On July 13 2012 07:05 FailCow wrote: Lurker may debatably be able to do more damage and may be more powerful but thats why it cant be added into the game.
Its a game of balance. If lurker comes in other AoE units will have to come inf or the other race. Like the reaver. The game has enough AoE, it needs different kinds of units.
the game has a lack of decent aoe. which is another reason why deathballing is so popular. If storms were to decimate your entire blob in a seconds, you wouldn't see so many deathballs.
On July 13 2012 07:05 FailCow wrote: Lurker may debatably be able to do more damage and may be more powerful but thats why it cant be added into the game.
Its a game of balance. If lurker comes in other AoE units will have to come inf or the other race. Like the reaver. The game has enough AoE, it needs different kinds of units.
Funny how I don't think the game have ENOUGH AoE around for self explanatory reasons.
Not enough AOE? Isn't that the biggest complaint Terran has had since beta? Too much Zerg/Protoss AOE? Why is this crap still being posted on anyways -_-
On July 13 2012 00:40 LeGeNDz wrote: Swarm hosts seem so useless against terrans after watching the hots beta cast with day9 the broodlings die immediately from terran firepower and yet dustin and david say swarm hosts will put on the "pressure" to a turtle terran lol? Really? When you have 20 marines and 10 marauders behind a depot wall and 15 broodlings come up the ramp the marines and marauder fire power will laugh at swarm host broodlings, its a useless unit. The other "use" for it is to Control space - how - it takes 30 seconds to spawn units that die off in 5 seconds how in comparison to the lurker is that controlling space?
swarm host is not useless. go play with them in the custom map and you can tell me if they're useless or not
I played the custom map 9 months ago when it was made - its a bit outdated now you know. Swarm hosts don't perform the same way they do in the latest build that was displayed at MLG.
This is the most recent build of hots - Go to 10 minutes 51 seconds, watch all of the damage it does to the terran expansion after it kills 1 battle hellion - you can also see at 11 minutes 13 seconds another powerful wave of locusts causing their massive damage to the terran expansion.
10 minutes 51 seconds , looks pretty useless - caster even says "its a good unit to absorb siege tank fire"
That vid makes me laugh everytime.
If this is Blizzards best shot at showing how "exciting" Hots will be, they might better not try at all.
Yeah. The whole thing sounded scripted, which is not a good thing.
As for the thread, although the lurker may be a unit which is better when compared to the swarm host in a vacuum, SC2 isn't a vacuum. The lurker, if I recall correctly, was removed because it overlapped roles with the baneling. If Blizzard just decided to throw the lurker in the game for HotS instead of the swarm host, they would:
A: Be in the same bind as they were before
B: Be adding a unit that didn't really enhance the gameplay that much
C: Ironically enough, be bashed for adding in an unoriginal unit just to appease the BW crowd
D: Be adding a unit that isn't as good as the swarm host, for the overall game
Although adding in the lurker instead of the swarm host is a great idea when you first think about it, the swarm host fulfills more roles and fills more missing niches in the zerg army than the lurker ever could.
How you came to this conclusion is beyond me.
The lurker serves in the surprise gank, detection forcing, splash damage, anti-infantry, turtling, map control, midgame siege, containment, and ramp defense roles.
The swarm host does... what, bait siege tank fire and slowly cause minimal damage when not detected?
Stop autocasting to surprise gank, forces detection like lurkers, has splash damage in the effect that it spawns more than one unit, forces terran to push slower, has map control in the same effect that you need to bring a real force to move through a portion of the map with them there, they contain int he same respect that you need certain units (detection, tanks) to move through them and ramp defense. I don't think marine hit squads are going to be running up ramps with two hosts without autocast for the locusts, but that'd just be a numbers game really.
It's completely ridiculous to assert that a few locusts constitute a surprise gank the way that high splash damage does.
Swarm hosts do not force detection, contain, or defend any area as you can simply gun down the locusts while moving past the swarm hosts (compare that to the difficulty of running past lurkers in chokes).
Spawning more than one unit is not splash damage; c'mon, are you even trying?
One lurker doesn't gank a group of marines, nor does one swarm host. You have to have multiples. I'll give you splash damage if you can't see how multiple units can attack multiple units, and you can't move past locusts in a choke easily. You do know units block eachother in this game, right?
They fufill the same roles. You're just refusing to see how the swarm host fufills those roles because it doesn't fufill them identically to the lurker.
