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The swarm hosts offensive capabilities look medioce at best, as the locusts are kinda slow and occupy space, therefore block your own creeps, and on top of that they are melee.
In the video there are like 4 tanks, while there are plenty more swarm hosts and they barely are able to reach the bunker.
Make it a real scenario with plenty of marines and i dont see the locusts do any damage at all.
However, lets forget about its offensive capabilities for a second and look at its defensive capabilities.
I dont see it having any use in a defensive position.
If someone pushes your base and you deploy your swarm hosts, they will send out their locusts, which will be kited until they are dead, after which you are left with a 15 second cooldown unit that occupies 4 supply worth of army (was it 4 supply? im not sure), which is 4 less supply you could have had in other units that are actually able to defend your base.
Now imagine having like 8 of these in your base as defensive units which is 32 supply.
32 supply should be able to defend something right?
I can actually see all 8 of them die to 10 marines, stim kite the locusts, stim run to the swarm hosts, kill em all.
Could 10 marines charge into 8 lurkers and hope to take them out? Underwhelming is the only word that comes to my mind regarding the swarm host.
The swarm host looks pretty weak right now and i dont see it being used in its current condition.
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On October 26 2011 03:42 Ariakan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2011 23:51 jeeeeohn wrote:
I don't think the Swarm Host is redundant, but I do agree that it doesn't feel swarmy in the slightest. Big clunky units that shoot out glorified broodlings once every 15 seconds? How worthless. A Terran will wait for them to expire, scan, then stim, then destroy them. Tada, dead Swarm Hosts. I can see their defensive potential, or maybe nydus/drop harass, but as a siege unit it's pretty terrible. Your assuming that the swarm host will be at the front by itself in a normal game, and if one does that, they are essentially sacrificing their swarm hosts, siege tanks sit near the front, "sieging" a base, but they are usually backed by some # of marines for cover, i could see these units working well with some hydra's upgraded with speed, and infestors actually, it could make for a terrifying lair tech unit composition
Terrifiyng Lair tech army who need Hive tech upgrades ... ( Hydra speed )
And with different upgrades path ( melee for locusts, range for hydra )
meh
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It is a 'siege' unit in the sense that it puts pressure on your opponent.
It is not a 'siege tank' in that it does not do massive damage to anything within its range and LoS.
I have seen someone several pages back criticising the SH on the basis that a ball of fifteen marines and a couple tanks will hold off a few SH rallying to a third or fourth base all day.
What they did not recognise is that a main purpose of the SH is to 'pin' parts of the T and P army to defense, allowing the much more mobile Z main army to attack elsewhere - or, if the opponent does take his army to break the SH siege, to backstab. Both of which are behaviours well in keeping with the 'agile' design philosophy of Z.
I would also like to draw your attention to other forms of harassment such as mutas and MM drops. In both cases, the harassed player must choose to do one of the following:
- mass static defences, in which case the harass has succeeded in diverting resources away from army value;
- leave part of the defender's army at home to keep the mineral line safe, in which case the harass has diverted resources from the player's main army;
- respond to incoming harassment fast (stalker warpins, etc), requiring a display of high-level awareness and skilful execution;
- go all-in, and hope the harasser invested too much resources in such harassment.
The SH fills a very similar role, except its harassment is siege-like in having the quality of relentlessness. Unless the defender forces back the SH (in doing so possibly exposing weaknesses elsewhere which the mobile Z army can exploit best of all races), they are forced to commit resources to defence which weakens their main army against the Z's push.
If anything, I'd call the SH's role 'siege-harass'. And I should also note that given the huge hp and damage on the Locusts, they are more slow-slow-zealots than broodlings.
The SH will also change up ZvZ midgame, as locusts will chew away at slings/banes and roaches due to their short range, and encourage more hydra usage. Especially banes. Poor army micro could mean losing a lot of banes to free units. Tactically sniping the viper's Eyestalk recipient will become more important, and tug-of-war sounds like fun for all!
Then let us look at synergies:
- Infestor FG to lock down units sent to kill SHs (while the Locusts catch up and dice - no stutter step under FG!);
- Viper 'Dark Swarm' on same units or defensive units to allow Locusts to close... slowly...;
- Locusts tanking defensive fire for speedlings or even broodlings;
- Viper 'MK scorpion pull' can yank expensive units into the path of the locusts, forcing a more active response from the opponent.
