Blizzard's thoughts on Swarm Hosts - Page 53

On May 23 2014 01:55 Big J wrote:


oh sorry, that is just the attack animation of SHs. They aren't even unburrowed as far as I have tested. I guess I gotta play with that actor a little to turn that off, it looks really shitty.

I actually just wanted to point at the projectile concept and the rough idea of the direction of its stats.

On May 23 2014 03:38 Code wrote:

I thought it was pretty cool. A dodgeable projectile would be interesting.

Nice idea

On May 23 2014 18:05 Mazuuurk wrote:



It's nice, but it's basically more or less a lurker without splash?

On June 20 2014 13:59 myndkf wrote:
The problem with swarm hosts is not because it builds free units, BUT it builds free units while requiring basically no micro, and can be mass produced.

Take the brood lord. Although they can be mass produced they're a t3 unit, and the draw back is that they are ridiculously slow. Without proper support units they will get ravaged by an opponents AA. Their spawned units block movement however they don't produce so many broodlings.

Carriers are t3 and can not be mass produced all at once. This ensures that the Protoss cannot build 10 at a time like Zergs SH and even have interceptors ready to go all at once. A large amount of carriers can only snowball if not dealt with but as always a Zerg can mass produce counters upon seeing even lots of carriers, even if they let a toss snowball. Their interceptors actually have a cost, and take time to build. When they die, they are useless and need to be rebuilt for a cost AND time and can only be built ONE at a time. Although the benefit is that they are air and can move around more freely than BL and swarm hosts.

Swarm hosts,
Can be mass produced all at once and have locusts ready straight away. They aren't t3 units, and produce MANY locusts, rallied and left alone WHILE focusing on micro on other units or macro.
Opponents need AOE to deal with locusts, and will get hit nevertheless and therefore will slowly die if the actual SH aren't taken out. Because they move quickly you can simply unburrow when in danger but will generally still have spines and units to support.
The thing is, having a unit that spawns free units and have great dps which require AOE to deal with, has too many upsides.
The other simple fact where Zerg can mass produce them and have locusts ready to use makes it hard to counter.
On top of that, making a counter like colossus or tanks to deal with killing LOCUSTS not SH themselves already takes so much resources and TIME.
All us Zergs needs to is tech switch, and it's pretty much GG with Zerg being able to do a full switch easily unlike other races..

Call it what you want, Zergs style is to tech switch. I agree, however SH just have terrible gameplay, they have too much upside and require too much to counter.
The worst thing is holding it off but not being able to kill them yet when you have the units, they simply tech switch.
Since they don't need micro the Zerg can focus too much on other tasks, and any decent Zerg will have static defense to deal with drops.

Some fixes to look at (tweaked or whatnot, and not all at once obviously) may include:
- starts with costs to produce locusts
- manually release swarms
- each swarm takes more time to produce the longer they burrow to encourage more micro
- locusts do less dps but just enough to hold pushes, but not enough to slowly kill the opponent without even watching.. Encourages more action and unit balance and attacks
- manually send locusts, SH lose hp or minerals for every locust killed to encourage tactical spawning instead of unlimited and leave and forget
- SH have same movement speed but slow acceleration
- can be attacked in animation when spawning locusts, so if opponent is on top, they can attack a few times instead of just running back dealing with locusts, encourages better positioning of SH
- have a drone morph into SH building that can only produce 2 at a time (can still mass produce if building multiple buildings) but must weigh the cost factor, gives more time to deal with SH for opponent

At the moment using SH really has no downside and blizzard should encourage something to make us Zergs weigh up our options instead of giving an easy option

On May 23 2014 18:24 Big J wrote:


Hm, to clarify how this works exactly:

It's a 10range double projectile with no splash.
It is shot like a normal attack, but with three twists compared to a normal target:
1) It doesn't follow the unit, so a moving target may dodge it
2) It hits the first target along its way
3) It travels 3range further than the the place it was shot at

I thought 1) and 2) made for interesting micro interactions, like avoiding the projectile with spreads or reactive movement or putting something in the way of the projectiles. Meanwhile it doesn't influence its siege capabilities.
3) prevents that units can just take a tiny step backwards and avoid any hits. And maybe somecould abuse it somehow.
Also, each of the projectiles is calculated separately, so you can get hit only by the left, but not by the right if you are on the left.
Imo it keeps a bit of the feel of the swarm host (dodge the locusts; protect your frontrows; visually the projectile is a locust) but is just much more reliable for both sides and doesn't include any Hitpoint interaction that forces enemys to kill free units.

I think apart from that it is a burrowed unit with a ranged attack, it actually doesn't share a lot with the lurker.

On June 20 2014 13:59 myndkf wrote:
Can be mass produced all at once and have locusts ready straight away. They aren't t3 units, and produce MANY locusts, rallied and left alone WHILE focusing on micro on other units or macro.

On June 20 2014 15:35 ElMeanYo wrote:


This is exactly why I love them so much. My favorite unit in SC2. I hope instead of changing them they just make it a bit easier to deal with them. Update something on the other two races that could help with that.