And fyi, I'm for the lurker being included instead of the swarm host, but saying the swarm host can't fill the roles of the lurker is kinda silly because it absolutely can.
Edit; why does zerg need more splash? Fungal and banelings are handling groups of units just fine at the moment.
The issue is this. The swarm host attacks through proxy units. And it attacks every 25 fucking seconds. That means that not only are your "splash" units/wall able to be killed easily by any amount of units over 8, it means that you have a fucking long window of time where the hosts are sitting ducks.
The lurker doesn't stop attacking, and it deals enough damage to be a deterrent. That's an important difference that you fail to note. Maybe if they made the SH attack more than every 25 seconds. The real flaw with the unit is the idea of proxy units themselves. You can't make them too strong or else they become overpowered, but the result is that they are too weak to cause any realy disruption, and in high numbers you invest too much supply/money into a proxy army that can be killed easily in a straight up fight.
More than one swarm host + turn off autocast = continuous stream of locusts. If the problem is them being too vulnerable, it can be easily balanced through numbers, either by making locusts more beefy or by making the hosts more beefy. The same logic with tying up too much supply with them can be applied to any unit that isn't a very generalist unit (like seige tanks, thors or immortals), and you're assuming you're not going to have any units to back up the swarm host in a fight.
AOE is what makes deathballs so strong... Deathball was named after protoss collusus because the AOE was so strong it could obliterate your entire army without losing anything. Hence deathball.
On July 13 2012 07:05 FailCow wrote: Lurker may debatably be able to do more damage and may be more powerful but thats why it cant be added into the game.
Its a game of balance. If lurker comes in other AoE units will have to come inf or the other race. Like the reaver. The game has enough AoE, it needs different kinds of units.
the game has a lack of decent aoe. which is another reason why deathballing is so popular. If storms were to decimate your entire blob in a seconds, you wouldn't see so many deathballs.
On July 13 2012 07:49 FailCow wrote: AOE is what makes deathballs so strong... Deathball was named after protoss collusus because the AOE was so strong it could obliterate your entire army without losing anything. Hence deathball.
Deathball is a brood war term, actually, used to describe the very clumped movements of late game protoss armies that are very strong when they have the right composition.
Punishing AoE would make deathballs less used, since you would instantly lose a bunch of units if you're just clumping them up. Think about it: what about AoE would make putting your units together stronger? It doesn't make any sense. The deathball-ness of sc2 is usually because most people have one or two hotkeys for their entire army.
On July 13 2012 07:24 mrtomjones wrote: Not enough AOE? Isn't that the biggest complaint Terran has had since beta? Too much Zerg/Protoss AOE? Why is this crap still being posted on anyways -_-
bw's aoe is ten thousand times stronger. you don't see deathballs there, because a couple of templar and a reaver can defend versus literally anything.
the difference is that every noob and his grandmother can now cast ten storms across the entire screen without even thinking. Plus the fact that the pathing engine or w/e you want to call it makes everything clump up into balls which is terrible.
Do you not realize that if a couple of units can hold an entire ball of units, deathball play would get disadvantageous?
On July 13 2012 07:24 mrtomjones wrote: Not enough AOE? Isn't that the biggest complaint Terran has had since beta? Too much Zerg/Protoss AOE? Why is this crap still being posted on anyways -_-
bw's aoe is ten thousand times stronger. you don't see deathballs there, because a couple of templar and a reaver can defend versus literally anything.
the difference is that every noob and his grandmother can now cast ten storms across the entire screen without even thinking. Plus the fact that the pathing engine or w/e you want to call it makes everything clump up into balls which is terrible.
Do you not realize that if a couple of units can hold an entire ball of units, deathball play would get disadvantageous?
I think it's more of a mixture of having a 255 unit per hotkey cap and the lack of very painful AoE. On the subject of hotkeys, it wasn't really easy to ball units in BW with the unit select cap. You had to move your army in portions which, in combination with pathfinding and map structure, usually led to your armies moving in lines. You would move in a line so your army was in a concave when you engaged because of this as well. Hotkeys in SC2 could allow this, but why waste the APM on moving when you can be using it on macro?
Which brings me to the topic of punishing AoE. In TvZ, terrans tend to spread instead of balling up because they will get destroyed by banelings. In TvT, you tend to see terrans not trying to ball their units up. They typically spread their tanks and units so they don't get killed instantly. You don't see it as much in TvP, but when engagements happen players tend to spread to avoid storm and colossus splash. With terran being severely punished by AoE, it tends to make them play without deathballing.
