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I firmly believe that hydralisks hold the same role in heart of the swarm as they did in WOL. They simply have not changed as a unit and the introduction of the new features in HOTS has not given them a new role either. The speed upgrade was implemented to intentionally give hydras the ability to harass however they still melt extremely easily. The maps, atleast in the current state of the beta as well as WOL, do not allow for the style of play intended in HOTS.[The ability to run in, pick off key units, and run out unscathed.] The best use for the hydra is to provide DPS, as that is what the unit is best at doing. The problem has always been that the hydralisk has no other aspects to it that compliment this.
Look at the ZvZ matchup, basically the only MU where the hydralisk has found a consistent role. The role of the hydra in this MU is to provide dps while the complimentary roaches alongside them will provide a line of armour. The reason this is possible in ZvZ, and so consistently seen, is because this MU involves the same units on both sides. That means you won't have situations where the hydralisk can't reach its target or simply gets melted before gaining vision of what is firing at it. The range of the hydra needs to be farther and the health/armour of it would need to be significantly buffed for the hydralisk to become a, "core", unit similar to a roach or a marine.
The role of the hydra has always been based around timings. In ZvZ, the hydra is best used before your opponent has banked a large number of infestors with energy. In matches like PvZ, you typically see the hydra used in 2 base all-ins involving drop-play or nydus-play. That is because the dps of the hydra can be severely strong if your opponent doe not have the sheer numbers of units to deal with such a detrimental force. If your opponent is going for a fast oracle play in HOTS (as an example), chances are there will be a timing where a 2 base hydra attack would hard-counter his build and straight up kill him due to the investment of the oracle and lack of units to coincide with it. This is one way the hydra is used in WOL against greedy protoss builds, however it is typically executed blindly due to the lack of scouting a zerg can depend on in this portion of the game.
Nothing in HOTS actually changes the hydralisk as a unit, the speed upgrade doesn't make it a form of harassment that you can depend on. Perhaps if it was available during lair tech, it would have a better purpose and create new timings, but this is not the case. The sole purpose of the hydralisk does not coincide with the fact that it needs a speed upgrade at hive tech, in fact this upgrade to me is actually quite irrelevant but may find a place in odd late game ZvZ situations.
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Hydra s should have some form of armour upgrade like the ultra, love fighting them, love the lore, wish they were more viable so ppl would use them more
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I actually use them alot in my HOTS ladder games. Roach hydra coupled with about 10 swarm hosts, i can put pressure on the toss's front door. then i get vipers to pull in colossi. its really good actually. hydras arent going to be used as harassment, but used to add dps and to knock back air. the only reason queens are used to heavily against air is because after making hydras, they are deadweights. they don't add anything else later into the game. once you get the speed upgrade tho, they can actually move around instead of being slow. so you can open hydras against a person who goes stargate now. its rather good imo. and in zvt, roach hydra swarmhost viper is really good against mech. even without the swarmhost, its really good. adds alot of dps and with abduct and the blinding cloud, it really makes hydras much more fun.
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I think part of the problem is that they belong to their own building. Hydras are outdone by the Mutalisk in terms of harassment, although they have higher DPS. This is kind of a fair tradeoff, but Mutas come with Corruptors, which are a necessity for most Z games. Similarly, Infestors are useful for AA, although they rely on other units for DPS and are sitting ducks without energy. But Infestors require the same building that unlocks Hive tech, and now unlocks Swarm Hosts, so...
I think the tech should be switched around somehow.
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On October 08 2012 07:57 TheLunatic wrote:
Hydra s should have some form of armour upgrade like the ultra, love fighting them, love the lore, wish they were more viable so ppl would use them more
They already have 2 upgrades. They need a HP buff first and foremost. Hopefully that'll be in the first WOL-unit HOTS patch which is suppose to come within a few weeks.
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On October 08 2012 08:01 Aurrora wrote:
I actually use them alot in my HOTS ladder games. Roach hydra coupled with about 10 swarm hosts, i can put pressure on the toss's front door. then i get vipers to pull in colossi. its really good actually. hydras arent going to be used as harassment, but used to add dps and to knock back air. the only reason queens are used to heavily against air is because after making hydras, they are deadweights. they don't add anything else later into the game. once you get the speed upgrade tho, they can actually move around instead of being slow. so you can open hydras against a person who goes stargate now. its rather good imo. and in zvt, roach hydra swarmhost viper is really good against mech. even without the swarmhost, its really good. adds alot of dps and with abduct and the blinding cloud, it really makes hydras much more fun.
Perhaps the hydra gains some synergy with the new units/abilities, however I'm not sure if the metagame will allow for the unit to stay relevant. Early on in WOL we saw hydralisks all the time, but people found out they were just not practical due to cost and their lack of functionality outside specific situations. In hots, if the hydra stays as is, I think they may become irrelevant once again for basically the same reasons.
