To be fair Protoss is the clear cut dominate race of HOTS at the moment. Obviously that can change but the ladder is pretty dominated by Toss. They upgraded their deathball in HoTS. Most top Toss use Cruncher style of just turtle to invincible.
StarCraft 2
- Thread starter Stosh
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Fight
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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In HOTS, it seems with the emergence of the Ultralisk and it's total ground superiority, nobody is using Swarm Hosts. I really don't think they have found their purpose yet and need some tweaking.
What if, you could decide what spawned out of them, as long as you had the tech structures built?
First, change the tech to the Hydralisk den. By default, it would be two locusts that spawn, like normal. If you had a Baneling Nest, you could set it to spawn suiciding AE splash damage unit, that could only be placed a very short distance from the Host itself and does no dmg to friendly units, has no timed life but 1 Swarm Host can only have 1 at a time. If you had a Infestation Pit, you could choose to spawn 2 Infested Terrans.
What if, you could decide what spawned out of them, as long as you had the tech structures built?
First, change the tech to the Hydralisk den. By default, it would be two locusts that spawn, like normal. If you had a Baneling Nest, you could set it to spawn suiciding AE splash damage unit, that could only be placed a very short distance from the Host itself and does no dmg to friendly units, has no timed life but 1 Swarm Host can only have 1 at a time. If you had a Infestation Pit, you could choose to spawn 2 Infested Terrans.
Swarm Hosts are strange because if the Zerg can amass a fair number they're a nightmare to fight against. But mixing in 2-3 in your army is completely worthless.
Yeah, I watch Catz pretty often, and he talks about IMSeed's deathball that's caught on and is basically invincible against any Zerg composition. Isn't it something like Zealot/Colossus/Archon/Templar/Oracle/Void Ray and pretty much steamrolls anything while barely losing any supply?
The irony is one of Blizzards main stated goals early on for HOTS was to move away from deathballs
From what I've seen and read it's not a qq. It's basically an invincible deathball that can't be beat with even a 300 supply zerg army. Putting a 13 range flying unit into the game is just fucking stupid and compounds the idiocy of any Protoss deathball.
Sid's statement has merit. The classic deathball from WoL hasn't really changed it is just Zergs figured out you can Infestor the fuck out of it. However I can't even really theorycraft a way out of the current Toss deathball. Tempest being flying siege tanks really throws off any idea of cute stuff like abduction on key units and the extreme mobility of the ball makes cloud worthless as well. Tempest also fry the fuck out of Broodlords making them worthless.
Valishar
Molten Core Raider
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The Protoss death ball was never really solved other than "my Broodlords with fungal defense are better". Without BL, infestors + stuff doesn't really cut it, the only other possible way to beat it was a weird ultra+bane drop+infestor surround with quick transition into something else because you can't deal with archons with that composition.
Sidian
Lord Nagafen Raider
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The problem still is that end game gateway units just suck. Hell, they could easily bring back warp in storms and nerf the living shit out of everything else in that deathball and toss would be in a better position. It's just everything from the gateway is just awful and is used to buffer damage so the t3 units just aoe everything down. Zealots suck and are just a mineral dump to soak damage, stalkers are cost inefficient but are the only "cheap" AA toss get, so you're forced into them, otherwise you better have the more godly blink micro or else they suck (although now you don't even use stalkers anymore since you get tempests). Sentres are good, but it's a huge gas dump for no damage, just zone control. DTs are useless. HTs are useless until you keep them on the field for like 30 seconds so they can storm once.
Then again, it all just stems back to warpgate being the main problem. If you didn't have warpgate you could just make all the gateway units stronger. You can't do that now because then early/mid game gateway pushes would be impossible to stop, but if they didn't have the ability to warp in it might not be as bad.
Then again, it all just stems back to warpgate being the main problem. If you didn't have warpgate you could just make all the gateway units stronger. You can't do that now because then early/mid game gateway pushes would be impossible to stop, but if they didn't have the ability to warp in it might not be as bad.
