HotSContest Beta as fuck

Hi TL, this is my first blog and this weekend was the first starcraft 2 major I attended. Let me begin by saying that MLG Anaheim was a fucking awesome live event. I watched starcraft 2 on the main stage, featured player area, and player pit. I met all kinds of players, from ones who radiate star power wherever they go to the most down to earth pro gamers who will come sit down and have a meal with fans. I was blown away by the energy of the crowd during the KESPA player tournament and during championship Sunday. I also want to give massive props to the LoL audience for being so hype; they got me to stay after sc2 finished and see what they were cheering about. There really is a monumental difference between sitting at home on the couch watching an MLG and going to one, having to grab a seat hours in advance of the finals, and being surrounded by passionate starcraft fans with two talented players, who fought their way through a massive tournament over the course of a weekend, sitting right in front of you.
I didn’t feel like my Heart of the Swarm (HotS) impressions would be complete without at least giving an idea of what the weekend was like overall. I feel like HotS was actually underhyped over the weekend, though this meant that there was never really a line. I managed to play about half a dozen multiplayer matches, covering all the new races and units. Now that I’ve had some time to think about the build I played and organize my thoughts, I would say that I agree with most of the design decisions Blizzard made.
My expectations for this build of HotS were that Blizzard would change quite a bit from the build they had shown previously. I was also hoping that they would remove certain units which are in Wings of Liberty (e.g., marauder, colossus).
I’m withholding judgment about balance and focusing on the role and utility units have. Blizzard can and will balance or tweak units up to and after release. Instead, I will just discuss which units/changes really captured my imagination and which ones I think I could do without.
Before I go into unit changes, I will talk about the maps and map features Blizzard implemented and give a rundown of my very first match.
The maps are what you would expect from the Blizzard team that brought you Steppes of War. Some maps were impossible to FFE(nat is completely open). The maps had the familiar theme of exposed expansions with short rush distance and retarded spawn locations. Most maps featured the brand new collapsible rocks. If you destroy them, they collapse to block an area. I left a stalker in the path of the rock slide and got it crushed. I assume they can crush buildings as well. Any new tools map makers can get will surely help; I just hope blizzard isn’t too adamant about putting it in all their season 1 ladder maps in HotS.
My first HotS match was a ZvT. I took a quick 3 hatch against a 1 rax CC build(we both just wanted to macro up and get the new units rolling out). I sent out a pack of zerglings as soon as I could while getting infestation pit. The first thing I learned is that widow mines are not so good against zerglings. Unlike Hunter Seeker Missile, it’s really easy to see which unit the mine is attached to. On top of that, there’s a full ten seconds to kill or pull the affected unit from the pack. I answered back with some swarm hosts, which got cleaned up quickly by siege tanks. The little guys they spawn took quite a pounding before dying, but the long cooldown on their respawn allowed the terran to run some marines out and clean them up. It seems they are very vulnerable without backup. Next I teched up to hive while getting a hydra den and some lings, vipers, and infestors. Terran takes his third and gets a lot of hellions out to get some map control. The viper consume effect is really cool, but I lose some to mines as I move them between my army and base. It seems that you have to be careful about widow mines when moving expensive units, since the mines are so mobile. I add hydras with speed and ultras to my composition. When I attack the third, I find out that blinding cloud doesn’t work on siege tanks or thors. I abduct his siege tanks and make quick work of his army piece by piece. The game ends as I destroy his third with hydras and ultras.

Ultralisk: I didn’t get to use the burrow charge. The first matches I played zerg were before I saw the battle report, so I just used them like normal. Still, it seems kind of pointless to me to charge in when you can just abduct siege tanks before cleaning things up.
Queens: Liked the new look. They now look more “zergy” and slimy with the tentacles coming out the back of their head.
Hydralisk: Even without the speed upgrade, their biggest foes, the siege tank and colossus, can easily be brought close enough for them to shred. Now with the speed upgrade, it’s possible to use them late game to attack bases with ultralisks and lings. I think this really cements the roach as an early to midgame unit.
Swarm host: These guys seemed pretty mediocre on attack. They’re not able to bust down defenses, but you can maybe force them to repair some buildings or waste some medivac energy to deal with the little guys they spawn. Maybe they could bust down some protoss wall-offs, but only because the protoss army at that point may find it unwieldy to move out to kill the swarm hosts. Swarm hosts could also be worthwhile ZvZ units, since zerg lacks long range splash damage units that can clean up the little guys before damage is dealt. I wonder if they would be good if used defensively with spine crawlers and lings to defend them while wearing down an attacking force. If Blizzard wants them to spawn cannon fodder units for busting siege lines or chokes, I think a melee unit would be better than the ranged units they spawn now.
Viper: See a unit in the opponent’s army you don’t like? Grab it and give it a whipping. Run out of energy? Go chomp on some evolution chambers and spine crawlers. This is the one zerg unit I built every matchup. It’s just way too good at everything. You could use this with mutas to keep marines from pushing them away from your mineral lines. You could use this late game to break up death balls. You could even use this in ZvZ to shut down any ranged units in roach wars. In addition, it comes from the infestation pit, which is needed for hive and contains another good all round spellcaster, the infestor. It’s a really bad idea in my opinion to have such an easily accessible unit which has such broad utility.

