EPTFirst lets talk about the visual changes to the game. There are a few cool subtle things I noticed that won't change gameplay overall but to spectators it will make the game more enjoyable to watch.
So for zerg the first thing I noticed was the creep spread animation. It has this cool veiny animation to it that makes your creep feel more...alive. However I did notice that it delays the creep momentarily so thats kind of lame but overall looks great! Queens got a new portrait animation. Not much else to say there. The final thing I noticed was when you place a building down the animation from when the drone is heading to the spot until it is building the structure has a nice little shine to it. Thats really all I noticed visually I play in low settings at home and cast in medium so I don't know if the ultra settings were better looking or the same. Nothing really different for terran or protoss that I noticed.
Lets talk units/upgrades and what not now. As a caster one of the few things I feel I'm good at is not being biased towards any one race. Hopefully that can show when I'm discussing the following important and big changes coming in HotS. So lets get started with Terran.
Being a terran player I was really excited to see all the new additions to the factory. There are two new additions to the mech lineup. First lets talk about a very interesting unit known as the Widow Mine. With a cost of 75/25 it is relatively easy to get out with a reactor factory expand off of one gas. Oh didn't I mention that you can build it out of a reactor? So yes this means you can build them on a naked factory. The unit itself is pretty fucking cool. It looks a lot like a spider mine from SCBW but you have full control of it. You can move them around load them into medivacs and all that jazz. Unburrowed they do nothing at all but when you burrow them (takes about 5 seconds didn't actually right down the exact time) they become activated. They have a decent range want to say about 6 maybe 8 yards. Anything that walks into its range it instantly attaches itself to it. Does 200 damage which one shots most units. I was using them to expand against protoss any gateway unit they sent at me early on got destroyed. Also spreading them around the map in key locations is really nice as well. Any scouting unit got picked off.
A key bug or atleast I assume its a bug is that when an observer flew over it even without detection it would attach itself to it. Assuming that this is a bug it should be fixed eventually. Using it as AA and drop defense is really fucking nice as well. Taking on banshees has never been easier and having them as drop defense is super fucking amazing as well. They lose the drop and eventually are forced to lose the units as well. Another great thing to note is that it
one shots void rays. Anyone who loses to void ray rushes rejoice because this unit is really going to help you out. TvZ its pretty okay. Any smart playerI went up against would just send one ling in at a time trying to clear them out. It helps a lot against early roach aggression though. One shots roaches and the splash cleans up lings. People complaining about it being super strong about mutas are silly though. Ever heard of radiate in BW? It worked instantly and zergs were able to get the infected muta out almost instantly. You have 10 seconds to get the unit with the widow mine attached to it out of the group and there is a giant timer on the unit so even the slowest player should be able to get it out in time. Overall its a pretty cool unit and I enjoyed playing with it.
Finally lets move on to the warhound. TvT it was pretty cool to watch. The range on it is pretty nice and does pretty good splash damage. Vs bio it does okay splash to marines. The real thing is what it can do the siege tanks. It has a really nice range and does extra damage to mechanical. It's kind of a lame unit now since it can't shoot air. I mean mutas aren't a problem any more TvZ since all teran have learned how to deal with them by now and the widow mine could work okay against them but still. I don't think people will be building them at all in TvZ.
The best thing about the warhound is what it does to TvP. Like I said it does extra damage to mechanical which is most protoss units. A list would be probe, stalker, sentry, immortal, collosus, observer, phoenix, warp prism, void ray and the two removed units mothership and carrier. From all the games I went mech TvP (want to say 7-8) it was very satisfied with how it went. The mix of map control with the widow mine and mobility of the warhound mixed in with tanks Really made it a lot more enjoyable and easier to pull off.
I almost forgot about the battle hellion. It serves the purpose that blizzard was aiming for. Late game in a maxed army hellions were kind of useless except for running them into mineral lines. They are really nice tanks now and help out a lot in TvP against zealots. TvZ i never once felt the need to go OH SHIT GO BATTLE MODE QUICK. Usually kept the in fast mode to kite lings and what not. You could argue that it would help a lot to have them battle mode vs very
fast roach timings but in that situation i think it would be better to get out the widow mines instead. TvT I never really experienced a situation where I needed my hellions in battle mode. Because of the widow mine I was mainly making that with my reactor factory so my hellion count was fairly low most of the time. The one problem I had was that hellions come out of the factory in battle mode. I would prefer them coming out in bike mode because I would just change them into bike mode and go scout/harass with them right away. Makes reinforcing with them really annoying. Other than that enjoyed the unit.