On July 13 2012 08:10 FailCow wrote: you dont see deathballs in BW because of the pathing... lol
Sometimes you'll see clumps much more disastrous than the sequel because of it as well. When you have units moving toward exact location, they'll collide and will glitch on top of each other. lol
On July 13 2012 00:48 iky43210 wrote: [quote] swarm host is not useless. go play with them in the custom map and you can tell me if they're useless or not
I played the custom map 9 months ago when it was made - its a bit outdated now you know. Swarm hosts don't perform the same way they do in the latest build that was displayed at MLG.
This is the most recent build of hots - Go to 10 minutes 51 seconds, watch all of the damage it does to the terran expansion after it kills 1 battle hellion - you can also see at 11 minutes 13 seconds another powerful wave of locusts causing their massive damage to the terran expansion.
If this is Blizzards best shot at showing how "exciting" Hots will be, they might better not try at all.
Yeah. The whole thing sounded scripted, which is not a good thing.
As for the thread, although the lurker may be a unit which is better when compared to the swarm host in a vacuum, SC2 isn't a vacuum. The lurker, if I recall correctly, was removed because it overlapped roles with the baneling. If Blizzard just decided to throw the lurker in the game for HotS instead of the swarm host, they would:
A: Be in the same bind as they were before
B: Be adding a unit that didn't really enhance the gameplay that much
C: Ironically enough, be bashed for adding in an unoriginal unit just to appease the BW crowd
D: Be adding a unit that isn't as good as the swarm host, for the overall game
Although adding in the lurker instead of the swarm host is a great idea when you first think about it, the swarm host fulfills more roles and fills more missing niches in the zerg army than the lurker ever could.
How you came to this conclusion is beyond me.
The lurker serves in the surprise gank, detection forcing, splash damage, anti-infantry, turtling, map control, midgame siege, containment, and ramp defense roles.
The swarm host does... what, bait siege tank fire and slowly cause minimal damage when not detected?
Stop autocasting to surprise gank, forces detection like lurkers, has splash damage in the effect that it spawns more than one unit, forces terran to push slower, has map control in the same effect that you need to bring a real force to move through a portion of the map with them there, they contain int he same respect that you need certain units (detection, tanks) to move through them and ramp defense. I don't think marine hit squads are going to be running up ramps with two hosts without autocast for the locusts, but that'd just be a numbers game really.
It's completely ridiculous to assert that a few locusts constitute a surprise gank the way that high splash damage does.
Swarm hosts do not force detection, contain, or defend any area as you can simply gun down the locusts while moving past the swarm hosts (compare that to the difficulty of running past lurkers in chokes).
Spawning more than one unit is not splash damage; c'mon, are you even trying?
One lurker doesn't gank a group of marines, nor does one swarm host. You have to have multiples. I'll give you splash damage if you can't see how multiple units can attack multiple units, and you can't move past locusts in a choke easily. You do know units block eachother in this game, right?
They fufill the same roles. You're just refusing to see how the swarm host fufills those roles because it doesn't fufill them identically to the lurker.
And fyi, I'm for the lurker being included instead of the swarm host, but saying the swarm host can't fill the roles of the lurker is kinda silly because it absolutely can.
Edit; why does zerg need more splash? Fungal and banelings are handling groups of units just fine at the moment.
The issue is this. The swarm host attacks through proxy units. And it attacks every 25 fucking seconds. That means that not only are your "splash" units/wall able to be killed easily by any amount of units over 8, it means that you have a fucking long window of time where the hosts are sitting ducks.
The lurker doesn't stop attacking, and it deals enough damage to be a deterrent. That's an important difference that you fail to note. Maybe if they made the SH attack more than every 25 seconds. The real flaw with the unit is the idea of proxy units themselves. You can't make them too strong or else they become overpowered, but the result is that they are too weak to cause any realy disruption, and in high numbers you invest too much supply/money into a proxy army that can be killed easily in a straight up fight.
More than one swarm host + turn off autocast = continuous stream of locusts. If the problem is them being too vulnerable, it can be easily balanced through numbers, either by making locusts more beefy or by making the hosts more beefy. The same logic with tying up too much supply with them can be applied to any unit that isn't a very generalist unit (like seige tanks, thors or immortals), and you're assuming you're not going to have any units to back up the swarm host in a fight.
