50 DPS on a spell is surprisingly not that much in the grand scheme of things especially when it’s a single target spell. Tempest Disintegrate doesn’t need vision to do damage, but it has an abysmal cooldown of 90 seconds. Cyclone Lockon can be casted repeatedly, but breaks the moment the target isn’t visible.
Playing Artanis’s “Valorous Inspirator” prestige makes using tempests fun because of the doubled damage on disintegrate, which is a PROBLEM. It ups their DPS to 50, while base disintegrate is 25.
Swann can’t take advantage of Lock On’s range because he doesn’t have a reliable spotter (by design, as he also has the laser drill). Also they’re slow. They’re as fast as Dominion Troopers and cannot outrun chargelots or hydralisks. Losing them in the field also sucks.
Some changes I’d like to suggest:
Tempest’s Disintegrate damage changed to 500 over 10 seconds.
Cyclone gains Immortality Protocol.
Targeting Optics upgrade allows Lock On to provide vision of the affected target for Swann.
Mag-Field Accelerator upgrade increases Cyclone’s movement speed by 25%.
Please I just want cyclones to get more love, they’re swann’s least used unit
I’d make Cyclone fill a bit better with Wraiths in a hit and run tactic for early/midgame. But yeah, they could even remove the Cyclone right now because of how niche and useless is.
For Tempests, I’d actually decrease his CD insteaf of increasing his DMG.
A rather simple and easy fix that I always pondered was simply giving the Targeting Optics upgrade +3 Vision in addition to the +3 range. It would also be handy if Lock On would automatically activate during regular Move Orders, to make it easier to Lock On while doing a drive by.
Finally, increasing the move speed of Cyclones would be a good fix, as well. I don’t mind if this change also affects Amon’s Cyclones, they’ve never been that much of a threat.
Swann suffers from a lot of neglect and ignorance from the developers.
His unit variety and mechanics could be so much better with a few number/cost tweaks.
Swann prestiges are also god awful, probably the worst and lamest out of all the prestiges.
Wraiths, Cyclones, Hellions/Hellbats and Thors could use buffs and cost reductions to make them more viable.
For some reason swann Science Vessel still can not repair buildings or shield buildings, and it still can’t heal biological (to help teammates).
I personally have had no problems with cyclones. My composition is hellbat/cyclone/science vessels. It’s a little slow, but it gets the job done. It’s also pretty gas heavy. I’ve never actually used the hercules, and I only use siege tanks and thors very situationally.
I understand the criticism on Disintegration, because that thing doesn’t stack, but Lock On does. Cyclones can trivially melt objectives, to say they are kinda trash is insane. Its just that, within Swann’s kit, there is hardly any reason to pick them over anything else.
I think enabling each of them moving shots would make an interesting alternative build for Swann.
As of now, hellions are rarely used for their squishiness (some do use them but most use Hellbats) and Cyclone just need some speed boost and lock-on range maintain buffs.
Disintegrate was actually decent on the train map, where you can put one on each carriage, it does spell damage that ignores the huge armor of the trains. But that was very very long time ago, before all commanders were buffed to sky high, when barely any commander could solo Brutal. So, it’s a bit out of date, because it didn’t receive any “buff”, and seems trashy compared to all overbuffed stuff now.
Outside of train maps, I used Disintegrate to pick off Vikings, BCs, Void Rays, and Carriers because Tempests had too short air range. Well, of course, nowadays everything is vaporized instantly, no one cares about that little micro anymore.
Ive never understood what purpose disintergate was to serve; in a fight against any unit its pretty unnecessary to use, even on hybrids, unless you are really down in the gutters and cant take a direct fight for some reason and need to kite units all over the map for 20-40 seconds till they finally die to your disintegrate… My only other guess as to its true designed purpose is they made it for a hit and run strategy on shards to slowly slowly kill them overtime. I don’t understand why they haven’t buffed or reinvented this spell yet though.
Cyclones is antizerg unit, I dunno wtf u talking bout. Firebat cyclone Thor wrecks Zerg hard. They also good with a couple mixed in Goliath deathball if vs air. Also spotting shouldn’t be problem, you have science vessels
Cyclone is just good period. Their only downfall is a small weakness while under 10, so they can still get overwhelmed due to their current slower movement speed (compare to their counter part in ladder). They can still nevertheless kite like a mofo against most units. Get your 2 Lock-on researches done first.
Wouldn’t making Cyclone moving too fast harder to kite enemy? You know because they may move too far out of their attack range?
How about an innate Afterburner?
I think even those are not enough and those two units still feel very hard to use for their cost and in particularly i don’t even know how the ability “Lock on” actually functions. Cyclone still attacks like usual for me, i don’t see any benefit it does vs Cyclone’s normal attack.
For Tempest, i suggest they do x2 vs buildings for their normal attack
Their Disintegrate deal 600 damage in 20s but the damage can stack infinitely and also their cooldown is reduced to 30s.
For Cyclone
An afterburner ability for free
When lock-on is activated, they attack every 0.1s instead of 1s.
Mag-Field Accelerator will double the amount of missiles Cyclone fire every normal attack.
Targeting Lock-on +6 range instead of +3 and also +5 sight range