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Reposting from the Battle.net forums, wanted to get some feedback into whether or not anyone else feels this is a problem.
With the addition of Viper and Swarmhost into the Zerg Tech Tree, I'm concerned there's going to be an over emphasis on the Infestation Pit and reaching the Hive by 11 minutes for what is essentially free tech. And while I appreciate the addition of both the Viper and the Swarmhost to the Zerg arsenal and feel Zerg received the best designed units in HOTS overall, the addition of these units has moved the attention away from the Spire and the Hydralisk Den to the point where I doubt Mutalisk play will be able to compete with either Swarmhost play or Infestor play in all of the match ups.
From a design standpoint, the problem is that the Zergs who build their Infestation Pit immediately after their Lair are advancing further into their tech tree than Zergs who build a Spire. While this has always been the case in terms of researching the Hive faster, now the Infestation Pit and the Hive are offering both of the two new Zerg units on top of it and Infestation Pit is threatening to surplant the validity of the Spire because Swarm Hosts and the Viper offer more units, more powerful units and more flexible units faster and teching immediately to Hive is more appealing than delaying your tech and upgrades by dropping a Spire.
Furthermore, even tho' Hydralisks have received a Hive Tech speed upgrade, there's still no reason to build Hydralisks on Lair tech with Queens being produced en mass in the TvT and to a lesser extent the TvP match up to protect against air assaults. The added benefits of receiving free Swarmhost tech with an Infestation Pit, or free Infestor tech depending on how you look at it, and receiving free Viper tech as soon as you reach Hive have essentially put the final coffin nail into the Hydralisk Den.
Disregarding the balancing of the Swarmhost and Viper, the fundamental problem with the Swarmhost and the Viper is their designation in the trech tree. In order to address this, I suggest the Swarmhost tech be moved to the Hydralisk Den and the Viper tech be moved to the Greater Spire. To me, moving the Swarmhost tech to the Hydralisk Den makes the most sense from a game design perspective, because it would encourage Zerg players to build Hydralisks Dens in order to play with Swarmhosts and the Hydralisks would be able to protect the Swarmhosts from their characteristic weakness, air attacks. This way the two units complement each other in their position in the tech tree and even if the player doesn't build Hydralisks as opposed to Swarmhost, Queen and Corrupter compositions at least Hydralisks can actually be played if the Zerg need to take advantage of a tech switch or they need to build a unit to address drops if they chose to forego Zergling speed upgrades or melee weapon upgrades.
Once the player techs to Infestation Pit and Hive, the player now has the necessary Hydralisk Den in his tech tree in order to take advantage of the Hydralisk speed upgrade and tech switch to Hydralisk once they've become fully upgraded. Furthermore, by including Swarmhosts and Hydralisk into the tech tree together, Zerg now have a clear path for maximizing the utility of the ranged weapons upgrades via. Queens, Roach Warren -> Hydralisk Den -> and finally Infestation Pit where all Zerg units with ranged attacks receive their respective upgrade. This will hopefully encourage Zerg players to depart from automatically researching melee attack upgrades and disregarding the ranged attack upgrades as only an afterthought.
If Zergs choose to tech into Spire and then Infestation Pit, they lose the utility of Swarmhosts but gain the added utility of Vipers at Greater Spire tech faster, essentially zoning the decision to tech to Swarmhosts and to tech to Vipers thru' differentiating their tech paths. If the Zerg player chooses to tech to Infestation Pit immediately, then he retains his advantage of being able to tech to Hive faster and thus tech to Ultralisk Cavern and Greater Spire tech faster so he'll be on par with Spire before Infestation Pit tech in terms of overall units but miss the Swarmhost tech and the timing window for Mutalisks in favor of a faster timing window for Greater Spires and Viper tech as well as Ultralisk Cavern tech.
As such, I feel Zergs will have more balanced, differentiated tech paths with varying timings to explore, as well as a reason to build Hydralisk Dens at Lair tech in order to actually reach their Hive tech Hydralisk upgrades and encourage ranged attack upgrades to be taken seriously as a viable upgrade from Hatchery tech. And while it's entirely possible that moving Swarmhosts to the Hydralisk Den may turn it into the "Swarmhost" Den regardless, because players will never build Hydralisks anyway, at the very least Hydralisks can still protect the Swarmhost from air instead of Corrupters or Queens when Zerg can't afford to build a Spire or they need more mobility than Queens can provide, essentially turning the Hydralisk into a reactionary unit against opponents who try to hard counter Swarmhosts with air.
