What's yours most hated unit in StarCraft 2? The Brood Lord Infestor meta story - ruclips.net/video/KbtDFgEO7pM/видео.html LONGEST Heart of The Storm match - ruclips.net/video/RkXpxoXCNlY/видео.html Timecodes: 00:00 What's yours most hated unit? 00:17 Why and how Swarm Hosts were invented 03:07 How Swarm Hosts ruined the game 08:52 How did this meta end?
swarm host is balanced, they need specific mass to be efficient, and they took a lot of population, not only that they got whooping long cooldown between interval , so when the swarm get pushed with good timing the zerg is just as near as dead aniway
The Disruptor, and it's not even close. It's a unit that should not exist. It fills a role that didn't need filling, and its sole purpose from a game balance standpoint is adding more micro to the game. Before the Disruptor, the Protoss already had a Robo Bay tech unit that deals splash damage (the Colossus), and a unit that can deal powerful bursts of splash damage with a risk of friendly fire (the High Templar). The Disruptor didn't add anything new or interesting, it just does the same thing, but better and with more micro required. And that is my opinion as a Protoss player.
my most hated period of sc2 balance was the voidray meta which we just left. i played through swarmhost era (was high plat at the time) and as a zerg i just never ever ever built the unit as i thought it was stupid.. but it also generally didnt do much in zvz so i could just ignore it's existance. the voidray meta was honestly so frustrating and awful to play that it's perminately made me hate zvp (already didnt like match up much, now just hate it) and caused me to mostly quit the game (was ~100-150gm for most of the patch when i played actively). i've tried getting back into the game, but i just hate protoss so much now. doubt ill ever truly get back into the game and am mostly just waiting for stormgate to come out and hopefully move over
It's interesting to see that note in the early attempts to nerf, "increased range," and you'd think hang on, that's a nerf? But then you remember half the value of the locusts against terrans was to cause self harm with tanks. Kinda interesting.
You didn't even include the infamous hour-long snoozefest that was ZvZ with these things. It was reminiscent of WW1 trench warfare, with waves and waves of disposable soldiers constantly being thrown against each other to gain or lose inches of ground.
The worst part is the vipers just yoinking all those expensive capital ships, and the enemy player not being able to engage on the spore forest but also unable to stop the vipers and swarmhosts just continuously grabbing value
Making a new unit which creates an unbearably slow and unfun experience to watch/play for both players and viewers, and then being slow to fix it is a surprisingly common Blizzard phenomenon, it also happened in Overwatch and Hearthstone
It's because they don't pay attention to their QA department. And once the product is released, it's a matter of ego and lack of funding to fix their mistakes. So the problem is basically summed up with one word: Blizzard 🤷♂
@@MrSixPool nope, blizzard, hate it or not has actually one of the best QA teams amongst Western studios. The balance team has nothing to do with QA. Balancing a game is a much more different discipline altogether as a small change can have ripple effects for the meta. The problem however is the response time, blizzard takes way too long to respond to the aftereffects of their new changes. Same with overwatch and goat meta and now again with overwatch 2 with support importance/survivability.
@@raptorate2872 I'm talking about pre-release QA. We all heard from the news that EA/Blizzard doesn't care about QA. When the QA teams tells them that a certain unit is shit, they don't listen. That's when even the expansions are release, each time, there were useless units and overpowered units.
It still baffles me to this day how Blizzard was so reluctant to redesign the Swarm Host when there where these ZvPs that lasted for hours. Their balancing was just like: "-2 Damage, that should do the trick". I think it was also that time when the "David Kim Memes" where born, right?
as was stated throughout the video, Zerg had some incredible struggles midgame. Zerg always had some really bad midgame options, except the Muta, as early as Wings launch. but post-BLFestor nerf, pre-Swarm, now there was nothing to transition from that bad midgame into a good lategame. Blizzard didnt really have much of a choice. they had simply designed themselves into a corner from day 1 of Wings dropping, they didnt realize this when they started working on Swarm, and they didnt have an opportunity to fix this until Void. you _cant_ really do any major redesigns or reworks in the middle of a game's (expansion's) lifespan while it's the most active, it is simply not a good idea, even if it means bleeding off numbers because of those things you need to rework but cant. with Void, they *finally* did fix Zerg's bad midgame options that aren't totally game breaking by adding the Ravager, and then *finally* giving Zerg good late-game options *that wasn't the Brood Lord* by adding the Lurker and making the Ultralisk an actually viable unit. the Ultralisk basically had not seen *any* action since early Wings, and for different reasons for each era of SC2. and overall, the Ultralisk is simply a much more interesting unit than the Brood Lord, so it's a good thing they finally addressed that.
I feel like both Brood Lords and Swarm Hosts were devs realizing that outside of Zerglings, most Z units weren’t really swarmy. Hell, the only 1 supply unit is the drone, most are instead 2 or 3 supply. The only “swarmy” behavior left was just larva. So instead their solution was spawning free units, except now instead of the faction that supposedly tried drowning your guns with blood, now can just drown you for free, making the faction that can already expand faster, even more efficient. Whups.
Zerg had 3 free unit types. Infestors, those were insanely busted. brood lords, not as bad cause had counter play. Then the swarm hosts, made me sad watching all my Protoss and Terran mains quitting the game due to the boring and crazy imbalance state of the game. Zergs just had to defend early game, so they’d mass drone for eco and queen for defense. Queen is still a busted unit imo. They’d rush to late game and just whittle down their opponent for an hour straight until game over and they’d still whine about other races being too strong. I remember I quit when they nerfed Protoss one more time cause they thought it was too good in the early game vs Zerg. Protoss is just a race to cheese with nowadays if your opponent is evenly matched cause you will most likely lose mid or late game. Terran players suffer vs splash and Zerg still is laughing in there corner saying the other races are better
Thanks! I am reliving the best storylines from the best memories of competitive SC2. Pls continue, player rivalries, Korea vs World evolution and rise of the West, The most dominant player eras. MC, MVP, Life, Innovation, Taeja, Maru, Serral all had periods where they were unplayable, would love to see it all in stories. Sc2 forever
Thanks for the video, I remember living through this era of SC2 and if anything Swarm Host games were usually much WORSE than the clips in this vid, which were mostly of Snute, who at least moved around and stuff. Zergs like Stephano and FireCake in particular would just make tons of swarm hosts and spores/spines with a few vipers, park in the middle of the map, and settle in for a 1-2 hour game where eventually you just ran out of resources. It didn't matter if they only have 2 bases and you have 10 bases--their units are free and yours aren't.
i remember early heart of the swarm i think where it was stephano vs someone that i dont remember but it was a ZvZ it was just swarm hosts fighting each other. The entire game was just locus fighting in the middle of the map
7:15 "mech was a slow turtling play style by it nature, of course. imagine a turtling mech playing a turtling zerg" and that's why the unit was hated, it allowed zerg to turtle. Of course, when terran does that, by its very nature, everyone hates the whole race and its players as unimaginative boring and op. but these were zerg players who should know better and leave being hated for turtling to terran players.
Would you consider making a video about the tankivac meta? It was extremely fun for when it lasted, obviously imbalanced but not in such a painful boring way like swarmhosts
The one thing I hate about the Swarm Host rebalance was that it affected the HotS campaign, the Crucible is built around your hosts being about to stall each wave, and now its a lot more rough on brutal.
I remember this, darks times and I stopped watching for a while. Glad that the game is back to being amazing again. Didn't even Stephano say sorry to the audience during a tournament?
