HoTSContest: Snapshot of the Future

HoTS Preview and Reflection: Snapshot of the Future
A Terran Perspective

Very few things can drag an eSports fan away from a main stage battle between titans such as Stephano, Marineking, Polt, and MC. But at the Anaheim Convention Center on June 8-10, countless fans found themselves distracted as they beheld a different element of eSports: a new stage of the game itself, presented throughout 200 playing stations of Starcraft 2's upcoming expansion from Blizzard Entertainment, Heart of the Swarm.

Balance becomes a very touchy subject for the many players of Starcraft, both professional and amateur. The smallest attempts at balance tweaks have almost always attracted a flurry of discussion - HoTS, introducing several new units and mechanisms, will undoubtedly produce a momentous change in the way we play the game.

If you haven't kept up to date with all of the new information for HoTS, check out the new HoTS features and new unit stats. Lucky for me, I happened to be in the right place in the right time, having MLG Anaheim 2012 as my first ever LAN visit, I got to try out HoTS, so here are some of my thoughts. Since I am a Terran player, I will direct my attention toward the Terran matchups.

Blizzard's Design Philosophy

Blizzard's patches have almost always attempted to respond to particular concerns of the Starcraft community, and Heart of the Swarm is no different. The changes in Heart of the Swarm reflect many key issues that have been discussed quite frequently, such as the use of Terran Mech or the harass options of Protoss. Examining the philosophy of Blizzard's design changes will be helpful in examining the end picture they have in mind and how successful their changes are in reaching that state. That said, it's also important to note that Blizzard's intentional goals are not, and should not be the only focus. After all, no one at Blizzard could have predicted Starcraft reaching the stage that it has today, and many of its best features have been unintentional uses of the game (such as Brood War's Mutalisk stacking). Still, a look at Blizzard's philosophy might get us a glimpse of the future trajectory of Blizzard's changes, both now, and in the future.

Terran

Mech. Maybe the Blizzard design team was bribed by Artosis, or maybe they decided that they didn't have enough M's to satisfy their inner Terran alphabet, but Blizzard's changes to Terran can almost entirely be found in the mechanic units of the factory. Additionally, the changes seem to fulfill particular roles in Mech that were absent in Wings of Liberty. The widow mine appears strikingly similar to the spider mine of Brood War, and could perhaps serve a similar function in controlling space.

Great mines think alike?

The warhound, lacking the anti-air functions that it was initially designed for, is now a beefy anti-mechanical unit, probably aimed at buffing Terran's Mech arsenal against Protoss. However, there's an odd consequences to be unleashed in TvT, given a mechanical Terran unit that counters mechanical units.

Oh, and the reaper. Blizzard introduced a small life-regeneration change, aimed at extending the life of the reaper (both directly in game and as a strategy), just to add a little kick to a potential harass option in the Terran toolkit. I'm a little skeptical of this change's benefit, since the main issue is that reapers simply die too easily for their cost, and the regeneration buff assumes that reapers can manage to escape (both speedlings and stalkers are pretty fast), but there might be some use in early game TvZ where metabolic boost is still not complete.

Protoss

Harass options. Blizzard's Protoss changes all introduced peripheral support units, rather than tweaking the core "deathball" army composition (Zealot, Sentry, Stalker, and Colossi remain unchanged). One of the biggest changes, the mothership core, introduces recall to the Protoss army much more earlier than usual, allowing its army greater mobility. The oracle offers the ability to block an enemy mineral line to hinder their economy, and the tempest is a long (with an upgrade, extremely) long ranged unit.

Other abilities, such as the Mothership's purify and stasis or the Oracle's cloaking offer small support spells that can help nullify an army's ability to attack temporarily.

Zerg

Map control and mobility. With the spotlight on zerg as the thematic race for HoTS, it is unsurprising that they received a wide variety of changes. Most of them enhance the Zerg's ability to control map space, with some changes boosting their offensive capabilities. The Swarm Host fills the Lurker's shoes as a burrowing fighter, the burrow mechanic and free units both presenting a potential tool for control of positioning (check out the battle report, where Swarm Host spawns function, often driving back the protoss forces. The Viper, on the other hand, gains map control more offensively, disrupting the opponent's positioning with its abduction ability and blinding cloud. Hydralisk upgrade speed and ultralisk charge both offer hive-tech options that increase the speed and offensive capacity of both units.

The New Match-Ups

One of the greatest aspects of Starcraft 1 and 2 is the dynamicism it contains in terms of the relationships between units. As Day[9] frequently points out, common terms like "tank" or "counter" rarely do justice to the elements of Starcraft as its units have very nuanced functions, often in a number of many different roles. An easy example is the Zealot - zealots, head-to-head, beat a marine-marauder force with their hefty constitution and deadly blades that tear apart the fragile marines and marauders. However, stutter step, positioning (behind walls and other obstacles), or certain critical masses of bio-clumps' hefty DPS could all nullify this. On the other hand, using zealots in conjunction with sentries, that can trap marines and marauders for the zealots, upgrading zealots with charge, or using zealots with stalker support all present examples of this relationship changing. That said, a broader outlook of the new units in each matchup seems most suitable.