The added advantage of moving Swarmhost tech to the Hydralisk Den is that it's a SC2 design nod to BW Lurkers, neatly tying in the games history to its current adaptation.
While it's not necessary to move Viper tech to the Greater Spire in order to move Swarmhost tech to the Hydralisk Den, I feel there really needs to be a reason not to tech to Hydralisk Den in order to make teching to Spire and then Infestation Pit or directly into Infestation Pit attractive. Essentially by teching into Hydralisk Den, I hope that players will either be able to rely on only Swarmhost, Hydralisk, Infestor and Ultralisk tech and be able to disregard the Greater Spire altogether or they'll receive their Greater Spire tech, Viper tech and air upgrades slower than any of the other tech paths.
If there are any critical timing windows created by the difference in Hydralisk Den and Infestation Pit build times, I'm sure increasing the build time of the Hydralisk Den wont adversely affect Zerg's ability to respond to air openings, considering no one currently responds to air openings with anything other than Queens and Spore Crawlers anyway.
While I feel as tho' Zerg still have fundamental design flaws in their lack of tier 1 upgrade tech, Burrow should really be Hatchery tech, and the failure to differentiate Zerg timing attacks, Mutalisks, Nydus Worms and drop tech do not all need to have the same timings and drop tech could afford to be reduced by 50 seconds at least, I hope that the above suggestions fix a design flaw that I feel has gone unnoticed by current beta testing. And while I don't feel the current tech tree path is necessarily overpowered as it is from a balance standpoint, it's really likely that players will just never build Hydralisk Dens even with Hive tech Hydralisk upgrades and skipping the Spire and Mutalisk timings to go straight for your Infestation Pit, faster Swarmhost tech, faster Viper tech, faster 3/3 upgrades and Adrenal Glands and faster Greater Spire or Ultralisk Cavern tech just far outweighs any harrassment you could do with Mutalisks as it is. We simply don't need such a linear tech path in order to compete with Terrans or Protoss.
Thank you for reading.
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I agree with your initial statement, the tech trees are not ideal. However, I think that if you add swarm hosts to the hydralisk den, an upgrade or something could be needed. Swarm host/hydra is a pretty strong composition (as of now) so getting both units by building a cheap den could be a bit too strong.
With the current design of the widow mine (might even get buffed), mutalisk play in zvt is almost completely ruled out.
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I suppose there are potential pitfalls by combining Swarmhosts and Hydralisks, but I'm not certain they're any worse than combining Swarmhosts and Infestors as it is. And frankly, even if it is "over powered," anything that gets people to actually play with Hydralisks should probably be welcomed at this point.
I agree the current state of Mutalisk and Zergling play is incredibly dubious at this point in the Beta, because Widow Mines destroy Mutalisks, Battle Hellions destroy Zerglings and Warhounds 2 shooting Zerglings doesn't exactly help the situation either. And while it's a tangential balance issue, it just goes to show you that Zerg's are going to take the Infestation Pit tech path that much more.
Everything in Beta is disconcerting at this point in time, but I suppose that's why it's Beta.
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I agree that the incentives aren't optimal for play variety, especially when Infestor, Hive Tech, and Swarm Host are on the same building. Since the Swarmhost is basically the spiritual successor of the Lurker, it should go on the Hydralisk Den. Now, why should that be? Because BW got it right with their decision tree, because if you decide to choose the aggressive route, it should sacrifice the tech route, and if you decide the tech route, you sacrifice the aggressive route. This would be especially helpful for ZvZ, where Swarm Hosts seem to be dominating any of the choices being made.
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I agree there is too much emphasis on infestation pit tech.
But viper on Greater Spire is horrible idea!
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Viper is a Hive Tech, without Spire or greater Spire
Spire is a harass tech and into brood lords
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On September 14 2012 05:38 Tuczniak wrote:
I agree there is too much emphasis on infestation pit tech.
But viper on Greater Spire is horrible idea!