Can you please do a video on the stupid drop metas? -Hellbat drops in mineral lines in TvT -Baneling drop on tank-marine or protoss -The infinite range (okay, 4 range) Warp Prism
Most hated units as a Z main? 1) Ghost: counters all Z lategame units with negligent ease, while being virtually impossible to kill after they snipe your Overseers, then killing the rest of your units while you try to run away. 2) Widow Mines: more counterable than ghosts, but they really screwed the whole Zerg meta of being able to get across the map quickly. Crossing the map at all pretty much requires a slow creep push with Broods against Terran mine spam. During this particular patch, mass mine would simply march in, burrow, and evaporate your entire army, Swarms, Broods, and everything, then roll in and murder your workers, park on your hatches and eradicate your units as fast as they hatched. Ravens were op as hell then too, seeker missiles could destroy almost any deathball in a matter of seconds, then completely cover your base in autoturrets. Swarms gave me headaches for about a month till I learned to time the locusts and get Muties, though I did get pretty savagely destroyed by Swarm/Infestor in one game, immobilized my muta, and funged them down, it felt pretty bad. Haven't played in few years, but it looks much more balanced now, although Ghosts still seem pretty broken. Continuously spawning Swarms were a better mainline unit you could use with your army, they zoned pretty nicely most of the time, a role taken over by the lurker which I like a lot better. The real problem with Swarms for Z is that while they are a great aggressive siege unit that can ignore walls and cliffs, they are completely useless in defense, while eating a huge chunk of your supply.
Heart of the Swarm was such a dark time in the meta and in the competitive scene. I was a big fan of Pro SC2 back in WoL and I stopped playing and watching because of Swarm Hosts. Came back to the game and I love watching the current pro scene. The current SC2 meta is awesome and super entertaining to play and watch. If you're curious about Starcraft 2, go watch IEM Katowice 2022 or 2023.
Yep as a Protoss player who played since WoL. The one two hit of losing black hole and swarm hosts was precisely why I quit. I eventually bought LotV but I was at a different point of my life then and didn’t even finish the campaign. I just really really hated infestors vipers and swarm hosts. Not talking about balance but definitely took away any enjoyment of the game.
Awesome video as per usual 😁. It's been great to see the history of the meta game and balance around one of my old favorite games. As a game designer is cool to see the why they created a certain unit and the result of it. I wonder why they took so long to answer when the unit was clearly breaking their game 🤔, since they've reworked units and abilities in the past I don't see why keep a stale meta for so long in a highly competitive game.
This is exactly how I remember Starcraft 2 when I just never watched it again in my life. What a shame. Like a super thin layer of jam over an old slice of bread.
@@curtiswilkerson8489 the f is zerg gonna do without a viper? It already needs a crazy micro so it's fine, skill issue for protosses not being able to drain their energy with the high templars.
@@razorback9999able ya man for sure! we said it since WoL! the whole "imba protoss deathball" problem would have never occured if there had been lurkers in the first place. the way it turned out ofc with BL/Inf made the lurker irrelevant in the later stages of WoL. but still.
@@OldSpaghettifactory89 Not the latter. Carriers have been one of the most iconic Protoss units in the StarCraft franchise, removing them erases the identity of the Protoss fleet!
I didn't really get how changing the swarm host spawns into flying critters that drop onto the ground changed the meta and magically fixed everything. Being the conclusion of the video, I feel like that part could have been explained better.
Yeah, let me explain in short - the duration of locusts and spawn time was also changed, now the cooldown is higher and you can't send waves after waves, which allows other races to have a solid timing window to push out. The Swarmhost was pretty much redesigned, my bad I didn't explain that properly, sorry!
What I'm reading here is not that the swarm host was bad, but that the meta was bad (everyone can turtle super hard till late game), and the swarm host just expressed that meta to its fullest extent. The solution shouldn't have necessarily been to break or remove the swarm host, but to change the meta so that turtling wasnt so good. Give players actual tools for breaking sieges and swarm hosts will stop being so bad. Technically the feeling that "there's nothing I can do but keep losing units with no compensation" is how Z feels in the current ZvT matchup, where Terrans turtle behind literally a dozen planetary fortresses and spooky mech. The Brood Lord trick is basically just the meta re-inventing swarm hosts because they have run out of choices for dealing with turtle Terran. They're taking that out too, though. I don't think the current balance team has taken to heart the lesson.
In addition Zerg now lacks a good late game unit that is flexible. Thors are able to attack air&ground, same goes for battle cruiser, tempest and carrier. Ghosts and High Templars outrange any caster by Zerg and Zerg doesn't even have any anti-energy ability like the other races. Right now it just feels like Zerg has the weakest early game and weakest late game.
@@Karttibone i think it is good this way. zerg aren't supposed to have super units that are universally as strong as those 2. they function in a fundamentally diffeeent way with weaker dispensable units that can be reproduced easily if lost. also zerg is definitely not weak late game if played properly. There is a reason why we see zerg so much in semi and finals .
@@idirbouchdoug1567 Zerg arent supposed to have super units, but neither are they supposed to "play defensive and never engage until late game unless you completely outclass your opponent". There's a middle ground somewhere. The likely reason why we see zerg in semi and finals is because it's the same players all the time, who are forced to always practice the entire gamut of early to late game in every tournament; whereas T or P for example can basically dictate the game direction / pace and choose to specialize in early or mid game. There are no _consistent_ zergs outside of Serral, even a Rogue or Reynor or Dark will randomly drop out in the group stages of a premier tournament. And Serral is basically Perfect Cell.
@@madumlao zergs in genwral are the most consiatent and have been for the last 5 years now at the super top level. while protoss has been historically lagging behind in tournament wins and even preaence in semis and finals in tier 1 tournaments. even terran has presence too and win sometimes. Also playing defensive and having the flexibility to reaxt to anything your opponent has and the lack of a rigid builds for zerg makes it hardee to predict them which is an advantage not a weakness. They are also the one race that can come back the easiest from catateophic damage. i have seen zerg missplay and lose 60 supply more than the opponent more than the opponent and insrantly refill and retaliate somewhere else to recover.
I tried to do coops with the swarm hosts in mind. They are so expensive and they don't seem to produce enough. They also don't get very much buffs as you level up the hero that can use them either. Making normal mode nearly impossible with their tickles.
It feels like all the terrans getting put in front of a mirror with the Swarm Host. I mean its basically the zerg siege tank. And terran is known for turtelling behind walls of CCs, turrets and tanks... I love em
I find it funny how the Swarm Host made it to live while the Carrier being allowed to deploy its interceptors at range (losing them in the process) was called wildly overpowered (even though interceptors actually cost minerals).
The worst meta is the choke point immediately adjacent to first Nexus/CC. P and T are just dead without that choke point. I hope to someday see a game where P/T can fight(not just survive) early game without those choke points. Someday I hope to see P/T be competitive in a “natural” terrain.
lol that'd be interesting, I've been thinking about that for a few days while thinking about a 2D Space RTS (Taking place in space, where there are no to very little obstacles in terms of terrain) and how that would affect general RTS meta-games. Though terrain advantages is a big part of Starcraft, I imagine that you'd have to, besides nerfing creep, allow marines to "Siege" or dig trenches and something similar for Protoss if the choke point wasn't there.
@@vilhelmkb2087 You can look at tabletop games like attack wing (starwars and star trek). Basically, ships/units in space must always be moving, making avoiding the few obstacles a bit more challenging while also maintaining a tactical position (ship moving around a planet or asteroid to avoid hitting it may no longer have line of sight to fire on an enemy or threaten a particular area). Things like speeding up, slowing down, arcs of fire/line of sight, different armor depending on side of a ship/unit being hit and maneuverability of different units become important. For instance, in SC2 balancing air units has always been a problem because they ignore terrain features, stack on top of each other (patrol flowers, etc). Imagine if every air unit had a minimum speed and max turn rate. For instance, it makes sense for a banshee or muta to be able to hover in place, but a unit like the viking shouldn't be able to. Units with a non-zero minimum speed would instead orbit their target location. This would give different units different orbital radius. When attacking, choosing an attack angle that works with the terrain (avoiding ground units on the way out) instead of completely ignoring it becomes a decision factor. It's not something that could be implemented in SC2 without breaking the game, but would be interesting to see in future RTS.