Terran vs. Zerg

Early-Mid Game:

Since nearly all of the Zerg changes are late-Lair or Hive based, the entirety of XvZ match-ups seem pretty similar for Zerg as they are now, and their main change rests in an attempt to find ways to deal with the other races' changes with the current tools available. While the design changes are largely mech-based, the terran changes present several interesting offensive options for the early and mid-game in conjunction with the traditional bio or bio-mech styles. The more hardy battle mode of hellions can be combined with marines and/or marauders to create a deadly early-game composition. Earlier baneling tech seems to be a must-have for Zerg to deal with these sorts of pushes.

I find Widow mines to be a particularly fascinating tool with a wide variety of different uses - given the prevalence of medivacs for bio compositions, plenty of dropships are available for use with widow mines as harass options. Or, like baneling mines in an anticipated future expansion, the mine can preemptively damage future expansions. Of course, they present many ambush and positioning options.

The countdown, of course, offers an element of micro, where targeted players can separate the marked unit to minimize damage from the mine. That means that spider mines scale in cost-efficiency as the number of mines in a fight increases, extending their use to later game battles of high unit counts and zerg swarms. In the mid-game, mines also allow potential anti-air coverage against mutalisks, which can be particularly useful for mech builds in TvZ when facing the uncertainty of zerg builds that might employ fast mutas - given the lower cost and lack of armory requirement, they may give mech builds more flexibility in alleviating concern for anti-air.

Late-Game:

Late-game tech, like Wings of Liberty, remain largely concentrated in the hands of the Zerg with its ultralisks and broodlords. The main changes in Terran are in the viability of mech - while zergs' primary weapon against mech was its broodlord tech, the HoTS changes enhance the zergs' options. Ultralisk's charge upgrade provide potential strength in their ability to bull through tank lines. But hydralisk speed presents a third option for Zerg - much as in BroodWar, hydralisk drops on top of tanks combined with a flatout hydralisk push seems like a strong way to fight back. Of course, any of the three (hydras, ultras, and broodlords) can be combined. Hydralisks, with their speed, seem to be a strategy much like bio vs mech in current TvT where fragile, but high DPS units can still defeat tanks, and the Terran response to hydras would seem very similar to the mech response to bio in TvT: critical mass. However, given the many different tools the Zerg has on top of that, with charging ultras, broodlords, infestors, and vipers, it seems that the Zerg has plenty of tools for whittling away a terran mech force, so I'm not sure if TvZ mech can work in an even match at the late game.

Late-game bio play seems pretty similar, although ultras are a slightly more powerful, the main terran answer to ultras isn't that dependent upon speed, but relies more on positioning and whether Terran has the sheer number of units to deal with ultras in the first place. Vipers seem to be able to force engagements, or at the least, pick apart tank counts, so this in conjunction with the buffed ultralisks could make the Stephano style much more worrisome.

Terran vs. Protoss

While the presence of tougher mechanic units like Warhounds or Battle Hellions make a mech composition more feasible against protoss, it's an entirely question of whether or not they make the match-up more interesting. In my opinion, they don't. The mech changes contribute to a matchup that seems fully built around deathball versus deathball, since none of the units involved in either composition really involves any interesting degree of control. Warhounds are functionally the mechanic army's marauders, requiring even less ability control with the removal of the mere usage of stimpack, and battle hellions are the same.

Aha, but there's widow mines! Couldn't they fill in the role of spider mines from Broodwar?

“Hello, players, look at your widow mines.
Now back to the spider mines.
Now back at your widow mines.
Now back to the spider mines.
Sadly, widow mines aren't spider mines.
Look again, the mines are now diamond players.
I'm on a vulture.”

The problem is that you have to pay for each individual widow mine (and with gas), and that this is against the strong protoss army composition. That means that A: widow mines are not very cost-efficient against protoss units, via damage output and B: widow mines are not very cost-efficient against protoss units in straight-up cost.

Now, I have to admit that I find late-game TvP pretty difficult to play, and this is a sentiment that has been expressed all across the board, from amateur to pro, since it just requires such perfect control in the late game. As a result, I find it concerning that the new auxiliary protoss units seem to add some very clear bonuses to the protoss in this match-up, as recall and the oracle seem to make the job a lot more annoying for Terran players. Recall is self-explanatory - not only having warp-ins, protosses can now move their entire armies, easily dealing with any heavy drop play (and Protosses have already gotten pretty good at fending off lighter drops with quick warp-ins of units, a few stalkers pre-positioned, high templar, and/or cannons).

The oracle's harass is particularly effective because it directly counters the mule - by blocking the minerals when any mule is summoned, the Terran effectively loses the mule before it can mine much at all. Additionally, Terrans cannot afford to leave units lying about at every expansion, given the nature of the protoss deathball and how it requires a likewise concentrated force to defeat it. On top of that, Terrans lack any ground-targeting defense structures that do not occupy food to deal with the entombed minerals once the spell is cast. The oracle's other ability also makes it effective against Terran. The earlier and more easily obtainable cloaking requires the Terran to save scans, once again reducing their mule count. The other two alternatives are turrets and ravens. However, turrets require a degree of units that emphasize mach control - i.e., the tanks within mech, which carries the flaws of mech discussed above, and the Raven seems to be fairly difficult to get in the mid-game when Terrans really need that starport to have a reactor to fueld the medivac-based mid-game.

