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Germany767 Posts
On May 07 2017 03:42 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 03:34 Liquid`TLO wrote:On May 07 2017 03:31 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:
And again the grandmasters aren't even willing to remotely say anything relating to balance. Great.
Strategic diversity-> higher winrate? If that is so why don't pro terrans play mech more often? Oh right it's about as valid as proxy ghost cloak vs protoss.
Avilo's latest tweet was probably just a way of saying: I hate starcraft as it is atm, sub so I have a reason to play.
Oh well keep it up people. Atleast it's amusing to read.
Mech is the niche and Bio the standard, that's just how the game developed, making Mech as valid as Bio isn't anything most people desire and changing such a core concept at this point is an almost impossible undertaking. That is correct. There is absolutely no flaw in that reasoning. I just wish Blizzard would straight out tell us for once that they intend to keep it that way, so we can accept that the swarm host is meant to keep mech the niche. If they did then people would have no choice but to let this ''discussion'' end. Avilo could stop preaching to the choir and these community feedback updates wouldn't be filled with a myriad of philosophical game changes either. Honestly why is blizzard even opting for transparancy without being transparant themselves about what they want starcraft 2 lotv to be. Anyway what do you personally think of the thor and the tempest buff? I'd like to know that much atleast.
First of all I really don't think swarmhost are the end to Mech, most Zerg pros I know have really mixed feelings about swarmhosts. They can be amazing but if your opponent knows what they're doing they can also help Terran transition into a sick lategame while you delayed your path to Hive and are stuck with bad mid game units.
Thor buff is alright, I don't mind it. Small changes like that are great because they can be quite impactful without breaking the game. SC2 fights can snowball numberwise if you even just add a single upgrade or a single additional unit. (for example 9 roaches crush 7 roaches and 7-8 of the 9 roaches survive)
Tempest buff is a bit awkward it's mostly to deal with Carrier vs Carrier but at least they realised +25 would allow 4 shooting broodlords with upgrades which would make them unviable.
I think there would be more elegant solutions to it tho.
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Germany767 Posts
On May 07 2017 03:49 Liquid`TLO wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 03:42 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:On May 07 2017 03:34 Liquid`TLO wrote:On May 07 2017 03:31 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:
And again the grandmasters aren't even willing to remotely say anything relating to balance. Great.
Strategic diversity-> higher winrate? If that is so why don't pro terrans play mech more often? Oh right it's about as valid as proxy ghost cloak vs protoss.
Avilo's latest tweet was probably just a way of saying: I hate starcraft as it is atm, sub so I have a reason to play.
Oh well keep it up people. Atleast it's amusing to read.
Mech is the niche and Bio the standard, that's just how the game developed, making Mech as valid as Bio isn't anything most people desire and changing such a core concept at this point is an almost impossible undertaking. That is correct. There is absolutely no flaw in that reasoning. I just wish Blizzard would straight out tell us for once that they intend to keep it that way, so we can accept that the swarm host is meant to keep mech the niche. If they did then people would have no choice but to let this ''discussion'' end. Avilo could stop preaching to the choir and these community feedback updates wouldn't be filled with a myriad of philosophical game changes either. Honestly why is blizzard even opting for transparancy without being transparant themselves about what they want starcraft 2 lotv to be. Anyway what do you personally think of the thor and the tempest buff? I'd like to know that much atleast. First of all I really don't think swarmhost are the end to Mech, most Zerg pros I know have really mixed feelings about swarmhosts. They can be amazing but if your opponent knows what they're doing they can also help Terran transition into a sick lategame while you delayed your path to Hive and are stuck with bad mid game units. Mech shines the most when the initial Hellion/Hellbat/Raven/Mine/Marine/Drop (pick your poison) kind of harrass does decent damage, then Mech can secure a victory and avoid the danger of losing in late late game because very late game of Mech is actually superior to Zergs. I feel like swarmhosts are only very strong when Zerg is ahead anyway. Thor buff is alright, I don't mind it. Small changes like that are great because they can be quite impactful without breaking the game. SC2 fights can snowball numberwise if you even just add a single upgrade or a single additional unit. (for example 9 roaches crush 7 roaches and 7-8 of the 9 roaches survive) Tempest buff is a bit awkward it's mostly to deal with Carrier vs Carrier but at least they realised +25 would allow 4 shooting broodlords with upgrades which would make them unviable. I think there would be more elegant solutions to it tho.
-Ooops delete please-
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On May 07 2017 03:49 Liquid`TLO wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 03:42 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:On May 07 2017 03:34 Liquid`TLO wrote:On May 07 2017 03:31 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:
And again the grandmasters aren't even willing to remotely say anything relating to balance. Great.
Strategic diversity-> higher winrate? If that is so why don't pro terrans play mech more often? Oh right it's about as valid as proxy ghost cloak vs protoss.
Avilo's latest tweet was probably just a way of saying: I hate starcraft as it is atm, sub so I have a reason to play.
Oh well keep it up people. Atleast it's amusing to read.