To counter all the people that said they stopped watching at this time, I will say that I actually enjoyed it as a viewer. It was obviously not balanced, but was still an interesting time and fun to watch for me
I would argue that in theory it is fun to watch as you are sieging/laying siege to an opponent the problem is that the games end up taking super long and you couldn't host a weekend tournament if the games were taking an hour long each. One of the reasons people stopped watching starcraft was the games were to long which is why the game was changed to start with 12 workers. This was at a time where games were 20-30 minutes.
Blizzes like to fuck up balance. Tankovacs, void rays not so long ago, charge zealots with damage on charge, battery overcharge at first, battlecruiser rush, infested terrans... You got my point
this get a lot of hate but i actually really like the swarmhosts. They may have been too strong at some point but it's very rare for them to even see gameplay anymore. also RIP infested terrans.
It’s insane to me that swarm host are still in the game as it’s the unit that made me quit StarCraft. I had originally planned to return once the unit was removed. That never happened I never returned
I quit playing Starcraft for like a year because of this unit. I was shocked it went from Wings of Liberty and how incredible it was (yes, it had its own issues with balance) to this. Dark times it was!
For me, a person who allways hated going againts Terran, could never win againts their mechs, siege tanks, constantly calling them op, this unit was a blessing. I never had problem going againts them either, because i knew that a good detection could destroy them super fast. Unlike the tanks who could annihilate everything even when they were exposed. I was so happy everytime I saw some terran rg on chat, because of this unit. That's how I felt going againts terran all the time, a base that is unbusteable, with good baneling target micro, and just....tanks that are constantly got buffs, this was a relief for me.
Yeah this Definitely turned me off from the game for a while. Even now swarm host are still strong but it’s easy to deal with them if you’re a decent player now
To me the mothership core was everything wrong with SC2's game design. But the Swarm Host was pretty terrible too, showcasing how the devs kind of missed the point a unit like say the Protoss Reaver.
Don't know if Blizzard tride this but woudn't the the simplest solution to the swarmhost- question bin to ad a price to the spawn locuste thingy. Like in SC 1 the Reaver had to buy there shootes. This way the Zerg are on a Timer es well.
As a Wings of Liberty veteran, Swarm Hosts were nowhere near as egregious and game-breaking as the Queen. The developers buffed the ground attack range of this unit from 3 to 5 in a mid-2012 balance update, allowing it to effectively outrange or match the range of any early game aggressor that could be used to kite it. Imagine being able to defend REAPER, 3-RAX AND 4 GATE ALL-INS by just spamming a support unit that cost 150 minerals, no gas and zero larvae commitment which can self-heal, produce more larvae from macro hatcheries and spread ludicrous amounts of creep very very quickly. This allowed Zerg players to effectively rush out an 80-worker economy unpunished and macro their way to an unbeatable 12 minute 3/3 Corruptor/Infestor/Brood Lord army comp. Tonnes of patchzergs like Vortix, Ziktomini, Jonnyrecco, XLord, Symbol and others (who would be at-best Diamond League if it weren't for an unbeatable late game unit comp that you could easily eco-cheese your way to) ended up taking whole tournaments thanks to this one asinine balance change. BL Infestor wasn't even the problem with WoL. The issue was that it came out far too early for anybody to stop. Protoss already had decent tools to deal with a tier 3 Zerg ground army, but not enough time to build it. Terran on the other hand could have used with a slight Siege Tank buff (I would have changed them so they did 60 base damage and only 25 reduced damage to Light units instead of +15 to Armored, so that they could 6-shot instead of 11-shot Archons), and that's literally the only thing I would have changed about them in WoL. I hate the rework Swarm Hosts got in LotV because it now feels like an aerial cheese unit and not a core part of your army. HotS Swarm Hosts could have worked if the swarmlings cost 5 minerals per pop to produce and if there was an extra 5 second cooldown allowing you to slowly push in on a Swarm Host blockade. It was literally the only good zone control unit in the game at the time because Siege Tanks sucked prior to LOTV's second year of release, Colossi were mindless attack-move machines and we didn't get the Disruptor or Lurker until LOTV released.
I had my highest winrate in TvZ because I always used a devastating hellion banshee into Hellbat Banshee timing push to punish the greedy third zerg. But I don't think I ever won when smarm horst were out.
i remember playing serg in the hots setting around 2017 or 2018, the mothership core was an absolute nightmare to deal because i had no anti air units to attack and it would just chip off my zerglins to death (you can guees i played in lower leagues)
@@DakkonDS of course i did, its just they are far to slow to reach the other side of the map in a meaning full time period, and it would just destroy what little macro i had by either cutting larva production or making too many queens for a rush that would be screwd any ways
Honestly, I liked them. I was a Zerg main, casual player, and avid fan of watching the tournaments. Maybe they just weren’t as big of a problem for Gold players at the time, maybe it’s because I liked how thematic and “Zerg-y,” they felt, maybe because I always loved tower defense game modes back in brood war, but I thought thought they were cool.
Hm. I could never figure out how these things even work. I make them. I bury them somewhere. They never shoot. Same with Disruptors; I make them, I never see them fire a single shot; after a while I just stopped dumping money in that hellhole. Maybe someone can cue me in what am I doing wrong?
I remember back then scII was my main game, during summer I'd swap night and day to watch the Korean players and then the 40+ minutes zvps became more and more common, I'd lost interest in the competitive scene and soon in the game as well. I'm starting to come back now after years
Don't, the game hasant really changed sadly. Every match with a zerg is very predictable with the zerg simply using queens to effortlessly reach lategame then invalidating 80% of t/p comps with the viper. Blizzard isint even blizzard having had most of their veteran staff quit and the remains of the company baught out. The Golden age of rts blizzard pioneered is a time lost entirely to history...... :(
Zerg has almost always been the most problematic of the three races: maphack with creep, overstacked spellcasters, the most mobile units, no need to build walls, static defenses that can be repositioned, larva mechanic allowing for quick re-maxing of armies... The list just goes on. This isn't to say that it's an easy race to play. A Zerg player definitely has a lot to keep track of. But the ceiling of Zerg potential is so much higher than Protoss and still modesty higher than Terran.
Disrupters are the worst unit such bullsht unit can turn a game around so instantly so many times. It’s like having infinite nukes with out the cost or wait time
This unit is almost single handily responsible for killing the starcraft 2 viewership on pro play and in turn started killing the player base. The game never recovered to where it once was after HOTS released lmao
I'm gonna be honest. This was my favorite era of StarCraft, because I was like, 10, and this was like the only time where I felt I could play and do well LMAO 🤣🤣🤣
This video feels so low effort. So much is missing, so much isn't explained, and there is no real story built. 1) You show Snute a lot and even say his name, but you never mention the real offender of this strategy Stephano. If anything Snute played SH only as the last resort after everything else didn't work. 2) You talk about PvZ, but only barely mention the real reason why people hated Swarm Hosts - TvZ and mass Raven-Tank defence of it. 3) You show Firecake, but only because you were talking about Ravens, not because you wanted to talk about he basically made Swarm Host popular. 4) You never mentioned how Koreans tried to battle this strategy, and how KR zergs didn't use it as much.
Hi! Thanks for the comment! I usually try to make videos with a right balance of information/entertainment, so I felt like diving too deep would be unneccesary long. 1) Stephano was one the first to use it, it's true, I remember his match vs BabyKnight on WCS 2013. However, Snute was probably the one who mastered it. Stephano also retired quite soon and didn't play as much in HotS, even though he was still streaming and even competing at some tournaments from time to time. 2) I mentioned it a bit later with Lillekanin vs ZhueGeLiang match. I remember that people hated both PvZ SHs and ZvT kinda equally. ZvT was worse of course, but there were not that many mech terrans at that time. So it's kinda subjective. 3) It's true, you're right on that, I should've shown more FireCake because he was one of the players who played that way very often. Again, as with most topics that I cover on the channel, there's usually a LOT of information, and I can talk about SHs even for 30, or even 60 minutes, but I don't want to overload the viewer with too many details. I think for this video, I covered like 90% of the topic and most important things concerning this meta. Maybe I'll delve deep into this in another video. As for FireCake and Snute - I'll be making separate stories about them and there'll be more on that, and for Stephano I've already made one where I talked about him being the pioneer of SHs.
i despise the ghost. It did way to much and countered way too many things with built in anti-counter as well. Nobody ran ultralisk because a ghost would just one shot it, they can knock out spellcasters and shields, and to top it all off their counter, zerglings and banglings, could be anti-countered because they had clock which you would have to bring an observer which, you guessed it, could be sniped. I am glad they nerfed the ghost.
