While watching some regular Starcraft II gameplay, I realized two major things that were missing from Swann’s arsenal; Transformation Servos, and High Impact Payload for the Thor. Both of these would be researched from the Factory Tech Lab/Reactor.
Transformation Servos - 150/150 75s (Requires Armory.)
Hellions, Hellbats, Siege Tanks, and Thors transform between modes 75% faster. (I forget what the actual MP value is, but the MP value is fast enough.)
Dual Payload - 100/100 60s research (Replaces 30mm Cannons. 30mm Cannons is now an innate/default ability on the Thors. Requires Armory.)
Allows the Thor to swap between Explosive Payload and High Impact Payload. Explosive Payload (the current default) deals AoE damage against air units. Better vs Light targets. High Impact Payload hits a single air unit for massive damage. Better vs Armored targets.
Reason for this suggestion? Thor is fairly under utilized. It’s overshadowed in every way compared to Goliaths and Siege Tanks. Giving the Thors the ability to use either Payload would increase their value in various match-ups.
The Transformation Servos is suggested so that your transforming units are not stuck in mode change at critical times. Hellion/Hellbat/Cyclone would be a faster composition to work with, making Hellion Mobility into Hellbat tanking for the Cyclones a lot easier to manage. Siege Tanks could deploy and undeploy at any moment to get out of a bad situation without needing to rely on the Hercules. Thors could make use of the upgrade to quickly swap between Payloads mid-fight and have more versatility.
His Hellion’s flames are fine. Hellion/Cyclone is very good vs light targets, especially Ling/Bane compositions.
His Wraiths are pretty lack-luster though.
they were fairly powerful until they nerfed them. i support a wraith buff. thors could certainly get more upgrades, specially since only swann have access to them.
Swann doesn’t need the Punisher Cannons for his Thor. Goliaths are much better per supply for single-target damage against heavy capital ships, and likewise with Cyclones and Wraiths. His Thor’s Javelin Missiles fill the only aerial splash Swann has in his arsenal.
While I feel like his Thors are a tad underwhelming, replacing Barrage with the Punisher Cannons toggle won’t do anything. My personal favorite I liked to think about now and then was simply changing Multi-Lock Weapon Systems to include both Goliaths and Thors, having it affect both walkers. This would make Thors a tad less clunky when fighting a mixed force, without being a super huge change. Swann’s single Tier 3 unit should feel better than it does.
No. Stukov already has those. He doesn’t need Diamondbacks.
That’s the problem. Goliaths just do so much better than Thors at combat in general, and Siege Tanks do so much against the ground that the Thor doesn’t have much of a niche or any sort of major use within his army.
This isn’t replacing them. Barrage becomes a default ability (unlocked without research.) The Payloads and Servos are the new researches, adding one into the Tech Lab and replacing the old Barrage research.
They can tank alright with some science vessels and matrix. I usually just use the 330mm ability for long range splash from safety (DoN high grounds for example).
Stukov’s Diamondbacks are different though. If Swann’s Cyclones got replaced by Diamondbacks he’d get a good anti-armor fast unit to pair with the fragile Hellions and give a reason for you to build Wraiths - which are his most mobile anti-air units. Diamondbacks were supposed to be available to Swann originally and they would have had access to Immortality Protocol.
And I’m gonna grab every opportunity to get Diamondbacks because I love them.
I think Diamondbacks are as cool as the next person and fun to play with, but good gravy no on this idea. That would be an absolute downgrade, and one that doesn’t make any sense to me. Cyclones are basically just better Diamondbacks in most respects, in addition to being really fun units to play with on their own right. They fire on the move, and do more damage and have greater range than Diamondbacks, can target air, and are cheaper in gas. All this at the cost of slightly slower move speed than the Diamondbacks.
I wouldn’t be averse to future implementations of Diamondbacks in new commanders, but let’s not trash the arsenal of commanders we already have. Cyclones are fine for Swann.
Don’t they only fire on the move with Lock On? (Actually now that I think of it they do) Also I think their range is only 5, unlike the Diamondback which has a range of 6 (7 with upgrade). Their leash range is longer, yes, but they also have much less health and need to get close to use Lock On.
I’d need to mess around with the damage numbers to confirm which one deals more damage. I think it’s situational with the DB’s slow but anti-armor attack and greater range but no ability to attack air.
All in all, fair point, I never liked the Cyclone on Swann because it didn’t fit to his overall theme (which is old/odd mech units plus the Thor) and is the only unit you don’t see in WoL - unlike the Diamondbacks he personally likes a lot. Just like I do. So I’m gonna be biased on this one.
Imo Swann is one of those commanders in for nothing short of a design rework. His kit is overflowing with redundancies and units built for a niche which doesn’t exist in coop.
It feels like he just got a random selection of Mech units without any regard to how they might work together.
When I look at the original unit design pre awanns upgrade caches, it seems like siege tanks are anti ground splash units while Thors can provude anti ground single target damage against big targets.
So yeah in in theory they should add upp well also because siege tanks could use a front line drawing the fire away form them normally.
But then they went ahead and gave siege tanks maelstrom shells for single damage and Thors an aoe barrage ability so both are now geared for both jobs? On top his siege tanks are untouchable because of herc micro so oyur tanks don’t need a frontline either.