Mech is the niche and Bio the standard, that's just how the game developed, making Mech as valid as Bio isn't anything most people desire and changing such a core concept at this point is an almost impossible undertaking. That is correct. There is absolutely no flaw in that reasoning. I just wish Blizzard would straight out tell us for once that they intend to keep it that way, so we can accept that the swarm host is meant to keep mech the niche. If they did then people would have no choice but to let this ''discussion'' end. Avilo could stop preaching to the choir and these community feedback updates wouldn't be filled with a myriad of philosophical game changes either. Honestly why is blizzard even opting for transparancy without being transparant themselves about what they want starcraft 2 lotv to be. Anyway what do you personally think of the thor and the tempest buff? I'd like to know that much atleast. First of all I really don't think swarmhost are the end to Mech, most Zerg pros I know have really mixed feelings about swarmhosts. They can be amazing but if your opponent knows what they're doing they can also help Terran transition into a sick lategame while you delayed your path to Hive and are stuck with bad mid game units. Thor buff is alright, I don't mind it. Small changes like that are great because they can be quite impactful without breaking the game. SC2 fights can snowball numberwise if you even just add a single upgrade or a single additional unit. (for example 9 roaches crush 7 roaches and 7-8 of the 9 roaches survive) Tempest buff is a bit awkward it's mostly to deal with Carrier vs Carrier but at least they realised +25 would allow 4 shooting broodlords with upgrades which would make them unviable. I think there would be more elegant solutions to it tho.
Alright, thanks for the taking the time to put forward some insightful commentary.
I obviously have no clue how good things are or aren't at the very high level. So swarmhosts might actually be slightly overhyped for all I know. But I personally found that if the zerg is ahead economically and gets a large number of swarmhosts it becomes very hard for terran to build his army or tech. It's this frustrating feeling of actually already being defeated and dying a slow death which makes them feel overpowered and annoying at the very least (And ofcourse that for purely mech units it's hard to catch them). I believe that this is the reason why people are vocal about them.
Oh well, again thanks for answering.
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Germany767 Posts
On May 07 2017 04:04 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 03:49 Liquid`TLO wrote:On May 07 2017 03:42 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:On May 07 2017 03:34 Liquid`TLO wrote:On May 07 2017 03:31 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:
And again the grandmasters aren't even willing to remotely say anything relating to balance. Great.
Strategic diversity-> higher winrate? If that is so why don't pro terrans play mech more often? Oh right it's about as valid as proxy ghost cloak vs protoss.
Avilo's latest tweet was probably just a way of saying: I hate starcraft as it is atm, sub so I have a reason to play.
Oh well keep it up people. Atleast it's amusing to read.
Mech is the niche and Bio the standard, that's just how the game developed, making Mech as valid as Bio isn't anything most people desire and changing such a core concept at this point is an almost impossible undertaking. That is correct. There is absolutely no flaw in that reasoning. I just wish Blizzard would straight out tell us for once that they intend to keep it that way, so we can accept that the swarm host is meant to keep mech the niche. If they did then people would have no choice but to let this ''discussion'' end. Avilo could stop preaching to the choir and these community feedback updates wouldn't be filled with a myriad of philosophical game changes either. Honestly why is blizzard even opting for transparancy without being transparant themselves about what they want starcraft 2 lotv to be. Anyway what do you personally think of the thor and the tempest buff? I'd like to know that much atleast. First of all I really don't think swarmhost are the end to Mech, most Zerg pros I know have really mixed feelings about swarmhosts. They can be amazing but if your opponent knows what they're doing they can also help Terran transition into a sick lategame while you delayed your path to Hive and are stuck with bad mid game units. Thor buff is alright, I don't mind it. Small changes like that are great because they can be quite impactful without breaking the game. SC2 fights can snowball numberwise if you even just add a single upgrade or a single additional unit. (for example 9 roaches crush 7 roaches and 7-8 of the 9 roaches survive) Tempest buff is a bit awkward it's mostly to deal with Carrier vs Carrier but at least they realised +25 would allow 4 shooting broodlords with upgrades which would make them unviable. I think there would be more elegant solutions to it tho. Alright, thanks for the taking the time to put forward some insightful commentary. I obviously have no clue how good things are or aren't at the very high level. So swarmhosts might actually be slightly overhyped for all I know. But I personally found that if the zerg is ahead economically and gets a large number of swarmhosts it becomes very hard for terran to build his army or tech. It's this frustrating feeling of actually already being defeated and dying a slow death which makes them feel overpowered and annoying at the very least (And ofcourse that for purely mech units it's hard to catch them). I believe that this is the reason why people are vocal about them. Oh well, again thanks for answering.
Swarmhosts are incredibly powerful if Zerg is ahead after the early game. I think what most people that play Mech need to realise is that in the early game you can't play passive at all. If you want to mech you need to make work with your initial hellions/hellbats/raven/banshee/Mine/MarineDrop (pick your poison). Only after you secured an advantage or at least slowed down the Zerg can you transition into a more passive style, otherwise Zerg has too many options.
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Pig wrote an excellent pair of Strategy Articles about the current state of Mech and how to play/counterplay with it, using the example of Dark vs. Gumiho. I highly recommend checking then out.
Incidentally, swarmhosts are a complete non-issue.
Strictly from my personal observations, most people (including Blizzard) just like Bio more than Mech. As long as that remains true and Bio remains viable Mech will never become a thing.
And for the sake of the viewers I hope that the insanely awesome 4M vs LBM games that are currently displayed by guys like INnoVation and ByuL never revert to that infamous turtle mech Game 5 on Coda that effectively won INnoVation his second GSL.
