Blizzard's thoughts on Swarm Hosts

While testing the recent Brood Lord changes, we realized we’re nearly ready to release the balance update.

We’d like to adjust Terran as soon as possible, and we feel comfortable with the previously-proposed Hellbat/Hellion transformation changes. We’ve carefully listened to every top player that was willing to consult us on this, and found the at-large community response to this change extremely positive. It’s also clear that Terran needs to slow down Zerg economy in the mid-game, in order to better compete throughout the course of the game.

Regarding these quick-turnaround Brood Lord changes:
1. This is a very strategic change that is intended to only affect the ZvZ late game.
2. We agree with player feedback that this will prevent Brood Lords from being taken out by primarily base defenses.
3. Only a handful of players around the world are playing at the level this change addresses, so we don’t see a strong case for extensively public-testing it.

Overall, we believe this is one of those times when we need to move quickly, and we’re looking to release this balance patch as soon as possible.

Thank you very much! Please feel free to raise any concerns (based on your experience in the balance test map) here.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your feedback and continued help with the current balance test map changes. After further evaluation and discussion, we’re leaning towards testing ZvZ changes that will strictly focus on the late game.

Therefore, we’d like to try these two changes instead of the current Spore and Hydralisk changes.

- Broodlord gains the Frenzy ability.
- Frenzy is changed to also be immune to movement altering abilities.

With these newly proposed changes, the ZvZ match-up can remain the same as it is now, while also providing a clear counter to the rare Swarm Host stalemate games. Please let us know your thoughts regarding these changes, and we’ll move from there.

Thank you.

We’ve recently published a new version of the Balance Test Map to the StarCraft II Custom Games list titled " MerryGoRoundLE (2.1.1 Balance v1.1)" in order to test a couple of Zerg changes alongside the existing Terran balance tweaks. This version of the map will be testing the following changes:

Terran
Removed Transformation Servos upgrade
Changed Hellion/Hellbat transform requirement to Armory

Zerg
Spore Crawler damage decreased from 15 + 30 vs biological to 15 + 10 vs biological
Hydralisk damage against air increased from 12 to 12 + 4 vs biological

While we previously announced our plans to decrease Spore Crawler damage to 15 + 15 vs biological, we’ve decided to test out 15 + 10 vs biological instead. This new value further reduces the Spore Crawler’s effectiveness against Brood Lords while leaving its power against Mutalisks unchanged.

We'd encourage everyone to jump into Battle.net and check out the new changes! Once you feel you've had enough time to test the changes thoroughly, we'd love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to use this thread to post any feedback you have on these changes.

If you're interested in the StarCraft II Balance Team's reasoning behind each change, you can check out David Kim's recent forum posts on both the Terran and Zerg changes.

Thank you for your feedback everyone. After evaluating your feedback and discussing this subject more in detail, we’re currently thinking of adding these two changes to the balance test map (and extension mod):

- Spore Crawler damage decreased from 15+30bio to 15+15bio
- Hydralisk damage against air increased from 12 to 12+4bio

Please focus further discussion around the above adjustments only, and again, thank you very much.

We wanted to share our thoughts and start a discussion about the Swarm Host because, like many of you, we were watching along on Saturday during Lone Star Clash 3 where there was an abnormally long ZvZ stalemate game. The potential for such with Swarm Hosts has been a consistent topic of conversation, and I assure you we’ve heard what you had to say about it. We don’t feel this type of play is healthy for the game or exciting for spectators.

Over the last few months, we’ve been internally playtesting a variety of design changes to the Swarm Host. We’ve come to believe that, in the long term, a change to overall Swarm Host design could be a good thing, but in the short term, we’d prefer to not disrupt the interesting non-stalemate Swarm Host play we currently see. Therefore, we don’t believe in removing the unit or completely redesigning to it at this time. Drastic changes to the way the Swarm Host currently works could affect the game negatively, as the unit plays a key role in various matchups.

We’ve also regularly seen feedback from players who want fewer balance changes and more time for strategies to adapt to playstyles like this one. We definitely respect that opinion, but with issues like this, we do more than just listen.

Here are the main thoughts we’re working from:

1. Of course, we don't want there to ever be 1+ hour long games that are nothing except Locusts vs. Locusts.

2. We’ve only seen this a handful of times at the highest level of play.

3. As we look down the ladder, we don’t see a significant percentage of games that last more than 25 minutes, especially in the leagues below Master.

4. This playstyle is clearly not a requirement in ZvZ, and that raises questions:
-1. How much do we risk negatively impacting Zerg styles and strategies (that are also fun and entertaining to watch)?
-2. Are we seeing any shift (even a very slow shift) in how players answer this playstyle?
-3. How do potential changes to the unit play out?

5. Because ZvZ is a mirror matchup, it doesn’t impact balance. That means we can target any changes we might make the way we did with the Spore Crawler vs. Mutalisks.

At this point, we’re taking public our discussion about finding the best adjustments that address the issue without affecting the ZvP and ZvT matchups in negative ways.

We’re thinking along these lines:

- Revert spore buff and buff hydralisk anti-air vs. biological units only.
o With this, even if Broodlords are Abducted by Vipers, they would still be great against base Defenses.
o The Mutalisk strength in ZvZ could possibly be countered a bit better by Hydralisks.
o The effect on ZvZ would be acceptable, and the potential effects on ZvP and ZvT are minor.

- Change the Viper’s Abduct ability to make massive units immune to it.
o By making Brood Lords immune to Abduct, we’d solve the stalemate. Late game ZvZ would be mostly about who wins in the air.
o There are downsides -- Abduct is a really cool ability, and it is something Zerg needs vs. Colossi in PvZ.
o To address that, we’d consider a potential buff to Blinding Cloud so that Vipers would still be a valuable utility unit in the ZvP matchup.

As always, please remember that what we’re doing here is talking -- not yet playing publicly on a balance test map. We’d really love to hear and evaluate your thoughts on these and other changes before taking further steps. Please try to keep in mind that Swarm Hosts are needed in other places in the game (such as vs. Mech), so we don’t have an option to just remove the unit.

Thank you very much, and we’re be looking forward to your feedback.