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Whats with all the hate to the Swarm Host?
I think people are reading way too deep into it and making assumptions way too early into the beta. I mean, c'mon guys... It's the beta!
I personally love the SH, he gives me the ability to force an engagement against the Terran mech army (which is what I use it against, with roach/hydra/infestor) in the mid-game, when usually I would be condemned to take a million bases and fight with Broodlord/Infestor. I don't use him myself in zvp, as I like the Roach/Hydra/Viper in that MU. I am low mastes, just for reference.
Oh, and one more thing... I see a lot of people have said something like "It's BS that there are free units in an RTS game, like the infested terrans, broodlings and locusts" - Well this is Starcraft, it's not just any other old RTS, it is the best RTS (in my humble opinion) and I think its perfect for zerg, it gives the feel of never ending waves and swarms. How is that not zergy? Go play Red Alerts or Age of Empires if you want a safe and boring RTS, I would hate to think that Starcraft design would ever be limited by "rules of the genre". Frankly, Starcraft: Brood War and Starcraft 2 are the genre. Blizzard makes the rules, and they are damn good at it.
Wait for the beta to wind up before bitching,
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On November 29 2012 17:02 Glurkenspurk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2012 06:36 Ramiz1989 wrote:On November 29 2012 06:31 ElMeanYo wrote:
Swarm hosts are so awesome I'm surprised they going to be buffed. I just said that to counterbalance the whining in this thread :p
Whoever is saying there is no micro with swarmhosts, well sorry but you are wrong. Microed locusts do much better than un-microed ones. Burrow-spawn-unburrow is much more effective than when the swarm hosts just sit there. Timing your attacks to use locusts as meatshields requires micro. Not to mention the creep spread that has to be done for locusts to really become long-range.
I would say that hosts require just as much micro as siege tanks and even more than collosi, if you want to compare the races T2 siege units.
Of all the things to be bitching about in HOTS, swarm hosts are the very least of them. Blizz got this one right. People bitch just for the sake of bitching, they don't like the design and that is it. It is still beta, I am pretty sure that we will see a lot of great games with Swarm Hosts and Vipers when the HOTS comes out, I am 100% positive. Swarm Hosts have a lot higher micro potential than any other Siege unit, just because you can constantly move them around, burrow & unburrow, and pro players will even micro the Locusts and spread them so they take less damage from splash(Stephano already did this at the start of the Beta when he was streaming HOTS). Dude, that's exactly what you do with tanks. Except with sieging instead of burrowing. Even focus firing the tank shots takes about as much micro as moving around the locusts.
Not really. Tanks can be sieged at one place, and will constantly attack, while with Swarm Hosts, you are encouraged to burrow, spawn wave of Locusts, unburrow and reposition, since they can't do anything until they get spawn Locusts off cooldown again, and you are doing that while microing with Locusts, spreading them, and focus fire the important units such as Sentries. Don't know, it doesn't look the same as Siege Tank micro to me. I am not saying it is some ultra hard micro, but it is good that we got unit that have micro potential, and that Blizzard is forcing more micro and positional play.
On November 29 2012 18:26 Big J wrote:
Can we be honest about the OP? He has no clue about the game. Comparing SH to Lurker or BL is just bullshit, end of story.
This is true, sadly, majority of players look at Swarm Hosts the same way he is looking...
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At first I wasn't sure what to think about the Swarm Host. After about 100 games this season I can say that I've grown accustomed to it. I've had the most success with it in ZvP winning most of my games when I'm able to amass 20+ SH's. Anything much less than that and they aren't very effective IMO. I have yet to win with it yet though against Terran. Still trying to figure that one out. I have yet to use it in any ZvZ.
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On November 29 2012 18:26 Big J wrote:
Can we be honest about the OP? He has no clue about the game. Comparing SH to Lurker or BL is just bullshit, end of story.
This, why are you bringing Lurkers into this? You said that Swarm Hosts are stationary brood lords, are brood lords now somehow similar to Lurkers? Obviously not. People need to stop relating the two simply because of appearance, the only similarity between the Swarm Host and the Lurker is that they burrow before they attack. You can't siege an enemy with lurkers, they are defensive DPS dealers. If anything apart from the Brood Lord, the Swarm Host is more similar to the Tempest in the way it slowly pushes against the opponent than the Lurker. You need to think from the actual unit's functionality perspective rather than just what you see which visually makes it look kind of sort of like a lurker. Imagine the Swarm Host was a Terran Mini-factory that buried itself into the ground then sent out little robots to do its bidding, then ask yourself, how is this similar to the Lurker in any way? The reason I find this frustrating is because it lowers the level of discourse and people continue discussing what is essentially a moot point. Judge the SH on its own merit and how it relates to the current WoL units as are in HOTS, it has nothing to do with the lurker.