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There are many ways to make Mech work. I am only around 6100 MMR but I definitly meet a lot of Mech.
I open 2 Hatch every ZvT anyways so I just go Mutalisk --> 3 hatch Sat --> 8 Swarmhost --> 16 Swarmhost Ling Hydra Bane allin and kill them....
Here is an example of a 6.4k terran dying to it.
+ Show Spoiler +
Here is a Replay versus a Mech Terran who just walks over my Swarmhost Hydra Broodlord composition while I had a Spending Quotient of 161: http://sc2replaystats.com/replay/4164250
Here is me explaing a fellow Zerg how to beat a Raven Viking Ghost Tank Turtle:
+ Show Spoiler +
Honestly the problem is not the Swarmhost there are definitly many ways to straight up roll Swarmhosts or to just turtle to death. I just don't understand what these Mech Terrans actually want. There are definitly Mech Compositions that just roll me over and I lose a decent amount of Games to Mech Terran.
I suggest ignoring what Avilo thinks on the Mech Balance though and question people who actually play the style to win and not to whine and blame maphackers.
EDIT:
Don't forget that some Terrans just don't micro their Mech at all even at 6k MMR+...
+ Show Spoiler +
This guy just attacked nothing but my Queens with his tanks and got steamrolled because of it
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On May 07 2017 04:30 Railgan wrote:There are many ways to make Mech work. I am only around 6100 MMR but I definitly meet a lot of Mech. I open 2 Hatch every ZvT anyways so I just go Mutalisk --> 3 hatch Sat --> 8 Swarmhost --> 16 Swarmhost Ling Hydra Bane allin and kill them.... Here is an example of a 6.4k terran dying to it. + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnCufl6uoow Here is a Replay versus a Mech Terran who just walks over my Swarmhost Hydra Broodlord composition while I had a Spending Quotient of 161: http://sc2replaystats.com/replay/4164250Here is me explaing a fellow Zerg how to beat a Raven Viking Ghost Tank Turtle: + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp20Jy1Vl0A&t=28m Honestly the problem is not the Swarmhost there are definitly many ways to straight up roll Swarmhosts or to just turtle to death. I just don't understand what these Mech Terrans actually want. There are definitly Mech Compositions that just roll me over and I lose a decent amount of Games to Mech Terran. I suggest ignoring what Avilo thinks on the Mech Balance though and question people who actually play the style to win and not to whine and blame maphackers. EDIT: Don't forget that some Terrans just don't micro their Mech at all even at 6k MMR+... + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lslOnzHfvWI&t=4m20s This guy just attacked nothing but my Queens with his tanks and got steamrolled because of it
Thanks for the good post.
I looked at these games, and I am aware of the lategame turtle potential of mech (oh god why). Ofcourse in the one game where you lost there were 2 major differences with what people currently dislike about swarmhost play in TvZ
The first being that your hydra's were 10 hp weaker in january. The second part is that swarmhosts snowball out of control when you have like 16, the number which you had in the game where you won. What people are frustrated about (I imagine) is losing units to an overwhelming amount of swarmhosts, enabling the zerg to be very cost-efficient-> remax on hive army/or static D.
In that case mech players feel like they have no other choice but to turtle since they feel they can't walk out on the map and beat the standing hydra swarm host army + the eventual remax. Ofcourse people with higher mmr are better at knowing if they can move out or not but others might feel inclined to stay at home.
I just.. I personally can't tell if they are too powerful or not. It's such a weird unit that either dominates a game or is kind of there. But with the recent hydra buff they've become a more powerful presence for sure. I also don't know how your games would pan out if you went straight hydra swarm host instead of a muta opener. It's true that you force thors/turrets which aren't exactly the best units vs hydra swarm host but it's also true that your muta investment = 10 swarm hosts.
What I do know is that playing against swarmhosts might not be what people think is fun. Just like how playing against mech isn't fun for others. But yea like always, Blizzard should just give it to us straight if they think mech is fine atm.