I quit sc2 once heart if the swarm cane out, mainly because of swarm hosts, but also a little because of those long range protoss air units. Sc2 really dropped the ball in many ways. They need to just make another expansion for sc1 and fix some of the jank. No need to reinvent what worked. The super mario model is the best. The sequels should just be like the previous game with some extra features.
@@diwajerebation4077 not when the patch first came out and they were new and they can just rush one and kill your entire base with it because their range is like 4 billion. All of a sudden your workers are getting sniped and you can't even reach the thing with marines. So stupid.
And now Zergs have no Muta, no Swarmhost, no Broodlords really, Zergsw actually avoid Banes now to a poin...so now we have Roach Ravager Corruptor, or Ling Bane Hydra into Lurker really
Honestly, I think swarm hosts would be absolutely fine without vipers also being in the roster. vipers let zerg players absolutely pick apart Skytoss, which was otherwise a hard-counter to swarm host defenses, being a relatively fast moving air comp.
@@EsportsStoryteller Blizzard can't make a different unit. For two expansions now, Zerg have fewer and fewer options, to the point where in wings, you could bane bust, ling flood, drop, infestor rush or roach rush, now you get a ravager all-in, and nothing else. Hydras were never viable, and Zerg can't shoot up to this day. Infestors have had every single ability nerfed, infested Terrans removed (adding insult to injury, ravens keep instant autoturrets which don't incubate in an egg), and can no longer harass. Muta harass vs T has been hard countered between invisible mines (even with detection) burrowed beneath a tank or behind a building and Thor splash. LOTV made lings no longer a viable army unit with a double nerf to increased starting workers and -1 larvae per inject, but roaches still suck, ravagers are a worse cyclone, and banelings were nerfed purely because of a decade+ of players perfecting unit micro. All while the widow mine is a vastly superior baneling (faster out of the gate than a baneling on creep, faster than speed banes off creep, no speed research, no burrow research, doesn't die when shooting, bigger splash radius, more range, more damage, can shoot up, available sooner. I mean, shit, between widow mines and disruptors, deathballs are a downright liability now. With storm & EMP acting as a soft counter. Zerg still has no solution. Except maybe building a deathball of lurkers and hoping it isn't beaten by the other race's anti deathball.
@@pondracek Funny how you say ‘lings are no longer viable. I just took a look at recent tourney results and saw that a lot of events won by Zerg. And those Zerg players are known for producing mass ‘lings.
@@caelestigladii Have you seen the engagement summaries? All I see are Serral, Rogue, etc. losing for cost to every other unit, and sacrificing drones to do so because lings are so larvae inefficient. Lings are more fragile than workers. Banes are better but not great for cost, and even they've been nerfed multiple times since WOL. The only unit worse is hydralisks, which lose to both air and ground cost for cost and supply for supply. If zerg had zealots or marines, they might actually win a good fight rather than taking and losing 5 good fights in a row, any of which would be an instant loss if it weren't good. Serral sidesteps the shitty units by just building queens. In the late game, he's starting to win less now that high templar a-move got repeatedly buffed and terran started to learn to micro ghosts. Fundamentally, you will always get value out of marines & medivacs, and you will always get value out of zealots. With zerg, the game keeps revolving around not building anything because it all sucks and waiting until you can actually build something that doesn't suck. Which these days seems to exclusively be lurkers & vipers.
@@caelestigladii but lings are no longer viable, on the PRO scene the earliest wins will be by roach early attacks, zerglings almost never decide the fate of the game
I would say nowadays corruptor is the most annoying unit. It was planned to increase it's supply cost 3 or 4, but it was cancelled. I don't know why... For 2 supply, it's just too strong
these units made me quit the game a few years ago. I recently reinstalled and... game after game of swarm hosts.... yeah.... now I remember why I left lol
What's yours most hated unit in StarCraft 2?
The Brood Lord Infestor meta story - ruclips.net/video/KbtDFgEO7pM/видео.html
LONGEST Heart of The Storm match - ruclips.net/video/RkXpxoXCNlY/видео.html
Timecodes:
00:00 What's yours most hated unit?
00:17 Why and how Swarm Hosts were invented
03:07 How Swarm Hosts ruined the game
08:52 How did this meta end?
Probes
Canons
swarm host is balanced, they need specific mass to be efficient, and they took a lot of population, not only that they got whooping long cooldown between interval , so when the swarm get pushed with good timing the zerg is just as near as dead aniway
The Disruptor, and it's not even close. It's a unit that should not exist. It fills a role that didn't need filling, and its sole purpose from a game balance standpoint is adding more micro to the game. Before the Disruptor, the Protoss already had a Robo Bay tech unit that deals splash damage (the Colossus), and a unit that can deal powerful bursts of splash damage with a risk of friendly fire (the High Templar). The Disruptor didn't add anything new or interesting, it just does the same thing, but better and with more micro required. And that is my opinion as a Protoss player.
my most hated period of sc2 balance was the voidray meta which we just left. i played through swarmhost era (was high plat at the time) and as a zerg i just never ever ever built the unit as i thought it was stupid.. but it also generally didnt do much in zvz so i could just ignore it's existance. the voidray meta was honestly so frustrating and awful to play that it's perminately made me hate zvp (already didnt like match up much, now just hate it) and caused me to mostly quit the game (was ~100-150gm for most of the patch when i played actively).
i've tried getting back into the game, but i just hate protoss so much now. doubt ill ever truly get back into the game and am mostly just waiting for stormgate to come out and hopefully move over
It's interesting to see that note in the early attempts to nerf, "increased range," and you'd think hang on, that's a nerf? But then you remember half the value of the locusts against terrans was to cause self harm with tanks. Kinda interesting.
You didn't even include the infamous hour-long snoozefest that was ZvZ with these things. It was reminiscent of WW1 trench warfare, with waves and waves of disposable soldiers constantly being thrown against each other to gain or lose inches of ground.
Honestly, those games were so terrible that they kinda looped back around to hilarious.
The worst part is the vipers just yoinking all those expensive capital ships, and the enemy player not being able to engage on the spore forest but also unable to stop the vipers and swarmhosts just continuously grabbing value
Since that's a mostly protoss thing, tempest?
@@ChristianSandviknes yep. any decent micro beyond A-move with the tempests do very well against vipers.
Same thing with tanks and thors too. It’s not just Protoss only (unless you meant specifically capital ships from toss)
Yeah Vipers are OP.
At first i thought void rays are the worst meta in my experience.
Making a new unit which creates an unbearably slow and unfun experience to watch/play for both players and viewers, and then being slow to fix it is a surprisingly common Blizzard phenomenon, it also happened in Overwatch and Hearthstone
It's because they don't pay attention to their QA department. And once the product is released, it's a matter of ego and lack of funding to fix their mistakes. So the problem is basically summed up with one word: Blizzard 🤷♂
@@MrSixPool nope, blizzard, hate it or not has actually one of the best QA teams amongst Western studios. The balance team has nothing to do with QA. Balancing a game is a much more different discipline altogether as a small change can have ripple effects for the meta. The problem however is the response time, blizzard takes way too long to respond to the aftereffects of their new changes. Same with overwatch and goat meta and now again with overwatch 2 with support importance/survivability.
@@raptorate2872 I'm talking about pre-release QA. We all heard from the news that EA/Blizzard doesn't care about QA. When the QA teams tells them that a certain unit is shit, they don't listen. That's when even the expansions are release, each time, there were useless units and overpowered units.
