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Initially, I was rather underwhelmed with the HotS unit stats (posted by Bair here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=343635). Protoss specifically didn’t get much in the way of combat units – unlike the other races, which received the Warhound and Swarm Host – both of which are reportedly strong.
But my line of thinking was mainly because I didn’t look at one unit in particular nearly closely enough: The Mothership Core.
Protoss
Mothership Core – Mechanical, Armor, Psionic, Massive, Unique
No requirement (As in you can make it with nothing but a Nexus and an Assimilator)
Minerals: 100
Gas: 50
Supply: 3
Build Time: 60
Health: 350
Shields: 350
Armor: 2
Speed: Immobile
Special Ability – Teleport (25 Energy):
The Mothership Core teleports to another Nexus.
Special Ability – Energize (25 Energy):
At a range of ~8 the Mship Core recharges the energy of any unit/building at the rate of about 25 per second. If energy is spent during this recharge time the building/unit will still recharge to maximum energy (Basic Application: Mass Chronoboost).
Special Ability – Purify (75 Energy):
The Mship Core gains a powerful attack for 20 seconds.
Damage: 60
Range: 13
Delay: 1.25
Special Ability – Mass Recall: Functions the same as the current Mothership spell.
Special Ability – Build Mothership
Requires Fleet Beacon
Minerals: 300
Gas: 350
Time: 100
Supply: 8
Basically finishes building the Mothership. Takes up production at the Nexus. Cannot be chrono boosted from what I could tell. This needs better verification though. Mothership is the same as in Wings of Liberty with the exception of having a Stasis spell I was unable to test.
At first glance, I looked this over as a unit which was made for more Chronoboost, and an early game forgeless cannon. Let’s be honest, Chrono Boost isn’t exactly the strongest macro mechanic. And a bigger cannon with no forge is great and all, but the energy requirement feels a bit like something a person could get around pretty easily if they committed to aggression. It’s no planetary, that’s for sure. And you can only have one – making its usefulness in repelling anything beyond very early game rushes questionable.
But let’s push aside the defensive aspect of it for a moment, and examine what else the Mothership Core can do.
Energize
For 25 Mothership Core energy, it fills up a unit/building’s energy. This is big. Sure it means that you can keep Chronoboosting out your high tech units – but what else does it mean? It means the number of sentries you need to FF a ramp continuously is one. 25 energy accumulates over 45 seconds. A full energy sentry can FF a ramp for 80 seconds, at which point the Mothership Core can energize it again. No more need for 12 defensive sentries. It also means that it can energize a Templar, meaning fewer are needed to push back assaults (though the same number will be needed to attack) – or that if a Mothership Core is allowed to live, newly summoned Templar can storm at a moment’s notice. Meaning a single Templar can get off more defensive storms on muta packs. Meaning your Oracle can scout, much, much more often – or that it can keep cloaking field up indefinitely. I love this for a few reasons. First, it’s useful. Second, it is defensively oriented (since your unit needs to be within range 8 of the Nexus it’s attached to. And last, but perhaps most importantly, it takes micro. To use more storms with a Templar, you need to use the storms you’ve saved, select the Mothership Core, use Energize on the Templar (with the Templar in range of the Nexus), select the Templar and use storms.
If there is anything I hope survives the beta – it’s energize on the Mothership Core. The only thing I question is the cost. Energize every 45 seconds seems like a lot of energy to throw out there. Not that this is a huge problem – it just seems like a surprising amount of energy available for 100/50. Then again, I thought larva inject seemed like a lot of money saved in infrastructure spending too.
Edit: Regarding Wording - Maybe I was the only one who read it this way, but I read Energize as more an observation than a written rule. So I read it as "recharges 25 energy per second for x seconds" where x is large enough that you can use some of the energy and still come out full, rather than "recharges 25 energy per second until it's full, regardless of how much you spend".
I may be wrong, but that seems the more reasonable interpretation.
Mass Recall
For 100 Mothership Core energy, you can use Mass Recall.
When Blizzard announced that they were going to look into putting Mass Recall on the Nexus, I was among the first to cry foul. Just imagine having three bases and 600 energy worth of Mass Recalls available. The options for defense and offense are through the roof – all the while leaving the deathball fully intact. Meanwhile, in order to compensate for the fact that protoss units are able to attack anywhere they want and be more or less immune to counterattacks, protoss would be giving up the idea of having a macro mechanic, and bringing about all kinds of balance concerns.