On the other hand, oracles require stargate tech, which is fairly uncommon in PvT, and by the time a Protoss player creates an oracle, a Terran should be able to get a Raven.

Terran vs. Terran

Two major changes change up the overall TvT matchup: changes to mech, and the widow mine. First, I'll address why the widow mine is important to be considered its own major change to this matchup.

Given how important positioning is in TvT, the widow mine's impact on positioning makes it quite interesting. Busting tank lines becomes a far greater challenge with the presence of widow mines, requiring obligatory detection and target firing to eliminate the mines as obstacles towards later reaching the tanks. And as usual, mines can be used to lock down potential enemy paths so that you can flank, siege, counterattack, defend, to your heart's content (it pretty much enhances your ability to do anything that involves troop movement). I would also be interested in seeing mine drops to latch onto sieged tanks - the delay in unsieging and moving means that that could be a neat trick to pull off, though the fragility of the mine would probably get it killed before it burrowed.

Also, I'm not really quite sure what to make of a mechanic unit that counters mechanic unit (the Warhound). It doesn't seem like it would supplement a pure bio force that well, because of the inefficiency of using mech when your upgrades are focused on bio, in addition to the redundancy of the warhound and the marauder. So it seems like it'd be a core mech against mech unit, which seems rather boring as it amounts to two deathball mech armies a-moving as warhound mob faces warhound mob, with tank support on each side.

However, in my mind, another small and seemingly inconsequential change could have big repercussions for the TvT early-game: the reaper life-regeneration upgrade. Currently, reapers have appeared rarely in TvT openings, occasionally popping up in the rare reaper expand, or the even rarer three reaper rush. The main problem with reapers in early game TvT is reaper retention and preservation. Given the range on marines, it is inevitable that a defender will land some potshots on any offending reapers, leading to those reapers' inevitably demise. However, with regeneration, reapers may gain the capacity to cause even greater havoc, especially when they reach the magic number three (the number of reapers required to one-shot kill both marines and scvs). Given the natural movement tendency of ground units, precise reaper control could allow a player to snipe the leading marines, with a single volley, then withdrawing with minimal fire. Regeneration could then allow what little damage that occurred to disappear, allowing an even greater buildup of reapers as the regeneration favors reaper retention. Eventually, the reaper count could overwhelm the defender if the defender fails to have matching numbers of units and control.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

These are miscellaneous thoughts I had that didn't really fit in anywhere else.

For one, HoTS introduces a lot of units that make detection much more important. Terran widow mines, Zerg Swarm hosts, and Oracle cloaking all add a greater presence of invisible units. Perhaps Ravens will find a greater purpose as Terrans find a need for more detection.

New cheese. The mothership core makes me think of how a proxy nexus-core rush would do. It's ridiculously impractical (400 minerals, 100 mineral and 150 gas, and 25 energy before it can move from one nexus to another [if you pre-build the core, which kind of nullifies that option as a speedier way of doing it]). I guess it would be like a PF rush - not practical, but hilarious ^_^.

Who needs FFE when you can FMCE? Can the mothership core act as a replacement for cannons, and perhaps allow protosses greater flexibility in 1-gateway expands? Not too sure about that, I hadn't tried that as a real move in any games approaching seriousness at Anaheim.

I don't like the tempest. While its long range is initially cool, it's extremely slow rate of fire and mediocre damage makes it a really limited unit. It's much too late in tech and expensive to be much of a harassing unit (especially since it requires an upgrade to access it's super-range), and its extremely slow rate of fire makes it useless in doing anything other than sniping specific units, even in high tempest counts. That functionally leaves it with two roles, as an anti-broodlord unit, and an anti-mech unit. Its role as anti-broodlord is especially key, given the change to vortex so that it only targets land units. I don't understand why Blizzard did that, as vortexes were at least had that cool "wow" factor, whereas the tempest just flatout seems boring, but more than that, it's a blatant copy of the brood lord function. It's one thing to take general ideas from its predecessor and modify them (such as the widow mine or the swarm host), it's another thing to have a plain, boring unit that is very similar to another in the very same game.

Conclusion

All in all, it seems pretty clear that Blizzard, at the very least, is responsive to community's thoughts on balance, as almost every change/philosophy has to deal with concerns expressed in one form or another. Whether Blizzard succeeds in achieving the goals reflected in their changes, let alone reach that lofty ideal of balance, is another question. It's hard to answer that question right now, since the interaction of all of these units also depends widely on unit stats (timer countdown of widow explosion, energy of mothership core, etc.), and all of these are open to change. Nonetheless, with the sneak peek, I'm excited to see how things work out in the future, and I look forward to battling within the heart of the swarm.

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