If I only send 2-4 locusts at an enemy at a time, they're all going to die. And if I get a lot of siege tanks shit is going to die. The same can't be said for swarm hosts at all. It's the concept of proxy units. Brood lord works b/c it also has an auto attack, infestor works b/c it is energy based. This is the SH's only attack and it's a fucking weak one.
On July 13 2012 07:24 mrtomjones wrote: Not enough AOE? Isn't that the biggest complaint Terran has had since beta? Too much Zerg/Protoss AOE? Why is this crap still being posted on anyways -_-
spoken like a true sc2 player.
Stronger aoe means you will less likely be to keep your army in 1 group as a few tank shots, storms, or fungals would absolutely destroy the ball in seconds. Time to split up that army in 5+groups like you should be doing.
I played the custom map 9 months ago when it was made - its a bit outdated now you know. Swarm hosts don't perform the same way they do in the latest build that was displayed at MLG.
This is the most recent build of hots - Go to 10 minutes 51 seconds, watch all of the damage it does to the terran expansion after it kills 1 battle hellion - you can also see at 11 minutes 13 seconds another powerful wave of locusts causing their massive damage to the terran expansion.
If this is Blizzards best shot at showing how "exciting" Hots will be, they might better not try at all.
Yeah. The whole thing sounded scripted, which is not a good thing.
As for the thread, although the lurker may be a unit which is better when compared to the swarm host in a vacuum, SC2 isn't a vacuum. The lurker, if I recall correctly, was removed because it overlapped roles with the baneling. If Blizzard just decided to throw the lurker in the game for HotS instead of the swarm host, they would:
A: Be in the same bind as they were before
B: Be adding a unit that didn't really enhance the gameplay that much
C: Ironically enough, be bashed for adding in an unoriginal unit just to appease the BW crowd
D: Be adding a unit that isn't as good as the swarm host, for the overall game
Although adding in the lurker instead of the swarm host is a great idea when you first think about it, the swarm host fulfills more roles and fills more missing niches in the zerg army than the lurker ever could.
How you came to this conclusion is beyond me.
The lurker serves in the surprise gank, detection forcing, splash damage, anti-infantry, turtling, map control, midgame siege, containment, and ramp defense roles.
The swarm host does... what, bait siege tank fire and slowly cause minimal damage when not detected?
Stop autocasting to surprise gank, forces detection like lurkers, has splash damage in the effect that it spawns more than one unit, forces terran to push slower, has map control in the same effect that you need to bring a real force to move through a portion of the map with them there, they contain int he same respect that you need certain units (detection, tanks) to move through them and ramp defense. I don't think marine hit squads are going to be running up ramps with two hosts without autocast for the locusts, but that'd just be a numbers game really.
It's completely ridiculous to assert that a few locusts constitute a surprise gank the way that high splash damage does.
Swarm hosts do not force detection, contain, or defend any area as you can simply gun down the locusts while moving past the swarm hosts (compare that to the difficulty of running past lurkers in chokes).
Spawning more than one unit is not splash damage; c'mon, are you even trying?
One lurker doesn't gank a group of marines, nor does one swarm host. You have to have multiples. I'll give you splash damage if you can't see how multiple units can attack multiple units, and you can't move past locusts in a choke easily. You do know units block eachother in this game, right?
They fufill the same roles. You're just refusing to see how the swarm host fufills those roles because it doesn't fufill them identically to the lurker.
And fyi, I'm for the lurker being included instead of the swarm host, but saying the swarm host can't fill the roles of the lurker is kinda silly because it absolutely can.
Edit; why does zerg need more splash? Fungal and banelings are handling groups of units just fine at the moment.
The issue is this. The swarm host attacks through proxy units. And it attacks every 25 fucking seconds. That means that not only are your "splash" units/wall able to be killed easily by any amount of units over 8, it means that you have a fucking long window of time where the hosts are sitting ducks.
The lurker doesn't stop attacking, and it deals enough damage to be a deterrent. That's an important difference that you fail to note. Maybe if they made the SH attack more than every 25 seconds. The real flaw with the unit is the idea of proxy units themselves. You can't make them too strong or else they become overpowered, but the result is that they are too weak to cause any realy disruption, and in high numbers you invest too much supply/money into a proxy army that can be killed easily in a straight up fight.
More than one swarm host + turn off autocast = continuous stream of locusts. If the problem is them being too vulnerable, it can be easily balanced through numbers, either by making locusts more beefy or by making the hosts more beefy. The same logic with tying up too much supply with them can be applied to any unit that isn't a very generalist unit (like seige tanks, thors or immortals), and you're assuming you're not going to have any units to back up the swarm host in a fight.