Why do you feel Zerg should receive a free tech caster unit as soon as they upgrade to Hive? Protoss have to build Templar Archives, Terrans have to build Ghost Academies but all Zerg have to do is follow their natural tech path for a free tech caster unit? I don't think delaying the Viper 100 seconds is going to make it any less effective or appealing to tech to, I'd certainly tech to Greater Spire just for Vipers and the ability to tech switch to an air assault if necessary. I suppose Protoss get a free tech caster unit off of Cybernetics Core if you choose to look at it that way, but without Sentries Protoss can't survive the early game, I'm pretty sure Zerg can survive the late game without Vipers.
I know it sounds outlandish, but I think Swarmhosts are going to replace Broodlords as the end game unit of choice, so look at Vipers as being an added incentive to ensure a Swarmhost player actually techs to Greater Spire even if he never uses the Spire or Greater Spire to produce Mutalisks or Corrupter/Broodlords.
Plus, you know, Vipers are a flying unit and it just makes sense to me.
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I think they should have experimented a bit with mutalisk or corruptor metamorphoses. After all, mutalisks could morph into guardians which made them incredibly usefull even when their harrass faded away in zvt/zvp. And they could also morph into devourers, although not used a lot, could be useful against corsairs etc.
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I find myself disagreeing with the OP in pretty much every respect 
In WoL, Zergs ended up rushing for hive tech because they lacked units like the swarm host and viper. If you max on lings, roaches and hydra your infestor count will be low (compared to ling/infestor), your upgrades diluted, and you'll get smashed by a higher-tech Terran or Protoss force. If you go mutalisks, again everything is too late unless your mutas really slow your opponent down. Hence the rush to broodlords or ultras off the back of a gas-lean ling/infestor midgame army, to get them in time to go toe-to-toe with the enemy deathball.
In HotS, the Swarm Host and Viper make it practical for a Zerg to invest in a mid-game army without being all-in. And don't complain about the Swarm Host building from the infestation pit - this way Zergs can only research one upgrade (pathogen glands / enduring locusts) at a time.
Vipers coming from the greater spire is, I think, a terrible idea. Vipers don't synergise with spire units. They synergise with lair-tech ground armies, and - just as Broodlords are in WoL - they would be far too late to the party to be useful unless the Zerg rushed hive - which as we already know means going ling/infestor, an army the Viper doesn't synergise with either.
TL;DR: Zerg's dead-end midgame in WoL is what made them rush headlong for Hive units. The Swarm Host and Viper, placed where they are in the tech tree, make it viable to play a lair-tech-heavy midgame and transition at a later stage.
Plus, you know, Vipers are a flying unit and it just makes sense to me.
Warp Prism, anyone?
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On September 14 2012 05:49 MoonCricket wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2012 05:38 Tuczniak wrote:
I agree there is too much emphasis on infestation pit tech.
But viper on Greater Spire is horrible idea! Why do you feel Zerg should receive a free tech caster unit as soon as they upgrade to Hive? Protoss have to build Templar Archives, Terrans have to build Ghost Academies but all Zerg have to do is follow their natural tech path for a free tech caster unit? I don't think delaying the Viper 100 seconds is going to make it any less effective or appealing to tech to, I'd certainly tech to Greater Spire just for Vipers and the ability to tech switch to an air assault if necessary. I suppose Protoss get a free tech caster unit off of Cybernetics Core if you choose to look at it that way, but without Sentries Protoss can't survive the early game, I'm pretty sure Zerg can survive the late game without Vipers. I know it sounds outlandish, but I think Swarmhosts are going to replace Broodlords as the end game unit of choice, so look at Vipers as being an added incentive to ensure a Swarmhost player actually techs to Greater Spire even if he never uses the Spire or Greater Spire to produce Mutalisks or Corrupter/Broodlords. Plus, you know, Vipers are a flying unit and it just makes sense to me. Just balance it around midgame. Let it be on hive or spire at lair tech. I don't want to see more pvz games when Z turtles until greater spire and than makes units. Viper has good synergy with lower tier units like roach/ling or roach/hydra. Putting it as far as possible on tech tree seems counter-intuitive.
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Swarm host on infestation seem too strong when strats and pros get better. The only vulnerability with current tech tree seem to be lack of anti-air, when you are aggressive.