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On May 07 2017 05:15 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 04:30 Railgan wrote:There are many ways to make Mech work. I am only around 6100 MMR but I definitly meet a lot of Mech. I open 2 Hatch every ZvT anyways so I just go Mutalisk --> 3 hatch Sat --> 8 Swarmhost --> 16 Swarmhost Ling Hydra Bane allin and kill them.... Here is an example of a 6.4k terran dying to it. + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnCufl6uoow Here is a Replay versus a Mech Terran who just walks over my Swarmhost Hydra Broodlord composition while I had a Spending Quotient of 161: http://sc2replaystats.com/replay/4164250Here is me explaing a fellow Zerg how to beat a Raven Viking Ghost Tank Turtle: + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp20Jy1Vl0A&t=28m Honestly the problem is not the Swarmhost there are definitly many ways to straight up roll Swarmhosts or to just turtle to death. I just don't understand what these Mech Terrans actually want. There are definitly Mech Compositions that just roll me over and I lose a decent amount of Games to Mech Terran. I suggest ignoring what Avilo thinks on the Mech Balance though and question people who actually play the style to win and not to whine and blame maphackers. EDIT: Don't forget that some Terrans just don't micro their Mech at all even at 6k MMR+... + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lslOnzHfvWI&t=4m20s This guy just attacked nothing but my Queens with his tanks and got steamrolled because of it Thanks for the good post. I looked at these games, and I am aware of the lategame turtle potential of mech (oh god why). Ofcourse in the one game where you lost there were 2 major differences with what people currently dislike about swarmhost play in TvZ The first being that your hydra's were 10 hp weaker in january. The second part is that swarmhosts snowball out of control when you have like 16, the number which you had in the game where you won. What people are frustrated about (I imagine) is losing units to an overwhelming amount of swarmhosts, enabling the zerg to be very cost-efficient-> remax on hive army/or static D. In that case mech players feel like they have no other choice but to turtle since they feel they can't walk out on the map and beat the standing hydra swarm host army + the eventual remax. Ofcourse people with higher mmr are better at knowing if they can move out or not but others might feel inclined to stay at home. I just.. I personally can't tell if they are too powerful or not. It's such a weird unit that either dominates a game or is kind of there. But with the recent hydra buff they've become a more powerful presence for sure. I also don't know how your games would pan out if you went straight hydra swarm host instead of a muta opener. It's true that you force thors/turrets which aren't exactly the best units vs hydra swarm host but it's also true that your muta investment = 10 swarm hosts. What I do know is that playing against swarmhosts might not be what people think is fun. Just like how playing against mech isn't fun for others. But yea like always, Blizzard should just give it to us straight if they think mech is fine atm.
Neither is it fun for Zergs to deal with Archon Drops that you can't really punish... or oracles or 16 marine drops or ravens and the list goes on. It's part of the game and there are things that every race struggles with.
If he goes mass Swarmhost you can use BC's / Liberators / Banshees that the Swarmhosts can't shoot at. If he has Mass Swarmhost, Mass Corruptor and Viper then you probably messed up and deserve the loss that you have coming.
Furthermore, as I mentioned previously you can always punish swarmhosts with hellbats as long as the banes don't get insane connections on your hellbats. I play Mech too and I just go Tank Thor Hellbat and amove over the Zergs at 5.2k mmr as their locusts all get abused by my single hellions that I drive into their army so the locusts all land immediatly far away from my army.
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On May 07 2017 05:24 Railgan wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 05:15 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:On May 07 2017 04:30 Railgan wrote:There are many ways to make Mech work. I am only around 6100 MMR but I definitly meet a lot of Mech. I open 2 Hatch every ZvT anyways so I just go Mutalisk --> 3 hatch Sat --> 8 Swarmhost --> 16 Swarmhost Ling Hydra Bane allin and kill them.... Here is an example of a 6.4k terran dying to it. + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnCufl6uoow Here is a Replay versus a Mech Terran who just walks over my Swarmhost Hydra Broodlord composition while I had a Spending Quotient of 161: http://sc2replaystats.com/replay/4164250Here is me explaing a fellow Zerg how to beat a Raven Viking Ghost Tank Turtle: + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp20Jy1Vl0A&t=28m Honestly the problem is not the Swarmhost there are definitly many ways to straight up roll Swarmhosts or to just turtle to death. I just don't understand what these Mech Terrans actually want. There are definitly Mech Compositions that just roll me over and I lose a decent amount of Games to Mech Terran. I suggest ignoring what Avilo thinks on the Mech Balance though and question people who actually play the style to win and not to whine and blame maphackers. EDIT: Don't forget that some Terrans just don't micro their Mech at all even at 6k MMR+... + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lslOnzHfvWI&t=4m20s This guy just attacked nothing but my Queens with his tanks and got steamrolled because of it Thanks for the good post. I looked at these games, and I am aware of the lategame turtle potential of mech (oh god why). Ofcourse in the one game where you lost there were 2 major differences with what people currently dislike about swarmhost play in TvZ The first being that your hydra's were 10 hp weaker in january. The second part is that swarmhosts snowball out of control when you have like 16, the number which you had in the game where you won. What people are frustrated about (I imagine) is losing units to an overwhelming amount of swarmhosts, enabling the zerg to be very cost-efficient-> remax on hive army/or static D. In that case mech players feel like they have no other choice but to turtle since they feel they can't walk out on the map and beat the standing hydra swarm host army + the eventual remax. Ofcourse people with higher mmr are better at knowing if they can move out or not but others might feel inclined to stay at home. I just.. I personally can't tell if they are too powerful or not. It's such a weird unit that either dominates a game or is kind of there. But with the recent hydra buff they've become a more powerful presence for sure. I also don't know how your games would pan out if you went straight hydra swarm host instead of a muta opener. It's true that you force thors/turrets which aren't exactly the best units vs hydra swarm host but it's also true that your muta investment = 10 swarm hosts. What I do know is that playing against swarmhosts might not be what people think is fun. Just like how playing against mech isn't fun for others. But yea like always, Blizzard should just give it to us straight if they think mech is fine atm. Neither is it fun for Zergs to deal with Archon Drops that you can't really punish... or oracles or 16 marine drops or ravens and the list goes on. It's part of the game and there are things that every race struggles with. If he goes mass Swarmhost you can use BC's / Liberators / Banshees that the Swarmhosts can't shoot at. If he has Mass Swarmhost, Mass Corruptor and Viper then you probably messed up and deserve the loss that you have coming. Furthermore, as I mentioned previously you can always punish swarmhosts with hellbats as long as the banes don't get insane connections on your hellbats. I play Mech too and I just go Tank Thor Hellbat and amove over the Zergs at 5.2k mmr as their locusts all get abused by my single hellions that I drive into their army so the locusts all land immediatly far away from my army.
