Swarm Host v Widow Mine

Now that I’ve been playing HotS for a while, I’d like to share some thoughts on the new balance and game design.

Now if you came to me before playing the beta and asked me what the game was missing, I think the answer is obvious. Zerg with the fewest number of units, would certainly need a few more.

At the crux of the strategy of StarCraft is siege tech. Terrans get their siege tech first. Followed by Toss, second. Finally Zerg get their siege tech all the way in tier three. So if you asked me, what does zerg need for their expansion, I’d say they need siege. Blizzard, seems to agree, because they introduced the Swarm Host.

But then Blizzard gives terran the widow mine. They make it target cloaked units, have infinite ammo, and do amazing single target damage and splash damage.

A single widow mine, in the current patch, is one of the most powerful units in the game. It kills groups of zerglings much more effectively than a baneling, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving. The big question is: Why?

Why does terran have an endless, cloaked and detecting, undodgeable baneling? Why do they have what is effectively a type of siege tank that requires detection to even attack, when Terran already is the fastest race to get their siege tank?

To me, it feels like the widow mine’s redesign is one of the worst calls on Blizzard’s part since the WarHound. I hope this is simply one of their little brain farts, where they figured they’d make the mines reuseable and work against cloaked units, without really thinking about the consequences.

The only reason for giving terran such a strong unit, is how underrepresented terran players are at the highest level of play. It’s kind of sad, really. The race with the most options has been nerfed to irrelevance, and the only fix is to double down on this one unit.

But while a single widow mine can easily turn an entire game in favor of a Terran, the same could not be said about the Swarm Host. Swarm Host tech comes late -- as late as infestors. And since infestors are arguable siege tech in their own right, they basically do nothing to the balance of the game. Before, zerg hand to micro fungal growth. Now zerg can auto attack a position. Big deal.

I have a little saying in strategy games. “To attack your opponent in the spot he would choose / Is to not want to win, is to beg to lose.” With the Swarm Host, Blizzard has given us a unit that is specifically good only at attacking a fortified position. In my mind, that makes the Swarm Host one of the worst units ever. For all the positioning and burrowing that a Swarm Host has to do, they can’t have the oft used Terran advantage of attacking with high ground volleys.

So for the Zerg themed HotS patch, Terran gets an auto detecting, high dps, cloaked alternative to their siege tanks. Zerg gets a unit that replicates a handful of zerglings. Get back to the design board, Blizzard.