Greater spire for viper I don't like. You could go around and make consume an upgrade at hive tech or something like that. Then zerg would have to wait before the vipers can cast spells, or wait for consume to finish.
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On September 14 2012 06:16 Umpteen wrote:I find myself disagreeing with the OP in pretty much every respect In WoL, Zergs ended up rushing for hive tech because they lacked units like the swarm host and viper. If you max on lings, roaches and hydra your infestor count will be low (compared to ling/infestor), your upgrades diluted, and you'll get smashed by a higher-tech Terran or Protoss force. If you go mutalisks, again everything is too late unless your mutas really slow your opponent down. Hence the rush to broodlords or ultras off the back of a gas-lean ling/infestor midgame army, to get them in time to go toe-to-toe with the enemy deathball. In HotS, the Swarm Host and Viper make it practical for a Zerg to invest in a mid-game army without being all-in. And don't complain about the Swarm Host building from the infestation pit - this way Zergs can only research one upgrade (pathogen glands / enduring locusts) at a time. Vipers coming from the greater spire is, I think, a terrible idea. Vipers don't synergise with spire units. They synergise with lair-tech ground armies, and - just as Broodlords are in WoL - they would be far too late to the party to be useful unless the Zerg rushed hive - which as we already know means going ling/infestor, an army the Viper doesn't synergise with either. TL;DR: Zerg's dead-end midgame in WoL is what made them rush headlong for Hive units. The Swarm Host and Viper, placed where they are in the tech tree, make it viable to play a lair-tech-heavy midgame and transition at a later stage. Warp Prism, anyone?
Please, explain to me why I should ever build a Hydralisk Den, or explain to me why I should build a Spire before an Infestation Pit when Mutalisks are hard countered by Widow Mines and Infestation Pit gives me twice as many units to choose from, Corrupters don't count, and my Viper tech and upgrade tech quicker? There's no reason to build anything but Infestation Pit as things are, and even if you disagree with the position of the Viper in the tech tree at Greater Spire tech, I think it's pretty clear that Zerg's Lair tech trees are far too weighted towards the Infestation Pit.
If the position of the Viper in the tech tree at Greater Spire tech is a problem, perhaps there is a compromise where Vipers require a Spire and Hive tech instead of Greater Spire tech so a Swarmhost player has to at least build a Spire as soon as he upgrades his Lair to Hive for Vipers and thus will have an incentive to continue upgrading his Spire to a Greater Spire since it's already been built?
I don't know about you, but I'm currently not building Spires at all in HOTS, I'm just winning my games with Queens, Zerglings, Roaches, Swarmhosts, Infestors, Vipers and drop tech in most of my matches, and there's something seriously wrong with that. And you're definitely wrong if you think Vipers don't work with Zergling armies, because they pretty much work with any army and I've had quite a bit of success with Muta/Ling/Bling and drop tech into Infestors, Vipers and Greater Spire vs. Protoss.
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On September 14 2012 05:38 Tuczniak wrote:
I agree there is too much emphasis on infestation pit tech.
But viper on Greater Spire is horrible idea!
basically this. vipers on greater spire are really horrible since zerg would have to go spine infestor again or die vs collossi pushes. AND there is no need to go viper if you can go BLs at that time anyways. viper is that "early" to counter things like colossi all ins and not needing 1000 spines and infestors so it will make for a much more dynamic gameplay.
btw how many hitpoints do viper have?
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Viper needs come from Spire (not Greater Spire neither Hive). It's a flying unit, and it's cleary a T2.5 unit, not a T3 unit.
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On the other hand zerg already has the longest time to reach T3, and also the most fragile infrastructure to get T3.
The stronger midgame will also slow down zerg T3.
Building the infestor den also doesn't provide solid AA by itself.
But yeah, swarmhosts should get their own den.
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I really think the swarm host should require a building. It's certainly more interesting as an observer when you can go "ooooohh, he's getting swarm hosts!!"