Going on to the reaper change...its fucking stupid. Reapers are awesome because of what they can do with speed late game to dart in and snipe buildings. The out of combat heal is cool but fucking useless. With the queen range buff and the mothership core(talk about later) reaper scouts/harassment are pretty silly and to get the heal you have to research it. OH btw yeah reaper speed buff has been removed. No more repeaer speed/hellion drops in TvT. Also the tech lab sniping you could do with that game is gone since we can't do extra damage to buildings. Overall the repeaer sucks now T.T how they change this. However one game I went reaper expand a lot like you would do with marauders instead of getting concussive shell I got the reaper buff. It was in a TvT and he went glassless expand. Darting in sniping marines and running away and healing was cool but I can't really see it working in any other situation.
Battle cruiser speed boost ability is cute and all makes it harder for your opponent to kite you with vikings I guess. Nothing else to really to say. I guess I can note that with the speed boost I was able to keep up with mutalisk. Only lasts 6 seconds though.
I think that does it for the Terran changes if I forgot something I'll edit it in later as well as anything else I forget. Now onto Zerg!
When HotS stuff was first announced all the zergs were crying "THIS IS A ZERG EXPANSION AND THEY ONLY GOT 2 UNITS THIS IS STUPID WAAAAH" but zerg got the most changes that I really can't wait to see in action from top level players. First lets get into the units though starting with the swarm host.
The swarm host is a really fun unit that is really going to give zerg players something new. They finally have something they can get early on that really forces your opponent into making a decision. The ability to siege your opponents base is really nice and a lot of fun. They burrow into the ground (Don't need burrow researched) and every 20 seconds they spawn 2 little broodling things with a cool ranged spit attack. Someone said it can hit air but I never tried using them against air units. The little broodlings last 10 seconds and with the upgrade you can research they last 20. Really fun unit overall and not as silly as I originally thought.
The viper is fucking awesome btw. I forget what the spell is called but its just like dark swarm from broodwar. Any unit sitting in it has a range of 1 which is going to bring back so many horrible memories. Also you can't cast spells in it which really through me off when I tried to emp them ROFL. The pull ability has an amazing range and with proper strategy and placement is going to make any matchup so much fun. When I get done talking about all the zerg changes I'm going to discuss a few compositions that I was really enjoying so much. The final ability allows you to siphon health from a building for energy.
The following information is brought to you by ROOTFitzy a good friend of mine. As most of you know Fitzy loves queens. He was doing a stupid queen, swarmhost, viper contain. He was pulling units behind is opponents wall into his swarm host but he ran out of energy. Guess what the crazy bastard did. He built a nydus worm behind his swarmhost. He then drained they health of the nydus to get energy for his vipers. But hey guess what!?!? Transfuse is silly so he would keep the nydus alive keep maxing out the energy on his vipers and kept pulling units 1 by 1 into his silly little death trap. So much for being unbiased LOL. Anyways really cool what people are already figuring out and I can't wait to see what else people come up with.
Moving on to the unit changes ultras have this pretty cool burrow charge. Terran are already going heavy marauder styles and with good control I'm not to worried about it TvZ. of course its going to help but i don't think its going to change anything drastic in the matchup. The one thing I really love about this change is how it works in ZvP. Ultras are actually a good unit now in this matchup and I can't wait to see more of them. Also after I discuss the next change I can discuss a composition I really really really really really love.
Hydralisk have finally been added to the game(thank you reddit). Just kidding they get this really nice speed upgrade off of creep from hive tech. Now lets go to that composition I was talking about. In ZvT and ZvP I'm really like a hydralisk, ultra, viper style. The ultras are like roaches being a nice shield for the hydras and with their new mobility can actually do damage against protoss. With the upgrade to hydras you can actually micro them which is anyone can say is a huge improvement. Adding vipers to the mix to pull in tech units and blind ranged units makes this a pretty fun composition. I enjoyed playing the hell out of this.
