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On May 07 2014 04:40 Squat wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 04:33 Sapphire.lux wrote:On May 07 2014 04:25 sabas123 wrote:
I would like to see an option for zerg to counter mech other then swarm host so that they maby could remove it. The Viper should be the key IMO. Some sort of ling roach hidra combo on the ground and blinding cloud. That spell could force tanks to spread out so helping Zerg and making the game look cool at the same time. So much potential there instead of the retarded SH Raven crap we see. Vipers are already immensely strong vs mech. Zerg has little or no issue dealing with ground based mech, roach/hydra with vipers can deal fine already. It's the air armies that are the real killers. And that's where the viper goes from great to outright mandatory.
IMO Ravens should be looked at. They should not be massed the way they sometimes are, it is reminiscent of WOL infestors.
Bah, dreams. SH Viper VS Tank Raven it is.
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On May 07 2014 04:48 Squat wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 04:40 Pursuit_ wrote:On May 07 2014 04:32 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:16 Ercster wrote:On May 07 2014 04:10 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:08 Ercster wrote:On May 07 2014 04:05 Falling wrote:On May 07 2014 03:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On May 07 2014 03:52 ZigguratOfUr wrote:On May 07 2014 03:47 Ercster wrote:
Would capping the amount of swarm hosts you can have at once help? I'm not talking about increasing their supply cost, but just making it so you can only have something like 15-20 out at a time? Changes like this are just poor design. You end up with a ton of unintuitive corner cases, which makes learning the game much harder. All changes need to make sense when compared to previously existing changes. You could presumably design a balanced game where each unit deals a different amount of damage to each other unit, and with weird unit caps to each unit but it would be way too restrictive and confusing to play. Not that I agree with him (its one of the dumber ideas I've heard) but the unit limit has already been done with the Mothership and the Mothership Core. Blizz is already okay with arbitrary non-supply limitations in the number of units. It's still not a good solution. It basically acknowledges that they've made a unit that snowballs too well, but doesn't change the underlying cause on why it snowballs. Plus the swarmhost doesn't really even have special spells that would make it even feel like a hero unit like the Mothership. (And I never liked the idea of a mothership in the first place.) I mean, realistically this could be the solution to any unit composition problem. Marauders are too good and Terran will only make pure marauders to snipe everything on the ground and shrug off air attacks. Solution? You can only make 20 marauders... or fix the reason why Terran only goes marauders every game. It sounds like they want a short term fix, though. Long term would be to change what makes them good in a comp, and that doesn't seem likely in this expansion. It's kinda the reason why I presented the idea of the unit cap. It wasn't to be the end all solution to the unit, but for the time being it might fix the problems it has until they decide to rework the unit. A short term fix that doesn't fuck up zerg late game is preferable, and available. Make BLs immune to abduct. Done. "- 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." To me, it doesn't seem like they're capable of doing that otherwise it would have been suggested instead of all massive units. And I don't think applying it to all massive units would be helpful. What prevents them from just making the broodlord immune exclusively? Ultras are immune to roots and snares. I think elegance is part of the problem, if you have more exceptions than rules it becomes very hard to understand the game. Maybe make it so Abduct doesn't work vs Biological units? This would fix the problem with Abduct vs Brood Lord without affecting ZvMech or ZvP. Another potential fix imo is to reduce the size of locusts, this would make banelings more effective vs them and baneling / ultra can actually wreck SH compositions in ZvZ (The banelings clear a wave of locusts and the ultralisks can't be stopped by fungal so they run in and decimate the SH's before the next wave spawns). It would also be a slight buff to other AoE counters to SH (Tanks and Hellions / Hellbats, Collosi and Storm). This also runs the risk of giving locusts more dps / surface area though. I'm unconvinced, Dota 2 is riddled with exceptions and special rules, yet pulls huge viewer numbers consistently. It's confusing one or two times. Anyone who would find something like that hard to process is not very likely to be watching competitive Sc2. People who are interested enough in this game to watch other nerds play games for hours on a friday night probably have a deent understanding of what is going on already. And honestly, the market for new players getting into Sc2 at this point is likely negligible.
Special rules are what make dota beautiful. If you want consistency, play another game.
SC2 could use more special rules.