Oracle: The oracle is my favorite unit added in HotS for protoss. Not only is it solid early game harassment (you would be surprised how long it takes probes to kill all the mineral shields) with its insane speed, but it also combines well with getting the mothership core, which can replenish its energy for non-stop harassment. In addition, it comes out of the stargate and can provide superb scouting information(you can even see the timing on their upgrades) and detection. Probably the coolest ability of this unit, however, is the cloaking field. If you see a slow, big mothership moving across the map, it’s pretty clear it’s not there by itself. However, because the oracle is useful as a harassing unit, if you see a fast moving blip on your minimap, you don’t instantly think that your opponent is attacking. Instead you may send a small group of units to intercept it or deal with its mineral shields. However, I’m sure if you center on it with your screen, it will be pretty clear that there’s an army with it.
Mothership/Mothership core: As someone who got into RTS esports through WC3, I find the mothership core to be a great addition. The ability to warp it into a cannon is great for defending 2 base all-ins in PvZ especially, providing you wall close to your nexus. Refilling energy also is a great way to add defensive capability to protoss. Recall is almost like town portal in its utility. You can recall if your base is getting attacked, or to save your army. This is the ability of the of the mothership core which is probably the most controversial, since I’m sure a lot of players consider this a get out of jail free card. The main use I see for recall is “sharking” with a protoss army will become much more effective, since you can be as threatening as you want without risking your army. I used recall in PvP to save my tempests and PvZ to defend a big counterattack.
The mothership itself in my opinion is actually stronger now, despite it losing recall and the cloaking field. Vortex still allows for big late game plays, but now the mothership has an extra survival mechanism. Mass Vikings and corrupters can no longer simply overwhelm the mothership, since it can stasis itself and other air units, at which point a ground army can come and save the mothership. I’ve also used it to save my tempests from getting overrun. I’m not sure if stasis affects colossuses, but if it does that could be pretty huge as well. Losing cloak isn’t a big deal, since most late game armies have plenty of detection.
Tempest: The tempest is also fairly controversial, since many players love the carrier. Personally, I loved the tempest and the role it had. Even without the range upgrade, it outranges basically everything. However, with the range upgrade, this unit becomes hilarious. One use for the insane range I found was using an oracle to cast its detection spell on an enemy nexus. Then have tempests just blast probes all day long. The damage they do is modest, but still enough to rack up plenty of kills over time, and there’s really nothing the other player can do as far as I know except pull probes, since his nexus is what gives you the vision. Just to give you an idea of how big the range is, my tempests could kill probes in the enemies main from the center of the map, where my gold expansion was. The Blizzard maps were small, but this is still pretty cool to harass the main from such safety.

Warhound: I had very limited experience with the warhound. However, the mechanic where it only shoots its missiles on a cool down seems well thought out. It has good range, so you can pop into range fire the missiles, and run off. Conceivably you could pick off siege tanks like this fairly cost effectively, but I didn’t get to try it against tanks. They do rip apart hellions, though. I’m interested to see how they fare against immortals with their missiles.
Battle hellion: Mech just feels so much safer with this unit around. I played a TvT where I tried to go 100% mech against a player going biomech. It went well. Battle hellions do a good job at dealing with units which try to run up and focus on tanks, especially bio and zealots. In addition, they are resilient to friendly splash damage, so they tank chargelots so much better than bio units do.
Widow Mine: The widow mine is a solid map control unit. It latches onto everything(including workers) and provides detection. I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t alert your opponent on the minimap if their unit gets mined, but I could be wrong. The splash damage will always be mitigated by a skilled player who notices his unit getting mined, since it’s so easy to see the timer indicating the unit which was mined. However, if one of your expensive units with less than 200 hp gets mined, you’re fucked. There’s nothing you can do to save them at that point. I could see widow mines being incredibly effective at stopping harassment units. Now zerg players will be paranoid at sending mutas into the terran base without overseers, drops will avoid overflying ground at all costs to avoid getting mined, and cloaked units will have to deal with this new form of cheap mobile detection. In addition, since you can build them out of reactored factories, you can use them to follow up hellions and try to lure some queens into the mines. I really want to see if Blizzard decides to give them friendly fire, since that would encourage using them on the map instead of as base defense. Personally I lost some vipers to mines, since I had to fly the between my base and army to regain energy. I’m still not sure if you could turn off their “autoattack” and manually target the mines, or use the burrowed mines as a way to delay expansions. I’m also unsure of what happens to drones that try to morph into buildings.
Reaper: I didn’t find the reaper particularly useful. I went TvT against a terran who also decide to go reapers, so I can’t really comment on how well they do at picking of marines now that they can regenerate life. The upgrade comes out pretty fast though. I’m sure someone with better unit control could have caused quite a bit more havoc than I could have.

I felt that protoss got some of the coolest and most unique tools in this build of HotS. Zerg and terran didn’t really get the short end of the stick though. A lot of the tools terran and zerg are getting help make units they had more viable. I’m sure zerg players will appreciate the mobility of the new hydralisks and battle hellions give mech some more meat, so players won’t instantly die if they aren’t sieged well in advance. However, there are still units which seem to have too broad of a utility, like the viper, or don’t seem to have much utility at all, like the reaper.