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![[image loading]](http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_small/9/90155/2472471-2472470-6277221729-swarm.jpg)
EDIT 5/1/16
Hello. EndOfLine here from PsiStorm Gaming.
The Swarm host is about to be buffed by having its cost and supply readjusted. However, I strongly believe that its role, and function is need to be readjusted instead.
In Heart of the swarm, the swarm host's function was to zone the Enemy from different parts of the map, and siege/defend enemy fresh bases. This forced engagements which could end the game quickly. However, later in Hots, It forced long drawn out games, that were boring to play and watch.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/z7B6nOy.jpg)
The Swarm host needed a redesign badly, which it did receive, even if it took a long long time. The Swarm Host's new role was to harass, and sometimes destroy the enemy. Blizzard added flying locusts, to circumvent terrain and defenses to help ensure the utility of the unit. However, This new ability is very powerful, so to "balance" the unit, it received a mega long cool down, rendering it useless.
In fact, many professional zerg players have removed the unit hotkey completely!
However, I'll argue that the Swarm host wasn't very good at harassing anyway.
1. The unit is too expensive
2. The unit has too long of a cool down making one open to counterattack
3. during cool down, the high supply unit made the main army too small.
4. The unit can not reliably do damage every spell cycle
5. Most importantly, Korean zerg DARK has shown the world that simply Ling/Bane drops is by far the best harass during the current meta.
In comparison to swarm hosts, Drop technology and ravagers are a much better harass tool.
1. Much cheaper
2. Much more reliable
3. Can afford to use in the early stages of the game
4. More fun to watch and play.
Finally, Some have suggested that the swarm host become a better siege weapon, by reducing its cool down time. This would allow swarm hosts to reliable do damage, and prevent the user from being open to counter attacks during the SH cool down. I would like to argue against this change....
1. This would be too powerful, and It will make other strategies inferior by comparison.
2. having less viable strategies makes the game boring to play and watch.
3.it would be redundant. The zerg already has the lurker which is an excited siege unit that already does tons of damage.
4. MOST IMPORTANTLY, having a strong anti ground, siege, and harass unit isn't what zerg needs. Zerg desperately needs anti air.
![[image loading]](http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starcraft/images/6/60/SporeCrawler_SC2_DevRend2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090630041449)
The spore crawler is by far the best anti air option the zerg has.
It can't be countered by high templar, or shot down by liberators/vikings. When compared to other anti air zerg units:
Hydra's get wrecked by anything air in large amounts. Did you know that hydra's get one shotted by liberators?
Mutas have too many hard counters
corruptors fire to slowly and still are really not that great at being anti air,
queens are too slow.
How many times have you tried to engaged protoss air army just to have all your vipers feedback'ed and you lose the game? Spell casters are too all or nothing in my opinion. In fact, Guys like firecake use brilliant strategies like massing overseers to stack on top of vipers to make it less likely for vipers to be targeted... This tactic is paired with 300 spores. The goal is to gank the enemy into a field of spores.
However, this is a very boring style to watch and play.
What I suggest is making "spawned" flying locusts into anti air only
in fact, lets go one step further, lets just call locust scourge!
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/commons/images/5/58/Scourge.png)
wiki.teamliquid.net
If you are as old as me, (im 30 btw) you remember glorious anti scourge micro from Brood war!
1. Zerg will finally have reliable anti air tactic that does not involve turtling for 20 minutes.
2. it would reopen the infestor tech tree instead of being of just being a stepping stone for hive
3. it would be fun to watch, creating forced micro situations
4. it would reduce the power of turtle terran air, and protoss air, creating more attack focused games
5. It is an easy fix. SH already spawn "flying Units" Just a few graphic tweaks and....
Now, I undestand if this sounds drastic. However you can easily balance this kind of unit by making it's supply cost high. For augments sake, lets say 6 supply per SH. 10 SH would be 60 supply of army! Terran or protoss can remax with ground only army then, punishing the zerg for overmaking/abusing redesigned SH.
EDIT 5/1/16 Talking about these ideas with X5_Pig has made me rethink the balancing of this unit. He has convinced me that "free units" will be too hard to balance. Instead Making a Brood war reaver like unit that is anti air would be much easier to balance.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/T7ozmaN.jpg)
So instead of spawning free Scourges, It would be better to Buy a cue of scourges and fire them one at a time, like the BW reaver.
You can also balance this kind of unit by making it very slow.. Like for example, can only move fast on creep and have it be super slow off creep like the queen. Or you can force it to plant down (not buried/cloaked) to fire
One can also balance this unit by tweaking anti air splash damage.
In conclusion, I am suggesting for a swarm host redesign to fill a gap in zerg's arsenal. This Gap is Anti air. The SH should no longer be a harass unit because it is redundant with ravagers and ling drops. Making them is a waste of supply because of long cool down cycles, not cost.
Qualifications for suggestion: I have played Starcraft since sc1 (before BW) I have roughly played over 20,000 games of sc2 and strongly believe I know the game well. I am a mulitple time Grandmaster on NA and EU.
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When would someone build swarmhosts vs corruptors vs vipers for parasitic bomb?
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Why not just have scourge in the game instead of the swarm host at all? It just seems like a useless step at that point.