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I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad.
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On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad.
Why is it bad?
How do you get to the "15+" number in the first place?
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On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad.
Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker.
Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either.
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The op is right though, swarm hosts do not fill any kind of niche that the brood lord did not already fill. They can chip away from further back and are less mobile/powerful, that's about it. Maybe if the locusts themselves did aoe, this unit could be relevant in terms of positional play. Not sure how that could be balanced out though.
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On November 30 2012 02:03 TheSambassador wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad. Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker. Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either.
A Siege Tank does 50 damage with an AOE effect per shot, adding considerable firepower to any army. A single Swarm Host adds very little DPS to any given army. However, when you have a large amount of Swarm Hosts, you begin to overcome the firepower of the opposing force, and the Locusts begin doing damage instead of all dying before they do any damage. And thus you can drown an opponent in wave after wave of Locusts, as the situation snowballs.
What you are arguing is completely incorrect.
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On November 30 2012 02:20 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 02:03 TheSambassador wrote:On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad. Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker. Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either. A Siege Tank does 50 damage with an AOE effect per shot, adding considerable firepower to any army. A single Swarm Host adds very little DPS to any given army. However, when you have a large amount of Swarm Hosts, you begin to overcome the firepower of the opposing force, and the Locusts begin doing damage instead of all dying before they do any damage. And thus you can drown an opponent in wave after wave of Locusts, as the situation snowballs. What you are arguing is completely incorrect.
Yes, they work like siege tanks in a very different way. That doesn't change the fact that small numbers of siege tanks are weak (as are unprotected tanks).
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On November 30 2012 02:20 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 02:03 TheSambassador wrote:On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad. Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker. Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either. A Siege Tank does 50 damage with an AOE effect per shot, adding considerable firepower to any army. A single Swarm Host adds very little DPS to any given army. However, when you have a large amount of Swarm Hosts, you begin to overcome the firepower of the opposing force, and the Locusts begin doing damage instead of all dying before they do any damage. And thus you can drown an opponent in wave after wave of Locusts, as the situation snowballs. What you are arguing is completely incorrect.
Siege Tanks don't have really high dps (at least per cost). Yeah, they do 35+15 damage and have (a small and strongly decreasing in damage) splash radius, but that's not really interesting about having 2-3 siege tanks. What is interesting is, that they have huge range.
You deploy them, and suddenly the defender has to give up a lot of his defenders advantages (better positioning, static defenses, walls, the "I have a clock on you" etc.)
And that's actually the same effect that Swarmhosts will hopefully have at some point in a stable metagame. "Whoopsie, time to come out and play or I can kill something for free".
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On November 30 2012 02:12 Zahir wrote:
The op is right though, swarm hosts do not fill any kind of niche that the brood lord did not already fill. They can chip away from further back and are less mobile/powerful, that's about it. Maybe if the locusts themselves did aoe, this unit could be relevant in terms of positional play. Not sure how that could be balanced out though.
Brood Lords are an inferior and less dynamic unit. They have too few weaknesses, and broodlings have too many advantages. I'd rather the Swarm Host stay the same/get buffs than see it get changed for the sake of an awful unit like the Brood Lord.
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On November 30 2012 02:34 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 02:20 BronzeKnee wrote:On November 30 2012 02:03 TheSambassador wrote:On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad. Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker. Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either. A Siege Tank does 50 damage with an AOE effect per shot, adding considerable firepower to any army. A single Swarm Host adds very little DPS to any given army. However, when you have a large amount of Swarm Hosts, you begin to overcome the firepower of the opposing force, and the Locusts begin doing damage instead of all dying before they do any damage. And thus you can drown an opponent in wave after wave of Locusts, as the situation snowballs. What you are arguing is completely incorrect. Siege Tanks don't have really high dps (at least per cost). Yeah, they do 35+15 damage and have (a small and strongly decreasing in damage) splash radius, but that's not really interesting about having 2-3 siege tanks. What is interesting is, that they have huge range. You deploy them, and suddenly the defender has to give up a lot of his defenders advantages (better positioning, static defenses, walls, the "I have a clock on you" etc.) And that's actually the same effect that Swarmhosts will hopefully have at some point in a stable metagame. "Whoopsie, time to come out and play or I can kill something for free".