Not too sure about those comparisons and mass swarmhost but okay. I realize there's stuff that people hate in all matchups though.
BC's liberators and banshees excluding speed banshee's can't catch swarmhosts and even if they did, they'd get killed by hydra's without the ground army support. Surely this is the reason why you go tank thor hellbat is it not? I'm not too sure about air V swarmhost in general since that means the standing ground army gets owned by locusts.
And it's ofcourse rather tragic that 5.2k mmr zergs can't manually move their locusts to not attack the first hellions. Also how do you even drive a hellion into their army when it should get killed by some hydra's
But yea, there's a lot to dislike and like about Sc2. So it'd be nice for our conscience (atleast mine) to know whether something will ever get changed or not.
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On May 06 2017 22:17 MockHamill wrote:
I have played every major RTS since Dune II.
I have never seen anything as broken as the current Swarm Hosts vs mech.
parking your submarine in your opponents harbour in Utopia.
On May 07 2017 04:30 Railgan wrote:
There are many ways to make Mech work. I am only around 6100 MMR but I definitly meet a lot of Mech.....
....
Don't forget that some Terrans just don't micro their Mech at all even at 6k MMR+...
thx for your insights man.
On May 07 2017 04:06 Liquid`TLO wrote:
Swarmhosts are incredibly powerful if Zerg is ahead after the early game. I think what most people that play Mech need to realise is that in the early game you can't play passive at all. If you want to mech you need to make work with your initial hellions/hellbats/raven/banshee/Mine/MarineDrop (pick your poison). Only after you secured an advantage or at least slowed down the Zerg can you transition into a more passive style, otherwise Zerg has too many options.
thx for ur insights sir.
TL should pay its SC2 team members to provide feedback in these threads. Just 20 minutes a week makes a world of difference. TL would easily squeeze another $30/year out of me if they did that.
i think its really cool that one must "earn" your opportunity to tech into a big mech build. i like the gradual crescendo of battles... starting with a few small skirmishes... and gradually building to bigger and bigger fights.
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On May 07 2017 04:06 Liquid`TLO wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 04:04 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:On May 07 2017 03:49 Liquid`TLO wrote:On May 07 2017 03:42 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:On May 07 2017 03:34 Liquid`TLO wrote:On May 07 2017 03:31 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:
And again the grandmasters aren't even willing to remotely say anything relating to balance. Great.
Strategic diversity-> higher winrate? If that is so why don't pro terrans play mech more often? Oh right it's about as valid as proxy ghost cloak vs protoss.
Avilo's latest tweet was probably just a way of saying: I hate starcraft as it is atm, sub so I have a reason to play.
Oh well keep it up people. Atleast it's amusing to read.
Mech is the niche and Bio the standard, that's just how the game developed, making Mech as valid as Bio isn't anything most people desire and changing such a core concept at this point is an almost impossible undertaking. That is correct. There is absolutely no flaw in that reasoning. I just wish Blizzard would straight out tell us for once that they intend to keep it that way, so we can accept that the swarm host is meant to keep mech the niche. If they did then people would have no choice but to let this ''discussion'' end. Avilo could stop preaching to the choir and these community feedback updates wouldn't be filled with a myriad of philosophical game changes either. Honestly why is blizzard even opting for transparancy without being transparant themselves about what they want starcraft 2 lotv to be. Anyway what do you personally think of the thor and the tempest buff? I'd like to know that much atleast. First of all I really don't think swarmhost are the end to Mech, most Zerg pros I know have really mixed feelings about swarmhosts. They can be amazing but if your opponent knows what they're doing they can also help Terran transition into a sick lategame while you delayed your path to Hive and are stuck with bad mid game units. Thor buff is alright, I don't mind it. Small changes like that are great because they can be quite impactful without breaking the game. SC2 fights can snowball numberwise if you even just add a single upgrade or a single additional unit. (for example 9 roaches crush 7 roaches and 7-8 of the 9 roaches survive) Tempest buff is a bit awkward it's mostly to deal with Carrier vs Carrier but at least they realised +25 would allow 4 shooting broodlords with upgrades which would make them unviable. I think there would be more elegant solutions to it tho. Alright, thanks for the taking the time to put forward some insightful commentary. I obviously have no clue how good things are or aren't at the very high level. So swarmhosts might actually be slightly overhyped for all I know. But I personally found that if the zerg is ahead economically and gets a large number of swarmhosts it becomes very hard for terran to build his army or tech. It's this frustrating feeling of actually already being defeated and dying a slow death which makes them feel overpowered and annoying at the very least (And ofcourse that for purely mech units it's hard to catch them). I believe that this is the reason why people are vocal about them. Oh well, again thanks for answering. Swarmhosts are incredibly powerful if Zerg is ahead after the early game. I think what most people that play Mech need to realise is that in the early game you can't play passive at all. If you want to mech you need to make work with your initial hellions/hellbats/raven/banshee/Mine/MarineDrop (pick your poison). Only after you secured an advantage or at least slowed down the Zerg can you transition into a more passive style, otherwise Zerg has too many options.
