarm Host is flawed because Zerg shouldn't have and doesn't need a siege unit. It's laughable that Zerg in SC2 has two siege units that outclass the tank.
The current metagame in Zerg matchups involves them aiming for a victory late game with a Broodlord/Infestor composition. By giving Zerg a way to push an advantage in the midgame, Blizzard is aiming to reduce the Zerg reliance on delaying the game to endgame. This also opens up the option to nerf their endgame and buff that of others.
Swarm Hosts and Broodlords are similar, but they have a very big difference - one can be built far, far sooner than the other. The fact that the Broodlord exists doesn't mean the Swarm Host has no reason to - the Swarm Host brings the advantage that it can be built earlier, while the Broodlord retains its advantage of being a better siege unit overall (mostly because Broodlings get to their targets instantly and do damage in the process).
Personally I like the idea of making the locusts spawn under ground, rapidly move towards their targets and pop out at close/melee range and make them melee units. It would make it so they could be melee again without completely dying before reaching the enemy and allow the enemy to use detection/scans to target the locusts if they see them coming.
Also this doesn't take away from any of the current micro the unit would require spreading vs splash and burrowing/unburrowing to unleash locusts and getting away from enemies/re positioning.
I think the locust should keep its high damage and become a melee unit, but have a health and speed buff to actually do damage. For besieging siege lines, as Locusts are meant to do, melee is a good idea, as it will cause friendly fire if in close proximity to enemy terran units while being shot by tanks.
I also think its a great idea for Locusts to be able to burrow and move underground once spawned my the Swarm Host, but it should be a researchable upgrade. Also, the Locusts should be moving at their normal speed underground, but with a damage resistance while in that state, so detectors would not completely ruin its chances.
On September 08 2012 08:32 Antylamon wrote: Imo Swarm Hosts right now are like how VRs were. They were/are midgame-lategame units abused in early aggro.
If Blizz nerfs Swarm Hosts, they probably won't be seen very often (at least on a pro level) for a long while.
Maybe we should all call out bad boring units to get Blizzard to listen and make a better game? I mean sorry that I don't want to wait 2+ more years for the other expansion to see if they can finally get a single thing right in SC2.
So I come in here and read the OP about how this unit is bad. 4 pages later theres people saying its OP. I've also seen streams where they seem to dominate.
Which is it? Do they suck and not fill the role of a Zerg siege unit or are they too good?
On September 08 2012 12:35 Supamang wrote: So I come in here and read the OP about how this unit is bad. 4 pages later theres people saying its OP. I've also seen streams where they seem to dominate.
Which is it? Do they suck and not fill the role of a Zerg siege unit or are they too good?
They're great, borderline OP right now as people are trying to figure out how to combat them. People saying that they're bad are comparing them to lurkers which is silly.
On September 08 2012 08:32 Antylamon wrote: Imo Swarm Hosts right now are like how VRs were. They were/are midgame-lategame units abused in early aggro.
If Blizz nerfs Swarm Hosts, they probably won't be seen very often (at least on a pro level) for a long while.
Maybe we should all call out bad boring units to get Blizzard to listen and make a better game? I mean sorry that I don't want to wait 2+ more years for the other expansion to see if they can finally get a single thing right in SC2.
You consider the swarm host boring? Whenever I see them involved in a fight, it draws it out and makes for interesting scenarios.
if anything the only nerf they needed was a nerf to building damage. So something along the lines of "does 25% less damage to structures everything else the same" would have been better than just simply nerfing the unit in general. These things border on the line of "will use? will never use!"
I've been saying the same thing.. I think the design of the Swarm Host is pretty flawed. It's overpowered in some cases where it shouldn't be yet it still sucks at what it's meant to do...which is be a siege unit.
On September 08 2012 16:27 zoohairZ wrote: I've been saying the same thing.. I think the design of the Swarm Host is pretty flawed. It's overpowered in some cases where it shouldn't be yet it still sucks at what it's meant to do...which is be a siege unit.
Really? Wondering how you came to that conclusion that they suck at being a Siege Unit, when all of the top Zerg players are destroying with Swarm Host because of their Siege range.
On September 08 2012 13:53 johnny123 wrote: if anything the only nerf they needed was a nerf to building damage. So something along the lines of "does 25% less damage to structures everything else the same" would have been better than just simply nerfing the unit in general. These things border on the line of "will use? will never use!"
Are you joking? T and P build walls against Zerg to prevent them from getting overwhelmed. The whole point of a zerg siege unit would be to break down those walls.
On September 08 2012 16:27 zoohairZ wrote: I've been saying the same thing.. I think the design of the Swarm Host is pretty flawed. It's overpowered in some cases where it shouldn't be yet it still sucks at what it's meant to do...which is be a siege unit.
Really? Wondering how you came to that conclusion that they suck at being a Siege Unit, when all of the top Zerg players are destroying with Swarm Host because of their Siege range.
Well, I didn't make myself very clear. I didn't exactly mean that it sucks at being a siege unit itself, I meant the time window where it can be used to lay siege in each matchup is very short, which ultimately makes it feel like a rather gimmicky unit that can either end up working really well or really bad depending on what build the opponent is doing. Refer to the OP's post where he mentions these timing windows.
On September 08 2012 07:00 IPA wrote: I think the Swarm Host is borderline OP (masters zerg here).
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.
i think ppl are just not finding counters to hosts yet... i mean its been like 1 or 2 days beta has been out? and ppl are already crying OP before trying out all possible counters to it. ive been watching a fair amount of streams and ravent with hunter seeker missles on the terran mech side just tears swarm hosts apart. carfully placed widow mines are also a good ticket to get rid of them or prevent set up.
on the protoss side storm with other splash units is by far the best option. the problem for protoss tho is that 2 base hosts come way to fast so getting the proper deathball for them is hard, but it can be done if scouted, and 2 base hosts are pretty easy to scout... get an observer early and just prevent them from setting up outside of ur base while preparing ur tech. stargate tech is also very good to get rid of them especially with oracles revealing all burrowed units.
that being said if they do nerf hosts then i really hope they increase movement speed of locusts and the hosts themselves. right now there only useful if u have a certain critical mass of them and anything less than that would render them useless.
i find it so painful that ppl, protoss players in particular, are crying imbalance when they are still in WoL strategy mode... i mean no shit ur going to get stomped if ur massing immortals expecting roaches and instead u get 10 hosts that u cant kill because immortals are useless against them. most players that get stomped from hosts that ive seen have like 2-4 immortals sitting there trying to kill locusts (with no observers i might add)... i mean srsly, its beta. trying something new to counter new emerging strats...
this is especially true when ppl match up against stephano. clearly ppl think he is going to roach all in and when he doesnt they blame the swarm hosts instead of there bad decision to make blind immortals.
its funny tho because the irony of all this is that pre beta everyone was saying how sucky swarm hosts were going to be and how lurkers would be better. beta hits, swarm hosts are now OP. i find that hilarious tbh. ppl honestly need to start thinking outside of the box for once.
Well, people haven't found a counter yet, but I have to say I was really surprised when in between the "Custom HotS Map" and then closed beta start, they buffed Swarm Hosts stats even more, as it was one of the best units on the Custom Map imo. But with the AA gone... a voidray + an oracle(or an observer) should destroy any Host strategy that isn't played with massive anti air support (what you need a 3base economy for).
On September 08 2012 16:27 zoohairZ wrote: I've been saying the same thing.. I think the design of the Swarm Host is pretty flawed. It's overpowered in some cases where it shouldn't be yet it still sucks at what it's meant to do...which is be a siege unit.
Really? Wondering how you came to that conclusion that they suck at being a Siege Unit, when all of the top Zerg players are destroying with Swarm Host because of their Siege range.
Well, I didn't make myself very clear. I didn't exactly mean that it sucks at being a siege unit itself, I meant the time window where it can be used to lay siege in each matchup is very short, which ultimately makes it feel like a rather gimmicky unit that can either end up working really well or really bad depending on what build the opponent is doing. Refer to the OP's post where he mentions these timing windows.
I dunno I am seeing zergs like idra/stephano (those are the only 2 i'm really watching as they use the swarmhost good) make swarmhosts and use them for the whole game and not really once do I ever feel the swarmhost looks like a bad decision to keep making. Swarmhost with hydra/viper support is incredibly powerful from what I have seen :D.
they just need to make the locusts an underground unit. maybe a weaker baneling that has burrow move. that way you need detection to deal with swarm hosts or you're helpless.
On September 08 2012 17:34 TheDraken wrote: they just need to make the locusts an underground unit. maybe a weaker baneling that has burrow move. that way you need detection to deal with swarm hosts or you're helpless.
I was thinking about something like that the first time I saw Swarm Host in HotS alpha. But not to make them banelings, Zerg already has enough AoE, since it is supposed to be the swarming race. Make it like in Alpha, have around 100 hp, do same damage as now, but have them be melee, and let them go underground and pop-up when they reach the enemy. That way, enemy is forced to have detection, since right now if enemy has high firepower, Locusts alone can't reach them, but with that change, Firepower won't be enough when the Locusts will already be in melee range of your units.
But to be honest, even if they leave Swarm Host as it is, I am quite happy about it. My new favorite unit, really like how it is played.
I think Locusts should consistently be able to do damage (and not just die on their way), but should do way less damage.
This could be achieved by making them a) faster or b) tankier (and of course nerfing their damage).
My favourite approach would probably be to make them move faster and spawn more (and make them smaller if possible).
So the Swarm Host would spawn 3-4 Locusts with HP scaled accordingly, movement speed slightly faster than Stalker and like 6 or 7 damage. Basically Stim-Marines with more HP and less attack speed and range.
Would also feel Zergier with more but weaker and faster units.
On September 08 2012 16:27 zoohairZ wrote: I've been saying the same thing.. I think the design of the Swarm Host is pretty flawed. It's overpowered in some cases where it shouldn't be yet it still sucks at what it's meant to do...which is be a siege unit.
Really? Wondering how you came to that conclusion that they suck at being a Siege Unit, when all of the top Zerg players are destroying with Swarm Host because of their Siege range.
Well, I didn't make myself very clear. I didn't exactly mean that it sucks at being a siege unit itself, I meant the time window where it can be used to lay siege in each matchup is very short, which ultimately makes it feel like a rather gimmicky unit that can either end up working really well or really bad depending on what build the opponent is doing. Refer to the OP's post where he mentions these timing windows.
I dunno I am seeing zergs like idra/stephano (those are the only 2 i'm really watching as they use the swarmhost good) make swarmhosts and use them for the whole game and not really once do I ever feel the swarmhost looks like a bad decision to keep making. Swarmhost with hydra/viper support is incredibly powerful from what I have seen :D.
Swarm host/corruptor is also really good. I was originally aiming for infestor/swarm host but it turns out that you simply need more swarm hosts. -_-
My favorite thing about swarm hosts is that they cost 200/100. It makes the infestation pit very versatile. From a spending perspective, you can make swarm hosts and bank gas for tech or you can make infestors and bank minerals for drones.
On September 08 2012 16:27 zoohairZ wrote: I've been saying the same thing.. I think the design of the Swarm Host is pretty flawed. It's overpowered in some cases where it shouldn't be yet it still sucks at what it's meant to do...which is be a siege unit.
Really? Wondering how you came to that conclusion that they suck at being a Siege Unit, when all of the top Zerg players are destroying with Swarm Host because of their Siege range.
Well, I didn't make myself very clear. I didn't exactly mean that it sucks at being a siege unit itself, I meant the time window where it can be used to lay siege in each matchup is very short, which ultimately makes it feel like a rather gimmicky unit that can either end up working really well or really bad depending on what build the opponent is doing. Refer to the OP's post where he mentions these timing windows.
I dunno I am seeing zergs like idra/stephano (those are the only 2 i'm really watching as they use the swarmhost good) make swarmhosts and use them for the whole game and not really once do I ever feel the swarmhost looks like a bad decision to keep making. Swarmhost with hydra/viper support is incredibly powerful from what I have seen :D.
i have watched quite some Stephano streaming lately. And especially in his ZvZ, it feels like he is just toying with his opponent, rather than seriously playing, as his opponents are usually of rather small caliber. He sits on two bases, get swarm hosts, takes his third, turtles further up until he has a mass of spines/spores, some swarm hosts and then vipers (plus Brood Lords maybe). But it is not the swarm host that makes him win those games, it is his macro, combined with roach aggression if the opponent takes an early third, plus ling runbys. At which point he could make any unit he wants, and he wins the fights convincingly even without swarm hosts by just using Vipers to pull in important units into his spinecrawlers.