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On May 07 2014 04:55 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 04:48 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:40 Pursuit_ wrote:On May 07 2014 04:32 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:16 Ercster wrote:On May 07 2014 04:10 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:08 Ercster wrote:On May 07 2014 04:05 Falling wrote:On May 07 2014 03:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On May 07 2014 03:52 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
[quote]
Changes like this are just poor design. You end up with a ton of unintuitive corner cases, which makes learning the game much harder. All changes need to make sense when compared to previously existing changes.
You could presumably design a balanced game where each unit deals a different amount of damage to each other unit, and with weird unit caps to each unit but it would be way too restrictive and confusing to play. Not that I agree with him (its one of the dumber ideas I've heard) but the unit limit has already been done with the Mothership and the Mothership Core. Blizz is already okay with arbitrary non-supply limitations in the number of units. It's still not a good solution. It basically acknowledges that they've made a unit that snowballs too well, but doesn't change the underlying cause on why it snowballs. Plus the swarmhost doesn't really even have special spells that would make it even feel like a hero unit like the Mothership. (And I never liked the idea of a mothership in the first place.) I mean, realistically this could be the solution to any unit composition problem. Marauders are too good and Terran will only make pure marauders to snipe everything on the ground and shrug off air attacks. Solution? You can only make 20 marauders... or fix the reason why Terran only goes marauders every game. It sounds like they want a short term fix, though. Long term would be to change what makes them good in a comp, and that doesn't seem likely in this expansion. It's kinda the reason why I presented the idea of the unit cap. It wasn't to be the end all solution to the unit, but for the time being it might fix the problems it has until they decide to rework the unit. A short term fix that doesn't fuck up zerg late game is preferable, and available. Make BLs immune to abduct. Done. "- 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." To me, it doesn't seem like they're capable of doing that otherwise it would have been suggested instead of all massive units. And I don't think applying it to all massive units would be helpful. What prevents them from just making the broodlord immune exclusively? Ultras are immune to roots and snares. I think elegance is part of the problem, if you have more exceptions than rules it becomes very hard to understand the game. Maybe make it so Abduct doesn't work vs Biological units? This would fix the problem with Abduct vs Brood Lord without affecting ZvMech or ZvP. Another potential fix imo is to reduce the size of locusts, this would make banelings more effective vs them and baneling / ultra can actually wreck SH compositions in ZvZ (The banelings clear a wave of locusts and the ultralisks can't be stopped by fungal so they run in and decimate the SH's before the next wave spawns). It would also be a slight buff to other AoE counters to SH (Tanks and Hellions / Hellbats, Collosi and Storm). This also runs the risk of giving locusts more dps / surface area though. I'm unconvinced, Dota 2 is riddled with exceptions and special rules, yet pulls huge viewer numbers consistently. It's confusing one or two times. Anyone who would find something like that hard to process is not very likely to be watching competitive Sc2. People who are interested enough in this game to watch other nerds play games for hours on a friday night probably have a deent understanding of what is going on already. And honestly, the market for new players getting into Sc2 at this point is likely negligible. Special rules are what make dota beautiful. If you want consistency, play another game. SC2 could use more special rules.
That was kind of my point yes.
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On May 07 2014 04:57 Squat wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 04:55 Plansix wrote:On May 07 2014 04:48 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:40 Pursuit_ wrote:On May 07 2014 04:32 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:16 Ercster wrote:On May 07 2014 04:10 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:08 Ercster wrote:On May 07 2014 04:05 Falling wrote:On May 07 2014 03:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:
[quote]
Not that I agree with him (its one of the dumber ideas I've heard) but the unit limit has already been done with the Mothership and the Mothership Core. Blizz is already okay with arbitrary non-supply limitations in the number of units. It's still not a good solution. It basically acknowledges that they've made a unit that snowballs too well, but doesn't change the underlying cause on why it snowballs. Plus the swarmhost doesn't really even have special spells that would make it even feel like a hero unit like the Mothership. (And I never liked the idea of a mothership in the first place.) I mean, realistically this could be the solution to any unit composition problem. Marauders are too good and Terran will only make pure marauders to snipe everything on the ground and shrug off air attacks. Solution? You can only make 20 marauders... or fix the reason why Terran only goes marauders every game. It sounds like they want a short