Well protoss time and in my honest opinion I am most excited about these changes. Excluding the tempest which I will talk about first the utility that protoss players gain is so fucking awesome. Lets get started!
So the tempest is supposed to replace the carrier which really makes me sad. One of the few things in this game that has remained untouched by any patch blizzard didn't even try to improve/modify it T.T. Anyways the tempest has a huge fucking range of 22 yards. It can shoot things from of screen its really really crazy. The time between attacks is 6 seconds I believe. In all honesty I don't like this unit at all. I really don't see its purpose. I only went it twice once in a PvT (it was cool using it against tanks) and once in a TvZ but he didn't go mutas so idk. All in all I don't like it but we will have to see what smarter/better players can do with it.
Now on to the good stuff!
First thing first lets talk about the mothership core which I think is really fun! The mothership core requires no building to start(excluding the nexus) which means you can rush to get it(no real need to get it before gateway though) It has 4 abilities so lets talk about them 1 by 1. First of all you can only have one at a time and it sits over your nexus and stays there. This leads to the first ability which allows you to teleport it around to a different nexus. If you are going to lose the nexus that its on you can teleport it around. There is other strategy that we will discuss with the other abilities it has. Next is the recall which allows you to recall units to the mothership core. Not only is it an easy way to save yourself from death but I used it a couple of times to get units to a base that was under attack. Let me explain. One game 1 was on 4 bases and my 4th was under attack when I was way out of position. I teleported the mothership core from my third base to the 4th that was under pressure and then recalled my army to that base to defend it.
Cute little things like that make this unit really fun and allows the protoss player more mobility. Next ability is a cool little energy recharge ability. A select unit in range of the mothership core gets a full charge of energy. If you need an emergency storm for base defense or need a sentry with more force fields to save yourself then use this ability. There was no 2v2 play so idk if you can use it on friendly units such as ghosts or infesters or something. Lastly you can use an ability that turns the mothership core into a canon. Aggression by your nexus can be thwarted more easily now with this ability.
Next lets talk oracle. The best unit in the game hands down it is so much damn fun. Comes from the stargate with a cost of 200/100 I believe. It has two abilities which are just amazing. It still has the ability to lock out all mineral packs by putting a force field on all of them which you can attack. This ability only costs 75 energy. One game I rushed for mothership core to cheese an opponent(went gas first rushed to enemy base and stole a gas to try and canon rush him before I knew that the canon ability only worked on the mothership core) with that I was already behind about 3 minutes of tech. I went into stargate tech and got out two oracles. By the 12 minute mark my two base opponent had a worse income than my 1 base play because of this unit. Really amazing ability and I can't wait to see what a WhiteRa can do with it.
The next ability allows you to cast a short duration cloak on all units and buildings below you. If you're every caught off guard my an early rush and you have one of these sitting back home you can delay a push for a short amount of time. Idk how I honestly feel about this ability I only used it twice because locking out mineral backs was way more fun.
No other changes to protoss and as you can tell they have the least amount of changes going into the HotS beta. However I feel that protoss has the most potential for greatness with the MC and the Oracle
Now what would this game be like without rocks? However not the rocks we are used to oh no blizzard really went out of their way this tim we. Imagine what rocks look like in a choke making it smaller. Thats what I though once when playing zerg. Hey lets clear out these rocks so when he pushes me he needs more force fields to hold off my ramp. Guess what they weren't destructible rocks they were stupid fucking collapsible rocks. When I destroy these rocks they completely closed off the ramp. As this happened protoss pushed my third and I wasn't able to save my third and ended up losing the game because of this. However every other game on that map I used it to my advantage and killed the rocks and then sniped their third so either way it goes YA ROCKS...
Hope you guys enjoyed the writeup as much as I enjoyed playing! Would love to see what all of you think about the changes coming to us all soon!
Story time!
So a friend and I were walking to get food and we walked past hotbid. I shoutted "Hotbid fighting" and he gave me the most dismissive laugh you could ever hear and said thanks and walked off. Was amazing! <3