Stephano made mass Queens troll builds look like a viable strategy BEFORE they got the range buff, and against better opponents than what he is playing now against (at least most of the time). So take anything you see on his stream with a grain of salt, as it is hardly ever representative of the true strength of what he is using.
Also, as someone pointed out, people are not used to countering the swarm host yet. You do not even need a void ray to completely crush it, basically anything used in a smart way will do. Colossi can defend against it forever, blink stalker can blink on top of it, i have seen iNcontroL laughing at them while crushing a swarm host contain with sentry immortal. Sure, he lost a few Zealots to the initial waves, but then he just forcefielded the locusts to death (as in defensive forcefield, and once he had an observer ready he just moved out, forcefielded around the swarm hosts so they could neither run nor locusts attack, then his immortals killed the swarm hosts absurdly fast)
So don't measure the units strength just based on the stream of the very top zerg players
I've played with Swarmhost some more and I don't think it's OP from a usage perspective, if they reduce the DPS and the range of the Lochusts I think it'll balance out. From a design perspective, I'm really worred that we wont see Hydralisk Dens (I know, I know) Spires and Ultralisk Caverns at this rate because you can just stay on Infestation Pit and Hive for Infestors, Swarmhosts, Vipers and whatever your tier 1 unit of choice is. I mean I don't really have any reason not to just 18 Gas for Zergling Speed, Lair, Baneline Nest and then take 3 more Gas for Baneling Speed, Infestation Pit, Swarmhosts and then tech up to Hive for Adrenal Glands, 3/3 upgrades and just produce Infestors and Vipers as required unless my opponent goes mass air, which I can still pretty much destroy with just Queens, Spore Crawlers and the odd Infestor.
The army composition just feels really flaky, because you just spend all of your Gas on Swarmhosts, build Queens non-stop, dump all of your minerals into Zerglings (I like getting Drops too) and any time they get cute with mass air you just start adding on Spore Crawlers to repel air and be a wall for your Swarm Hosts, it's pretty faceroll.
On September 08 2012 20:27 FakeDeath wrote: SH is okay. I think.
But what happened to the Hydralisk??? No one is using them at all?????
Why would they? Nothing changed, their speed upgrade doesn't provide anything that good creepspread didn't do better in WoL already in defensive situations. For offensive situations you still need siege/high dps units, what the hydralisk is not. For reinforcing (=issue of costefficiency), roaches and zerglings are still better, unless the opponent has a lot of anti air.
How about making the locusts it spawns an untimed locust, so it can live past 30seconds and fight on, once the locusts finally die the swarm hosts make another. perhaps nerf the the health/damage if going this route? I don't know
I think there are a few things you can change for the SH to make it a more viable siege unit and some of the ideas stated are pretty good.
1 - make locusts be able to climb cliffs, protoss and terran have the options and its a harass/siege-ing option that i think zerg are missing out on. 2 - leave the host as it is for the most part, the move speed and HP seem to be fine. 3 - leave the upgrade for life span the same (10 seconds) as 5 would be too short and not worth it, plus the cost more then compensates for the added time. (200+200) 4 - leave the locusts with ground only attack, as zerg has pretty good options for AA in the mid game (queens, spores that are mobile, infested terran and relatively fast air options) 5 - leave locusts as light units, with a 10% speed boost and its misley 2 or 3 range and a 20% damage reduction (from 16 to 12, up to 15 with +3s)
I think if locusts would be able to climb cliffs it would make the unit a much better option, as then instead of rushing with your full army head on, you could take a handfull of SHs off to the side and harass those high ground positions that are otherwise not possible without overlords/seers or air support. It would open up more avenues of strategy for the locusts to be used with including siege-ing opponents into their own base and forcing them to move off their high ground to deal with the hosts. also the locusts having the poor range they do should keep the extended life upgrade as it makes them more viable to be useful as units. Their health seems to be legit at 65 as too much and its more then a hydra or roach...it should be in line with a ling or broodling. I think the 20% damage reduction is enough of a level to make it still be a force to be reckoned but not one to be an ultimatum. The Hosts should of course remain invisible while burrowed as that goes along with all the other units, you can easily change the animation of the unit to make the locusts unburrow or come out of the ground from within the host instead of its egg sacs exposed to make it more in line with the burrow theme.
Its not a bad unit concept, the zerg are a swarm that throw heavy numbers at you to overpower and outnumber you, they are still small and weak as individuals. just like in war3, though not much of a comparsion, the undead relied on summoned units to outnumber you as well, its like the scourge and the swarm, its a numbers game... I do see a future in this unit, much more then some of the other ones so far.
I would rather have the lurker. But from what I've seen, the swarm host actually isn't AS bad as I expected. I've been seeing some cute rushes with them versus protoss combined with the creep drop from overlords and even spines to assist them (sheth game).
I think if they don't overnerf them they could provide for some interesting play. They're a lot better than the other units like the war hound and oracle (two abominations).
That said I'd rather have the lurker, it's better in almost every way.
On September 08 2012 21:48 wcr.4fun wrote: I would rather have the lurker. But from what I've seen, the swarm host actually isn't AS bad as I expected. I've been seeing some cute rushes with them versus protoss combined with the creep drop from overlords and even spines to assist them (sheth game).
I think if they don't overnerf them they could provide for some interesting play. They're a lot better than the other units like the war hound and oracle (two abominations).
That said I'd rather have the lurker, it's better in almost every way.
well as good as the lurker is, its a complete different unit concept. swarm host is able to attack safely into midgame T and P lines with the huge range while lurker with range 7 (?) would just be killed if they tried to attack into tanks/collosi. lurker are much better in defending drops and choke points though. best would be blizzard gives zerg both perhaps in LOTV.
On September 08 2012 20:27 FakeDeath wrote: SH is okay. I think.
But what happened to the Hydralisk??? No one is using them at all?????
Why would they? Nothing changed, their speed upgrade doesn't provide anything that good creepspread didn't do better in WoL already in defensive situations. For offensive situations you still need siege/high dps units, what the hydralisk is not. For reinforcing (=issue of costefficiency), roaches and zerglings are still better, unless the opponent has a lot of anti air.
So basically Hydralisk is still the shitty unit as it is in WoL. How sad such an iconic unit fallen when it was such a mainstay unit in BW.
On September 08 2012 20:27 FakeDeath wrote: SH is okay. I think.
But what happened to the Hydralisk??? No one is using them at all?????
Why would they? Nothing changed, their speed upgrade doesn't provide anything that good creepspread didn't do better in WoL already in defensive situations. For offensive situations you still need siege/high dps units, what the hydralisk is not. For reinforcing (=issue of costefficiency), roaches and zerglings are still better, unless the opponent has a lot of anti air.
So basically Hydralisk is still the shitty unit as it is in WoL. How sad such an iconic unit fallen when it was such a mainstay unit in BW.
it is sad, that Blizzard neglects pretty much all WoL Zerg unit "problems" but i would kindly ask you to keep the discussion in this thread swarm host related and discuss problems with the hydralisks in the appropriate thread thank you and have a nice day
You can also drop Swarm Hosts and Drones to the island and kill rocks/expand without Nyduses or Ovie drops
Or place proxy-Extractors (cheapest building that can be placed everywhere without creep) to "energize" vipers without needing them to fly back to base.
What about Swarm Hosts - they are ok. And it's my favourite unit. I think they should rename it from Swarm Host to a "Siege Mushrooms"
I usually hate posts like this but I have to agree with you, the swarm host just feels like a bad creation to me, I wish they would just redesign it instead of trying to balance it by changing damage.
On September 09 2012 00:46 ROOTFayth wrote: lost all his banelings, didnt kill all the swarm hosts, doesn't look like an official counter to me
Look at costs of both armies. Add a bit more banelings and it will kill everything. 1500m/750g vs 4200m/2400g.
Add a bit more banelings to something like 2000/1000 (added 10 more Banes) and they will solve problem finally. And I don't say about supply cost. Banes takes A LOT LESS food than swarmhosts. So they are EXTREMELY effective counter to swarm-hosts, if they're nearby
Plus it was not an ideal baneling atack. But still it killed 80% of all Swarm Hosts. Compare costs again! In real game if explode those banes at the middle of SH field, they can do more damage.
On September 09 2012 00:27 Existor wrote: I think, in ZvZ there will be no mass SH+festor battles, because Banelings are official counter to swarmhosts!
You forget that Infestors can just fungal the Banelings. And even if they dont that only works if the SH are all stacked together.
On September 08 2012 16:27 zoohairZ wrote: I've been saying the same thing.. I think the design of the Swarm Host is pretty flawed. It's overpowered in some cases where it shouldn't be yet it still sucks at what it's meant to do...which is be a siege unit.
Really? Wondering how you came to that conclusion that they suck at being a Siege Unit, when all of the top Zerg players are destroying with Swarm Host because of their Siege range.
Well, I didn't make myself very clear. I didn't exactly mean that it sucks at being a siege unit itself, I meant the time window where it can be used to lay siege in each matchup is very short, which ultimately makes it feel like a rather gimmicky unit that can either end up working really well or really bad depending on what build the opponent is doing. Refer to the OP's post where he mentions these timing windows.
I dunno I am seeing zergs like idra/stephano (those are the only 2 i'm really watching as they use the swarmhost good) make swarmhosts and use them for the whole game and not really once do I ever feel the swarmhost looks like a bad decision to keep making. Swarmhost with hydra/viper support is incredibly powerful from what I have seen :D.
I couldn't disagree more with some of the OP's points. The swarm host does control space (which in my opinion makes it awesome). The "hit me here" sign that you claim it brings is another way of saying it controls space, because you can either "hit the zerg there" or you have to back up your army. That's the definition of controlling space.
Also, I feel that the swarm host is a fantastic siege line breaker, but only in large numbers. The fact that the locusts sometimes die before doing any damage is usually because you don't have enough swarm hosts, and isn't bad for game design at all.
I love the swarm host, and it's units like these that made me come back from a year of quitting sc2 because it's getting to be a little more like sc:bw. IMO the swarm host is conceptually like if you took the lurker, made it better for offense and worse for defense -- but still viable for both.
I just had a few thoughts on the swarm host and I'm looking for opinions:
- Swarm hosts are obviously designed for 2 polar opposite situations: contains and flanking harassment (like with lurkers) -> I feel that swarm hosts are WORSE than lurkers at contains, and BETTER at harassment (via drops).
Here's why: - During a contain, you are bound by the locusts' timers, and the cycle time of the swarm hosts. Opponents can exploit this. If you try to work around that by unburrowing swarm hosts, you are now bound by burrow/unburrow times. - During a contain, your locusts will need enemy units to run very close to them (as if to commit suicide) due to their short range. -> The net effect is that when an opponent can push out past your contain, you will lose a big investment or at least not be able to deal significant damage back to them in the ensuing fight.
- With drop harassment, lurkers need to burrow and shoot repeatedly to deal damage. If they're doing damage, they're burrowed near enemy stuff. - Swarm hosts only need to burrow when they release their locusts - in between locust cycles they can unburrow, run around, or get back in overlords, while locusts deal damage. -> The net effect is that swarm hosts are much less 'risky' to use for drop harassment, and the only major tradeoff is that the damage you do to an opponent who doesn't react at all is strictly lower than with lurkers.
Here is an example situation: - You pressure the front of a protoss base with roach/ling - At the same time, you casually drop 2 swarm hosts into the far back of their main, release locusts and attack workers/assimilators/pylons/etc - You pick the swarm hosts up and then release some locusts elsewhere (maybe the main front, if your roach ling attack is becoming effective with the opponent under stress), or maybe you pull in more roaches/lings to make the swarm hosts hard to remove
Every stream I watch so far has people just throwing swarm hosts in their army and pointing them at the main front (or at a ramp). They call it a 'contain' because their main army just happens to be near the enemy's expansion path, but a doom drop could go around their army and make their 'contain' look pretty weak.
Admittedly, I'm not watching a LOT of streams, so: Is anyone doing drop harass with swarm hosts? Is it viable? Am I wrong?
On September 09 2012 03:32 Beef Noodles wrote: I couldn't disagree more with some of the OP's points. The swarm host does control space (which in my opinion makes it awesome). The "hit me here" sign that you claim it brings is another way of saying it controls space, because you can either "hit the zerg there" or you have to back up your army. That's the definition of controlling space.
Also, I feel that the swarm host is a fantastic siege line breaker, but only in large numbers. The fact that the locusts sometimes die before doing any damage is usually because you don't have enough swarm hosts, and isn't bad for game design at all.
I love the swarm host, and it's units like these that made me come back from a year of quitting sc2 because it's getting to be a little more like sc:bw. IMO the swarm host is conceptually like if you took the lurker, made it better for offense and worse for defense -- but still viable for both.