It still baffles me to this day how Blizzard was so reluctant to redesign the Swarm Host when there where these ZvPs that lasted for hours. Their balancing was just like: "-2 Damage, that should do the trick". I think it was also that time when the "David Kim Memes" where born, right?
Could have made it so that swarm host locusts cost energy so they could spawn endless amounts of locusts.
Yes, the David Kim meme was most popular exactly between 2012-2015 (late BroodLordInfestors + SHs balance issues)
as was stated throughout the video, Zerg had some incredible struggles midgame. Zerg always had some really bad midgame options, except the Muta, as early as Wings launch. but post-BLFestor nerf, pre-Swarm, now there was nothing to transition from that bad midgame into a good lategame. Blizzard didnt really have much of a choice. they had simply designed themselves into a corner from day 1 of Wings dropping, they didnt realize this when they started working on Swarm, and they didnt have an opportunity to fix this until Void. you _cant_ really do any major redesigns or reworks in the middle of a game's (expansion's) lifespan while it's the most active, it is simply not a good idea, even if it means bleeding off numbers because of those things you need to rework but cant. with Void, they *finally* did fix Zerg's bad midgame options that aren't totally game breaking by adding the Ravager, and then *finally* giving Zerg good late-game options *that wasn't the Brood Lord* by adding the Lurker and making the Ultralisk an actually viable unit. the Ultralisk basically had not seen *any* action since early Wings, and for different reasons for each era of SC2. and overall, the Ultralisk is simply a much more interesting unit than the Brood Lord, so it's a good thing they finally addressed that.
I feel like both Brood Lords and Swarm Hosts were devs realizing that outside of Zerglings, most Z units weren’t really swarmy. Hell, the only 1 supply unit is the drone, most are instead 2 or 3 supply. The only “swarmy” behavior left was just larva.
So instead their solution was spawning free units, except now instead of the faction that supposedly tried drowning your guns with blood, now can just drown you for free, making the faction that can already expand faster, even more efficient.
Whups.
@@Appletank8 yep, this was definitely also a contributing problem
these balance patch history lessons are super interesting, especially for new players like me. Please do ones for the other races aswell!
An entire series could be done on the Raven.
Yeah Raven probably had like most changes ever
Zerg had 3 free unit types. Infestors, those were insanely busted. brood lords, not as bad cause had counter play. Then the swarm hosts, made me sad watching all my Protoss and Terran mains quitting the game due to the boring and crazy imbalance state of the game. Zergs just had to defend early game, so they’d mass drone for eco and queen for defense. Queen is still a busted unit imo. They’d rush to late game and just whittle down their opponent for an hour straight until game over and they’d still whine about other races being too strong. I remember I quit when they nerfed Protoss one more time cause they thought it was too good in the early game vs Zerg. Protoss is just a race to cheese with nowadays if your opponent is evenly matched cause you will most likely lose mid or late game. Terran players suffer vs splash and Zerg still is laughing in there corner saying the other races are better
The best thing about the Swarm host era was Life winning everything not using swarm hosts. Shame the guy messed up his career later, he was a GOAT
Thanks! I am reliving the best storylines from the best memories of competitive SC2. Pls continue, player rivalries, Korea vs World evolution and rise of the West, The most dominant player eras. MC, MVP, Life, Innovation, Taeja, Maru, Serral all had periods where they were unplayable, would love to see it all in stories. Sc2 forever
Thanks a lot for the support! I'll keep posting until I cover pretty much all of it :) There's gonna be a lot more videos in the future!
@@EsportsStoryteller kekeke!
@@EsportsStoryteller make patreon
@@tlixplix5212 If you want to support me, you can sub on YT direclty - ruclips.net/channel/UC5XcwYH-83Rw39Yq2EplJ0gjoin :)
The community was yelling for lurker and then the swarmhost was intruduced..
Yeah....
Well, the only thing in the mind of the devs around that time was for some reason "WE. MUST. MAKE. IT. DIFFERENT. FROM. BROOD WAR."
Lore-wise the swamp host fits the zerg perfectly though
Thanks for the video, I remember living through this era of SC2 and if anything Swarm Host games were usually much WORSE than the clips in this vid, which were mostly of Snute, who at least moved around and stuff. Zergs like Stephano and FireCake in particular would just make tons of swarm hosts and spores/spines with a few vipers, park in the middle of the map, and settle in for a 1-2 hour game where eventually you just ran out of resources. It didn't matter if they only have 2 bases and you have 10 bases--their units are free and yours aren't.
i remember early heart of the swarm i think where it was stephano vs someone that i dont remember but it was a ZvZ it was just swarm hosts fighting each other. The entire game was just locus fighting in the middle of the map
Yeah it was really boring :D
7:15 "mech was a slow turtling play style by it nature, of course. imagine a turtling mech playing a turtling zerg" and that's why the unit was hated, it allowed zerg to turtle. Of course, when terran does that, by its very nature, everyone hates the whole race and its players as unimaginative boring and op. but these were zerg players who should know better and leave being hated for turtling to terran players.
Would you consider making a video about the tankivac meta? It was extremely fun for when it lasted, obviously imbalanced but not in such a painful boring way like swarmhosts
Yes, I'm planning on making it soon
9:00 & 9:05 - Never seen that film. But that scene is instantly recogniseable as a rabbit Protoss player.
That's Zootopia
Awesome video! Very clear and I find myself watching everything you put out, keep up the great work!
Thank you!
The one thing I hate about the Swarm Host rebalance was that it affected the HotS campaign, the Crucible is built around your hosts being about to stall each wave, and now its a lot more rough on brutal.
I remember this, darks times and I stopped watching for a while. Glad that the game is back to being amazing again. Didn't even Stephano say sorry to the audience during a tournament?
These are also Dark's times (notice 2:58)
Can you please do a video on the stupid drop metas?
-Hellbat drops in mineral lines in TvT
-Baneling drop on tank-marine or protoss
-The infinite range (okay, 4 range) Warp Prism
Yes I'll do one, thanks for reminding! :)
Don't forget when medivacs could pick up tanks in siege mode.
Most hated units as a Z main?
1) Ghost: counters all Z lategame units with negligent ease, while being virtually impossible to kill after they snipe your Overseers, then killing the rest of your units while you try to run away.
2) Widow Mines: more counterable than ghosts, but they really screwed the whole Zerg meta of being able to get across the map quickly.
Crossing the map at all pretty much requires a slow creep push with Broods against Terran mine spam.
During this particular patch, mass mine would simply march in, burrow, and evaporate your entire army, Swarms, Broods, and everything, then roll in and murder your workers, park on your hatches and eradicate your units as fast as they hatched.
Ravens were op as hell then too, seeker missiles could destroy almost any deathball in a matter of seconds, then completely cover your base in autoturrets.
Swarms gave me headaches for about a month till I learned to time the locusts and get Muties, though I did get pretty savagely destroyed by Swarm/Infestor in one game, immobilized my muta, and funged them down, it felt pretty bad.
Haven't played in few years, but it looks much more balanced now, although Ghosts still seem pretty broken.
Continuously spawning Swarms were a better mainline unit you could use with your army, they zoned pretty nicely most of the time, a role taken over by the lurker which I like a lot better.
The real problem with Swarms for Z is that while they are a great aggressive siege unit that can ignore walls and cliffs, they are completely useless in defense, while eating a huge chunk of your supply.
Please continue uploading the story of SC2 gameplay! Amazing videos!
Thanks!
roach 'can only regen while burrowed *burrowed is expensive, long, and high up in tech research* and it only spawns 1 per egg. 'you are useless to me'
I absolutely love the part with the classic music !!!! Pleas keep uploading
Thank you!
I can subscribe at what you said. Left the starcraft 2 universe during the hots period. Came back only when lotv was launched.
Heart of the Swarm was such a dark time in the meta and in the competitive scene. I was a big fan of Pro SC2 back in WoL and I stopped playing and watching because of Swarm Hosts. Came back to the game and I love watching the current pro scene. The current SC2 meta is awesome and super entertaining to play and watch. If you're curious about Starcraft 2, go watch IEM Katowice 2022 or 2023.