I would like to see seige tanks get an upgrade for faster deploy and pack-up. The weakness of that unit is that everything in the world is faster than them and they take a month to deploy. If they could pack up and get redeployed quickly, it would make the unit more useful.
Also, an upgrade for medivacs to pick up deployed tanks would be awesome. Just one at a time, but I would love to watch some pickup and drop micro with those.
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I think some of you need some clarification about the lurker.
Whenever I hear 'area control' people always think of a purely defensive unit, and the lurker was anything but. The lurker is zerg's ground-aoe unit, as the siege tank and reaver were for their races. (This is probably why blizzard always gave us the speil about baneling-lurker overlap).
The difference between the lurker and the baneling though is that the lurker is effective against basically every ground unit in brood war. This is what I also suspect blizzard went through while designing the SH is to have a lurker-type unit that is effective against a much wider berth of enemies.
But the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The lurker was a run-and-gun unit. Send in some lings to draw fire, run in lurkers and burrow, and let them rip.
The swarm host is obviously not a run and gun unit and this is what the OP is probably talking about. It doesn't have an 'instant' attack. Its 'attack' is super long range. Its 'attack cooldown' is very long as well. So its a much slower style of unit, even with locust pushing. It lacks the 'thrill' of the lurker from both an attackers and defenders point of view. Or even its appeal in and of itself.
And regarding the unit itself, its dishonest if a zerg tells you the SH is anything but a stop-gap brood lord.
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On November 30 2012 02:34 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 02:20 BronzeKnee wrote:On November 30 2012 02:03 TheSambassador wrote:On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad. Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker. Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either. A Siege Tank does 50 damage with an AOE effect per shot, adding considerable firepower to any army. A single Swarm Host adds very little DPS to any given army. However, when you have a large amount of Swarm Hosts, you begin to overcome the firepower of the opposing force, and the Locusts begin doing damage instead of all dying before they do any damage. And thus you can drown an opponent in wave after wave of Locusts, as the situation snowballs. What you are arguing is completely incorrect. Siege Tanks don't have really high dps (at least per cost).
When you add in a qualification like that, sure. But you could also say that Siege Tanks have really high dps (at least in terms of food cost). Siege Tanks have quite high DPS for their food cost.
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On November 30 2012 02:52 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 02:34 Big J wrote:On November 30 2012 02:20 BronzeKnee wrote:On November 30 2012 02:03 TheSambassador wrote:On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad. Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker. Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either. A Siege Tank does 50 damage with an AOE effect per shot, adding considerable firepower to any army. A single Swarm Host adds very little DPS to any given army. However, when you have a large amount of Swarm Hosts, you begin to overcome the firepower of the opposing force, and the Locusts begin doing damage instead of all dying before they do any damage. And thus you can drown an opponent in wave after wave of Locusts, as the situation snowballs. What you are arguing is completely incorrect. Siege Tanks don't have really high dps (at least per cost). When you add in a qualification like that, sure. But you could also say that Siege Tanks have really high dps (at least in terms of food cost). Siege Tanks have quite high DPS for their food cost.
Yeah, but the amounts we are talking means that dps/food is nearly a nonfactor. Dps/production time is maybe something I could sgree with for siege tanks, still imo its the range and burst that makes them useful in tjose situations.
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On November 30 2012 02:45 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 02:34 Big J wrote:On November 30 2012 02:20 BronzeKnee wrote:On November 30 2012 02:03 TheSambassador wrote:On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad. Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker. Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either. A Siege Tank does 50 damage with an AOE effect per shot, adding considerable firepower to any army. A single Swarm Host adds very little DPS to any given army. However, when you have a large amount of Swarm Hosts, you begin to overcome the firepower of the opposing force, and the Locusts begin doing damage instead of all dying before they do any damage. And thus you can drown an opponent in wave after wave of Locusts, as the situation snowballs. What you are arguing is completely incorrect. Siege Tanks don't have really high dps (at least per cost). Yeah, they do 35+15 damage and have (a small and strongly decreasing in damage) splash radius, but that's not really interesting about having 2-3 siege tanks. What is interesting is, that they have huge range. You deploy them, and suddenly the defender has to give up a lot of his defenders advantages (better positioning, static defenses, walls, the "I have a clock on you" etc.) And that's actually the same effect that Swarmhosts will hopefully have at some point in a stable metagame. "Whoopsie, time to come out and play or I can kill something for free". I would like to see seige tanks get an upgrade for faster deploy and pack-up. The weakness of that unit is that everything in the world is faster than them and they take a month to deploy. If they could pack up and get redeployed quickly, it would make the unit more useful. Also, an upgrade for medivacs to pick up deployed tanks would be awesome. Just one at a time, but I would love to watch some pickup and drop micro with those.