I think you're wrong. I don't look at it as controlling space because when you control space with siege tanks it creates a line where the enemy has their own safe zone but if they come out of it or try to break out they're gonna have to deal with the tanks. The swarm host constantly sends locusts so there is no real "safe zone" and it kinda forces the enemy to break out ASAP so instead of controlling space it's almost like it forces them to be aggressive instead of keeping them in their base.
On September 09 2012 03:32 Beef Noodles wrote: I couldn't disagree more with some of the OP's points. The swarm host does control space (which in my opinion makes it awesome). The "hit me here" sign that you claim it brings is another way of saying it controls space, because you can either "hit the zerg there" or you have to back up your army. That's the definition of controlling space.
Also, I feel that the swarm host is a fantastic siege line breaker, but only in large numbers. The fact that the locusts sometimes die before doing any damage is usually because you don't have enough swarm hosts, and isn't bad for game design at all.
I love the swarm host, and it's units like these that made me come back from a year of quitting sc2 because it's getting to be a little more like sc:bw. IMO the swarm host is conceptually like if you took the lurker, made it better for offense and worse for defense -- but still viable for both.
I think you're wrong. I don't look at it as controlling space because when you control space with siege tanks it creates a line where the enemy has their own safe zone but if they come out of it or try to break out they're gonna have to deal with the tanks. The swarm host constantly sends locusts so there is no real "safe zone" and it kinda forces the enemy to break out ASAP so instead of controlling space it's almost like it forces them to be aggressive instead of keeping them in their base.
That is if you are using it offensively. It does control space in a defensive position.
On September 09 2012 03:32 Beef Noodles wrote: I couldn't disagree more with some of the OP's points. The swarm host does control space (which in my opinion makes it awesome). The "hit me here" sign that you claim it brings is another way of saying it controls space, because you can either "hit the zerg there" or you have to back up your army. That's the definition of controlling space.
Also, I feel that the swarm host is a fantastic siege line breaker, but only in large numbers. The fact that the locusts sometimes die before doing any damage is usually because you don't have enough swarm hosts, and isn't bad for game design at all.
I love the swarm host, and it's units like these that made me come back from a year of quitting sc2 because it's getting to be a little more like sc:bw. IMO the swarm host is conceptually like if you took the lurker, made it better for offense and worse for defense -- but still viable for both.
I think you're wrong. I don't look at it as controlling space because when you control space with siege tanks it creates a line where the enemy has their own safe zone but if they come out of it or try to break out they're gonna have to deal with the tanks. The swarm host constantly sends locusts so there is no real "safe zone" and it kinda forces the enemy to break out ASAP so instead of controlling space it's almost like it forces them to be aggressive instead of keeping them in their base.
That is if you are using it offensively. It does control space in a defensive position.
You're right, it does, but it's getting boring to keep giving zerg stuff to have them play defensive T_T
On September 09 2012 03:32 Beef Noodles wrote: I couldn't disagree more with some of the OP's points. The swarm host does control space (which in my opinion makes it awesome). The "hit me here" sign that you claim it brings is another way of saying it controls space, because you can either "hit the zerg there" or you have to back up your army. That's the definition of controlling space.
Also, I feel that the swarm host is a fantastic siege line breaker, but only in large numbers. The fact that the locusts sometimes die before doing any damage is usually because you don't have enough swarm hosts, and isn't bad for game design at all.
I love the swarm host, and it's units like these that made me come back from a year of quitting sc2 because it's getting to be a little more like sc:bw. IMO the swarm host is conceptually like if you took the lurker, made it better for offense and worse for defense -- but still viable for both.
I think you're wrong. I don't look at it as controlling space because when you control space with siege tanks it creates a line where the enemy has their own safe zone but if they come out of it or try to break out they're gonna have to deal with the tanks. The swarm host constantly sends locusts so there is no real "safe zone" and it kinda forces the enemy to break out ASAP so instead of controlling space it's almost like it forces them to be aggressive instead of keeping them in their base.
That is if you are using it offensively. It does control space in a defensive position.
You're right, it does, but it's getting boring to keep giving zerg stuff to have them play defensive T_T
But they won't play it defensively... Swarm Hosts are definitely better at offense than at defense. That is the whole point of the unit, a Lair tier unit that can be used for offense, and not just for harass, but for real offense and not making your attack an all-in.
This unit seems almost perfect to me, it does exactly what it is made for, and positional play/burrow attack than unburrow and move is pretty funny and interesting to watch. If any unit from all new units make SC2 grow, than it is this unit.
On September 09 2012 03:32 Beef Noodles wrote: I couldn't disagree more with some of the OP's points. The swarm host does control space (which in my opinion makes it awesome). The "hit me here" sign that you claim it brings is another way of saying it controls space, because you can either "hit the zerg there" or you have to back up your army. That's the definition of controlling space.
Also, I feel that the swarm host is a fantastic siege line breaker, but only in large numbers. The fact that the locusts sometimes die before doing any damage is usually because you don't have enough swarm hosts, and isn't bad for game design at all.
I love the swarm host, and it's units like these that made me come back from a year of quitting sc2 because it's getting to be a little more like sc:bw. IMO the swarm host is conceptually like if you took the lurker, made it better for offense and worse for defense -- but still viable for both.
I think you're wrong. I don't look at it as controlling space because when you control space with siege tanks it creates a line where the enemy has their own safe zone but if they come out of it or try to break out they're gonna have to deal with the tanks. The swarm host constantly sends locusts so there is no real "safe zone" and it kinda forces the enemy to break out ASAP so instead of controlling space it's almost like it forces them to be aggressive instead of keeping them in their base.
That is if you are using it offensively. It does control space in a defensive position.
You're right, it does, but it's getting boring to keep giving zerg stuff to have them play defensive T_T
But they won't play it defensively... Swarm Hosts are definitely better at offense than at defense. That is the whole point of the unit, a Lair tier unit that can be used for offense, and not just for harass, but for real offense and not making your attack an all-in.
This unit seems almost perfect to me, it does exactly what it is made for, and positional play/burrow attack than unburrow and move is pretty funny and interesting to watch. If any unit from all new units make SC2 grow, than it is this unit.
Well, a week ago I would have agreed with you. But since Hosts can't attack air anymore... Standard hellion banshee into third for Terran should beat host strategies as you can just go and hunt them down. (not to mention that with the new ravens... there might be banshee openings into bio/raven popping up and the first ravens just hunt down the hosts if you go for such a 2base rush) Void ray openings with oracle for detection sounds like it could beat it as well. Immortal + obs + prism at least forces you to protect the hosts and therefore get at least close to all-in. Or just drops. If you happen to see them on the open, you attack them, so he has to burrow, so the locusts spawn, Terran picks up and unloads before the next locusts spawn.
Of course I can't tell you if that stuff is going to play out like that, but basically you have your rather immobile units in the open and no anti air and all your gas spend on nonantiair tech, so I believe that if in such a scenario the swarm hosts still can do enough damage to put you in a good spot, the unit is just imbalanced, as your opponent plays a perfect counter but can't beat it.
Void ray openings with oracle for detection sounds like it could beat it as well.
More air means less ground, right? So it means that Hydralisk becomes more viable and effective. And mutalisks probably too
And it's ok if there are no anti-air atack for locusts, or there will be no counter to them in ZvZ, TvZ and PvZ
Just a question of stats. Right now Hosts are crazily powerful antiground units with a lot of "range". In the HotS Custom, they were nice pushing tools that could be used in a lot of situations, but could be beaten with a good ground army or by abusing their down time. And if it doesn't work out, just add more downtime until it's balanced. A unit really does not need to straight up suck against something to be balanced. Blink Stalkers don't have a real counter in WoL PvZ, but they also don't really counter anything hardcore. Immortals are straight up overpowered statswise vs ground, but Terran/Zerg can deal with them without air because of the long production time etc.
Also I'm not gonna talk about the viability of Hydralisks based upon some stream experiments. Right now, I don't see a reason why HotS Hydralisk should be better than WoL Hydralisk. Against airbuilds Zergs best reaction was Infestors or mutas or corruptors in WoL, Hydralisks are not better vs airrushes than in WoL and not better against lategame air, as you will have creep anyways so the speed upgrade won't make a difference, unless your opponent was crazy good with creep denying.
Just watched a match on Huskys youtube page with Stephano against some other Zerg. Wow the swam host just completely changes the game for Zergs. It was almost a TvT.
Wow, it's hysterical to me that the OP was arguing Hosts were too weak. Hahahahah. I thought I was actually going to read an argument to the effect that the design was just uninteresting.
People are actually debating them being too strong, based on real beta experience. They are strong-ass units.
On September 08 2012 20:27 FakeDeath wrote: SH is okay. I think.
But what happened to the Hydralisk??? No one is using them at all?????
Why would they? Nothing changed, their speed upgrade doesn't provide anything that good creepspread didn't do better in WoL already in defensive situations. For offensive situations you still need siege/high dps units, what the hydralisk is not. For reinforcing (=issue of costefficiency), roaches and zerglings are still better, unless the opponent has a lot of anti air.
So basically Hydralisk is still the shitty unit as it is in WoL. How sad such an iconic unit fallen when it was such a mainstay unit in BW.
hydras wasnt good in BW. ppl used them in builds purely because of lurkers.
On September 09 2012 08:03 suejak wrote: Wow, it's hysterical to me that the OP was arguing Hosts were too weak. Hahahahah. I thought I was actually going to read an argument to the effect that the design was just uninteresting.
People are actually debating them being too strong, based on real beta experience. They are strong-ass units.
there strong yes, but ONLY when u have mor than 20 of them.
On September 09 2012 00:27 Existor wrote: I think, in ZvZ there will be no mass SH+festor battles, because Banelings are official counter to swarmhosts!
lol. Let's put all the swarm hosts in a big ball? Perhaps you could spread them out? Just like in bw where you had to spread out lurkers or they'd get owned by one storm.
On September 08 2012 20:27 FakeDeath wrote: SH is okay. I think.
But what happened to the Hydralisk??? No one is using them at all?????
Why would they? Nothing changed, their speed upgrade doesn't provide anything that good creepspread didn't do better in WoL already in defensive situations. For offensive situations you still need siege/high dps units, what the hydralisk is not. For reinforcing (=issue of costefficiency), roaches and zerglings are still better, unless the opponent has a lot of anti air.
So basically Hydralisk is still the shitty unit as it is in WoL. How sad such an iconic unit fallen when it was such a mainstay unit in BW.
hydras wasnt good in BW. ppl used them in builds purely because of lurkers.
On September 09 2012 08:03 suejak wrote: Wow, it's hysterical to me that the OP was arguing Hosts were too weak. Hahahahah. I thought I was actually going to read an argument to the effect that the design was just uninteresting.
People are actually debating them being too strong, based on real beta experience. They are strong-ass units.
there strong yes, but ONLY when u have mor than 20 of them.
Hydra's are shit strong LOL. That's why you could just mass hydra's in zvp (with a control group of muta's) and be fine versus anything the toss throws at you.
Hydra's are also the core unit versus mech in zvt. Hydra's rocked.
Swarm host can't control space. I've seen thors run away from the locusts. How are the hosts going to hold space? They can't hold space in small numbers and would even fail versus mildly mobile units, unless you'd put the locusts on hold position above your swarm hosts, but even then, there's a window of 2-3 seconds to just go for it and run past them.
They can't hold ramps like lurkers could, they can't 'contain' someone at all. Again you can just run past it if you wanted too, locusts are so slow...
But they're ridiculously strong, but what'd you expect from a unit with 55 (?) dps. LOL
On September 09 2012 08:03 suejak wrote: Wow, it's hysterical to me that the OP was arguing Hosts were too weak. Hahahahah. I thought I was actually going to read an argument to the effect that the design was just uninteresting.
People are actually debating them being too strong, based on real beta experience. They are strong-ass units.
i never argued that they were too weak, i argued that their design was complete and utter failure that cannot be balanced. I also stated that depending on the situation, they are either way overpowered or way underpowered, and due to the design cannot be balanced, they will always feel balanced badly either way. And they have to be overpowered stats-wise to try make up for all the other fatal design flaws to not make them utterly useless. I also feel like the constant need of Blizzard to change them from when they first introduced them to where we are now (they got changed a third time now, at least for the changes the public can see, in the Beta Patch) seems to prove me right. Thank you for not reading the OP or not understanding it, you might want to read it (again) before you post here again.
I basically agree with the OP, but I like the concept of the unit. It feels very "zergy".
Imho, they should either swarm and spawn lots of small/fast units continuously, or spawn some big ass sturdy units that could actually tank tank-shots. Then they could fill a siege role. Now they're basically buffed infested terrans: slow, low hp high damage units. The best way to use them now is probably for harass/hit'n'run. Burrow them close to an expo, spawn the units and then get out of there.