Yep as a Protoss player who played since WoL. The one two hit of losing black hole and swarm hosts was precisely why I quit. I eventually bought LotV but I was at a different point of my life then and didn’t even finish the campaign. I just really really hated infestors vipers and swarm hosts. Not talking about balance but definitely took away any enjoyment of the game.
Awesome video as per usual 😁. It's been great to see the history of the meta game and balance around one of my old favorite games. As a game designer is cool to see the why they created a certain unit and the result of it. I wonder why they took so long to answer when the unit was clearly breaking their game 🤔, since they've reworked units and abilities in the past I don't see why keep a stale meta for so long in a highly competitive game.
Blizzard was just overall very slow to react - they would first run hundreds of tests to wait and see
This is exactly how I remember Starcraft 2 when I just never watched it again in my life. What a shame.
Like a super thin layer of jam over an old slice of bread.
Now it's much better though
@Esports Storyteller not really no, the queen and viper make most matches way too easy for the zerg
@@curtiswilkerson8489 the f is zerg gonna do without a viper? It already needs a crazy micro so it's fine, skill issue for protosses not being able to drain their energy with the high templars.
Swarm hosts were my favorite unit O.o... although i play pretty much exclusively Co-op and Campaign
What was the song at 02:50 ? The piece of classical music there, I mean.
swarm hosts should have been a campaign only unit
And Lurkers should've made a comeback in MP earlier. Lurkers in game design worked, where Swarm Hosts failed.
@@razorback9999able ya man for sure! we said it since WoL! the whole "imba protoss deathball" problem would have never occured if there had been lurkers in the first place. the way it turned out ofc with BL/Inf made the lurker irrelevant in the later stages of WoL. but still.
Could have made it so that swarm host locusts cost energy so they could spawn endless amounts of locusts. That would have maintained balance.
Ok we should apply the same fairness and remove ravens and carriers too
@@OldSpaghettifactory89 Not the latter. Carriers have been one of the most iconic Protoss units in the StarCraft franchise, removing them erases the identity of the Protoss fleet!
I didn't really get how changing the swarm host spawns into flying critters that drop onto the ground changed the meta and magically fixed everything. Being the conclusion of the video, I feel like that part could have been explained better.
Yeah, let me explain in short - the duration of locusts and spawn time was also changed, now the cooldown is higher and you can't send waves after waves, which allows other races to have a solid timing window to push out. The Swarmhost was pretty much redesigned, my bad I didn't explain that properly, sorry!
What I'm reading here is not that the swarm host was bad, but that the meta was bad (everyone can turtle super hard till late game), and the swarm host just expressed that meta to its fullest extent. The solution shouldn't have necessarily been to break or remove the swarm host, but to change the meta so that turtling wasnt so good. Give players actual tools for breaking sieges and swarm hosts will stop being so bad.
Technically the feeling that "there's nothing I can do but keep losing units with no compensation" is how Z feels in the current ZvT matchup, where Terrans turtle behind literally a dozen planetary fortresses and spooky mech. The Brood Lord trick is basically just the meta re-inventing swarm hosts because they have run out of choices for dealing with turtle Terran. They're taking that out too, though. I don't think the current balance team has taken to heart the lesson.
Yeah current ZvT/ZvP lategame isn't that great too, good that they'll be trying to change that with new patches
In addition Zerg now lacks a good late game unit that is flexible. Thors are able to attack air&ground, same goes for battle cruiser, tempest and carrier. Ghosts and High Templars outrange any caster by Zerg and Zerg doesn't even have any anti-energy ability like the other races.
Right now it just feels like Zerg has the weakest early game and weakest late game.
@@Karttibone i think it is good this way. zerg aren't supposed to have super units that are universally as strong as those 2.
they function in a fundamentally diffeeent way with weaker dispensable units that can be reproduced easily if lost.
also zerg is definitely not weak late game if played properly. There is a reason why we see zerg so much in semi and finals .
@@idirbouchdoug1567 Zerg arent supposed to have super units, but neither are they supposed to "play defensive and never engage until late game unless you completely outclass your opponent". There's a middle ground somewhere. The likely reason why we see zerg in semi and finals is because it's the same players all the time, who are forced to always practice the entire gamut of early to late game in every tournament; whereas T or P for example can basically dictate the game direction / pace and choose to specialize in early or mid game. There are no _consistent_ zergs outside of Serral, even a Rogue or Reynor or Dark will randomly drop out in the group stages of a premier tournament. And Serral is basically Perfect Cell.
@@madumlao zergs in genwral are the most consiatent and have been for the last 5 years now at the super top level.
while protoss has been historically lagging behind in tournament wins and even preaence in semis and finals in tier 1 tournaments.
even terran has presence too and win sometimes.
Also playing defensive and having the flexibility to reaxt to anything your opponent has and the lack of a rigid builds for zerg makes it hardee to predict them which is an advantage not a weakness. They are also the one race that can come back the easiest from catateophic damage. i have seen zerg missplay and lose 60 supply more than the opponent more than the opponent and insrantly refill and retaliate somewhere else to recover.
Bold of you to (correctly) assume I know what zugzwang is!
Stephano vs. Firecake was one of the most infamous games ever. ZvZ mindless waves of swarmhosts attacking one another.
Who remembers swarm hosts fights in ZvZ ... true grind lol
I just hate the concept of free units entirely, it creates the exact problem it was trying to solve which was the boring turtling meta.
wut about free units that givw u money to boot? thats what mules are
I tried to do coops with the swarm hosts in mind. They are so expensive and they don't seem to produce enough. They also don't get very much buffs as you level up the hero that can use them either. Making normal mode nearly impossible with their tickles.
It feels like all the terrans getting put in front of a mirror with the Swarm Host.
I mean its basically the zerg siege tank.
And terran is known for turtelling behind walls of CCs, turrets and tanks...
I love em
I find it funny how the Swarm Host made it to live while the Carrier being allowed to deploy its interceptors at range (losing them in the process) was called wildly overpowered (even though interceptors actually cost minerals).
I never saw them again so I even forgot they were in the game these days.
like watching history of meta videos, are you planning on doing more? would like to know how SC2 went from WOL at the start to end of WOL
Yes, I'll do more for sure
Awesome video like always!
Thank you!
You should talk about the time when terrans would use BCs as a harass unit.
Hey! Will you make a video about the protoss God Parting? His military service will be done beginning of next year also
Yes I'll make one for sure :)
@@EsportsStoryteller yayyyyyy🥰🥰🥰
The worst meta is the choke point immediately adjacent to first Nexus/CC. P and T are just dead without that choke point. I hope to someday see a game where P/T can fight(not just survive) early game without those choke points.
Someday I hope to see P/T be competitive in a “natural” terrain.
lol that'd be interesting, I've been thinking about that for a few days while thinking about a 2D Space RTS (Taking place in space, where there are no to very little obstacles in terms of terrain) and how that would affect general RTS meta-games. Though terrain advantages is a big part of Starcraft, I imagine that you'd have to, besides nerfing creep, allow marines to "Siege" or dig trenches and something similar for Protoss if the choke point wasn't there.
@@vilhelmkb2087 You can look at tabletop games like attack wing (starwars and star trek). Basically, ships/units in space must always be moving, making avoiding the few obstacles a bit more challenging while also maintaining a tactical position (ship moving around a planet or asteroid to avoid hitting it may no longer have line of sight to fire on an enemy or threaten a particular area). Things like speeding up, slowing down, arcs of fire/line of sight, different armor depending on side of a ship/unit being hit and maneuverability of different units become important.
For instance, in SC2 balancing air units has always been a problem because they ignore terrain features, stack on top of each other (patrol flowers, etc). Imagine if every air unit had a minimum speed and max turn rate. For instance, it makes sense for a banshee or muta to be able to hover in place, but a unit like the viking shouldn't be able to. Units with a non-zero minimum speed would instead orbit their target location. This would give different units different orbital radius. When attacking, choosing an attack angle that works with the terrain (avoiding ground units on the way out) instead of completely ignoring it becomes a decision factor. It's not something that could be implemented in SC2 without breaking the game, but would be interesting to see in future RTS.