- SH drops! Two or four SH in an ovie, dropped into a base, spawning free harass (depending how long it takes for the SH to unload, burrow, spawn, unburrow and reload).
- Pre-emptively burrow an SH near the expected third and rally locusts to the third (not only giving away timing as a burrowed ling would, but putting pressure on the expo even before it's up).
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On October 26 2011 04:16 Wildflame wrote:
It is a 'siege' unit in the sense that it puts pressure on your opponent.
It is not a 'siege tank' in that it does not do massive damage to anything within its range and LoS.
I have seen someone several pages back criticising the SH on the basis that a ball of fifteen marines and a couple tanks will hold off a few SH rallying to a third or fourth base all day.
What they did not recognise is that a main purpose of the SH is to 'pin' parts of the T and P army to defense, allowing the much more mobile Z main army to attack elsewhere - or, if the opponent does take his army to break the SH siege, to backstab. Both of which are behaviours well in keeping with the 'agile' design philosophy of Z.
I would also like to draw your attention to other forms of harassment such as mutas and MM drops. In both cases, the harassed player must choose to do one of the following:
- mass static defences, in which case the harass has succeeded in diverting resources away from army value;
- leave part of the defender's army at home to keep the mineral line safe, in which case the harass has diverted resources from the player's main army;
- respond to incoming harassment fast (stalker warpins, etc), requiring a display of high-level awareness and skilful execution;
- go all-in, and hope the harasser invested too much resources in such harassment.
The SH fills a very similar role, except its harassment is siege-like in having the quality of relentlessness. Unless the defender forces back the SH (in doing so possibly exposing weaknesses elsewhere which the mobile Z army can exploit best of all races), they are forced to commit resources to defence which weakens their main army against the Z's push.
If anything, I'd call the SH's role 'siege-harass'. And I should also note that given the huge hp and damage on the Locusts, they are more slow-slow-zealots than broodlings.
The SH will also change up ZvZ midgame, as locusts will chew away at slings/banes and roaches due to their short range, and encourage more hydra usage. Especially banes. Poor army micro could mean losing a lot of banes to free units. Tactically sniping the viper's Eyestalk recipient will become more important, and tug-of-war sounds like fun for all!
Then let us look at synergies:
- Infestor FG to lock down units sent to kill SHs (while the Locusts catch up and dice - no stutter step under FG!);
- Viper 'Dark Swarm' on same units or defensive units to allow Locusts to close... slowly...;
- Locusts tanking defensive fire for speedlings or even broodlings;
- Viper 'MK scorpion pull' can yank expensive units into the path of the locusts, forcing a more active response from the opponent.
- SH drops! Two or four SH in an ovie, dropped into a base, spawning free harass (depending how long it takes for the SH to unload, burrow, spawn, unburrow and reload).
- Pre-emptively burrow an SH near the expected third and rally locusts to the third (not only giving away timing as a burrowed ling would, but putting pressure on the expo even before it's up).
The problems i see currently, is price. Gas is precious. 100 gas for a unit doing what i saw is kinda lacking. The tanks do more than just put pressure, they deal directly with the baneling problem. 8 mutas and 32 zerglings or 8 swarm hosts?? They actually have to do something when the engagement comes, otherwise really strong marine tank pushes will make it hard to use them. Mutas directly engage with the tanks, slowing the push down. I literally think that Terran could just attack into it. Everything in BW comes down to how much something costs.
I mean we need more info. But I don't like the design of this unit. You have to account that gas is the major limiting thing though.
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On October 26 2011 03:58 gh0un wrote:
The swarm hosts offensive capabilities look medioce at best, as the locusts are kinda slow and occupy space, therefore block your own creeps, and on top of that they are melee.
In the video there are like 4 tanks, while there are plenty more swarm hosts and they barely are able to reach the bunker.
Make it a real scenario with plenty of marines and i dont see the locusts do any damage at all.
However, lets forget about its offensive capabilities for a second and look at its defensive capabilities.
I dont see it having any use in a defensive position.
If someone pushes your base and you deploy your swarm hosts, they will send out their locusts, which will be kited until they are dead, after which you are left with a 15 second cooldown unit that occupies 4 supply worth of army (was it 4 supply? im not sure), which is 4 less supply you could have had in other units that are actually able to defend your base.
