HotsContest - Hots for HotS!

The Viper is what I am most scared about in Heart of the Swarm. The flying spellcaster is an extremely
useful unit to have in your composition because of its powerful and game changing abilities. Its Abduct quite
literally rips death balls apart, isolating any unit in range by hurling it Into your army of whatever, and killing it instantly. Blinding Cloud does what Dark Swarm did in Brood War, giving an area-of-effect, melee range debuff to anything in it. In conjunction with Infestor's Fungal Growth, I can see how the two can be used for massive damage, given the player has the mechanical skill to put them both to good use! To power these new skills, the Viper neither has to wait around for its energy nor rely on an upgrade to give it energy when it hatches, instead, the Viper can Consume Zerg buildings to speed up the energy regeneration rapidly! This means that within seconds of it spawning, the Viper can be combat-ready with Max energy and bad intentions! This new unit scares me the most as a Protoss because of its deadly late-game potential and borderline ridiculous abilities. I look forward to the many nerfs this unit will receive in the upcoming months. Kidding!

The Swarm host is an interesting unit to add to the current roster of Zerg units. Its concept behind it is not new, attacking much like a Brood Lord, and burrowing the same way any Zerg unit can. It periodically spawns Locusts, Which are surprisingly strong and can attack upwards, however it only attacks while burrowed, giving it a Lurker feeling and yet acting nothing alike. I do not see this being the staple or core of a Zerg army, but I do see it as being an excellent initiator, running Into tank lines to soak up damage and keeping constant pressure at no expense. Messing around with these guys versus buddies of mine only supported my claim. In their current form, they are much too slow, squishy, and expensive to be a big Impact to the foreseeable competitive metagame, but the metagame for Heart of the Swarm isn't that foreseeable anyways.

It doesn't do anything fancy, other than SEND UNITS FLYING WHEN IT COMES BLASTING THROUGH THE GROUND. HotS physics engine rocks! It doesn't quite work like charge, it's more of a blink with a delay, easily compensated by the fact that your opponents are now thisclose to the beefiest, tankiest unit in the game. Yikes.

I didn't get to try this upgrade for myself, but from What I saw on the battle reports and heard from the other demo testers, this upgrade alone has revolutionized Zerg. Being compared to Hydras with Metabolic Speed, I anxiously await to see What the new Hydra brings to the table in HotS.

The Widow Mine seems to be one of the units that are not necessarily Mech-based. This unit fits in perfectly with the existing units of Wings of Liberty because it offers what tankless Terrans does not have: zoning. Controlling chokes and denying alternate attack routes is something that we will see from Terrans who choose to remain biological, and the fact that these suckers can attach themselves to flying, and even cloaked units makes this a unit to look out for. Personally, I feel like the red dot that attaches itself to a unit is too noticeable to be practical in a higher skill environment, but I did kill many Zergs with it positioned well.

Half Firebat, half WoL Helion, the revamped HotS Helion is something I believe will be not change the game very much. Staying true to the Terran Transforming unit requirement, the Helion can be a slow, beefy, cone firing unit, or transform Into a speedy, familiar, line-em-up worker killer. Not too exciting, I think We'll still mostly be seeing these in TvZ. More than meets the eye? You decide.

Marine in shining armor. Strong, cost efficient, anti-mech. This unit has an auto cast that does tons of damage to mechanical targets, so it's also very viable against Protoss. Not one of the units I had too much fun with, and I doubt We'll see much of these in TvZ. They're basically a Goliath, but uglier. Bleh.

Battlecruiser Speed, read it, Never used it. Seems "alright". *shrug*

Just silly, all my reapers die when they hop into the main anyways . I can see this being used in mass reaper builds, however rare they are. Also reapers no longer have the alternate attack to buildings!

Replacing the Carrier, I question whether or not this can live up to the standards that the ex-capital ship set. Its range is nothing to scoff at, upgraded it is a whopping 22, shooting things you can't even see on your screen. Although its damage per second is nothing to write home about, with a pack of these expensive ships you could potentially kite things from one corner of the map to the other, seeing as these are not terribly slow like their predecessor. It will be interesting to see how it fits in an army composition, but from what I played, it was not that promising. Fun Fact: Not a single patch since release of Wings of Liberty even touched the Carrier. Blizzard, you gotta at least try to make it work .

This speedy flying spellcaster is something that I can see innovative Protoss and multitasking machines use to great effect. It has Entomb, an indirect harass ability that makes mineral patches unmineable until killed or timed out, effectively reducing income drastically for an certain duration. Its second ability is Preordain, targeting a building and revealing it through the fog of war as well as showing what it's building. It looks to be useful for scouting potential timings as well as army movement and tech routes. Its last ability is taken from the Mothership, giving area of effect cloaking to units within its radius. The oracle is not a unit with high HP, and most of the time it will be doing Entomb harass or providing map awareness, so the usefulness of this ability remains to be seen. This unit has a ton of potential, and creative players will get the most out of it.

This is the unit I am most excited about. The Mothership Core is so game breaking because of its abilities. The abilities it has open up a way of playing Protoss that is unlike anything previously seen. Energize recharges a unit to full energy, allowing a single Sentry to hold of 4 Gates, a High Templar to storm when it warps in, or the Oracle and Phoenix to do some serious economic damage. Being locked on to the roof of a Nexus, the Mothership Core can teleport around to the Nexii you have, as well as use its second ability Purify, which turns it Into a make-shift photon cannon. The ability I'm most excited for is Mass Recall, bringing an ability that the lategame Protoss army had to a midgame playing field. In my eyes, this opens up a whole new way of playing Protoss. You could potentially move out with expensive sentries early game and save them when the going gets rough, or snipe a base and quickly retreat to defend harass. It's similar to the Scroll of Town Portal in Warcraft 3, as you can't recall to any location like a WoL Mothership, (It's still in the game, has a ground-only Vortex, and Air-Stasis). The highlight of my HotS Demo experience was using Mass Recall to bring my Stalkers to defend Mutalisk harass after sniping his third! I simply can't wait to see What this flexible unit becomes in the years following Heart of the Swarm release.