Not saying I'm not down with the idea of scourge but I think having swarm hosts as a means to that end is pointless when you could just cut the middleman and make scourge
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On April 30 2016 12:31 CalebAracous wrote:
When would someone build swarmhosts vs corruptors vs vipers for parasitic bomb?
if something like this would go through I would suggest parasitic bomb just be removed. No one likes it anyway
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On April 30 2016 12:40 chipmonklord17 wrote:
Why not just have scourge in the game instead of the swarm host at all? It just seems like a useless step at that point.
Not saying I'm not down with the idea of scourge but I think having swarm hosts as a means to that end is pointless when you could just cut the middleman and make scourge
In BW scourge was made when the spire was built. The danger of doing this would be allowing zerg to be able to sky zerg, and have the counters that counter sky zerg all on one tech tree. By having it on a different tech tree, it would force zerg to choose it tech path wisely
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Actually the timings of this would be really interesting for midgame ZvT. Getting a couple SH to chase Liberators around, and even having a micro duel would be really, really interesting to consider. Expanding this idea more would be cool.
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On April 30 2016 12:48 -Kyo- wrote:
Actually the timings of this would be really interesting for midgame ZvT. Getting a couple SH to chase Liberators around, and even having a micro duel would be really, really interesting to consider. Expanding this idea more would be cool.
and even a scourge trying to chase down a med ship!
I think to balance it out the scourge would "die" after a certain amount of time, somewhat like flying locusts.
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On April 30 2016 12:46 EndOfLineTv wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2016 12:40 chipmonklord17 wrote:
Why not just have scourge in the game instead of the swarm host at all? It just seems like a useless step at that point.
Not saying I'm not down with the idea of scourge but I think having swarm hosts as a means to that end is pointless when you could just cut the middleman and make scourge In BW scourge was made when the spire was built. The danger of doing this would be allowing zerg to be able to sky zerg, and have the counters that counter sky zerg all on one tech tree. By having it on a different tech tree, it would force zerg to choose it tech path wisely
So just make the scourge available at infestation pit instead for the same effect
EDIT: I suppose if you really wanted to keep the swarmhost in in this situation you could just turn it into a carrier basically. Just a unit that holds the actual unit.
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Not the worst idea ever post, but not "brilliant" as well.
I'd rather have an unit that helped breaking sieged locations and disruptors to set up an engagement.
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On April 30 2016 15:15 xTJx wrote:
Not the worst idea ever post, but not "brilliant" as well.
I'd rather have an unit that helped breaking sieged locations and disruptors to set up an engagement.
Zerg has that......Do you want a 3rd unit?
They are called Broodlords and Lurkers. Considering the fact that Zerg doesn't have an anti-air siege unit, this makes a lot of sense.
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I came here for the "brilliant", didn't deliver.
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On April 30 2016 12:31 CalebAracous wrote:
When would someone build swarmhosts vs corruptors vs vipers for parasitic bomb?
Swarm Hosts create free units..FREE UNITS. Interceptors are not free. They are cheap, but not free. The strength of free units is very high. Even a severely negative trade efficiency with free units can still go very favorably for the Zerg player when the unit they are losing constantly is free.....
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The only brilliant solution for the Swarm Host is to revert it back to its old glory.
That said, yes, Zerg AA sucks. I'd suggest giving hydras the abilities to travel on the back of Roaches so they can move faster.
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37032 Posts
Thread title renamed. It was a little misleading before.
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very interesting idea. that sounds fun.
I have some other thoughts: what if the locust or scourge do small damage at explosion but they lower the enemy's defense, like the devourer? and those acid spores can reveal cloaked units (like banshees or cloaked air units around the mothership)
Oh, BW memories...
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Talking about these ideas with X5_Pig has altered my design of this unit somewhat. Instead of spawning free anti air units. The SH should now que up scourges that one can buy and fire. This would be very similar tot he reaver from BW
Forcing the zerg to buy that ammo will be much easier to balance.
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its a nice idea imo, a reaver that shots scourges,
finally zerg can do something against phoenix harass, or have more of these "gghosts" against an airforce
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i'm still thinking about this, i guess giving the locusts detection would be cool?
detector buildings: cannon, turret, spore
detector units: observer, raven, overseer
temporary detection: oracle revelation(60s*6), orbital scan(12s*13)/EMP(10s*1.5), fungal(3s*2)
what if we give locusts detection? they live for 18s right now and they can help zerg on detection.
Another thought is, we change them into melee attack, and when they die the enemy units nearby will gain the "spore" effect for some time, like the devourer spore. The duration, the range and the max number of spores on an enemy unit can be adjusted for balance. So they are not almost useless in a battle.
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United Kingdom20300 Posts
Zerg desperately needs anti air.
Zerg has some of the best anti-air in the game right now
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On April 30 2016 12:13 EndOfLineTv wrote:
MOST IMPORTANTLY, having a strong anti ground, siege, and harass unit isn't what zerg needs. Zerg desperately needs anti air.
I think all the races need better anti-air. Actually, scratch that, we just need to revert all the buffs air units got, Blizzard has made them ridiculously strong.
Personally, I was thinking we should keep the Swarm Host as a harrass unit and make it spawn Broodlings with a short duration on their life (melee Broodlings with ground collision and a short life means they wouldn't be good massed, only the front line of the Broodlings would be able to do damage). In fact I had been arguing that since I first saw the concept.
But I think I like your idea better considering the state of air units. It seems like a lot more fun than parasitic bomb, which isn't very fun to use (and I can say that now that I play random!) or play against.
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EPT