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On September 14 2012 06:37 MoonCricket wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2012 06:16 Umpteen wrote:I find myself disagreeing with the OP in pretty much every respect In WoL, Zergs ended up rushing for hive tech because they lacked units like the swarm host and viper. If you max on lings, roaches and hydra your infestor count will be low (compared to ling/infestor), your upgrades diluted, and you'll get smashed by a higher-tech Terran or Protoss force. If you go mutalisks, again everything is too late unless your mutas really slow your opponent down. Hence the rush to broodlords or ultras off the back of a gas-lean ling/infestor midgame army, to get them in time to go toe-to-toe with the enemy deathball. In HotS, the Swarm Host and Viper make it practical for a Zerg to invest in a mid-game army without being all-in. And don't complain about the Swarm Host building from the infestation pit - this way Zergs can only research one upgrade (pathogen glands / enduring locusts) at a time. Vipers coming from the greater spire is, I think, a terrible idea. Vipers don't synergise with spire units. They synergise with lair-tech ground armies, and - just as Broodlords are in WoL - they would be far too late to the party to be useful unless the Zerg rushed hive - which as we already know means going ling/infestor, an army the Viper doesn't synergise with either. TL;DR: Zerg's dead-end midgame in WoL is what made them rush headlong for Hive units. The Swarm Host and Viper, placed where they are in the tech tree, make it viable to play a lair-tech-heavy midgame and transition at a later stage. Plus, you know, Vipers are a flying unit and it just makes sense to me. Warp Prism, anyone? Please, explain to me why I should ever build a Hydralisk Den, or explain to me why I should build a Spire before an Infestation Pit when Mutalisks are hard countered by Widow Mines and Infestation Pit gives me twice as many units to choose from, Corrupters don't count, and my Viper tech and upgrade tech quicker? There's no reason to build anything but Infestation Pit as things are, and even if you disagree with the position of the Viper in the tech tree at Greater Spire tech, I think it's pretty clear that Zerg's Lair tech trees are far too weighted towards the Infestation Pit. If the position of the Viper in the tech tree at Greater Spire tech is a problem, perhaps there is a compromise where Vipers require a Spire and Hive tech instead of Greater Spire tech so a Swarmhost player has to at least build a Spire as soon as he upgrades his Lair to Hive for Vipers and thus will have an incentive to continue upgrading his Spire to a Greater Spire since it's already been built? I don't know about you, but I'm currently not building Spires at all in HOTS, I'm just winning my games with Queens, Zerglings, Roaches, Swarmhosts, Infestors, Vipers and drop tech in most of my matches, and there's something seriously wrong with that. And you're definitely wrong if you think Vipers don't work with Zergling armies, because they pretty much work with any army and I've had quite a bit of success with Muta/Ling/Bling and drop tech into Infestors, Vipers and Greater Spire vs. Protoss.
People aren't experimenting with mutalisks too much as they don't have good synergy with swarm hosts. That's no reason to make rash changes, I honestly think the community is way too eager to wish for: underused unit -> buff unit. Often they're just underused because people haven't found strategies for them yet, not because they're too weak.
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On September 14 2012 06:39 ZeroClick wrote:
Viper needs come from Spire (not Greater Spire neither Hive). It's a flying unit, and it's cleary a T2.5 unit, not a T3 unit.
Yeah, I think I agree with this now that I've thought about it a bit longer, requiring a Spire and Hive tech instead of Greater Spire tech basically accomplishes exactly what I wanted to accomplish before by requiring Zerg to actually build a Spire, because once you've built the Spire for the Viper you really have no reason not to upgrade it to a Greater Spire at some point.
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Funny idea: Swarm Hosts requires Nydus Networks due the underground nature of the Swarm Hosts. In the end, it can be an incentive to use more Nydus Worms (in sinergy with Swarm Hosts), and to ease the fact of HotS doesn't comes with the Nydus Worms buffs... 
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On September 14 2012 06:02 wcr.4fun wrote:
I think they should have experimented a bit with mutalisk or corruptor metamorphoses. After all, mutalisks could morph into guardians which made them incredibly usefull even when their harrass faded away in zvt/zvp. And they could also morph into devourers, although not used a lot, could be useful against corsairs etc.
I agree. IMHO, with Spire we can create Mutalisks. Then...
1) You can directly morph it to Corruptors;
2) With Hive tech, morph it to Vipers;
3) With Greater Spire tech, morph it to Brood Lords;
Best Sinergy AND it will honor the MUTA in the name Mutalisks.
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EPT