term fix, though. Long term would be to change what makes them good in a comp, and that doesn't seem likely in this expansion. It's kinda the reason why I presented the idea of the unit cap. It wasn't to be the end all solution to the unit, but for the time being it might fix the problems it has until they decide to rework the unit. A short term fix that doesn't fuck up zerg late game is preferable, and available. Make BLs immune to abduct. Done. "- 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." To me, it doesn't seem like they're capable of doing that otherwise it would have been suggested instead of all massive units. And I don't think applying it to all massive units would be helpful. What prevents them from just making the broodlord immune exclusively? Ultras are immune to roots and snares. I think elegance is part of the problem, if you have more exceptions than rules it becomes very hard to understand the game. Maybe make it so Abduct doesn't work vs Biological units? This would fix the problem with Abduct vs Brood Lord without affecting ZvMech or ZvP. Another potential fix imo is to reduce the size of locusts, this would make banelings more effective vs them and baneling / ultra can actually wreck SH compositions in ZvZ (The banelings clear a wave of locusts and the ultralisks can't be stopped by fungal so they run in and decimate the SH's before the next wave spawns). It would also be a slight buff to other AoE counters to SH (Tanks and Hellions / Hellbats, Collosi and Storm). This also runs the risk of giving locusts more dps / surface area though. I'm unconvinced, Dota 2 is riddled with exceptions and special rules, yet pulls huge viewer numbers consistently. It's confusing one or two times. Anyone who would find something like that hard to process is not very likely to be watching competitive Sc2. People who are interested enough in this game to watch other nerds play games for hours on a friday night probably have a deent understanding of what is going on already. And honestly, the market for new players getting into Sc2 at this point is likely negligible. Special rules are what make dota beautiful. If you want consistency, play another game. SC2 could use more special rules. That was kind of my point yes.
Yeah, I'm just backin you up. People like to shit on good solutions by saying "it's not elegant design", whatever the fuck that mean. Icefrog has elegant design down to a science. It's called, whatever makes the game awesome, fuck consistency.
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I'd like to clarify that there is NOTHING fun about swarmhosts. What fun style are they referring to? Even super aggressive Swarm Host play is not fun. The entire concept is not fun.
Seriously, just lower the cost of swarmhost mineral requirement and make there be a 1mineral requirement to spawn the unit per swarmhost.
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Hydralisk buff would dramatically affect ZvT. Just remove Swarm Hosts Blizzard.
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Has someone a link to the game in question?
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On May 07 2014 05:00 FabledIntegral wrote:
I'd like to clarify that there is NOTHING fun about swarmhosts. What fun style are they referring to? Even super aggressive Swarm Host play is not fun. The entire concept is not fun.
Seriously, just lower the cost of swarmhost mineral requirement and make there be a 1mineral requirement to spawn the unit per swarmhost.
The first thing you said is just your opinion, not a fact. I know people that like Swarm Hosts, especially when used offensively(myself included) and I would like more than anything to rework Swarm Hosts and make them more of an aggressive units than turtling defensive like they are now.
The second thing also doesn't make any sense because of the time when Zerg is turtling with Swarm Hosts, he has 4k+ minerals, so 1 mineral per spawn won't do anything, and if you want to make more minerals per spawn then you have to buff Locusts.
I am really looking forward the LotV and see what will they do with them, what kind of redesign. About current changes, Hydra and Spores "swap" is pretty much needed, but I don't think that it will affect ZvZ that much at all. Abduct not affecting all massive units is terrible idea, but if we apply only to massive Air units, than we might have a solution.
On May 07 2014 05:04 geokilla wrote:
Hydralisk buff would dramatically affect ZvT. Just remove Swarm Hosts Blizzard.
Read again...
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On May 07 2014 05:00 FabledIntegral wrote:
I'd like to clarify that there is NOTHING fun about swarmhosts. What fun style are they referring to? Even super aggressive Swarm Host play is not fun. The entire concept is not fun.
Seriously, just lower the cost of swarmhost mineral requirement and make there be a 1mineral requirement to spawn the unit per swarmhost.
speak for yourself? repositioning vulnerable swarm hosts aggressively and keeping them alive while multitasking a group of roaches can be quite fun in my opinion, especially when you add burrow play to the mix.
i don't understand the obsession with a single unit being "fun to play" all on its own? it's not fun to sit there and build a spine crawler, but using spine crawlers as part of an overall strategy to win the game is fun. what makes the game fun for me is designing an overall strategy. it's definitely the specific strategy of massing 30 swarm hosts and 100 static defenses that ceases to be fun for me
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Just a suggestion (not sure if it was ever discussed).