Weaknesses make units interesting. Just because it has a weakness doesn't mean that weakness should be fixed. Of course you could be of the opinion that the amount of control it exerts in Siege Mode isn't enough to compensate for the lack of mobility, but that's a different discussion.
(And in that case I would argue make it stronger in Siege Mode because just making it more mobile just makes Tank play more bland).
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On November 28 2012 19:16 Infernal_dream wrote:
The only reason lurkers were good is because of the horrid AI in sc1. In sc2 they would run all the marines right in the middle and annihilate your lurkers.
Lurkers would be ineffective if simply thrown into sc2 as it currently is. This, however, is not the reason why. Run all the marines right in the middle? wtf?
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On November 30 2012 03:02 ZjiublingZ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 02:45 Plansix wrote:On November 30 2012 02:34 Big J wrote:On November 30 2012 02:20 BronzeKnee wrote:On November 30 2012 02:03 TheSambassador wrote:On November 29 2012 22:42 Tuczniak wrote:
I like about vipers that you can make three of them and they are useful. With swarm hosts you need 15+ for them to do anything at all. That's just bad. Your conclusion is not self-evident from your premise. Requiring a lot of a unit for them to be effective is nothing new, and even your claim that you need lots of them isn't really true. Locusts are incredibly strong, and a few left burrowed near a 3rd can do some pretty good harassment work. Having just 3 SHs burrowed and sent towards a protoss army without AOE still will typically net you a free Zealot or Stalker. Siege tanks are pretty useless in small numbers too, but nobody complains about that fact either. A Siege Tank does 50 damage with an AOE effect per shot, adding considerable firepower to any army. A single Swarm Host adds very little DPS to any given army. However, when you have a large amount of Swarm Hosts, you begin to overcome the firepower of the opposing force, and the Locusts begin doing damage instead of all dying before they do any damage. And thus you can drown an opponent in wave after wave of Locusts, as the situation snowballs. What you are arguing is completely incorrect. Siege Tanks don't have really high dps (at least per cost). Yeah, they do 35+15 damage and have (a small and strongly decreasing in damage) splash radius, but that's not really interesting about having 2-3 siege tanks. What is interesting is, that they have huge range. You deploy them, and suddenly the defender has to give up a lot of his defenders advantages (better positioning, static defenses, walls, the "I have a clock on you" etc.) And that's actually the same effect that Swarmhosts will hopefully have at some point in a stable metagame. "Whoopsie, time to come out and play or I can kill something for free". I would like to see seige tanks get an upgrade for faster deploy and pack-up. The weakness of that unit is that everything in the world is faster than them and they take a month to deploy. If they could pack up and get redeployed quickly, it would make the unit more useful. Also, an upgrade for medivacs to pick up deployed tanks would be awesome. Just one at a time, but I would love to watch some pickup and drop micro with those. Weaknesses make units interesting. Just because it has a weakness doesn't mean that weakness should be fixed. Of course you could be of the opinion that the amount of control it exerts in Siege Mode isn't enough to compensate for the lack of mobility, but that's a different discussion. (And in that case I would argue make it stronger in Siege Mode because just making it more mobile just makes Tank play more bland).
I would rather a change that requires the player to make the unit better, rather than a damage/AOE increase. I don't think people would use this to "micro" tanks mid battle, but make them to they can fall back without losing every high gas unit they have. People who want "stronger” tanks that are less mobile make me suspicious.
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I hate the argument of bringing more BW units and mechanism in SC2, but yeah I'd much rather have some sort of lurker than the swarm host.
It makes for very stationary and slow play, and imo doesn't fill the role Blizzard intended it to.
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EPT