I think they should be hive tech, melee and have a longer burrow time to compensate for higher HP.
Swarm host can't control space. I've seen thors run away from the locusts. How are the hosts going to hold space? They can't hold space in small numbers and would even fail versus mildly mobile units, unless you'd put the locusts on hold position above your swarm hosts, but even then, there's a window of 2-3 seconds to just go for it and run past them.
They can't hold ramps like lurkers could, they can't 'contain' someone at all. Again you can just run past it if you wanted too, locusts are so slow...
But they're ridiculously strong, but what'd you expect from a unit with 55 (?) dps. LOL
hosts are not meant to control space in the same way colos and broodlords are not meant to control space. hosts are meant to force a reaction from ur opponent the way it is currently designed and it is mean as a push type unit or a defensive unit.
the way i see swarm host is you either push with it, defend with it, or harass with it. its not meant to control space since it has no area of effect to do so with.
also i highly dissagree with swarm host not being able to contain someone. they can contain very well actually as long as u SUPPORT them. this is best done with some infestors as back up to stop kiting.
Swarm host can't control space. I've seen thors run away from the locusts. How are the hosts going to hold space? They can't hold space in small numbers and would even fail versus mildly mobile units, unless you'd put the locusts on hold position above your swarm hosts, but even then, there's a window of 2-3 seconds to just go for it and run past them.
They can't hold ramps like lurkers could, they can't 'contain' someone at all. Again you can just run past it if you wanted too, locusts are so slow...
But they're ridiculously strong, but what'd you expect from a unit with 55 (?) dps. LOL
hosts are not meant to control space in the same way colos and broodlords are not meant to control space. hosts are meant to force a reaction from ur opponent the way it is currently designed and it is mean as a push type unit or a defensive unit.
the way i see swarm host is you either push with it, defend with it, or harass with it. its not meant to control space since it has no area of effect to do so with.
also i highly dissagree with swarm host not being able to contain someone. they can contain very well actually as long as u SUPPORT them. this is best done with some infestors as back up to stop kiting.
It can control space, unit doesn't have to have AoE attack to be able to control the space... Blizzards intention with Swarm Hosts is exactly what you listed + space control. What happened if you come in a area where Swarm Hosts spawns Locusts? Your units gonna get damaged a lot before they can get to the Swarm Hosts and kill them, same as Tanks, they control the space, but doing it a little bit different.
On September 09 2012 00:27 Existor wrote: I think, in ZvZ there will be no mass SH+festor battles, because Banelings are official counter to swarmhosts!
lol. Let's put all the swarm hosts in a big ball? Perhaps you could spread them out? Just like in bw where you had to spread out lurkers or they'd get owned by one storm.
On September 08 2012 20:27 FakeDeath wrote: SH is okay. I think.
But what happened to the Hydralisk??? No one is using them at all?????
Why would they? Nothing changed, their speed upgrade doesn't provide anything that good creepspread didn't do better in WoL already in defensive situations. For offensive situations you still need siege/high dps units, what the hydralisk is not. For reinforcing (=issue of costefficiency), roaches and zerglings are still better, unless the opponent has a lot of anti air.
So basically Hydralisk is still the shitty unit as it is in WoL. How sad such an iconic unit fallen when it was such a mainstay unit in BW.
hydras wasnt good in BW. ppl used them in builds purely because of lurkers.
On September 09 2012 08:03 suejak wrote: Wow, it's hysterical to me that the OP was arguing Hosts were too weak. Hahahahah. I thought I was actually going to read an argument to the effect that the design was just uninteresting.
People are actually debating them being too strong, based on real beta experience. They are strong-ass units.
there strong yes, but ONLY when u have mor than 20 of them.
Hydra's are shit strong LOL. That's why you could just mass hydra's in zvp (with a control group of muta's) and be fine versus anything the toss throws at you.
Hydra's are also the core unit versus mech in zvt. Hydra's rocked.
Swarm host can't control space. I've seen thors run away from the locusts. How are the hosts going to hold space? They can't hold space in small numbers and would even fail versus mildly mobile units, unless you'd put the locusts on hold position above your swarm hosts, but even then, there's a window of 2-3 seconds to just go for it and run past them.
They can't hold ramps like lurkers could, they can't 'contain' someone at all. Again you can just run past it if you wanted too, locusts are so slow...
But they're ridiculously strong, but what'd you expect from a unit with 55 (?) dps. LOL
Swarm host can't control space. I've seen thors run away from the locusts. How are the hosts going to hold space? They can't hold space in small numbers and would even fail versus mildly mobile units, unless you'd put the locusts on hold position above your swarm hosts, but even then, there's a window of 2-3 seconds to just go for it and run past them.
They can't hold ramps like lurkers could, they can't 'contain' someone at all. Again you can just run past it if you wanted too, locusts are so slow...
But they're ridiculously strong, but what'd you expect from a unit with 55 (?) dps. LOL
hosts are not meant to control space in the same way colos and broodlords are not meant to control space. hosts are meant to force a reaction from ur opponent the way it is currently designed and it is mean as a push type unit or a defensive unit.
the way i see swarm host is you either push with it, defend with it, or harass with it. its not meant to control space since it has no area of effect to do so with.
also i highly dissagree with swarm host not being able to contain someone. they can contain very well actually as long as u SUPPORT them. this is best done with some infestors as back up to stop kiting.
It can control space, unit doesn't have to have AoE attack to be able to control the space... Blizzards intention with Swarm Hosts is exactly what you listed + space control. What happened if you come in a area where Swarm Hosts spawns Locusts? Your units gonna get damaged a lot before they can get to the Swarm Hosts and kill them, same as Tanks, they control the space, but doing it a little bit different.
Whats normally happening if an army gets near my Swarmhosts? A few volleys of Colossus/Hellion/random AE fire and the Locusts are dead before they even damagen one single unit. Then I need to run my little Mushrooms away. No... you dont need AE damage to control space. But you need GUARANTEED damage and not locust based damage which is mitigated by deathballing.
Swarm host can't control space. I've seen thors run away from the locusts. How are the hosts going to hold space? They can't hold space in small numbers and would even fail versus mildly mobile units, unless you'd put the locusts on hold position above your swarm hosts, but even then, there's a window of 2-3 seconds to just go for it and run past them.
They can't hold ramps like lurkers could, they can't 'contain' someone at all. Again you can just run past it if you wanted too, locusts are so slow...
But they're ridiculously strong, but what'd you expect from a unit with 55 (?) dps. LOL
hosts are not meant to control space in the same way colos and broodlords are not meant to control space. hosts are meant to force a reaction from ur opponent the way it is currently designed and it is mean as a push type unit or a defensive unit.
the way i see swarm host is you either push with it, defend with it, or harass with it. its not meant to control space since it has no area of effect to do so with.
also i highly dissagree with swarm host not being able to contain someone. they can contain very well actually as long as u SUPPORT them. this is best done with some infestors as back up to stop kiting.
It can control space, unit doesn't have to have AoE attack to be able to control the space... Blizzards intention with Swarm Hosts is exactly what you listed + space control. What happened if you come in a area where Swarm Hosts spawns Locusts? Your units gonna get damaged a lot before they can get to the Swarm Hosts and kill them, same as Tanks, they control the space, but doing it a little bit different.
Whats normally happening if an army gets near my Swarmhosts? A few volleys of Colossus/Hellion/random AE fire and the Locusts are dead before they even damagen one single unit. Then I need to run my little Mushrooms away. No... you dont need AE damage to control space. But you need GUARANTEED damage and not locust based damage which is mitigated by deathballing.
well thats the thing. he needs to bring his whole army if he really wants to engage your say 10 hosts. thats 120-130 army supply to 30 army supply. so IF he decides to kill your 10 hosts (and you can even safe most of them if you unburrow fast enough) you can counter with the rest of your army and kill an expo or something.
...while he proceeds to kill you, as you now have useless 30 army supply hanging around. Thats not what they wanted the swarmhost fo be. They wanted a siege unit capable to push an advantage and break a bunkering enemy instead of "ohm... just expand more and kill him with broodlords". Thats not what it does.
And the Ponit here is: The opponent does not need to "go out and kill the swarmhosts" but just leave a few minor AE units behind to deal with the locusts behind your cannon/depot wall. If you are under siege by 5 Tanks, you HAVE to leave your base or the Tanks will slowly kill off your base (not to mention that you can really abuse positional play). If you are under siege from 5 Hosts it just doesnt matter as they are no thread at all.
The only MU where Swarhosts work as intended is ZvZ as there is no AE/long Range units to prevent locusts from doing some damage. And ZvZ will become swarmhost vs swarmhost.
On September 09 2012 17:45 Charon1979 wrote: ...while he proceeds to kill you, as you now have useless 30 army supply hanging around. Thats not what they wanted the swarmhost fo be. They wanted a siege unit capable to push an advantage and break a bunkering enemy instead of "ohm... just expand more and kill him with broodlords". Thats not what it does.
And the Ponit here is: The opponent does not need to "go out and kill the swarmhosts" but just leave a few minor AE units behind to deal with the locusts behind your cannon/depot wall. If you are under siege by 5 Tanks, you HAVE to leave your base or the Tanks will slowly kill off your base (not to mention that you can really abuse positional play). If you are under siege from 5 Hosts it just doesnt matter as they are no thread at all.
The only MU where Swarhosts work as intended is ZvZ as there is no AE/long Range units to prevent locusts from doing some damage. And ZvZ will become swarmhost vs swarmhost.
You don't just leave "a few minor AE units", if 20 3-3 stimmed/shielded marines with adrenalin glands keep on knocking on your door. Hosts are a serious threat, the locusts stats are borderline broken.
Your arguement is based upon locusts not being able to do damage, but the truth is that they do so much damage so fast that you absolutly need to deal with the swarm hosts, because every wave of locusts is guaranteed damage, unless you have a huge defensive deathball with extreme amounts of firepower.
On September 09 2012 17:45 Charon1979 wrote: ...while he proceeds to kill you, as you now have useless 30 army supply hanging around. Thats not what they wanted the swarmhost fo be. They wanted a siege unit capable to push an advantage and break a bunkering enemy instead of "ohm... just expand more and kill him with broodlords". Thats not what it does.
And the Ponit here is: The opponent does not need to "go out and kill the swarmhosts" but just leave a few minor AE units behind to deal with the locusts behind your cannon/depot wall. If you are under siege by 5 Tanks, you HAVE to leave your base or the Tanks will slowly kill off your base (not to mention that you can really abuse positional play). If you are under siege from 5 Hosts it just doesnt matter as they are no thread at all.
The only MU where Swarhosts work as intended is ZvZ as there is no AE/long Range units to prevent locusts from doing some damage. And ZvZ will become swarmhost vs swarmhost.
Swarm Hosts aren't meant to break down a bunkerline by themselves. They're meant to help your other units break it down. It is completely fine if 5 SHs don't do any damage at all, because they still suck up tank shots and you should be capitalizing on that.
As do the swarmhosts... as you cant pool locusts so you have just one wave to tank fire for you.
You don't just leave "a few minor AE units", if 20 3-3 stimmed/shielded marines with adrenalin glands keep on knocking on your door. Hosts are a serious threat, the locusts stats are borderline broken.
no? a few tanks are more than enough to deal with this before you take serious damage. Also your example is flawed as there is a range advantage, a speed advantage and a huge dmg advantage (more marines can shoot, missile vs instant,...) Your 20 Marine force could even be enough to power through the waves of 10 swarmhosts.
lol. Let's put all the swarm hosts in a big ball? Perhaps you could spread them out? Just like in bw where you had to spread out lurkers or they'd get owned by one storm.
Okay, Swarm Hosts are spreaded and splitted. But Banelings counters EASILY all locusts, allowing you to atack FASTER defenceless Swarm Hosts without fighting with Locusts.
I mean, you can avoid time wasting when fighting against Locusts, and kill them with 2-3 seconds, and then walk directly to Swarm Hosts and kill them with minimal losing units. Because it's all about killing Locusts before Swarm Hosts spawn more of them.
On September 09 2012 19:09 Garmer wrote: this could be fixed by lowering the time of the locust respawn and also their life-time
in my opinion, this cannot, as the design of the swarm host requires it to cost a lot (of gas) to prevent just massing them. And they are about as bad as the Tempest in direct combat, just without guaranteed damage, less range and stuff.