This is completely different.
This iteration of Mass Recall costs 4 energizes – 3 minutes worth of energy – and said energy can only accumulate on one structure (as opposed to being accumulated on 3-4 of them in the late game). You also likely give up your option of static defenses if you use 100 energy on recalling troops out of a losing battle – so that if your deathball moves forward, starts to lose, and is recalled back, you can now be pushed into that same losing fight without the static defense Purify would usually provide.
Purify Rushing and Offensive Uses
Perhaps the best thought out part of the Mothership Core is how you are able to use it offensively. Specifically, it’s really freaking hard to do (perhaps impossible). Lategame, you’d be better served using Energize on Templar than you would using Purify. Early game – let’s take a look at the specifics. It takes 30 seconds to build an assimilator, 30 seconds to mine 50 gas, 60 seconds to build, and 135 seconds to save up to 100 energy (assuming it starts at 25). That’s 4 minutes and 15 seconds it would take to get a Purify up and running in your opponents base. And once you have that going, it only lasts 20 seconds, dealing a whopping 1020 damage (which is less than half a nexus’s health – about 2 supply depots). I guess you could try to snipe probes with it – but I’m pretty sure a halfway conscious player would be able to keep their probes out of harm’s way long enough to render that rush useless. 20 seconds of lost mining time is probably not worth all the probe cuts and the 400 minerals lost in placing a nexus in the opponent’s base – not to mention the delay in getting up units.
Conclusions
I really like the current iteration of the Mothership Core, and I think if there’s one thing I’m looking forward to in HotS, it’s what happens with this design. I hope and pray that no one figures out a way to break it to the point that they need to remove it. I do think Energize could cost a bit more or provide a bit less energy, but otherwise it seems like blizzard really did their homework on this one. I haven’t played with it – but I’m excited to.
Disclaimer
This blog is meant only for entertaining speculation. Please don’t hesitate to question the random mumblings contained herein. However, please refrain from using what I’ve written here to make comments about game balance (on a game that isn’t even in beta yet), to make negative or disparaging comments against Blizzard, or to make me expand the list of things you shouldn’t use my blog for.
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Wait, WHAT? Energize will still recharge a Nexus to max energy even if Chrono is used during the charging process? Doesn't that mean late-game, I can literally chronoboost like, 20 gateways...every 45 seconds? Even early, that seems pretty ridiculous. Every 45 seconds, I can chrono out a whole production cycle. Suddenly, instead of 4 extra CB's every 45 seconds (Which is strong) I have like, 10. If I chrono 3 Gates, a Robo, and 2 Nexi while the Energise is occuring...
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I really liked the mothership core, actually. It seems pretty well thought out, and it isn't even through beta yet.
When I first saw it I was like... what is that thing. However, I learned what it does and how it works and realized it solved a lot of the problems they were trying to solve when we first saw HotS at Blizzcon, but in a much more elegant way. The purifier beam is clearly supposed to be the replacement for that cannon thing you could put on any building to hold off early aggression, but much more balanced (lol assimilator rushes). Energize really adds some depth to protoss especially early game, where chronoboost alone doesn't have a lot of options (you either chrono probes, chrono out units, or chrono warpgate). Mass recall adds the option for earlier pushes that aren't "all-in" especially against zerg.
TBH I don't even really care about being able to make the mothership anymore, but having that option is also nice. I think with some tweaking, this could be a great new mechanic for protoss.
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Just a couple of things first:
From the battle report, you can see that the Mothership Core takes 30 seconds to build, but people have got 60 seconds from somewhere and it's spread.
Also, I've read that recall uses 150 energy, not 100, but I don't have a source for that, so I guess I can't be sure.
Ok, so, what I really wanted to say is that I'm sure that energize will either get removed or changed. I'd love for it to stay, but as it stands, I think it will be too powerful. Specifically for HT. it says that "the Mship Core recharges the energy of any unit/building at the rate of about 25 per second. If energy is spent during this recharge time the building/unit will still recharge to maximum energy". That means that it will take it 3 seconds to fill a unit to 75 energy. Take this situation for example:
*A High Templar has just used up all his energy. You select your Mothership Core and energize him.