Given that Blizzard has pretty much abandoned SC2, that not going to happen.
To counter all the people that said they stopped watching at this time, I will say that I actually enjoyed it as a viewer. It was obviously not balanced, but was still an interesting time and fun to watch for me
I would argue that in theory it is fun to watch as you are sieging/laying siege to an opponent the problem is that the games end up taking super long and you couldn't host a weekend tournament if the games were taking an hour long each. One of the reasons people stopped watching starcraft was the games were to long which is why the game was changed to start with 12 workers. This was at a time where games were 20-30 minutes.
Blizzes like to fuck up balance. Tankovacs, void rays not so long ago, charge zealots with damage on charge, battery overcharge at first, battlecruiser rush, infested terrans... You got my point
this get a lot of hate but i actually really like the swarmhosts. They may have been too strong at some point but it's very rare for them to even see gameplay anymore. also RIP infested terrans.
lol @ 5:50 yeah 200 supply vs 50 and it still takes the zerg forever to win when every other race would win in 10 seconds with A move. "Hella op"
It’s insane to me that swarm host are still in the game as it’s the unit that made me quit StarCraft. I had originally planned to return once the unit was removed. That never happened I never returned
It was redesigned, and now nobody uses it in competitive.
@@coldmossonarock7743 nobody other than serral winning games with it literally every bo7
@@diwajerebation4077 If it's only a serral problem then it's not really a problem. There is only one Serral in the world
@@sydneyguillermand4763 just play like serral lmao
@@diwajerebation4077 lol you wish
I hate battlecruisers the most, I see one, I wanna quit
I stopped playing because of these issues and I got into the beta for HoTS.
Man I forgot the player firecake! I’m sure he loved the swarm host.
I quit playing Starcraft for like a year because of this unit. I was shocked it went from Wings of Liberty and how incredible it was (yes, it had its own issues with balance) to this. Dark times it was!
For me, a person who allways hated going againts Terran, could never win againts their mechs, siege tanks, constantly calling them op, this unit was a blessing.
I never had problem going againts them either, because i knew that a good detection could destroy them super fast. Unlike the tanks who could annihilate everything even when they were exposed.
I was so happy everytime I saw some terran rg on chat, because of this unit.
That's how I felt going againts terran all the time, a base that is unbusteable, with good baneling target micro, and just....tanks that are constantly got buffs, this was a relief for me.
And that was the last time I played a ladder game.
Yeah this Definitely turned me off from the game for a while. Even now swarm host are still strong but it’s easy to deal with them if you’re a decent player now
End of WoL, when every ZvP wasn endless snooze fest instantly decided via one coin flip archon toilet was the worst meta.
Vipers are actually the most hated and OP unit in SC2.
Yeah if we talk about last 3 years then for sure, they're so valuable nowadays
To me the mothership core was everything wrong with SC2's game design.
But the Swarm Host was pretty terrible too, showcasing how the devs kind of missed the point a unit like say the Protoss Reaver.
Don't know if Blizzard tride this but woudn't the the simplest solution to the swarmhost- question bin to ad a price to the spawn locuste thingy.
Like in SC 1 the Reaver had to buy there shootes. This way the Zerg are on a Timer es well.
The worst unit is a probe on a mission to cheese you.
As a Wings of Liberty veteran, Swarm Hosts were nowhere near as egregious and game-breaking as the Queen.
The developers buffed the ground attack range of this unit from 3 to 5 in a mid-2012 balance update, allowing it to effectively outrange or match the range of any early game aggressor that could be used to kite it. Imagine being able to defend REAPER, 3-RAX AND 4 GATE ALL-INS by just spamming a support unit that cost 150 minerals, no gas and zero larvae commitment which can self-heal, produce more larvae from macro hatcheries and spread ludicrous amounts of creep very very quickly. This allowed Zerg players to effectively rush out an 80-worker economy unpunished and macro their way to an unbeatable 12 minute 3/3 Corruptor/Infestor/Brood Lord army comp. Tonnes of patchzergs like Vortix, Ziktomini, Jonnyrecco, XLord, Symbol and others (who would be at-best Diamond League if it weren't for an unbeatable late game unit comp that you could easily eco-cheese your way to) ended up taking whole tournaments thanks to this one asinine balance change.
BL Infestor wasn't even the problem with WoL. The issue was that it came out far too early for anybody to stop. Protoss already had decent tools to deal with a tier 3 Zerg ground army, but not enough time to build it. Terran on the other hand could have used with a slight Siege Tank buff (I would have changed them so they did 60 base damage and only 25 reduced damage to Light units instead of +15 to Armored, so that they could 6-shot instead of 11-shot Archons), and that's literally the only thing I would have changed about them in WoL.
I hate the rework Swarm Hosts got in LotV because it now feels like an aerial cheese unit and not a core part of your army. HotS Swarm Hosts could have worked if the swarmlings cost 5 minerals per pop to produce and if there was an extra 5 second cooldown allowing you to slowly push in on a Swarm Host blockade. It was literally the only good zone control unit in the game at the time because Siege Tanks sucked prior to LOTV's second year of release, Colossi were mindless attack-move machines and we didn't get the Disruptor or Lurker until LOTV released.
I had my highest winrate in TvZ because I always used a devastating hellion banshee into Hellbat Banshee timing push to punish the greedy third zerg. But I don't think I ever won when smarm horst were out.
i hated mothership core more than swarmhost tbh.
If mothership core is still patched out in heaven I'm not going.
i remember playing serg in the hots setting around 2017 or 2018, the mothership core was an absolute nightmare to deal because i had no anti air units to attack and it would just chip off my zerglins to death (you can guees i played in lower leagues)
@Melar did you not make queens?
@@DakkonDS of course i did, its just they are far to slow to reach the other side of the map in a meaning full time period, and it would just destroy what little macro i had by either cutting larva production or making too many queens for a rush that would be screwd any ways
this was the era when i stopped watching sc2 for a few years
Can someone do a Documentry on Appolo ... and where he is now? I have always wondered
He works with ESL backstage, does a lot good stuff for SC2 tournaments and production, but doesn't cast anymore sadly
Honestly, I liked them. I was a Zerg main, casual player, and avid fan of watching the tournaments. Maybe they just weren’t as big of a problem for Gold players at the time, maybe it’s because I liked how thematic and “Zerg-y,” they felt, maybe because I always loved tower defense game modes back in brood war, but I thought thought they were cool.
Hm. I could never figure out how these things even work. I make them. I bury them somewhere. They never shoot. Same with Disruptors; I make them, I never see them fire a single shot; after a while I just stopped dumping money in that hellhole. Maybe someone can cue me in what am I doing wrong?
Nothing is more fun than playing against free unlimited units when you have to pay for expensive units
aah i remember snute the swarm host king
I remember back then scII was my main game, during summer I'd swap night and day to watch the Korean players and then the 40+ minutes zvps became more and more common, I'd lost interest in the competitive scene and soon in the game as well. I'm starting to come back now after years
Don't, the game hasant really changed sadly. Every match with a zerg is very predictable with the zerg simply using queens to effortlessly reach lategame then invalidating 80% of t/p comps with the viper. Blizzard isint even blizzard having had most of their veteran staff quit and the remains of the company baught out. The Golden age of rts blizzard pioneered is a time lost entirely to history...... :(
Swarm Host: best unit in all Starcraft games EVER! Too bad it was removed...
The second best is the Cryocopter from Red Alert 3.
Zerg has almost always been the most problematic of the three races: maphack with creep, overstacked spellcasters, the most mobile units, no need to build walls, static defenses that can be repositioned, larva mechanic allowing for quick re-maxing of armies... The list just goes on.
This isn't to say that it's an easy race to play. A Zerg player definitely has a lot to keep track of. But the ceiling of Zerg potential is so much higher than Protoss and still modesty higher than Terran.
the problem with abduct is lack of counter play.