The reason you see the swarm host currently in ZvZ is because the Top Zerg players stream, and they can use whatever they want to win, basically, as a few Roach pokes and Ling attacks give them enough economic advantage that they might as well just bunker up, wait for Viper/Brood Lords and then proceed to collect easy wins. The swarm host has to be a huge investment, which means in a ZvZ where (when equally skilled players fight) every single unit advantage counts, your opponent will have 3-4 more Roaches than you for every swarm host you get. Which means, as soon as he sees the swarm hosts and you don't turtle with a ton of spine crawlers (and even then) he can just decide to go kill you. This gets even worse if your opponent is smart enough to get infestors or banelings for your swarm hosts. So besides the trolling going on in current ZvZ by top players, i see no viable position to play swarm hosts and not die in any matchup. And that investment does not even pay off offense-wise
I completely agree with u Cirqueenflex. I dont know how it would work but what if swarm hosts would have energy pool and zerg could manually choose when to send locusts to the battle. For example u could save energy for 4 locust spawns so u could spawn a mass of locusts to break a siege line or defend ur base. Anyways atm its imo pretty useless unit.
It's not useless unit. The damage is strong and it allows to tank more enemy siege lines. They are heavy support units, like Siege Tanks.
If you send Swarm Hosts alone with some spines - they OF COURSE will die, same as Siege Tanks alone with a very small support. Why many players sending them alone and losing them? Because they don't understand, that those "Siege Mushrooms" are siege support unit, not a main core damage dealer.
On September 09 2012 19:30 Juustokalle wrote: I completely agree with u Cirqueenflex. I dont know how it would work but what if swarm hosts would have energy pool and zerg could manually choose when to send locusts to the battle. For example u could save energy for 4 locust spawns so u could spawn a mass of locusts to break a siege line or defend ur base. Anyways atm its imo pretty useless unit.
ROFL, I love the people that says how Swarm Host is useless unit when it is almost overpowered. People have no clue what they are talking about. If you have 10+ Swarm Hosts, only way to counter those waves of Locusts that are doing so much damage is if you have huge army, so that they get destroyed quickly, or if you have at least 6+ Siege Tanks.
If anyone states differently, you didn't see good player using Swarm Hosts, simple as that. Try watching streams of Stephano, Dimaga, Ret and Sheth, to see how useless they are. Even when you first few Swarm Hosts come into play, they are tough to handle because usually you don't have enough firepower to take the Locusts down before they kill some of your stuff. And they are free, so every wave, you kill the Locusts, but they take down few of your units, and that is when you have only 3-4 Swarm Hosts.
And no, they aren't as bad as Tempests in direct combat, if they have Locusts they are crazy good, if they don't, they are defenseless, unlike Tempest, that is in direct engagement low DPS units no matter how you look at it.
Seriously people, try watching some streams or test your stuff before jumping to conclusions.
swarmhost + some infestor (which you can build since you have IP already) gonna be really nice. that way you prevent the enemy with fungal to just kill the hosts in between waves. instead of 10 hosts you will have something like 8 hosts + 2 infestors which will be really good for space control.
On September 09 2012 19:30 Juustokalle wrote: I completely agree with u Cirqueenflex. I dont know how it would work but what if swarm hosts would have energy pool and zerg could manually choose when to send locusts to the battle. For example u could save energy for 4 locust spawns so u could spawn a mass of locusts to break a siege line or defend ur base. Anyways atm its imo pretty useless unit.
ROFL, I love the people that says how Swarm Host is useless unit when it is almost overpowered. People have no clue what they are talking about. If you have 10+ Swarm Hosts, only way to counter those waves of Locusts that are doing so much damage is if you have huge army, so that they get destroyed quickly, or if you have at least 6+ Siege Tanks.
If anyone states differently, you did see good player using Swarm Hosts, simple as that. Try watching streams of Stephano, Dimaga, Ret and Sheth, to see how useless they are. Even when you first few Swarm Hosts come into play, they are though to handle because usually you don't have enough firepower to take the Locusts down before they kill some of your stuff. And they are free, so every wave, you kill the Locusts, but they take down few of your units, and that is when you have only 3-4 Swarm Hosts.
And no, they aren't as bad as Tempests in direct combat, if they have Locusts they are crazy good, if they don't, they are defenseless, unlike Tempest, that is in direct engagement low DPS units no matter how you look at it.
Seriously people, try watching some streams or test your stuff before jumping to conclusions.
+1 Swarm hosts are not meant to be burrowed and then just win/lose the game with one wave like banelings do. If you control them properly (reburrow, protect them, focus fire with locusts just to take whatever you can get), they are going to be around and do damage for a very long time.
I have to disagree with op that other siege units deal with swarm host. You need about 6 colossus to kill all or the majority of the spawned locust ( depending on how many swarm hosts you have). That is a huge investment for the protoss and you don't have that many in the midgame. So against toss you can deal damage. Siege tanks is the only things I've seen kill all spawned locusts from 15ish swarm hosts with no damage beeing dealt. However the terran had to match the swarm host count in tanks and pushing forward is volatile. You can not unsiege all tanks and go that will leave you vulnerable against the next wave of locusts.
They do give board control. Your opponent has to deal with the swarm hosts to gain that ground they are covering, in other words he must commit his main army in doing so or risk losing units for free. Unless you get caught of guard you can always retreat with your swarm hosts while the opponent is dealing with your locusts. Then burrow again and repeat. Delaying your opponent while still dealing damage and without losing much if you are good at it. Board control means that your opponent can't move freely around the map with small set of units.
I would like to see the locust attack, instead of a regular ranged attack, leap and attach themselves onto either an enemy unit or building, doing damage over time until the timer runs out or the unit dies. I think that would make it sufficiently different from broodlings to have a seperate role. It also lends itself to more of a zergy, body snatchers, alien type feel where your opponent would rather run away than deal with the locusts.
On September 09 2012 22:07 cerebralz wrote: I would like to see the locust attack, instead of a regular ranged attack, leap and attach themselves onto either an enemy unit or building, doing damage over time until the timer runs out or the unit dies. I think that would make it sufficiently different from broodlings to have a seperate role. It also lends itself to more of a zergy, body snatchers, alien type feel where your opponent would rather run away than deal with the locusts.
On September 09 2012 19:02 Charon1979 wrote: As do the swarmhosts... as you cant pool locusts so you have just one wave to tank fire for you.
You are entirely missing the point. SH costs one larva and then it can attack indefinitely. Zerglings cost a new larva each time they die. It's like saying that banelings and storm do the same thing. They are very different.
On September 09 2012 17:45 Charon1979 wrote: ...while he proceeds to kill you, as you now have useless 30 army supply hanging around. Thats not what they wanted the swarmhost fo be. They wanted a siege unit capable to push an advantage and break a bunkering enemy instead of "ohm... just expand more and kill him with broodlords". Thats not what it does.
And the Ponit here is: The opponent does not need to "go out and kill the swarmhosts" but just leave a few minor AE units behind to deal with the locusts behind your cannon/depot wall. If you are under siege by 5 Tanks, you HAVE to leave your base or the Tanks will slowly kill off your base (not to mention that you can really abuse positional play). If you are under siege from 5 Hosts it just doesnt matter as they are no thread at all.
The only MU where Swarhosts work as intended is ZvZ as there is no AE/long Range units to prevent locusts from doing some damage. And ZvZ will become swarmhost vs swarmhost.
under siege by 5 hosts, no threat? is this a joke? do you guys even play beta? swarm host is still super imbalanced, even after nerf
At this point I feel bad for anyone that lets me get up swarm host/ling/corruptor. It's such a painful, slow death.
There's a lot of gosu micro potential to crush that push, e.g., wipe out a locust wave, dart in with your fast units to snipe hosts, then back out. But it's very hard to get those kinds of timings down without extensive practice against the style.
Watch any VOD with mass SH turtle and slow creeping attack. This is ridiculous. Tehy just send endless waves of decent and free units that almost impossible to stop. Especially terrans have no answer to that except mass tanks, which is not possible.
It blows my mind that people are complaining about swarm host already. Every game I've seen where the swarm hosts decimate a protoss or terran has the protoss or terran doing some greedy economy build that the swarm host was designed to do well against.
It's a mid-game siege unit, people -_-. The whole point of the unit was to allow zerg to be able to pressure the opponent instead of being forced into a long macro game and rushing to brood lord/infestor. You have no right to complain about it if you are just going to be doing the same greedy opening.
I feel the only reasonable nerfs to the swarm host should be to cost or something, if it turns out that it's too easy for the zerg to get swarm hosts to apply heavy pressure while taking 2 additional bases and putting the opponent impossibly behind. That and maybe a reduction in how much benefit upgrades give to locusts, because its pretty hilarious that they get +2.
It's still really early guys. The swarm host was designed to significantly change the metagame.
I feel the only reasonable nerfs to the swarm host should be to cost or something, if it turns out that it's too easy for the zerg to get swarm hosts to apply heavy pressure while taking 2 additional bases and putting the opponent impossibly behind. That and maybe a reduction in how much benefit upgrades give to locusts, because its pretty hilarious that they get +2.
i see swarm hosts as something to widdle a army down or force engagements. Swarm hosts take a while to build up locust so once the locust die you can just go atk the hosts while they do nothing. What zerg should be doing is having zerglings/roachs or whatever defend them while locusts keep coming to help in a engagement or if the enemy doesn't atk then it forces them to move back.
It just might take to many swarm hosts to make them seem worth it.
I feel the only reasonable nerfs to the swarm host should be to cost or something, if it turns out that it's too easy for the zerg to get swarm hosts to apply heavy pressure while taking 2 additional bases and putting the opponent impossibly behind. That and maybe a reduction in how much benefit upgrades give to locusts, because its pretty hilarious that they get +2.
To counter Swarm Hosts Terran has Nukes (TLO mentioned this during one of his games). I have seen White-Ra beat back Locusts with mass Colossus while counter attacking with Warp Prisms, Charge-Lots, and DTs. Swarm Hosts are immobile, so the answer is to not fight the Locusts directly but circumvent them by attacking at multiple points with small mobile forces.
On September 11 2012 06:39 oogieogie wrote: i see swarm hosts as something to widdle a army down or force engagements. Swarm hosts take a while to build up locust so once the locust die you can just go atk the hosts while they do nothing. What zerg should be doing is having zerglings/roachs or whatever defend them while locusts keep coming to help in a engagement or if the enemy doesn't atk then it forces them to move back.
It just might take to many swarm hosts to make them seem worth it.
This is more or less right IMO, the problem is Swarmhost is a new unit that can be easily massed, so everyone is easily massing them and Terran and Protoss think they have to find a direct counter to Swarmhosts or lose. The problem is that you can't direct counter the Swarmhost because you can just produce Swarmhosts and Queens and be safe vs more or less everything, you have to take advantage of Swarmhost and Queen immobility and force the opponent to answer your Medivac and Warp Prism drops with Zerglings etc. And even Zerglings don't always cut it, because Terrans can drop Blue Flame Hellions and micro the drop or Protoss can drop Sentries, Force Field your ramp and then just Warpgate in Zealots or float their Mothership Core to your base at the beginning of the game and Recall into your main.
Once Terran/Protoss stop being dumb, I think Swarmhosts are going to kind of be a Lair Tech alternative to Broodlords, I pretty much Muta/Ling/Bling into Infestation Pit and Hive just so I can go Swarmhost and upgrade to 3/3 and Cracklings and build the free tech casters as needed, Greater Spire doesn't really feel necessary anymore fwiw. Swarmhosts are such a good follow up after Mutalisks, it's almost like Broodlords 200 seconds earlier.
On September 11 2012 06:39 oogieogie wrote: i see swarm hosts as something to widdle a army down or force engagements. Swarm hosts take a while to build up locust so once the locust die you can just go atk the hosts while they do nothing. What zerg should be doing is having zerglings/roachs or whatever defend them while locusts keep coming to help in a engagement or if the enemy doesn't atk then it forces them to move back.
It just might take to many swarm hosts to make them seem worth it.
This is more or less right IMO, the problem is Swarmhost is a new unit that can be easily massed, so everyone is easily massing them and Terran and Protoss think they have to find a direct counter to Swarmhosts or lose. The problem is that you can't direct counter the Swarmhost because you can just produce Swarmhosts and Queens and be safe vs more or less everything, you have to take advantage of Swarmhost and Queen immobility and force the opponent to answer your Medivac and Warp Prism drops with Zerglings etc. And even Zerglings don't always cut it, because Terrans can drop Blue Flame Hellions and micro the drop or Protoss can drop Sentries, Force Field your ramp and then just Warpgate in Zealots or float their Mothership Core to your base at the beginning of the game and Recall into your main.