How about changing fungle to slowing units instead of freezing them and increasing its damage?
-Making muta more viable in more numbers later in the game
Viper abduct mana cost increase and increased radius of blinding cloud but blinding cloud doesn't work on defensive structure or tanks.
Of course these changes will need to be made with buffs for other zerg units (personally I think ultras need a better way to engage terran bio)
I would personally hate these changes for my ladder but I think the current mechanics of fungle is killing the game.
Fungle plus blinding cloud makes me want to puke because it is such an outrageous concept for rts.
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United States97277 Posts
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Some things I would like to see tried:
SH queen speed off creep.
More time between waves, adjust 100% uptime to like 90%
Or
Locusts don't last as long to limit their effective range.
Each locust spawn costs 1-2 minerals. Instead of endless spam, you have to to be more effective with how you use locusts. If to costly, buff locusts slightly in some way but keep that economic impact.
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On May 07 2014 05:04 [F_]aths wrote:
Has someone a link to the game in question?
Stephano vs everyone at the LSC -.-. Though I guess you can single out game 2/3 vs Petraeus. I don't know how to link timestamps but the game begins around 11:00:00 http://www.twitch.tv/lonestarclash/b/525449584.
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On May 07 2014 04:59 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 04:57 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:55 Plansix wrote:On May 07 2014 04:48 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:40 Pursuit_ wrote:On May 07 2014 04:32 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:16 Ercster wrote:On May 07 2014 04:10 Squat wrote:On May 07 2014 04:08 Ercster wrote:On May 07 2014 04:05 Falling wrote:
[quote]
It's still not a good solution. It basically acknowledges that they've made a unit that snowballs too well, but doesn't change the underlying cause on why it snowballs. Plus the swarmhost doesn't really even have special spells that would make it even feel like a hero unit like the Mothership. (And I never liked the idea of a mothership in the first place.)
I mean, realistically this could be the solution to any unit composition problem. Marauders are too good and Terran will only make pure marauders to snipe everything on the ground and shrug off air attacks. Solution? You can only make 20 marauders... or fix the reason why Terran only goes marauders every game. It sounds like they want a short term fix, though. Long term would be to change what makes them good in a comp, and that doesn't seem likely in this expansion. It's kinda the reason why I presented the idea of the unit cap. It wasn't to be the end all solution to the unit, but for the time being it might fix the problems it has until they decide to rework the unit. A short term fix that doesn't fuck up zerg late game is preferable, and available. Make BLs immune to abduct. Done. "- 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." To me, it doesn't seem like they're capable of doing that otherwise it would have been suggested instead of all massive units. And I don't think applying it to all massive units would be helpful. What prevents them from just making the broodlord immune exclusively? Ultras are immune to roots and snares. I think elegance is part of the problem, if you have more exceptions than rules it becomes very hard to understand the game. Maybe make it so Abduct doesn't work vs Biological units? This would fix the problem with Abduct vs Brood Lord without affecting ZvMech or ZvP. Another potential fix imo is to reduce the size of locusts, this would make banelings more effective vs them and baneling / ultra can actually wreck SH compositions in ZvZ (The banelings clear a wave of locusts and the ultralisks can't be stopped by fungal so they run in and decimate the SH's before the next wave spawns). It would also be a slight buff to other AoE counters to SH (Tanks and Hellions / Hellbats, Collosi and Storm). This also runs the risk of giving locusts more dps / surface area though. I'm unconvinced, Dota 2 is riddled with exceptions and special rules, yet pulls huge viewer numbers consistently. It's confusing one or two times. Anyone who would find something like that hard to process is not very likely to be watching competitive Sc2. People who are interested enough in this game to watch other nerds play games for hours on a friday night probably have a deent understanding of what is going on already. And honestly, the market for new players getting into Sc2 at this point is likely negligible. Special rules are what make dota beautiful. If you want consistency, play another game. SC2 could use more special rules. That was kind of my point yes. Yeah, I'm just backin you up. People like to shit on good solutions by saying "it's not elegant design", whatever the fuck that mean. Icefrog has elegant design down to a science. It's called, whatever makes the game awesome, fuck consistency.
What Icefrog is doing is forced roles design.
Elegant design is having zero corner case scenarios.
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I should have clarified - they are not fun to play against, whatsoever.