TLO telling it like it is. As far as balance goes, the key to all of this is activity and interactivity. Players have to interact in order for it to be a good multiplayer game. That's something that a lot of professional players as well as casters understand and constantly talk about, and the dev team makes balance decisions with this in mind.
When a player rages about not being to play passively they fail to understand that and so, so many other things. Swarm Hosts, as I've said idk how many times, are part of keeping players from being passive in 1v1 matches, and understanding exactly what they are so strong against and why is so key. The problem with Mech and Mech players is that it (historically, in SC2) rewarded Terrans for not interacting with their opponent until they could easily walk over them, it rewarded passive play, and a small group of players got used to this playstyle which is threatened by the Swarm Host unit. StarCraft is all about interactions, and with Legacy of the Void the team has been making it very difficult for Terran Mech players to play that same way in the matchup, and across all matchups to a lesser extent, which is a good thing for the game's design.
A lot of Terran players will quote David Kim as saying, on multiple occasions, that him and the team work very hard to make Mech viable and then rage at the current state of the game because the team still hasn't "fixed" Mech, and they'll believe that their negative feelings are justified somehow because of D. Kim's quotes. The team has made so many Mech units very powerful and they are always (as shown by 3.8 and patches since) looking at Mech units and the playstyle. Right now the Widow Mine, Cyclone, Hellion/Hellbat, Siege Tank, Viking, Raven, Battlecruiser, and even the Thor are extremely powerful when used in the right situations by an active player. However, they haven't made the old Turtle Mech playstyle more powerful. When used by a passive player, all of these units stop working properly because the game is not designed to be played passively. So, in the case of a player being passive and getting rolled over by an active player using a specific unit (the Swarm Host), it isn't a bad thing.
"You can't play passive at all." Yeah you have to get your buns in gear or you get destroyed, dawg.
That's the game, ever since 1998. There's a countdown, a slight pause as the map loads, then you immediately have to start making decisions as to how you will interact with your opponent. If you don't want your Zerg enemy to win with SH you have to do something about it on the battlefield starting as soon as the game begins. Now that I think about it, they're actually very similar to Ravagers in how they really punish static things, just with a much more narrow use. Anyway. I'm rambling. My bad.
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Sc2 in a nutshell is a rock-scissors-paper game with micro-management elements which makes it so fun to play.
But most mech players just want free-wins instead of adapting and using all the tools at their disposal to grind out a win, expecting to win with pure mech while other races have to mix & match full range of techs just to survive to late game.
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Bloodboil lags too much. Do they know about this? I think this is more urgent than other stuffs
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Well the minor problem is that the pressure options that mech has are so easily deflected by Zerg.
The major problem is that the units that you accumulate when you pressure Zerg (typically hellions and a few banshees) are not effective enough to slow down the Swarm Hosts transition.
If Swarm Hosts had less hit points or were light units you could use the units that you built earlier to chase them down so that Zerg had to invest in support units for the Swarm Hosts earlier, thus slowing down the Swarm Hosts transition.
In the current situation hellions only tickle Swarm Hosts and you can typically only can get a few banshees out. That is not enough to delay Swarm Hosts from attacking your bases or even being able to punish them for it.
Basically the counter play to Swarm Hosts exists but is is much too weak. It would be great if Blizzard could try changing the Swarm Host to light or lower their hit points on the test map so that the balance between play and counter play would be more even.
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Germany767 Posts
On May 07 2017 17:32 MockHamill wrote:
Well the minor problem is that the pressure options that mech has are so easily deflected by Zerg.
The major problem is that the units that you accumulate when you pressure Zerg (typically hellions and a few banshees) are not effective enough to slow down the Swarm Hosts transition.
If Swarm Hosts had less hit points or were light units you could use the units that you built earlier to chase them down so that Zerg had to invest in support units for the Swarm Hosts earlier, thus slowing down the Swarm Hosts transition.
In the current situation hellions only tickle Swarm Hosts and you can typically only can get a few banshees out. That is not enough to delay Swarm Hosts from attacking your bases or even being able to punish them for it.
Basically the counter play to Swarm Hosts exists but is is much too weak. It would be great if Blizzard could try changing the Swarm Host to light or lower their hit points on the test map so that the balance between play and counter play would be more even.
One or two banshees are enough to stop the initial Swarmhosts, it's very hard to have fast swarmhosts and also anti air on the Terran side of the map. So if you don't waste your banshees when you scout what's going on that's all you need to not have to deal with them for quite some time. Then once you have Blueflame hellbats swarmhosts lose most of their power and you need speedbanes and amazing control to still make swarmhosts work.
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On May 07 2017 20:15 Liquid`TLO wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 17:32 MockHamill wrote:
Well the minor problem is that the pressure options that mech has are so easily deflected by Zerg.
The major problem is that the units that you accumulate when you pressure Zerg (typically hellions and a few banshees) are not effective enough to slow down the Swarm Hosts transition.
If Swarm Hosts had less hit points or were light units you could use the units that you built earlier to chase them down so that Zerg had to invest in support units for the Swarm Hosts earlier, thus slowing down the Swarm Hosts transition.