Thats why i like veteran upgrade like command&conquer , protoss units will became more stronger killing "free" units.
Disrupters are the worst unit such bullsht unit can turn a game around so instantly so many times. It’s like having infinite nukes with out the cost or wait time
This unit is almost single handily responsible for killing the starcraft 2 viewership on pro play and in turn started killing the player base. The game never recovered to where it once was after HOTS released lmao
ngl, running 4v4s with 3 aggressive teammates while I rushed swarm host every game was the most fun I ever had in SC2. Probably why it was nerfed :-)
I'm gonna be honest. This was my favorite era of StarCraft, because I was like, 10, and this was like the only time where I felt I could play and do well LMAO 🤣🤣🤣
"And terran can just play bio"
Oh hey, i've seen that before
How are we not talking about the zvz meta?
So many years of humiliation, I quit stacraft 2... and then they buff my race to be overpowered after I'm gone. Why?
The worst meta is the smurf planetary rush Kappa
lol :D
This video feels so low effort. So much is missing, so much isn't explained, and there is no real story built.
1) You show Snute a lot and even say his name, but you never mention the real offender of this strategy Stephano. If anything Snute played SH only as the last resort after everything else didn't work.
2) You talk about PvZ, but only barely mention the real reason why people hated Swarm Hosts - TvZ and mass Raven-Tank defence of it.
3) You show Firecake, but only because you were talking about Ravens, not because you wanted to talk about he basically made Swarm Host popular.
4) You never mentioned how Koreans tried to battle this strategy, and how KR zergs didn't use it as much.
Hi! Thanks for the comment! I usually try to make videos with a right balance of information/entertainment, so I felt like diving too deep would be unneccesary long.
1) Stephano was one the first to use it, it's true, I remember his match vs BabyKnight on WCS 2013. However, Snute was probably the one who mastered it. Stephano also retired quite soon and didn't play as much in HotS, even though he was still streaming and even competing at some tournaments from time to time.
2) I mentioned it a bit later with Lillekanin vs ZhueGeLiang match. I remember that people hated both PvZ SHs and ZvT kinda equally. ZvT was worse of course, but there were not that many mech terrans at that time. So it's kinda subjective.
3) It's true, you're right on that, I should've shown more FireCake because he was one of the players who played that way very often.
Again, as with most topics that I cover on the channel, there's usually a LOT of information, and I can talk about SHs even for 30, or even 60 minutes, but I don't want to overload the viewer with too many details. I think for this video, I covered like 90% of the topic and most important things concerning this meta. Maybe I'll delve deep into this in another video. As for FireCake and Snute - I'll be making separate stories about them and there'll be more on that, and for Stephano I've already made one where I talked about him being the pioneer of SHs.
heart of the swarm made tourament boring asf. unlimited spam of free units. infestor and broodlord dominated the game. its so boring to watch.
i despise the ghost. It did way to much and countered way too many things with built in anti-counter as well. Nobody ran ultralisk because a ghost would just one shot it, they can knock out spellcasters and shields, and to top it all off their counter, zerglings and banglings, could be anti-countered because they had clock which you would have to bring an observer which, you guessed it, could be sniped. I am glad they nerfed the ghost.
I quit sc2 once heart if the swarm cane out, mainly because of swarm hosts, but also a little because of those long range protoss air units. Sc2 really dropped the ball in many ways. They need to just make another expansion for sc1 and fix some of the jank. No need to reinvent what worked. The super mario model is the best. The sequels should just be like the previous game with some extra features.
The tempest was the unit. Quit and then a couple years later went back to brood war when remastered came out. Never leaving again.
Heart of the swarmhost indeed
Tempest is not that good...
@@Dziaji tempest is like the worst unit in the game lol
@@diwajerebation4077 not when the patch first came out and they were new and they can just rush one and kill your entire base with it because their range is like 4 billion. All of a sudden your workers are getting sniped and you can't even reach the thing with marines. So stupid.
And now Zergs have no Muta, no Swarmhost, no Broodlords really, Zergsw actually avoid Banes now to a poin...so now we have Roach Ravager Corruptor, or Ling Bane Hydra into Lurker really
Honestly, I think swarm hosts would be absolutely fine without vipers also being in the roster. vipers let zerg players absolutely pick apart Skytoss, which was otherwise a hard-counter to swarm host defenses, being a relatively fast moving air comp.
This unit was forced on the game due to the expansion model. It was not necessary to have hots and lotv and it reflected on the games popularity
It's true, but they could've made a different unit though :D
@@EsportsStoryteller Blizzard can't make a different unit.
For two expansions now, Zerg have fewer and fewer options, to the point where in wings, you could bane bust, ling flood, drop, infestor rush or roach rush, now you get a ravager all-in, and nothing else.
Hydras were never viable, and Zerg can't shoot up to this day.
Infestors have had every single ability nerfed, infested Terrans removed (adding insult to injury, ravens keep instant autoturrets which don't incubate in an egg), and can no longer harass.
Muta harass vs T has been hard countered between invisible mines (even with detection) burrowed beneath a tank or behind a building and Thor splash.
LOTV made lings no longer a viable army unit with a double nerf to increased starting workers and -1 larvae per inject, but roaches still suck, ravagers are a worse cyclone, and banelings were nerfed purely because of a decade+ of players perfecting unit micro.
All while the widow mine is a vastly superior baneling (faster out of the gate than a baneling on creep, faster than speed banes off creep, no speed research, no burrow research, doesn't die when shooting, bigger splash radius, more range, more damage, can shoot up, available sooner.
I mean, shit, between widow mines and disruptors, deathballs are a downright liability now. With storm & EMP acting as a soft counter. Zerg still has no solution. Except maybe building a deathball of lurkers and hoping it isn't beaten by the other race's anti deathball.
@@pondracek Funny how you say ‘lings are no longer viable. I just took a look at recent tourney results and saw that a lot of events won by Zerg. And those Zerg players are known for producing mass ‘lings.
@@caelestigladii Have you seen the engagement summaries? All I see are Serral, Rogue, etc. losing for cost to every other unit, and sacrificing drones to do so because lings are so larvae inefficient.
Lings are more fragile than workers. Banes are better but not great for cost, and even they've been nerfed multiple times since WOL.
The only unit worse is hydralisks, which lose to both air and ground cost for cost and supply for supply.
If zerg had zealots or marines, they might actually win a good fight rather than taking and losing 5 good fights in a row, any of which would be an instant loss if it weren't good.
Serral sidesteps the shitty units by just building queens. In the late game, he's starting to win less now that high templar a-move got repeatedly buffed and terran started to learn to micro ghosts.
Fundamentally, you will always get value out of marines & medivacs, and you will always get value out of zealots. With zerg, the game keeps revolving around not building anything because it all sucks and waiting until you can actually build something that doesn't suck. Which these days seems to exclusively be lurkers & vipers.
@@caelestigladii but lings are no longer viable, on the PRO scene the earliest wins will be by roach early attacks, zerglings almost never decide the fate of the game
I would say nowadays corruptor is the most annoying unit. It was planned to increase it's supply cost 3 or 4, but it was cancelled. I don't know why... For 2 supply, it's just too strong
Why? It seems like a pretty basic one
@@EsportsStoryteller For 2 supply you can get a unit wich does 26 dmg to capital ship. I think it's too much, but correct me if I wrong
@@Nedvesperec yes, but so does viking
Nerf the Corruptor's HP and DPS to a reasonable level, but don't increase supply cost.
If it was a terran unit, they'd buff the burrow speed and nerf the counters and nerf similar units of other races.
these units made me quit the game a few years ago. I recently reinstalled and... game after game of swarm hosts.... yeah.... now I remember why I left lol
This was when i quit sc2
Ahhh yes, the unit that caused me to quit the game an never return. Sad because I had been playing starcraft since the og days. Brood war was my jam
ahh i miss watching snute plays :D
Zerg killed SC2