*You wait 1 second, (25 energy has been recharged) 2, (50 energy) 3 seconds (75 energy)
*Then you storm again. The HT is reset to 0 energy
*The HT keeps charging
*He reaches 75 energy again, and you storm again.
What I'm trying to demonstrate is that with 1 energize, you can get 1 storm per 3 seconds for the rest of the time that you care to micro that HT, and storm itself takes 4 seconds to complete. That means with one HT, you can have a patch of ground within casting range that is under constant psionic storm.
The key thing is that a unit will keep charging energy until it is full, regardless of whether energy has been spent during this time, so unless Blizzard has put a limit on the amount of energy that can be used mid-recharge, I don't think that energize can stay the same as it is right now, which is a shame, because it seems like a fun, micro-filled ability that can be good in the hands of a pro, but will sit useless for someone without the APM or the wherewithall to use it well.
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Maybe I was the only one who read it this way, but I read Energize as more an observation than a written rule. So I read it as "recharges 25 energy per second for x seconds" where x is large enough that you can use some of the energy and still come out full, rather than "recharges 25 energy per second until it's full, regardless of how much you spend".
I may be wrong, but that seems the more reasonable interpretation.
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I do think they will have to tinker with the energize ability, like everyone else seems to think. It seems a tad too strong, or maybe we aren't understanding it completely.
On a different note, does making a mothership actually seem like a BAD choice currently? I guess it depends on how good that stasis thing is, and does it still have mass recall? That still seems rather weak compared to what energize can currently do.
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On June 13 2012 02:21 Treehead wrote:
Maybe I was the only one who read it this way, but I read Energize as more an observation than a written rule. So I read it as "recharges 25 energy per second for x seconds" where x is large enough that you can use some of the energy and still come out full, rather than "recharges 25 energy per second until it's full, regardless of how much you spend".
I may be wrong, but that seems the more reasonable interpretation.
You may be correct, I don't know. I wish I could have tried these things out myself, but I suppose until we get another chance to give it a go, we can't know, unless someone out there already did try these things and could tell us just how energize works.
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On June 13 2012 02:26 HardlyNever wrote:
I do think they will have to tinker with the energize ability, like everyone else seems to think. It seems a tad too strong, or maybe we aren't understanding it completely.
On a different note, does making a mothership actually seem like a BAD choice currently? I guess it depends on how good that stasis thing is, and does it still have mass recall? That still seems rather weak compared to what energize can currently do.
I would hope if the Mothership doesn't have all the abilities of the Core that they'd let you rebuild the core. Then again Energize on the battlefield seems a bit strong.... we'll see how they do it. I want to have a core around, though, I'll say that much.
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Does it work in 2v2 , 3v3, or 4v4 on allied units? Because then I could energize my buddy's core and he could energize mine for infinite energy.
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On August 26 2012 16:22 llllllllllllllllllll wrote:
Does it work in 2v2 , 3v3, or 4v4 on allied units? Because then I could energize my buddy's core and he could energize mine for infinite energy.
Energize has a limited range, so you'd have to build nexuses right next to each other for it to work. But I don't know if it would work on allied units, just like you can't chronoboost your ally's units or warp in on their powerfields.
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On August 26 2012 19:48 Jackbo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2012 16:22 llllllllllllllllllll wrote:
Does it work in 2v2 , 3v3, or 4v4 on allied units? Because then I could energize my buddy's core and he could energize mine for infinite energy. Energize has a limited range, so you'd have to build nexuses right next to each other for it to work. But I don't know if it would work on allied units, just like you can't chronoboost your ally's units or warp in on their powerfields.
but wasnt it mentioned that the mothership core can move around now? so u can do like energize infinite energy into purifier 2v2 4gate lol
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On August 26 2012 21:29 Shock710 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2012 19:48 Jackbo wrote:On August 26 2012 16:22 llllllllllllllllllll wrote:
Does it work in 2v2 , 3v3, or 4v4 on allied units? Because then I could energize my buddy's core and he could energize mine for infinite energy. Energize has a limited range, so you'd have to build nexuses right next to each other for it to work. But I don't know if it would work on allied units, just like you can't chronoboost your ally's units or warp in on their powerfields. but wasnt it mentioned that the mothership core can move around now? so u can do like energize infinite energy into purifier 2v2 4gate lol
You're right, I'd forgotten about that. I think the most likely thing is that either energize will get a complete overhaul or they will at least make it so you can't energize allied units with it.
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EPT