Now imagine having like 8 of these in your base as defensive units which is 32 supply.
32 supply should be able to defend something right?
I can actually see all 8 of them die to 10 marines, stim kite the locusts, stim run to the swarm hosts, kill em all.
Could 10 marines charge into 8 lurkers and hope to take them out? Underwhelming is the only word that comes to my mind regarding the swarm host.
The swarm host looks pretty weak right now and i dont see it being used in its current condition.
exactly my thoughts. For defense it's quite useless. You pretty much pay price of SH to get 2 temporary locusts, because battle going to be over after SH's coldown ends.
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I'm interested in trying it out. I hear it has massive range... I guess infinite range as long as the locusts are alive. I'm not sure it was displayed perfectly in the Blizzcon video... against several tanks and bunkers seems like a huge uphill battle. I guess the point was made though.
Either way, from a Zerg perspective I like them. From a non-Zerg perspective, they may be fairly annoying. Time will tell if they are a fun unit or what.
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Use it like the Goblin Tinker's Poket Factory. You need your heroes and spell casters to make it effective.
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With some tuning the swarm host could be really cool. Make the cooldown equal to the locusts' "timer" and give them a hydra-esque boost on creep (think stim/speedling fast) and you can set two SH that no one SHOULD want to attack into. This would give zerg a defenders' advantage on par with terran (at least lategame) and that means more harass/small army trades/'stretching thin' in all matchups (again, in lategame - wonderful for PvZ).
Now just replace the colossus with a good unit and there's some serious progress.
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On October 25 2011 18:25 Sated wrote:
I don't think people are realising that you can burrow them in a staggered manner so you have a constant flow of Locusts coming out of them. Once you've set up this staggered "siege", you can protect them with expendable units like Roaches whilst the Locusts deal constant damage. It's a fairly strong contain if you pay attention to it.
Imagine sending slow zealots one by one to a marine/marauder ball. That's what it sounds like to me. Rofl.
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On October 26 2011 04:55 usethis2 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 18:25 Sated wrote:
I don't think people are realising that you can burrow them in a staggered manner so you have a constant flow of Locusts coming out of them. Once you've set up this staggered "siege", you can protect them with expendable units like Roaches whilst the Locusts deal constant damage. It's a fairly strong contain if you pay attention to it.
Imagine sending slow zealots one by one to a marine/marauder ball. That's what it sounds like to me. Rofl.
exactly, sc2 is a game where attacking with few units into a lot of units means you do no damage. In video the only reason why bunkers died is because tanks done all the damage.
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On October 25 2011 22:33 FluXxxx wrote:
i just do not know why people argue about the swarm host.
the swarm host itself does absolutely nothing.
it just spawns 2 zealoty things with a 10 second timer!
it has no attack.
so just discuss how well slow zealots work against a siege line might be better.
That's exactly the impression I've got from the video. Unless you have a lot of them, it's like sending a slow zealot or two to a marine ball every 10 sec (?). It's actually comical if you think about it. ^^
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It just doesn't seem swarmy enough to me. They need to make the locusts more in number, less in health, and faster. Also it needs to spawn faster. At this point I don't see the utility of them for offense or defense. On the defense you won't need a unit like this because the opponent's army is bigger than yours and having infestors with AOE damage is going to be better. On offense they don't spawn quick enough to do anything about entrenched fortifications that don't involve siege tanks who do friendly splash. I see this having limited use in tvz and almost no use in pvz and just forget zvz.
To me this is the epitome of blizzard dumbing down the units for lower level players. To me it's basically a less micro intensive version of the lurker that doesn't do as much damage at higher levels. If this doesn't get changed it's going to be one of those units you don't see anywhere beyond platinum.
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This thing has good synergy with the new Viper's "dark swarm" ability that reduces range to one.
Imagine burrowing these things in the same situation as the demo video while simultaneously casting "dark swarm" and reducing their units ranges to 1. They have to either retreat or take the damage head-on (which is all free to you). Even if you get the marines to move back out of "dark swarm" you can move your locusts and stuff forward a bit, driving them back, or sending in lings and locusts at the same time.