Or take Hellbats, the mineral sink meatshields. Well guess what Swann doesn’t need meatshields because he has Defense matrix and Immortality protocol. In fact, he is even minerals starved as opposed to gas starved unlike any other commander and you should rather sink any spare into static defenses or Goliath dps.
Oh yeah the Goliath. The Mech version of Swiss army knife Marine spam. They don’t have any synergy with other units but support one because they can handle everything themselves.
And then there are cyclones, hellions and wraiths. Mobile harassment and map control units in a game mode where neither of these strategies affect your enemy.
They could have at least been a mobile response force for when relocating your thors/tanks/Goliath would be naturally too slow and cumbersome since its Terran mech gameplay and all that…
However the maps are so static that you can always be in the right place even with a slow army and hercs exists so… Never mind.
This is of course a bit simplified and exaggerated but I am trying to show what a massive clash in design an purpose is between his units and I haven’t even touched on the topic of units competing for the AA role.
Swann is nothing like Nova where all units combine nicely in purpose and cover each others weaknesses.
I don’t think stat changes and new upgrades can fix this. They would have to redesign some of his units from the ground up and straight up replace abilities and upgrades with new ones.
Yeah, but it is an autocasted ability with a short cooldown that is basically always active when in battle, resulting in the same thing as any other Fire on the Move unit. It fires while on the move.
Yes, it starts at 5, but the upgrade increases by 3 to 8, and of course, as you said, the leash range is even longer than that once it locks on at 8.
Both Cyclones and Diamondbacks have 200 health (240 with Swann’s final talent), with Diamondbacks having an upgrade for 50 extra, so the snakes do get a little bit more life with the upgrade, but 290 isn’t a far cry from 240 on a unit that they do not outrange (upgraded railgun’s 7 compared to Lock On’s 8).
20 (+20 vs armored) for the Diamondback with a cooldown of 2. Ground only.
18 for the Cyclone with a cooldown of 1, but that doesn’t take in account Lock On.
25 damage a second for the Lock On, however, and 50 a second with the Magfield Upgrade.
I honestly get this feeling sometimes when I look at his kit. I often wonder why they gave him the Cyclones, if not for the sole reason of putting in the fancy new Versus unit into Coop at the start of LOTV.
But with that logic, why would they not give him standard issue Liberators in his arsenal, the OTHER new-fangled unit introduced with LOTV for Terran? They even fit his mech unit defensive theme, given that they are basically floating turrets, and would give him another option for a combat unit at the Starport, and a separate source of aerial splash damage aside from Thors and Spinning Dizzy’s.
That’s actually false, it increases the Lock On range by 3 not their base range. Their base range maxes out at 6 with the Armory upgrade. Also if you leave Lock On with autocast only one Cyclone will use it on a single target, right?
Well Cyclones got a sharp upgrade in HP compared to Versus. 200 to 120, same could go for Diamondbacks who could get the Stukov treatment (I think 300 HP) plus the extra 20% and the 50HP from Shaped Hull.
Diamondbacks would max their range out at 8 with the Armory and unique tech and that’s not a leash range like Lock On’s.
And about damage, if they introduced the upgrade they didn’t get in WoL they’d have 20% more attack speed, they could very well do that.
Diamondbacks do better against armor and scale well against it, and do less well against unarmored units which gets negated somewhat by Hellions.
Lock On is a great but situational talent with a bunch of drawbacks and not just benefits.
It’s pretty clear we disagree on which is more useful, and that’s fine. I think Diamondbacks would be an amazing unit for Swann and fit into his pre-LotV theme perfectly. And some co-op tuning would also be great on them, similar to how they made the Cyclone more useful.
I was referring to Lock On rather than the basic attack, since Cyclones will use Lock On when attacking when available. And yes, Lock On has the bonus of only locking onto one unit by default, attempting to vary their Lock Ons to as many units as possible for maximum efficiency. Of course, one can use the Rapidfire hotkey trick to manually force multiple Lock Ons on fewer, high HP targets (such as Big Hybrid, Map Objectives, and Tier 3 units), letting them burst down those targets.
Thors need to be smaller (to get stuck less) and they really need the multiplayer version of anti-air weapon switching (less goliath spam needed).
It would be great if swann’s thor anti-ground weapon got some splash dmg.
Faster thor/tank/hellion transformations would be great through the servos upgrade.
Cyclones could use more cost reduction, still too expensive.
Science vessels getting the global teleport (like hercules) and being able to heal biological (for helping teammates).
Also Science Vessels should be able to repair and shield buildings/turrets.
Wraiths should be able to fire on the move (just like new battlecruisers).
Also giving wraiths more Health would be a good idea - they usually die like flies even when cloaked.
Let his biosteel regeneration upgrade also affect buildings - slowly repairing them to full (the automatic extinguishers only heal to 50%).
Perhaps wider aoe attack on hellions and hellbats.
Swann masteries are rather boring and uninteresting.
Immortality protocol should somehow affect all swann combat units (perhaps as a % cost refund upon death or something).
I’d rather see them get the Tomahawk Power Cells (+100 starting energy) as a baseline passive or their own Cellular Reactor (+100 starting energy, +100 max energy). It would make the Displacement fields much more useful.
I agree. Twin-Linked Flamethrower from WoL doubled the flame width. In my book this is a decent improvement, and could be a baseline passive.