In the current situation hellions only tickle Swarm Hosts and you can typically only can get a few banshees out. That is not enough to delay Swarm Hosts from attacking your bases or even being able to punish them for it.
Basically the counter play to Swarm Hosts exists but is is much too weak. It would be great if Blizzard could try changing the Swarm Host to light or lower their hit points on the test map so that the balance between play and counter play would be more even.
One or two banshees are enough to stop the initial Swarmhosts, it's very hard to have fast swarmhosts and also anti air on the Terran side of the map. So if you don't waste your banshees when you scout what's going on that's all you need to not have to deal with them for quite some time. Then once you have Blueflame hellbats swarmhosts lose most of their power and you need speedbanes and amazing control to still make swarmhosts work.
Not to sound presumptious. But is it really such an investment to invest in a drop overlord with some queens to back up your swarm hosts against the banshees? I'm sure you would know they are out on the map since terran would've gone after your drones. In that case you would probably have some spores to defend against them at home too no?
Or hell, even burrow whilst running towards and away from their base would force several scans and minimal damage no? Or ofcourse. A nydus network.
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Germany767 Posts
On May 07 2017 20:38 Suchbalancemuchwow wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 20:15 Liquid`TLO wrote:On May 07 2017 17:32 MockHamill wrote:
Well the minor problem is that the pressure options that mech has are so easily deflected by Zerg.
The major problem is that the units that you accumulate when you pressure Zerg (typically hellions and a few banshees) are not effective enough to slow down the Swarm Hosts transition.
If Swarm Hosts had less hit points or were light units you could use the units that you built earlier to chase them down so that Zerg had to invest in support units for the Swarm Hosts earlier, thus slowing down the Swarm Hosts transition.
In the current situation hellions only tickle Swarm Hosts and you can typically only can get a few banshees out. That is not enough to delay Swarm Hosts from attacking your bases or even being able to punish them for it.
Basically the counter play to Swarm Hosts exists but is is much too weak. It would be great if Blizzard could try changing the Swarm Host to light or lower their hit points on the test map so that the balance between play and counter play would be more even.
One or two banshees are enough to stop the initial Swarmhosts, it's very hard to have fast swarmhosts and also anti air on the Terran side of the map. So if you don't waste your banshees when you scout what's going on that's all you need to not have to deal with them for quite some time. Then once you have Blueflame hellbats swarmhosts lose most of their power and you need speedbanes and amazing control to still make swarmhosts work. Not to sound presumptious. But is it really such an investment to invest in a drop overlord with some queens to back up your swarm hosts against the banshees? I'm sure you would know they are out on the map since terran would've gone after your drones. In that case you would probably have some spores to defend against them at home too no? Or hell, even burrow whilst running towards and away from their base would force several scans and minimal damage no? Or ofcourse. A nydus network.
Yeah, those are all investments into the midgame so if you stack those things there's no hope for any lategame transitions on the zerg side, unless they do absurd amounts of damage. So as long as Terran just focuses on defending by making more banshees and making sure to get hellbat blueflame + thors in time that's a gift to Terran to transition into an extremely strong defensive late game or go for a maxed out death push with few tanks but many thors, hellbats and banshees.
The biggest mistake by a bit lower ranked mech players that I see is that they love to go double armory and often get supply blocked or go to crazy on tech. So as long as you continuously produce out of your 3-4 factories and 1 starport you'll mass an army very quickly (I've lost plenty of times to 10 minute mech maxouts when I went swarmhosts) so Zerg actually has to be careful to not just die because they overmade harrass units
Terran mech basically has 3 power spikes vs Zerg.
Early game harrass with Hellions or hellbats + whatever starport preference you have
Mid game maxed-out or near maxed out push + potential hellion runbys or drops or liberator harrass
Late game Mega turtle style with many tanks some thors and mass viking some ravens and or ghosts and of course the ongoing hellion/hellbat runbys if zerg doesn't have infinite static defense yet.
Zerg is strongest in between all those stages so your goal is to make sure you hit your spikes and read the game properly to exploit your strengths.
Of course that's an oversimplification because SC2 is a WHOLE lot more complicated than that but it's an okay generalisation.
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The problem I have with the swarm host isn't balance related, it's design related. From my point of view, any unit dealing damage for free with little to no risk is problematic. You could argue that casters are dealing "free and risk-free" damage, but most casters in the game have to close in to cast their spells (even infested terrans), and somewhat endanger theirselves while doing so.
The SH is basically a X money Y supply investment to get a free doom drop every 43 seconds. And frankly, I don't think that's a bad way to design zerg's mech counter if it didn't mean the best counter is "mass sensor tower turtle into mass ravens" : because the SHs are free, most of the agressive options you can go for are not worthwhile because zerg uses a free army, which means he can replenish drones or switch tech very easily. The problem is that the locusts are free, and that they can also be casted on the main mech army to deal free damage.
This means that terrans needs free, risk-free damage to deflect free, risk-free damage. And if you look at it, both the raven (with the turret and the upgraded seeker) and the BC (with yamato + jump) are based on dealing free damage with very little commitment.
Also, the road blizzard took for mech is giving mech game-breaking stats, while giving other races mech-breaking mechanics. Vipers and SHs are entirely designed to counter mech, while the tank got buffed to a whooping 70dmg, and that the thor maybe gaining +1 armor, adding even more versatility its already all-purpose role.