Once Terran/Protoss stop being dumb, I think Swarmhosts are going to kind of be a Lair Tech alternative to Broodlords, I pretty much Muta/Ling/Bling into Infestation Pit and Hive just so I can go Swarmhost and upgrade to 3/3 and Cracklings and build the free tech casters as needed, Greater Spire doesn't really feel necessary anymore fwiw. Swarmhosts are such a good follow up after Mutalisks, it's almost like Broodlords 200 seconds earlier.
In practice, swarm hosts can't break certain compositions, e.g., a critical mass of tanks, because the AE is too great. There, you need to transition into broods to break them down. Then you can rely on swarm hosts once their numbers are down. Related, host/brood/corruptor is all kinds of silly.
On September 11 2012 06:39 oogieogie wrote: i see swarm hosts as something to widdle a army down or force engagements. Swarm hosts take a while to build up locust so once the locust die you can just go atk the hosts while they do nothing. What zerg should be doing is having zerglings/roachs or whatever defend them while locusts keep coming to help in a engagement or if the enemy doesn't atk then it forces them to move back.
It just might take to many swarm hosts to make them seem worth it.
This is more or less right IMO, the problem is Swarmhost is a new unit that can be easily massed, so everyone is easily massing them and Terran and Protoss think they have to find a direct counter to Swarmhosts or lose. The problem is that you can't direct counter the Swarmhost because you can just produce Swarmhosts and Queens and be safe vs more or less everything, you have to take advantage of Swarmhost and Queen immobility and force the opponent to answer your Medivac and Warp Prism drops with Zerglings etc. And even Zerglings don't always cut it, because Terrans can drop Blue Flame Hellions and micro the drop or Protoss can drop Sentries, Force Field your ramp and then just Warpgate in Zealots or float their Mothership Core to your base at the beginning of the game and Recall into your main.
Once Terran/Protoss stop being dumb, I think Swarmhosts are going to kind of be a Lair Tech alternative to Broodlords, I pretty much Muta/Ling/Bling into Infestation Pit and Hive just so I can go Swarmhost and upgrade to 3/3 and Cracklings and build the free tech casters as needed, Greater Spire doesn't really feel necessary anymore fwiw. Swarmhosts are such a good follow up after Mutalisks, it's almost like Broodlords 200 seconds earlier.
In practice, swarm hosts can't break certain compositions, e.g., a critical mass of tanks, because the AE is too great. There, you need to transition into broods to break them down. Then you can rely on swarm hosts once their numbers are down. Related, host/brood/corruptor is all kinds of silly.
In an idea world, Z are played to be swarmed and T/P are suppose to be played with the method explained above. But the problem lies that both High Templars and Tanks are relatively weak units. And thus in this case, making SH to be a real OP unit as it simply overrun its warpath.
they should make it so that like the locusts tunnel underground for a medium-short length, then pop up and begin charging in. then it wont betray the location of the swarm host so much.
I feel the only reasonable nerfs to the swarm host should be to cost or something, if it turns out that it's too easy for the zerg to get swarm hosts to apply heavy pressure while taking 2 additional bases and putting the opponent impossibly behind. That and maybe a reduction in how much benefit upgrades give to locusts, because its pretty hilarious that they get +2.
Heavy pressure? Really?
The pressure SHs currently apply is to contain and starve the opponent to death until he GGs out :D Just a game winning unit it is, nothing more :D
I've seen Thorzain handling swarm hosts and they didn't seem to be threatening at all. Mid-sized marine/tank armies took no damage at all from 10 or so "seiging" swarm hosts. Once a wave passes, scan, stim and move in, kill all swarm hosts, and move back or pursue even further depending on what else does Z have.
I've seen Thorzain handling swarm hosts and they didn't seem to be threatening at all. Mid-sized marine/tank armies took no damage at all from 10 or so "seiging" swarm hosts. Once a wave passes, scan, stim and move in, kill all swarm hosts, and move back or pursue even further depending on what else does Z have.
On September 12 2012 06:27 usethis2 wrote: I've seen Thorzain handling swarm hosts and they didn't seem to be threatening at all. Mid-sized marine/tank armies took no damage at all from 10 or so "seiging" swarm hosts. Once a wave passes, scan, stim and move in, kill all swarm hosts, and move back or pursue even further depending on what else does Z have.
Not a unit of 3-food worthy, I thought.
It's a positioning thing. It sounds like the zerg was too close to Thorzain's army and/or didn't have any supporting units to protect the swarm hosts between waves. Also, the locust upgrade for swarm hosts really helps as it allows zerg to position the hosts farther away to keep their opponent from sniping them in between waves.
On September 12 2012 07:19 baba1 wrote: And we had the lurker Why blizzard??? Not to mention the WH... ugh
It would be really hard to fit the lurker into SC2, which is why we don't have it.
How? We fit the freaking colossus and banelings in, but lurkers are too hard? Blizzard has all the resources you could reasonably have in this situation. It's their job to find a way to make these things work, but we get the warhound, marauder, colossus, sentry etc instead.
On September 12 2012 07:19 baba1 wrote: And we had the lurker Why blizzard??? Not to mention the WH... ugh
It would be really hard to fit the lurker into SC2, which is why we don't have it.
How? We fit the freaking colossus and banelings in, but lurkers are too hard? Blizzard has all the resources you could reasonably have in this situation. It's their job to find a way to make these things work, but we get the warhound, marauder, colossus, sentry etc instead.
Because it can't have the same role it did in bw. Zerg already has plenty of counters to mass light units in the form of banelings and infestors. Giving the lurker the same role would be too much.
If the lurker were to be introduced, it would have to function as a siege unit to break greedy turtles and/or push an advantage. This is basically what the swarm host already does. To make the lurker do this, you would have to give it enough range so that it could hit a protoss or terran wall without being able to be hit by tanks our colossi behind the wall. However, given the nature of the lurkers attack and when the unit would become available, having such a range would be really overpowered.
On September 11 2012 06:39 oogieogie wrote: i see swarm hosts as something to widdle a army down or force engagements. Swarm hosts take a while to build up locust so once the locust die you can just go atk the hosts while they do nothing. What zerg should be doing is having zerglings/roachs or whatever defend them while locusts keep coming to help in a engagement or if the enemy doesn't atk then it forces them to move back.
It just might take to many swarm hosts to make them seem worth it.
This is more or less right IMO, the problem is Swarmhost is a new unit that can be easily massed, so everyone is easily massing them and Terran and Protoss think they have to find a direct counter to Swarmhosts or lose. The problem is that you can't direct counter the Swarmhost because you can just produce Swarmhosts and Queens and be safe vs more or less everything, you have to take advantage of Swarmhost and Queen immobility and force the opponent to answer your Medivac and Warp Prism drops with Zerglings etc. And even Zerglings don't always cut it, because Terrans can drop Blue Flame Hellions and micro the drop or Protoss can drop Sentries, Force Field your ramp and then just Warpgate in Zealots or float their Mothership Core to your base at the beginning of the game and Recall into your main.
Once Terran/Protoss stop being dumb, I think Swarmhosts are going to kind of be a Lair Tech alternative to Broodlords, I pretty much Muta/Ling/Bling into Infestation Pit and Hive just so I can go Swarmhost and upgrade to 3/3 and Cracklings and build the free tech casters as needed, Greater Spire doesn't really feel necessary anymore fwiw. Swarmhosts are such a good follow up after Mutalisks, it's almost like Broodlords 200 seconds earlier.
In practice, swarm hosts can't break certain compositions, e.g., a critical mass of tanks, because the AE is too great. There, you need to transition into broods to break them down. Then you can rely on swarm hosts once their numbers are down. Related, host/brood/corruptor is all kinds of silly.
Compare the time, tech, bases and resources necessary to support Broodlords over Swarmhosts, you're producing Broodlords 200 seconds later after investing in a Spire, Greater Spire and a Hive and you're paying 100 more minerals, 150 more gas and 1 more supply on at least 1 more base for a slower unit that doesn't force detection. Swarmhosts aren't meant to be used on their own, they're meant to be used in conjunction with other units in the same way Broodlords are meant to be used with Corrupters, Infestors and Queens, when you can lay down a swarm of Lochusts to cover for Banelings or combine them with Mutalisks then you can start breaking the opponent's position. They're also incredible at distracting your opponent's siege and long range units in order to neutralize the Lochusts, which you can utilize by dropping your enemies main with Roaches and wreaking havoc on his mineral line. I can't tell you how many games have basically come down to Swarmhosts, Queens and Spine/Spore Crawlers camping outside the opponent's natural while I Roach drop his main well before a Hive could ever go online.
On September 12 2012 17:22 Cirqueenflex wrote: if you want it in a different position in the OP, just tell me
Just post before the wall of text And not need to link to me. I've just contrasted/recolored a bit, but original artwork was done by ArtMagix (link in previous post)
I find the idea of the swarm host alright, however I feel that the locusts spawned should be high-HP and low-DPS, instead of the current damage-dealing incarnation.
A tanky locust, preferably larger in size, would work better in all three matchups.
In ZvZ, the current locust will just vaporize before the mid-game roach wave before it has a chance to do damage, but a tankier one could soak up damage and make swarm hosts worth it.
In ZvP, a tankier locust could replace the roach in the role of absorbing fire while zerglings flank to deal DPS. If it is used with roaches, well, it makes no sense that the ranged unit is the tank while the melee unit is the DPS. With more life the locust could also lead in against colossus fire. It should also be larger so that other units are splashed less.
In ZvT, this change is the most important. A tougher locust could actually bear the brunt of tank fire and so serve some purpose. The current one will evaporate before Terran firepower, and vs T Zerg doesn't need more DPS anyway as lings and banelings deal plenty.
On September 12 2012 20:40 targ wrote: I find the idea of the swarm host alright, however I feel that the locusts spawned should be high-HP and low-DPS, instead of the current damage-dealing incarnation.
A tanky locust, preferably larger in size, would work better in all three matchups.
In ZvZ, the current locust will just vaporize before the mid-game roach wave before it has a chance to do damage, but a tankier one could soak up damage and make swarm hosts worth it.
In ZvP, a tankier locust could replace the roach in the role of absorbing fire while zerglings flank to deal DPS. If it is used with roaches, well, it makes no sense that the ranged unit is the tank while the melee unit is the DPS. With more life the locust could also lead in against colossus fire. It should also be larger so that other units are splashed less.
In ZvT, this change is the most important. A tougher locust could actually bear the brunt of tank fire and so serve some purpose. The current one will evaporate before Terran firepower, and vs T Zerg doesn't need more DPS anyway as lings and banelings deal plenty.
Don't know how tanky Locusts would work better with lower dps. The whole point of Swarm Host is to deal damage, at the cost of some units that tank for them. Isn't it better to sacrifice some units for others to be able to deal damage than sacrificing nothing for other units to be able to deal damage?
Don't really understand your point about ZvZ, but currently, ZvZ almost is impossible to be played without Swarm Hosts, because they deal just way too much damage, and Locusts are free, so you are trading Roaches/Lings/Infestors/Hydras for Locusts.
In ZvP again, it is better for Locusts to deal more damage while Roaches and Lings tank it, since they won't do much damage because of Colossi and Forcefields anyway.
In ZvT, Zerglings and Banelings do plenty of damage? Since when? Zerglings are mostly used to soak up the damage while Banelings destroys Marines, and nothing more. In theory, Banelings destroys everything when you have them in larger numbers, but when Terran spreads his army, you can't do much with Banelings, especially if Terran has Siege Tanks. And if Terran goes for Mech army, Lings and Banelings won't do anything. Only help there are Roaches, but then again, you don't even need Swarm Hosts for mech, Roaches are the best counter, while going for drops/Mutas/Brood Lords.
There are a lot of ways to change how the Locusts work, but I don't think that making them just tanky would be better than what we currently have.
On September 11 2012 06:39 oogieogie wrote: i see swarm hosts as something to widdle a army down or force engagements. Swarm hosts take a while to build up locust so once the locust die you can just go atk the hosts while they do nothing. What zerg should be doing is having zerglings/roachs or whatever defend them while locusts keep coming to help in a engagement or if the enemy doesn't atk then it forces them to move back.
It just might take to many swarm hosts to make them seem worth it.
This is more or less right IMO, the problem is Swarmhost is a new unit that can be easily massed, so everyone is easily massing them and Terran and Protoss think they have to find a direct counter to Swarmhosts or lose. The problem is that you can't direct counter the Swarmhost because you can just produce Swarmhosts and Queens and be safe vs more or less everything, you have to take advantage of Swarmhost and Queen immobility and force the opponent to answer your Medivac and Warp Prism drops with Zerglings etc. And even Zerglings don't always cut it, because Terrans can drop Blue Flame Hellions and micro the drop or Protoss can drop Sentries, Force Field your ramp and then just Warpgate in Zealots or float their Mothership Core to your base at the beginning of the game and Recall into your main.