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Imo they should move speed upgrade to lair tech and change Swarm host to require hydra tech, because speed upgrade at hive tech is pointless and infestation pit is allready good enough with giving access to infestors and hive tech
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they should get a better animation (like in bw, where microing your hydra's didn't mean losing 50 percent of their dps). And perhaps bring the gas back to 25 or make them cost 1 food. If these last two don't change anything, you could do other changes.
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They have to fix its speed. I hate the different multipliers for creep.
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What if the Hydra were given the ability to cliff-climb, a la the Reaper. Would that give it that added mobility + versatility that it needs? Either innate or as a result of upgrade.
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Hydras are too big of a gas investment. maybe if they decreased that, we would see more hydras?
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On October 08 2012 08:29 MasterCynical wrote:
Hydras are too big of a gas investment. maybe if they decreased that, we would see more hydras?
I think we would see more however I still don't think that gives the hydralisk a firm role as a unit. If the gas cost of the hydra was lowered to 75 it'd basically become a second tier roach. Or maybe the roach would stay dominant, due to the glass cannon nature of the hydra. I think the hydralisk would need a series of changes to give it a core role that stays dominant in the metagame. I'm not sure if blizzard would be able to do this however, it doesn't seem like an easy task.
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the Hydra is great when paired with roaches and vipers, it's just that people really like the practicality of infestors.
also, hydras suck against AoE
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For early 2 base pressure I've found it much better to invest 200 gas in a nydus worm and some queens rather than a hydra den and 3 hydras. Queens + transfuse just have so much more durability. A range upgrade or some extra hp would be nice.
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I've found hydras to be a great late game transition, especially when focusing on the upgrades in midgame for roaches and swarm hosts. Yes, they're still glass cannons, but now at least with the speed upgrade you can get them out of fights and even do counter attacks with them in the late game.
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If Hydralisks are to be more resilient, you're going to need to drop their DPS drastically, like to BW levels.
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Yeah, if we want hydras to behave as they did in BW that requires one supply, lower cost, lower dps, lower cost of the hydralisk den, speed upgrade from lair tech, and some sort of additional utility. In BW that additional utility was in the form of a lurker, which is an essential unit in most compositions. It's obvious as to why Hydras hardly fill any role: they weren't really designed to.
So before one thinks about what changes need to be made, a clear goal needs to be set on what the Hydralisk should achieve or accomplish. In BW it was a very Bread and Butter style staple unit that filled a generic ranged shooter, and also was a tech link to Lurkers, and the only ground to air unit.
In SC2 since Hydralisks have low speed, high dps, and low HP they are pretty much only used to kill an opponent before they have units that can trade cost-efficiently. In ZvP you can do a Hydra/Ling allin, which works well until a specific tech point is reached by the Toss. The low speed means hard to retreat, and lower HP and higher cost means any commitment to Hydra tech is highly dedicated as you cannot afford to lose them (and thus must trade cost-efficiently in specialized timings).
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I'm still convinced that the best way to fix hydras would be to switch the hydra and roach, basically bringing back the BW hydra (tier 1, 75/25, 1 supply) and making the roach a more expensive, specialized tanking unit (tier 2, 100/50, 2 supply) with its old 2 armor and/or 5 hp/s automatic regeneration. The hydras would still obviously be weak to AoE, but it wouldn't be a big problem because you can now afford to throw them away, plus you just have more of them due to 1 supply.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
I've played against a handful of people trying Viper/Hydra as a composition. It semi-works, but it's difficult to use. If the protoss goes double robo or robo/storm (which they should do against this composition) either the colossus melt enough hydralisks before the they're abducted and killed so that the rest of the protoss army can win the fight, or storm (and whatever colossus shots are possible) does a lot of damage to hydras and you can overwhelm them (retreating from storm could be an option, but then any abducted colossus get away). Feedback is also very useful.
I think that we won't ever see Hydras as the mainstay of the Zerg army. Rather it will only ever be a support unit. Back in the early days of SC2 there were a lot of Roach/Hydra/Corruptor builds. They could see a resurgence now that Hydras and Vipers get a buff at Hive tech and imo roach/hydra will work a lot better than pure hydra.
On October 08 2012 12:57 -NegativeZero- wrote:
I'm still convinced that the best way to fix hydras would be to switch the hydra and roach, basically bringing back the BW hydra (tier 1, 75/25, 1 supply) and making the roach a more expensive, specialized tanking unit (tier 2, 100/50, 2 supply) with its old 2 armor and/or 5 hp/s automatic regeneration. The hydras would still obviously be weak to AoE, but it wouldn't be a big problem because you can now afford to throw them away, plus you just have more of them due to 1 supply.
Yes the hydra is an iconic unit, but does that mean it is 'broken' because it isn't like it was in BW? As I said above, the hydra is an excellent support unit that now has more staying power in ZvP because of Vipers/Speed.
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Browder mentioned the entire game was going to be rebalanced later in the beta. I suspect many attributes about many units will change, including the hydra.
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EPT