From there, there's two ways to look at things :
- either we continue increasing the mech units general strength while keeping very strong spells/abilities to specifically counter said mech units
- either we tone down these mechanics and stop buffing the mech units stats
Personnally I'd gladly remove the tank's +15 hp buff and tone down its anti armored damage to 60 in exchange for changes to the SH and the viper. However, I think we're too far down the road for the dev team to start making big design decisions.
A good compromise, I think, would be to leave the thor as it is (not go through with the armor buff), but give the SH a light tag to be chased down by hellions, and nerf the locust swoop range to 4 in stead of 6 so that thors can once again be a soft counter to swarm hosts if they're positionned to intercept the locusts. This wouldn't change the SH's ability to stretch mech players defenses, while exposing theirselves to hellions.
Finally, i think that mech shouldn't necessarily be terran "niche" play. By its very design, bio play is very restrictive because the undivisable stim+shileds+medivacs+baracks production+2 ebays upgrades leaves very little space for diversity. Once you payed for the "bio package", you have very little money left to produce other units, which means that bio compositions are always the same. Mech, on the other hand, gives players a lot of choices because they can build whatever they feel like. You don't need to build tanks if you get other units to fill the role the tank usually play.
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True, design wise its bad but pro players dont care about the design one bit. Thats why you see pros argue like this.
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Germany767 Posts
On May 07 2017 22:51 JackONeill wrote:
The problem I have with the swarm host isn't balance related, it's design related. From my point of view, any unit dealing damage for free with little to no risk is problematic. You could argue that casters are dealing "free and risk-free" damage, but most casters in the game have to close in to cast their spells (even infested terrans), and somewhat endanger theirselves while doing so.
The SH is basically a X money Y supply investment to get a free doom drop every 43 seconds. And frankly, I don't think that's a bad way to design zerg's mech counter if it didn't mean the best counter is "mass sensor tower turtle into mass ravens" : because the SHs are free, most of the agressive options you can go for are not worthwhile because zerg uses a free army, which means he can replenish drones or switch tech very easily. The problem is that the locusts are free, and that they can also be casted on the main mech army to deal free damage.
This means that terrans needs free, risk-free damage to deflect free, risk-free damage. And if you look at it, both the raven (with the turret and the upgraded seeker) and the BC (with yamato + jump) are based on dealing free damage with very little commitment.
Also, the road blizzard took for mech is giving mech game-breaking stats, while giving other races mech-breaking mechanics. Vipers and SHs are entirely designed to counter mech, while the tank got buffed to a whooping 70dmg, and that the thor maybe gaining +1 armor, adding even more versatility its already all-purpose role.
From there, there's two ways to look at things :
- either we continue increasing the mech units general strength while keeping very strong spells/abilities to specifically counter said mech units
- either we tone down these mechanics and stop buffing the mech units stats
Personnally I'd gladly remove the tank's +15 hp buff and tone down its anti armored damage to 60 in exchange for changes to the SH and the viper. However, I think we're too far down the road for the dev team to start making big design decisions.
A good compromise, I think, would be to leave the thor as it is (not go through with the armor buff), but give the SH a light tag to be chased down by hellions, and nerf the locust swoop range to 4 in stead of 6 so that thors can once again be a soft counter to swarm hosts if they're positionned to intercept the locusts. This wouldn't change the SH's ability to stretch mech players defenses, while exposing theirselves to hellions.
Finally, i think that mech shouldn't necessarily be terran "niche" play. By its very design, bio play is very restrictive because the undivisable stim+shileds+medivacs+baracks production+2 ebays upgrades leaves very little space for diversity. Once you payed for the "bio package", you have very little money left to produce other units, which means that bio compositions are always the same. Mech, on the other hand, gives players a lot of choices because they can build whatever they feel like. You don't need to build tanks if you get other units to fill the role the tank usually play.
It's not true that swarmhosts deal ''free'' damage tho. Making Swarmhosts is like taking a loan, If I make 10 swarmhost I'm in debt with with 1000/750 and 30 supply, the longer my swarmhosts don't deal damage the more damage they deal to myself cause I took a loan that is not paying off. Swarmhosts becoming more useless every single second that goes by and even a single wrongly send locusts wave can lose you the game. Swarmhosts styles are insanely hard to make work if Terran knows how to abuse the downtimes and knows how to deflect waves or push out during the downtimes.
I've lost so many games because I send one wave to harras and then Terran a moved me and I only had one more wave at home which won't be enough to make my swarmhosts cost efficient. Swarmhosts actually need to get really close to do anything, if Locusts wave spawn from too far away you can just ignore it, lift buildings or run away workers/army.
The problem is that some mech players have planted this seeds that swarmhosts are simply too strong rather than looking at the solutions of strong players or finding their own too it. I've given you many examples how to deal with swarmhosts.
You should try to look at swarmhosts as an opportunity, because they're very gimmicky and a single mistake will kill Zerg. But if you fear a unit and think it's OP or broken design wise it's a self fulfilling prophecy cause you'll stop looking for weaknesses and solutions. I've been in that spot myself many times and once you are in that mindset you'll stop enjoying the game and just keep losing to it.
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EPT