Once Terran/Protoss stop being dumb, I think Swarmhosts are going to kind of be a Lair Tech alternative to Broodlords, I pretty much Muta/Ling/Bling into Infestation Pit and Hive just so I can go Swarmhost and upgrade to 3/3 and Cracklings and build the free tech casters as needed, Greater Spire doesn't really feel necessary anymore fwiw. Swarmhosts are such a good follow up after Mutalisks, it's almost like Broodlords 200 seconds earlier.
In practice, swarm hosts can't break certain compositions, e.g., a critical mass of tanks, because the AE is too great. There, you need to transition into broods to break them down. Then you can rely on swarm hosts once their numbers are down. Related, host/brood/corruptor is all kinds of silly.
Compare the time, tech, bases and resources necessary to support Broodlords over Swarmhosts, you're producing Broodlords 200 seconds later after investing in a Spire, Greater Spire and a Hive and you're paying 100 more minerals, 150 more gas and 1 more supply on at least 1 more base for a slower unit that doesn't force detection. Swarmhosts aren't meant to be used on their own, they're meant to be used in conjunction with other units in the same way Broodlords are meant to be used with Corrupters, Infestors and Queens, when you can lay down a swarm of Lochusts to cover for Banelings or combine them with Mutalisks then you can start breaking the opponent's position. They're also incredible at distracting your opponent's siege and long range units in order to neutralize the Lochusts, which you can utilize by dropping your enemies main with Roaches and wreaking havoc on his mineral line. I can't tell you how many games have basically come down to Swarmhosts, Queens and Spine/Spore Crawlers camping outside the opponent's natural while I Roach drop his main well before a Hive could ever go online.
No I agree with you. You need a supporting army for hosts like you do with broods. Broods still have their place in the match-up, mostly because they're a "better" swarm unit because their spawned units appear directly on top of their targets (in addition to dealing direct damage). But the swarm host offers a whole host of lair-level aggression, and they also have the benefits of being quicker to construct (so more sensible to reload with them) and more mobile.
Don't know how tanky Locusts would work better with lower dps. The whole point of Swarm Host is to deal damage, at the cost of some units that tank for them. Isn't it better to sacrifice some units for others to be able to deal damage than sacrificing nothing for other units to be able to deal damage?
We're saying that the point shouldn't be to deal damage. It should be to absorb damage.
And I must say that sacrificing nothing sounds a lot better than sacrificing something.
Don't really understand your point about ZvZ, but currently, ZvZ almost is impossible to be played without Swarm Hosts, because they deal just way too much damage, and Locusts are free, so you are trading Roaches/Lings/Infestors/Hydras for Locusts.
In ZvP again, it is better for Locusts to deal more damage while Roaches and Lings tank it, since they won't do much damage because of Colossi and Forcefields anyway.
In ZvT, Zerglings and Banelings do plenty of damage? Since when? Zerglings are mostly used to soak up the damage while Banelings destroys Marines, and nothing more. In theory, Banelings destroys everything when you have them in larger numbers, but when Terran spreads his army, you can't do much with Banelings, especially if Terran has Siege Tanks. And if Terran goes for Mech army, Lings and Banelings won't do anything. Only help there are Roaches, but then again, you don't even need Swarm Hosts for mech, Roaches are the best counter, while going for drops/Mutas/Brood Lords.
There are a lot of ways to change how the Locusts work, but I don't think that making them just tanky would be better than what we currently have.
You admit yourself that in ZvZ, SHs "deal just way too much damage". This is in itself a reason to lower their damage.
In ZvP, it is better for Roaches and Lings to deal damage while Locusts tank it, since they wont' do much damage because of Colossi and Forcefields anyway.
Zerglings take down tanks and even Thors pretty damn fast, if you get them close enough. Mech has armor, but they also have surface area. And the idea is that the SHs would allow them to get close enough.
So in two matchups Locusts are better served as being tanks, and in the other matchup your argument makes no sense.
I think the unit needs a energybar and with full bar it could do it 4-5times. Revert the damage nerf and put a energybar on it and you are good to go (maybe up +1 locust on each spawn too).
We're saying that the point shouldn't be to deal damage. It should be to absorb damage.
And I must say that sacrificing nothing sounds a lot better than sacrificing something.
The question is, why would you even focus the Locusts if they don't do enough damage? They would be tanky units, but they have to do something to be threatening for the enemy. I would just target down Roaches/Banelings/Zerglings and be good with it. This way, it is hard decision what to focus down, Locusts, that are free units, but are CRAZY good damage dealers, or Roaches/Lings/Banelings that there are far too many and will be able to get close if I focus down Locusts.
You admit yourself that in ZvZ, SHs "deal just way too much damage". This is in itself a reason to lower their damage.
In ZvP, it is better for Roaches and Lings to deal damage while Locusts tank it, since they wont' do much damage because of Colossi and Forcefields anyway.
Zerglings take down tanks and even Thors pretty damn fast, if you get them close enough. Mech has armor, but they also have surface area. And the idea is that the SHs would allow them to get close enough.
So in two matchups Locusts are better served as being tanks, and in the other matchup your argument makes no sense.
In ZvZ, I am not admitting they are doing too much damage, I am stating that, the guy that I quoted says that they are too weak, they die before they can do any damage, which isn't true. We are not arguing about nerfing their damage, but making them being tanky, which is retarded by itself since there are units that are made for soaking up damage in Zerg arsenal.
Did you even watch ZvP with Locusts right now? I guess not, because what you wrote is hilarious. Protoss won't waste Forcefields for Locusts, because they are free, while he will use Forcefields for Lings and Roaches, and if you make Locusts meat shield, nothing will change, since they won't do enough damage anyway, and Lings and Roaches can't touch Protoss army. The whole point of Swarm Hosts is to be able to do something with lair-tech, to destroy the turtling enemy and no, tanking won't help there. If you think that Zerg Roaches, Lings and Banelings are enough, then they wouldn't even need a new unit.
Zerglings take down Siege Tanks and Thors, yeah, the same way Marines take down whole Zerg army without Banelings and Infestors... oh wait, it isn't that easy, is it? I still didn't see a single mech army without Hellions, and 10+ Hellions(especially Battle Hellions now) make Zerglings completely useless. You can get Zerglings as close as you want when there is 15 Hellions around the Tanks, you won't do anything.
In the end, your arguments are the ones that are senseless, since you are not looking at the whole picture, but just at the part of it. Your point about Locusts being better by tanking is just a speculation, and nothing else, while we see that Locusts with 65 hp and 14 damage really are a huge threat, and pro players call them overpowered.
I imagine Lochusts will get a survivability increase and damage decrease at some point, it's pretty clear they designed the Swarmhost to produce a "meat shield" unit to provide cover for the units behind them, just watch the original Alpha videos that showed Lochusts tanking for Hydralisks etc.
The damage definitely wont stand, I think they're going to steadily nerf the damage patch by patch until they find the Goldilox point.
On September 13 2012 03:50 MoonCricket wrote: I imagine Lochusts will get a survivability increase and damage decrease at some point, it's pretty clear they designed the Swarmhost to produce a "meat shield" unit to provide cover for the units behind them, just watch the original Alpha videos that showed Lochusts tanking for Hydralisks etc.
The damage definitely wont stand, I think they're going to steadily nerf the damage patch by patch until they find the Goldilox point.
They maybe will do that, but that wasn't their intention, if it was, they would leave the Locusts as they were in the Alpha videos.(And they were also overpowered as hell there, they had 16 damage, 1.2 attack speed, were melee units, but had 110(!) hp). If they wanted to do that, they would leave them like that, they changed it because they didn't like the design, it seems.
And btw, I see you always write Lochusts. Are you doing that on purpose, or just don't know that the Locusts is the right way to call it? :D
I actually like that theres a 'borderline op' unit, gives us that BW feel where just about every unit was powerful. The more i see them fought with and against, the more i like it. I saw a cool TvZ ft drewbie playing bio and there was some really awesome army movements.
On September 12 2012 21:57 Ramiz1989 wrote: Don't know how tanky Locusts would work better with lower dps. The whole point of Swarm Host is to deal damage, at the cost of some units that tank for them. Isn't it better to sacrifice some units for others to be able to deal damage than sacrificing nothing for other units to be able to deal damage?
Don't really understand your point about ZvZ, but currently, ZvZ almost is impossible to be played without Swarm Hosts, because they deal just way too much damage, and Locusts are free, so you are trading Roaches/Lings/Infestors/Hydras for Locusts.
In ZvP again, it is better for Locusts to deal more damage while Roaches and Lings tank it, since they won't do much damage because of Colossi and Forcefields anyway.
In ZvT, Zerglings and Banelings do plenty of damage? Since when? Zerglings are mostly used to soak up the damage while Banelings destroys Marines, and nothing more. In theory, Banelings destroys everything when you have them in larger numbers, but when Terran spreads his army, you can't do much with Banelings, especially if Terran has Siege Tanks. And if Terran goes for Mech army, Lings and Banelings won't do anything. Only help there are Roaches, but then again, you don't even need Swarm Hosts for mech, Roaches are the best counter, while going for drops/Mutas/Brood Lords.
There are a lot of ways to change how the Locusts work, but I don't think that making them just tanky would be better than what we currently have.
Think of it, the current Locust makes it so that your free units deal damage while the units that cost money tank (and die) for them, after which your free units will run out of time and die anyway.
What I am proposing is that the Locust become tough but lower damage, and preferably melee range, so that the free units tank (and die), while other units such as a roach wave behind them do damage then run back when the Locusts die.
I'm imagining the Locust something like a smaller, weaker, but free Ultralisk. Maybe 150 hp, 1 armor, but same damage and attack speed as a Zergling. Hydras and roaches could then blast away behind them, then run back to the swarm host line once the locusts perish.
In Broodwar, when it came to the late game and Ultra-crackling time, the ultras didn't do much damage compared to the cracklings but they still tanked anyway. In Starcraft the tank need not do alot of damage to make the other player focus it; there are too many units on the field to focus fire anyway. All it needs to do is be leading the charge, and preferably big.
On September 13 2012 03:50 MoonCricket wrote: I imagine Lochusts will get a survivability increase and damage decrease at some point, it's pretty clear they designed the Swarmhost to produce a "meat shield" unit to provide cover for the units behind them, just watch the original Alpha videos that showed Lochusts tanking for Hydralisks etc.
The damage definitely wont stand, I think they're going to steadily nerf the damage patch by patch until they find the Goldilox point.
They maybe will do that, but that wasn't their intention, if it was, they would leave the Locusts as they were in the Alpha videos.(And they were also overpowered as hell there, they had 16 damage, 1.2 attack speed, were melee units, but had 110(!) hp). If they wanted to do that, they would leave them like that, they changed it because they didn't like the design, it seems.
And btw, I see you always write Lochusts. Are you doing that on purpose, or just don't know that the Locusts is the right way to call it? :D
It was their intention, the Swarmhost and Locusts (thank you) were meant to provide sustained pressure thru' generating waves of attacks, otherwise they would've been designed the same way they designed the Broodlord. At the moment, people are leading the attacks with units and following it up with Locusts because their DPS is overpowered, but they should be leading the attack with Locusts and following it up with units because theoretically the Locusts who die to the opponent's defenses are a 0 EV or + EV loss where the units that die to the opponent's defenses are a 0 EV, + EV or -EV loss. Sacrificing the Locusts to defend other units is less of a risk than sacrificing units to defend Locusts because they're expendable, free units that are replenished every 25 seconds, where units require larva and resources. Sending in Lochusts vs. a fortified position with unknown troop compositions and numbers is much less of a risk than sending in units, once the first Siege Tank round goes off you've spared countless Zerglings, Roahces etc.
The Swarmhosts aren't any different between the Alpha videos and the Beta from a design perspective, yes the HP, DPS, Range and Air attack may change, but these aren't design changes, they're balance chalanges where Blizzard overpowers a unit and then nerfs a unit until it finds the Goldilox Zone for what it wants the unit to do. The Swarmhost isn't the equivalent of the Siege Tank or the Colossus, which are inherently DPS units defended by your army, they're an outlast unit that defends your army, otherwise why even design them so your army can hide behind them? Broodlings aside, the closest equivalent are Infested Terrans, and given their range and nature those are very clearly a combination of tank and DPS units.
Swarmhosts are "cannon fodder" producers so you can invest your lara economically into Roaches or to a lesser extent Hydralisks instead of Zerglings, or you can use your Zerglings to morph into Banelings, counter attack, respond to drops or drop themselves without having to lead the attack into Siege Tanks that one shot them. If they were intended to be traditional siege weapons, they would've designed their "ammunition" differently to begin with.