They also have decent synergy with lings: send in the locusts first, which will absorb siege tank fire, and send in a wave of lings right behind them. 90 hp = 2-3 hits to kill spread-out locusts, so the tanks wont be hitting clumped up lings instead, unless the other player micros.
Or turn all your lings into banelings and use these locusts as a free meatshield.
This unit has problems, but it isn't hopeless. The biggest problem I see is that like carriers, this unit will have to be built up. One of these wont do anything, but 6 will be kind of fearsome when combined with other things.
However, unless it proves to have good synergy with lings (beyond my humble theorycrafting), it might only serve to overlap with the zerg's best mineral dump, which isnt overly useful as you need to spend those minerals anyway.
However, it could be a great way of freeing up supply, larvae and resources for other units in the mid-lategame so you dont have to rebuild lings and waste larvae. Dunno how useful that would be.
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On October 26 2011 04:59 Alpina wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 04:55 usethis2 wrote:On October 25 2011 18:25 Sated wrote:
I don't think people are realising that you can burrow them in a staggered manner so you have a constant flow of Locusts coming out of them. Once you've set up this staggered "siege", you can protect them with expendable units like Roaches whilst the Locusts deal constant damage. It's a fairly strong contain if you pay attention to it.
Imagine sending slow zealots one by one to a marine/marauder ball. That's what it sounds like to me. Rofl. exactly, sc2 is a game where attacking with few units into a lot of units means you do no damage. In video the only reason why bunkers died is because tanks done all the damage.
Doesn't friendly fire only deals 30% of the damage? In that case, 2 round of 6 tanks wave is 180 dmg friendly fire and 220 dmg from locust (not including the dead marines).
And does it really matter if the damage is from friendly fire or locus? In either case, the point of the unit is achieved
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I'm thinking drop them in a base spread them and burrow. Couldn't that be really fukin annoying? Although at first glance this unit is crap it may find it's place after a few patches, mods, bufs & nerfs ;-)
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I was kind of hoping if they gave zerg a siege unit, it'd be a baneling catapult.. kind of like a trebuchet. 
not to be I guess. I must say when I first saw it I thought it looked redundant, the speed looks from the video, like the terran can dodge the locust, scan, stim and your swarm host is dead after achieving nothing. But then, too fast and it'd be overpowered. I think it'll see a lot of changes in beta, it'll either be too easy to deal with, or be so hard to defend against.
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On October 26 2011 05:28 iky43210 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 04:59 Alpina wrote:On October 26 2011 04:55 usethis2 wrote:On October 25 2011 18:25 Sated wrote:
I don't think people are realising that you can burrow them in a staggered manner so you have a constant flow of Locusts coming out of them. Once you've set up this staggered "siege", you can protect them with expendable units like Roaches whilst the Locusts deal constant damage. It's a fairly strong contain if you pay attention to it.
Imagine sending slow zealots one by one to a marine/marauder ball. That's what it sounds like to me. Rofl. exactly, sc2 is a game where attacking with few units into a lot of units means you do no damage. In video the only reason why bunkers died is because tanks done all the damage. Doesn't friendly fire only deals 30% of the damage? In that case, 2 round of 6 tanks wave is 180 dmg friendly fire and 220 dmg from locust (not including the dead marines). And does it really matter if the damage is from friendly fire or locus? In either case, the point of the unit is achieved
No, because lots of armies don't have friendly fire
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On October 26 2011 01:27 bonifaceviii wrote:
This unit is going to be a headache for Blizzard to balance, as said before. It's either going to be OP as hell or barely useful at all.
I entirely disagree, this unit has a massive amount of things that can be tweaked about it to subtly change it's balance that it shouldn't be too hard to get it to the right balance level.
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Personally id like to see what would happen if a large amount of them were dropped in somebodys base just outside vision...
theres a whole lot of balancing blizzard need to do yet hopefully it works and is well balanced when it gets implimented but i dont think were at the point where ideas for units should be thrown out. I atleast see some possibility for this to be useful for zerg
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On October 26 2011 05:47 Archybaldie wrote:
Personally id like to see what would happen if a large amount of them were dropped in somebodys base just outside vision...
The same like when you drop a large amount of other units into someones base whiteout him noticing.
You fuck up his base until his army is there, then he will repell your forces or lose on the spot.
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EPT