If I only send 2-4 locusts at an enemy at a time, they're all going to die. And if I get a lot of siege tanks shit is going to die. The same can't be said for swarm hosts at all. It's the concept of proxy units. Brood lord works b/c it also has an auto attack, infestor works b/c it is energy based. This is the SH's only attack and it's a fucking weak one.
The unit itself is also just...underwhelming.
If the units had 500 hp and three armor they wouldn't die instantly. It's a numbers game.
On July 13 2012 00:40 LeGeNDz wrote: Swarm hosts seem so useless against terrans after watching the hots beta cast with day9 the broodlings die immediately from terran firepower and yet dustin and david say swarm hosts will put on the "pressure" to a turtle terran lol? Really? When you have 20 marines and 10 marauders behind a depot wall and 15 broodlings come up the ramp the marines and marauder fire power will laugh at swarm host broodlings, its a useless unit. The other "use" for it is to Control space - how - it takes 30 seconds to spawn units that die off in 5 seconds how in comparison to the lurker is that controlling space?
swarm host is not useless. go play with them in the custom map and you can tell me if they're useless or not
I played the custom map 9 months ago when it was made - its a bit outdated now you know. Swarm hosts don't perform the same way they do in the latest build that was displayed at MLG.
This is the most recent build of hots - Go to 10 minutes 51 seconds, watch all of the damage it does to the terran expansion after it kills 1 battle hellion - you can also see at 11 minutes 13 seconds another powerful wave of locusts causing their massive damage to the terran expansion.
If this is Blizzards best shot at showing how "exciting" Hots will be, they might better not try at all.
Yeah. The whole thing sounded scripted, which is not a good thing.
As for the thread, although the lurker may be a unit which is better when compared to the swarm host in a vacuum, SC2 isn't a vacuum. The lurker, if I recall correctly, was removed because it overlapped roles with the baneling. If Blizzard just decided to throw the lurker in the game for HotS instead of the swarm host, they would:
A: Be in the same bind as they were before
B: Be adding a unit that didn't really enhance the gameplay that much
C: Ironically enough, be bashed for adding in an unoriginal unit just to appease the BW crowd
D: Be adding a unit that isn't as good as the swarm host, for the overall game
Although adding in the lurker instead of the swarm host is a great idea when you first think about it, the swarm host fulfills more roles and fills more missing niches in the zerg army than the lurker ever could.
How you came to this conclusion is beyond me.
The lurker serves in the surprise gank, detection forcing, splash damage, anti-infantry, turtling, map control, midgame siege, containment, and ramp defense roles.
The swarm host does... what, bait siege tank fire and slowly cause minimal damage when not detected?
Stop autocasting to surprise gank, forces detection like lurkers, has splash damage in the effect that it spawns more than one unit, forces terran to push slower, has map control in the same effect that you need to bring a real force to move through a portion of the map with them there, they contain int he same respect that you need certain units (detection, tanks) to move through them and ramp defense. I don't think marine hit squads are going to be running up ramps with two hosts without autocast for the locusts, but that'd just be a numbers game really.
It's completely ridiculous to assert that a few locusts constitute a surprise gank the way that high splash damage does.
Swarm hosts do not force detection, contain, or defend any area as you can simply gun down the locusts while moving past the swarm hosts (compare that to the difficulty of running past lurkers in chokes).
Spawning more than one unit is not splash damage; c'mon, are you even trying?
One lurker doesn't gank a group of marines, nor does one swarm host. You have to have multiples. I'll give you splash damage if you can't see how multiple units can attack multiple units, and you can't move past locusts in a choke easily. You do know units block eachother in this game, right?
They fufill the same roles. You're just refusing to see how the swarm host fufills those roles because it doesn't fufill them identically to the lurker.
And fyi, I'm for the lurker being included instead of the swarm host, but saying the swarm host can't fill the roles of the lurker is kinda silly because it absolutely can.
Edit; why does zerg need more splash? Fungal and banelings are handling groups of units just fine at the moment.
Wait for army to move out, burrow Lurkers at nat, run lings past and kill main. Main army tries to run-by lurkers to defend -> gets obliterated by lurkers, army kills lurkers -> too late main is already destroyed, attack natural -> takes too long to get past lurkers at enemy base.
Imagine the same thing with swarm hosts. Swarm hosts burrow, army just runs past and ignores locusts -> LOL.
EPT