Even if the Zerg is playing an aggressive, non ridiculous turtle style, and even if you crush it as P or T, it's one of hte "nothing about this game is fun" moments.
Can't stand watching them either, though.
They are admittedly fun to use yourself, offensively, because they all of a sudden require much more multitasking to keep alive and get damage dealt.
On May 07 2014 05:05 Ramiz1989 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 05:00 FabledIntegral wrote:
I'd like to clarify that there is NOTHING fun about swarmhosts. What fun style are they referring to? Even super aggressive Swarm Host play is not fun. The entire concept is not fun.
Seriously, just lower the cost of swarmhost mineral requirement and make there be a 1mineral requirement to spawn the unit per swarmhost. The first thing you said is just your opinion, not a fact. I know people that like Swarm Hosts, especially when used offensively(myself included) and I would like more than anything to rework Swarm Hosts and make them more of an aggressive units than turtling defensive like they are now. The second thing also doesn't make any sense because of the time when Zerg is turtling with Swarm Hosts, he has 4k+ minerals, so 1 mineral per spawn won't do anything, and if you want to make more minerals per spawn then you have to buff Locusts. I am really looking forward the LotV and see what will they do with them, what kind of redesign. About current changes, Hydra and Spores "swap" is pretty much needed, but I don't think that it will affect ZvZ that much at all. Abduct not affecting all massive units is terrible idea, but if we apply only to massive Air units, than we might have a solution. Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 05:04 geokilla wrote:
Hydralisk buff would dramatically affect ZvT. Just remove Swarm Hosts Blizzard. Read again...
1 mineral per spawn isnt' meant to affect anything except the ridiculous stalemate split map situations where Zerg has 30 swarmhosts but can't actually kill the opponent, so it sits into absolute nothingness.
I've had this happen in well over 50 games, but then again my playstyle response to swarmhost is "mass expand and perpetually avoid them forever, sacking bases they are attacking and relocating all workers to new ones."
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On May 07 2014 05:08 Sufinsil wrote:
Some things I would like to see tried:
SH queen speed off creep.
More time between waves, adjust 100% uptime to like 90%
Or
Locusts don't last as long to limit their effective range.
Each locust spawn costs 1-2 minerals. Instead of endless spam, you have to to be more effective with how you use locusts. If to costly, buff locusts slightly in some way but keep that economic impact.
Why do people keep suggesting shit that are just flat out nerfs? As if it would solve anything? It's just unproductive. This is only relevant if we can show hosts are objectively OP, or else all you're doing is making zerg late game even worse. Seriously, stop it.
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On May 07 2014 05:08 ssxsilver wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 05:04 [F_]aths wrote:
Has someone a link to the game in question? Stephano vs everyone at the LSC -.-. Though I guess you can single out game 2/3 vs Petraeus. I don't know how to link timestamps but the game begins around 11:00:00 http://www.twitch.tv/lonestarclash/b/525449584.
Thank you.
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On May 07 2014 05:10 FabledIntegral wrote:
I should have clarified - they are not fun to play against, whatsoever.
Even if the Zerg is playing an aggressive, non ridiculous turtle style, and even if you crush it as P or T, it's one of hte "nothing about this game is fun" moments.
Can't stand watching them either, though.
They are admittedly fun to use yourself, offensively, because they all of a sudden require much more multitasking to keep alive and get damage dealt.
you can say the same thing about force fields, cannon rushes, 11/11, widow mines... probably almost anything. i still don't understand the distinction, to be honest
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The abduct change seems like such a bad idea. If colossi can't be abducted, I wonder how strong blinding cloud will have to be to make vipers even worthwhile in ZvP
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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. It's not even abnormal to have ZvZ's that long any more. Hell, we've almost come to expect it.
Blizzard should grow a pair and just remove the unit. It isn't good, in any way.
we’d prefer to not disrupt the interesting non-stalemate Swarm Host play we currently see. Any "cool" strats that use the swarm-host are ruined by there being swarm-hosts.
The very fact that swarm-hosts are used so much makes it clear that it's either too strong or too obnoxious. Even if the game isn't "balanced" (by the way, I care more about the game reflecting skill more than I care about balance) with the removal of the swarm-host, nothing good comes from the unit.
The Hydra change is okay. Their suggested Viper change sucks. Viper should have less range with it's abduct, and the blinding cloud is a bit OP versus mech (siege). Maybe make it only affect Bio units.
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EPT