On September 12 2012 21:57 Ramiz1989 wrote: Don't know how tanky Locusts would work better with lower dps. The whole point of Swarm Host is to deal damage, at the cost of some units that tank for them. Isn't it better to sacrifice some units for others to be able to deal damage than sacrificing nothing for other units to be able to deal damage?
Don't really understand your point about ZvZ, but currently, ZvZ almost is impossible to be played without Swarm Hosts, because they deal just way too much damage, and Locusts are free, so you are trading Roaches/Lings/Infestors/Hydras for Locusts.
In ZvP again, it is better for Locusts to deal more damage while Roaches and Lings tank it, since they won't do much damage because of Colossi and Forcefields anyway.
In ZvT, Zerglings and Banelings do plenty of damage? Since when? Zerglings are mostly used to soak up the damage while Banelings destroys Marines, and nothing more. In theory, Banelings destroys everything when you have them in larger numbers, but when Terran spreads his army, you can't do much with Banelings, especially if Terran has Siege Tanks. And if Terran goes for Mech army, Lings and Banelings won't do anything. Only help there are Roaches, but then again, you don't even need Swarm Hosts for mech, Roaches are the best counter, while going for drops/Mutas/Brood Lords.
There are a lot of ways to change how the Locusts work, but I don't think that making them just tanky would be better than what we currently have.
Think of it, the current Locust makes it so that your free units deal damage while the units that cost money tank (and die) for them, after which your free units will run out of time and die anyway.
What I am proposing is that the Locust become tough but lower damage, and preferably melee range, so that the free units tank (and die), while other units such as a roach wave behind them do damage then run back when the Locusts die.
I'm imagining the Locust something like a smaller, weaker, but free Ultralisk. Maybe 150 hp, 1 armor, but same damage and attack speed as a Zergling. Hydras and roaches could then blast away behind them, then run back to the swarm host line once the locusts perish.
In Broodwar, when it came to the late game and Ultra-crackling time, the ultras didn't do much damage compared to the cracklings but they still tanked anyway. In Starcraft the tank need not do alot of damage to make the other player focus it; there are too many units on the field to focus fire anyway. All it needs to do is be leading the charge, and preferably big.
I understand what are you trying to say, but I disagree because we already have tanking unit in Zerg arsenal before the Ultras, and those are Roaches. Roaches aren't meant to do damage, they deal 16 damage, which is great for focusing down large units, but their attack speed is 2.0, what makes them almost(if not) the worst dps units in Zerg army. They are made for soaking up the damage, the only thing why they are so good is because they are pretty cheap.
So, I think it isn't better to make 2 units quite similar. Hydras are already used with the Roaches, don't know I just think it won't work as good as you think, and that Swarm Host won't have a lot of uses with it.
On September 13 2012 16:03 MoonCricket wrote: It was their intention, the Swarmhost and Locusts (thank you) were meant to provide sustained pressure thru' generating waves of attacks, otherwise they would've been designed the same way they designed the Broodlord. At the moment, people are leading the attacks with units and following it up with Locusts because their DPS is overpowered, but they should be leading the attack with Locusts and following it up with units because theoretically the Locusts who die to the opponent's defenses are a 0 EV or + EV loss where the units that die to the opponent's defenses are a 0 EV, + EV or -EV loss. Sacrificing the Locusts to defend other units is less of a risk than sacrificing units to defend Locusts because they're expendable, free units that are replenished every 25 seconds, where units require larva and resources. Sending in Lochusts vs. a fortified position with unknown troop compositions and numbers is much less of a risk than sending in units, once the first Siege Tank round goes off you've spared countless Zerglings, Roahces etc.
The Swarmhosts aren't any different between the Alpha videos and the Beta from a design perspective, yes the HP, DPS, Range and Air attack may change, but these aren't design changes, they're balance chalanges where Blizzard overpowers a unit and then nerfs a unit until it finds the Goldilox Zone for what it wants the unit to do. The Swarmhost isn't the equivalent of the Siege Tank or the Colossus, which are inherently DPS units defended by your army, they're an outlast unit that defends your army, otherwise why even design them so your army can hide behind them? Broodlings aside, the closest equivalent are Infested Terrans, and given their range and nature those are very clearly a combination of tank and DPS units.
Swarmhosts are "cannon fodder" producers so you can invest your lara economically into Roaches or to a lesser extent Hydralisks instead of Zerglings, or you can use your Zerglings to morph into Banelings, counter attack, respond to drops or drop themselves without having to lead the attack into Siege Tanks that one shot them. If they were intended to be traditional siege weapons, they would've designed their "ammunition" differently to begin with.
I still think they are better of with dealing damage than absorbing it. The reason why the made their ammunition the way it is, is because it is unique concept, otherwise it would be the same unit Brood Lord is. And yes, the design of Swarm Host didn't change, but their purpose is when they changed the stats. They obviously want for Locusts to deal damage while you tank with Roaches and Lings and I don't see anything bad with it, and like I said, I don't see it being better when they tank damage, even for Hydralisks.
Ramiz I see your point, and I do agree that the roach is a decent tank. I did consider that earlier, however my feeling is still that a tanky locust opens up more avenues of play than a DPS one. The reason for this is that the Zerg mid-game ground army has 3 DPS units: ling, baneling and hydra, and only one tank which is the roach.
So if the locust is ranged DPS, this overlaps with the hydra's role in a way, making it less likely that the hydra will be used. As for synergy with roaches and lings, the tactic used will be simple - once the wave of locusts come out roaches and lings run in to soak damage while the locusts do their DPS.
However if they are tanky, this opens up a wider variety of tactics, hydras will have more synergy hiding behind them, roaches and lings can go for the flank better as the locusts absorb initial colossus or tank fire. Banelings can also follow behind the locust wave which soaks up the tank fire which usually withers the baneling charge.
My reasoning is that a tanky locust synergizes with all 3 DPS units, while a DPS one only synergizes with roaches, and to a lesser degree, lings.
I actually really like how the swarm host looks, it makes them stand out from the rest of the zerg army. The SH really looks unique and cool looking, like its some kind of giant mushroom mutant, while the rest of zerg just look like typical bugs.
In WOL, at a glance, the mid tier zerg army just looks like a huge blog of stuff where all the units dont really stand out from each other, but looking at any HOTS mid tier Z army just at a second glance, its extremely easy to tell that the SH is the SH, its really giving the zerg army some much needed character.
Yeah, the locusts just evaporate once toss or terran get their deathball, even the locust concept can be changed, the overall roll of the unit can be changed too, these are all balance related changes which all can be changed.
Its the graphical unit design that has really impressed me
On September 13 2012 17:41 targ wrote: Ramiz I see your point, and I do agree that the roach is a decent tank. I did consider that earlier, however my feeling is still that a tanky locust opens up more avenues of play than a DPS one. The reason for this is that the Zerg mid-game ground army has 3 DPS units: ling, baneling and hydra, and only one tank which is the roach.
So if the locust is ranged DPS, this overlaps with the hydra's role in a way, making it less likely that the hydra will be used. As for synergy with roaches and lings, the tactic used will be simple - once the wave of locusts come out roaches and lings run in to soak damage while the locusts do their DPS.
However if they are tanky, this opens up a wider variety of tactics, hydras will have more synergy hiding behind them, roaches and lings can go for the flank better as the locusts absorb initial colossus or tank fire. Banelings can also follow behind the locust wave which soaks up the tank fire which usually withers the baneling charge.
My reasoning is that a tanky locust synergizes with all 3 DPS units, while a DPS one only synergizes with roaches, and to a lesser degree, lings.
I have to disagree with your reasoning: Banelings that follow locusts doesn't sound like a too good idea, as the locusts will inevitably block the pathing of the faster units (if you have many locusts that is). Lings are great tanks (vs singlefire units). They are one of the best HP/cost units in the game. Hydras don't provide good dps. 14.5 singlefire vs everything is not good. It just doesn't suck.
Not sure if it really matters if the locusts balancing should focus more on damage or HP, as long as they have short range and sending them doesn't cost something extra, they will be used for tanking.
On September 13 2012 17:41 targ wrote: Ramiz I see your point, and I do agree that the roach is a decent tank. I did consider that earlier, however my feeling is still that a tanky locust opens up more avenues of play than a DPS one. The reason for this is that the Zerg mid-game ground army has 3 DPS units: ling, baneling and hydra, and only one tank which is the roach.
So if the locust is ranged DPS, this overlaps with the hydra's role in a way, making it less likely that the hydra will be used. As for synergy with roaches and lings, the tactic used will be simple - once the wave of locusts come out roaches and lings run in to soak damage while the locusts do their DPS.
However if they are tanky, this opens up a wider variety of tactics, hydras will have more synergy hiding behind them, roaches and lings can go for the flank better as the locusts absorb initial colossus or tank fire. Banelings can also follow behind the locust wave which soaks up the tank fire which usually withers the baneling charge.
My reasoning is that a tanky locust synergizes with all 3 DPS units, while a DPS one only synergizes with roaches, and to a lesser degree, lings.
I have to disagree with your reasoning: Banelings that follow locusts doesn't sound like a too good idea, as the locusts will inevitably block the pathing of the faster units (if you have many locusts that is). Lings are great tanks (vs singlefire units). They are one of the best HP/cost units in the game. Hydras don't provide good dps. 14.5 singlefire vs everything is not good. It just doesn't suck.
Not sure if it really matters if the locusts balancing should focus more on damage or HP, as long as they have short range and sending them doesn't cost something extra, they will be used for tanking.
Banelings that follow locusts don't get shot down at 13 range. That's the idea. Getting them to range 5 before they take even a single hit, sure sounds like a good trade for having their pathing blocked for a bit.
On September 13 2012 17:41 targ wrote: Ramiz I see your point, and I do agree that the roach is a decent tank. I did consider that earlier, however my feeling is still that a tanky locust opens up more avenues of play than a DPS one. The reason for this is that the Zerg mid-game ground army has 3 DPS units: ling, baneling and hydra, and only one tank which is the roach.
So if the locust is ranged DPS, this overlaps with the hydra's role in a way, making it less likely that the hydra will be used. As for synergy with roaches and lings, the tactic used will be simple - once the wave of locusts come out roaches and lings run in to soak damage while the locusts do their DPS.
However if they are tanky, this opens up a wider variety of tactics, hydras will have more synergy hiding behind them, roaches and lings can go for the flank better as the locusts absorb initial colossus or tank fire. Banelings can also follow behind the locust wave which soaks up the tank fire which usually withers the baneling charge.
My reasoning is that a tanky locust synergizes with all 3 DPS units, while a DPS one only synergizes with roaches, and to a lesser degree, lings.
I have to disagree with your reasoning: Banelings that follow locusts doesn't sound like a too good idea, as the locusts will inevitably block the pathing of the faster units (if you have many locusts that is). Lings are great tanks (vs singlefire units). They are one of the best HP/cost units in the game. Hydras don't provide good dps. 14.5 singlefire vs everything is not good. It just doesn't suck.
Not sure if it really matters if the locusts balancing should focus more on damage or HP, as long as they have short range and sending them doesn't cost something extra, they will be used for tanking.
Banelings that follow locusts don't get shot down at 13 range. That's the idea. Getting them to range 5 before they take even a single hit, sure sounds like a good trade for having their pathing blocked for a bit.
Well, the question is, what is better. And if the damage soaking from locusts doesn't help greatly because the locusts are in the way of banelings, I guess it is questionable whether you won't just use cheap lings that don't hinder blings at all (because they are faster than blings), instead of somewhat expensive swarm hosts.
And then add to that, that whenever you want to siege an opponent for a longer time, the last thing you want is to send in units that are dead after attacking once. You want something like hydras or probably Infestors with Fungal and IT, roaches that you can retreat and heal up - stuff you can use every locust wave again. Otherwise you would just baneling bust to begin with.
For what its worth, i think having a dozen swarm hosts parked outside your enemy base should be threatening. If they were high hp, low damage, they wouldn't be threatening, especially not to terran, who could just repair their stuff instead of deal with it.
That's why i think the current incarnation of swarm hosts is good.
On September 14 2012 01:47 Xanbatou wrote: For what its worth, i think having a dozen swarm hosts parked outside your enemy base should be threatening. If they were high hp, low damage, they wouldn't be threatening, especially not to terran, who could just repair their stuff instead of deal with it.
That's why i think the current incarnation of swarm hosts is good.
"Just repair their stuff" is a very short term solution. The locusts are going to keep coming for a longer time than you can repair the damage they do.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/aBTim.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/1/18/Swarm_Host.jpg)
). 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.
perhaps in LOTV. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ebSo7.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wX9Cy.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5WC5L.jpg)