Rombo
Lord Nagafen Raider
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WoL updatehttp://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/839...2013-1_11_2013
Kind of the same old shit we're used to from them. An apology for being years too slow to understand maps/ infestors are messing up sc2 (why do they think people mass infestors for only infested terrans btw) and the same old bullshit of taking new players for absolute retards has a reason to not promote new changes. Really? Meh.
Kind of the same old shit we're used to from them. An apology for being years too slow to understand maps/ infestors are messing up sc2 (why do they think people mass infestors for only infested terrans btw) and the same old bullshit of taking new players for absolute retards has a reason to not promote new changes. Really? Meh.
Zaphid
Trakanon Raider
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They are still about a year behind on updating ladder maps to balanced. If you change fungal, toss allins become almost unstoppable and TBH infested terrans are the a lot of bullshit, because they give you like 30 supply in a key battle.
From what Tenks said about Swarm Hosts, they seem to be like Infestor 2.0
Nah Swarm Hosts suck. No one really uses them. They're extraordinarily expensive and exploitable but they're very good for sealing a victory if you get an advantage.
I think there are a lot of contributions to the protoss deathball. A protoss army needs to consist of a variety of units which support eachother, and that basically means keeping all your units together. For example, colossus need stalker support and you need more than just four stalkers with them. Immortals require either a lot of zealots or a lot of sentry energy. High templar require a full army in front of them or a warp prism. Archons cost too much gas to be tanks, so you need zealots with them. The only protoss units that are self sufficient are stalkers or zealots with their movement upgrades. But you dont get late game stalker groups because they cost 50 gas each and really dont kill things fast enough (compared to a marine drop or a group of mutas).
Chronoboost contributes because it makes going for early upgrades more attractive. If you do for early double upgrades then you generally need to play defensive, making the game go towards the deathball.
The slow movement speed of most protoss units is obviously a big contributer.
The other thing is that the long build time of bases (Nexus etc) means that it is more important to defend them, which makes games more static. Even though a base only costs 400 minerals (plus a few extras), if you lose a base and do not have another base to transfer to them it is actually extremely costly due to the lost mining time.
Chronoboost contributes because it makes going for early upgrades more attractive. If you do for early double upgrades then you generally need to play defensive, making the game go towards the deathball.
The slow movement speed of most protoss units is obviously a big contributer.
The other thing is that the long build time of bases (Nexus etc) means that it is more important to defend them, which makes games more static. Even though a base only costs 400 minerals (plus a few extras), if you lose a base and do not have another base to transfer to them it is actually extremely costly due to the lost mining time.
Zaphid
Trakanon Raider
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If you want to watch a superior game, TLS qualifiers are live :http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/TeamLiquidTV
Bases rarely cost "only" the town hall, it's also your army composition - more sentries, pylons and gateways so you can macro your heart out once it kicks in. You are looking at 1k minerals more often than not as an investment into a new base.
Bases rarely cost "only" the town hall, it's also your army composition - more sentries, pylons and gateways so you can macro your heart out once it kicks in. You are looking at 1k minerals more often than not as an investment into a new base.
Xequecal
Trump's Staff
- 11,559
- -2,388
The problem with HotS Protoss is Stargate units are overpowered, but at the same time opening on Stargate tech is also mandatory, at least vs. Zerg. You just can't beat the regenerating mutalisks without fast Stargate. Heavy Stargate unit nerfs will just leave the Protoss player with a dead-end tech path and a bunch of useless Phoenix, since Zerg knows you must go Stargate and can build to counter it from the beginning of the game.
Sidian
Lord Nagafen Raider
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I thought I remember hearing Ret say something in HotS that if you see protoss open stargate you can just mass roach/ling/hydra off 3 base and attack them constantly and they should never be able to get off 2 base and you'll slowly just wither them down. It was probably a couple weeks ago when I was watching, not sure how true that could be though since I haven't been watching many HotS streams yet.
Xequecal
Trump's Staff
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I'm guessing that was prior to the patch change that made them attack at 0.5 speed. A +1 void ray does 14 DPS and beats two hydralisks, which means Hydra/Roach can't really break an expansion, especially with overcharge, because hydras are so awful slow and take forever to cross the map. Void rays beat every Zerg unit but infestors ATM, and that's only because they can chain fungal them and stay out of range.