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One thing that has really frustrated me as I have watched HOTS streams is that NO ONE ever disables the autocast on the Swarm Host. The potential advantages of doing this, while requiring more micro, are tremendous.
1) Always be ready for an enemy push out:
Swarm Hosts are most vulnerable when the locusts die and this provides the enemy the possibility to make their move. By controlling when your Swarm Hosts spawn the locusts, you can effectively discourage the enemy from trying to move out to snipe the Swarm Hosts and then when you feel your Swarm Hosts are properly supported, you can begin your attack.
2) Sync up your locust spawns:
I've seen SO MANY times where pro players will burrow their swarm hosts at different times and because they leave autocast on, the locusts spawn at different times and the ability to break siege lines is great reduced. Also, you may actually want half of your swarm hosts to alternate with the other half in spawning locust. Or maybe you want to keep 3-4 swarm hosts on "reserve" in case you need to spawn a few locusts very quickly to defend your other swarm hosts that do not have any locust ready. The situation dictates what you should do but the point is: YOU HAVE CONTROL!
3) Set up traps
While this would not be near as good as lurker traps, I can foresee situations in which burrowed swarm host traps could be effective against a protoss or zerg army that does not have detection. Imagine popping 8-10 locusts right underneath a big group of sentries to snipe them as the protoss army moves out! While this is highly situational and not effective (too risky) vs Terran, it's still something to experiment with.
4) Better defend against drops
While Swarm Hosts are pretty bad at dealing with drops, having some Swarm Hosts burrowed near your mineral line with autocast off is far more effective than just having them on autocast. This way, YOU CONTROL when they spawn and can more timely deal with drops.
These are just a few scenarios in which disabling autocast can be very beneficial. It does require you to press a button to spawn the locusts, but players at a high level should have no difficulty in executing this simple micro and I hope it leads to more interesting and strategic play. Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts!
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Of course it's easier to a-move with Roaches, than to control Swarm Hosts with reburrowing and turning on/off their auto-spawn.
I hope Blizzard will not continue nerf them, because they're very cool unit, probably more fun than Brood Lords, because they're tier2 and not tier4 (Greater spire + hive)
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There's a lot of different little micro tricks that need to be figured out, in my opinion. One big notable I've noticed is the Widow Mine auto attack. MorroW is the only person I've found that turns that off and micro's the mine to target the right units. Everyone else I've seen just burrows them and forgets about them, and often times lose them to single zealots doing mine sweeping.
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On September 23 2012 23:55 Uhh Negative wrote:
3) Set up traps
While this would not be near as good as lurker traps, I can foresee situations in which burrowed swarm host traps could be effective against a protoss or zerg army that does not have detection. Imagine popping 8-10 locusts right underneath a big group of sentries to snipe them as the protoss army moves out! While this is highly situational and not effective (too risky) vs Terran, it's still something to experiment with.
I was thinking the same thing about using swarm hosts like the hold lurker back in broodwar. Locust range being 2 (I think) doesn't help much when your opponent sees them coming and retreats. If you were to wait for them to walk over your swarm hosts before the locusts pop, it would just be so much more effective.
I'd also argue that it might be a bit more effective against terran than protoss as long as you don't burrow your swarm hosts on creep (forcing T to scan). Protoss usually has an obs in front of or following their army.
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All of that is (apart form #3) being achieved by just unburrowing the hosts until the next wave is ready. Also gives you extra mobility if you want to run.
Disabeling autocast is the worse solution.
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On September 24 2012 00:16 Mirosuu wrote:
There's a lot of different little micro tricks that need to be figured out, in my opinion. One big notable I've noticed is the Widow Mine auto attack. MorroW is the only person I've found that turns that off and micro's the mine to target the right units. Everyone else I've seen just burrows them and forgets about them, and often times lose them to single zealots doing mine sweeping.
It's so funny when people try to mine sweep against people who turn off auto attack.
EDIT: Is the post above mine serious?
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Also Swarm Hosts are great with Vipers. Blinding Cloud allows to locusts shutdown siege lines, when Abducting allows to snipe Colossies with locusts
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I agree it defiantly has got some cool potential. It's the same with the Widow mine, I've only seen MorroW actually target fire with it. A Swarm host trap would be really cool!
But it's not so strange since it's beta. We'll just have to wait for a whole before seeing people utilizing the units more efficient.
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On September 24 2012 00:43 Big J wrote:
All of that is (apart form #3) being achieved by just unburrowing the hosts until the next wave is ready. Also gives you extra mobility if you want to run.
Disabeling autocast is the worse solution.
Well neither solution is being utilized.
Also, it does take more time if you need to spawn locusts to have to burrow your swarm hosts first and then pop the eggs. If they are already burrowed they have added protection of being invisible plus are ready at a moments notice to spawn locust. Unborrowing and running away is still done pretty easily as unborrowing is faster than burrowing, I think. Could be wrong on that last point.
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Completely agree, said this since the beginning as well. But i don't have beta so what should I say ^^
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Dude, all this has been posted over and over again.
Please at least use search next time before making another "wow I have an awesome idea that none of the million ppl came up with" thread ;/
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Very good points. I especially like, your "putting up traps."
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People are just a little bit lazy (+ it seems hots requires a little bit more apm than wol), this doesn't warrant a thread, you really think noone had thought about that?
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Really love the post, however I do agree with people being just too lazy to care. Would love to see Blizzard implement something where auto cast locusts takes however many seconds but manual casts takes -2 seconds or something along those lines.
As well brought up an interesting point about the traps and lurker. Yes you could set traps with SH but definitely not with anywhere near the power of what lurker had. Not saying they need to bring back lurker, just that the cool ability to set traps is a hole that could be filled. I guess burrowed banelings do that, but they removed hive-tech burrowed bane movement.
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Good points, I've thought similar as well, I think it's only a matter of time until people start using them effectively.
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On September 24 2012 03:35 ejozl wrote:
Very good points. I especially like, your "putting up traps."
i agree the more micro, the more traps, the more drama, the greater it becomes to be a spectator
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Agreed. Also Wish they'd give auto cast a key set up instead of having to right-click on the icon to maybe encourage this a bit more.. Maybe a ctrl-C button perhaps?
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
On September 26 2012 03:22 suspiria wrote:
Agreed. Also Wish they'd give auto cast a key set up instead of having to right-click on the icon to maybe encourage this a bit more.. Maybe a ctrl-C button perhaps?
Sadly that everyone is lazy to post this great suggestion to US forums
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You can toggle auto-cast with alt-<hotkey for ability>.
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On September 26 2012 04:22 Kambing wrote:
You can toggle auto-cast with alt-<hotkey for ability>.
I love you, thanks I really didn't know.
On topic: Yeah I have been doing that since the first game I used them, all your points are pretty obvious, especially without the upgrade you'd be retarded to have it on autocast.
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EPT
