EPT
The Good
Mothership Core
Practically the only good unit for protoss in HotS. So far I can only see use for two abilities - recall and purifier. Both have obvious uses, recall allows for aggression early game (and hence why I'm playing exclusively 3 gate zealot/sentry pressure expand in PvZ atm) while purifier allows you to defend situations which would otherwise be impossible. I haven't worked out when is the optimal time to build the mothership core, but it isn't as essential as the HotS preview videos made out.
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/hotsd13.jpg)
Hi, I'm a Mothership Core and I'll be hanging around your base and stuff
I don't like how the mothership core moves at a snails pace. It doesn't make much sense for it to be this way. The mothership core is designed to be a unit which stays at home and gives you flexibility in defense/attack. Moving slowly doesn't really help that cause because it means it take a really long time to get between expos - making the mothership core stationary above a nexus and teleporting between nexii makes a lot more sense and gives the core a lot more utility.
Energize is just a gimmick ability. There isn't any real utility for it. Chrage a nexus? Since when has chronoboost been game breaking? Charge a sentry? lol who cares. Charge a templar? Maybe in a pinch. Charge an oracle? Good in theory (more on this). Really, the only thing you want to energize is a mothership itself, but that's impossible for obvious reasons.
All in all a nifty little unit, and a definite positive addition to the game.
Swarm Host
Kind of expected, but the swarm host has been an all around success for Blizzard. Okay, so the unit isn't exactly balanced at the moment. But it's creating all the right feeling within the game. You see the swarm hosts burrow in the distance and moments later swarms of locusts come charging at you. You know you need to get around them and attack the swarm hosts but how do you do it? The positional tension the unit creates is great. Its a unit that I absolutely hate coming up against in the early game, but I hate it for all the right reasons (unlike the warhound, more on that later).
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/swarmhost.jpg)
The swarm host rush in action, it's surprisingly hard to stop
Would a lurker be better? Yes, it would. The reason for that isn't that I'm a BW elitist, rather that the swarm host loses its utility in longer games. While I can't speak for ZvT, in ZvP once the Colossus count gets sufficiently high there is nothing that 123123123 swarm hosts can do because locusts just get vaporized in an instant. Then since the hosts are still on cool down, its just a matter of time before they are killed off. Lurkers have prolonged utility because they don't rely on a weak proxy to do damage, their spines aren't going anywhere until the lurker is killed whereas if the locusts die then the host is just waiting to die. Moreover, lurkers fulfill a defensive role significantly better than swarm hosts, which a more of an aggressive unit.
Perhaps this is a good thing, swarm hosts will have great utility in the early/mid game before the Zerg transitions out into hive tech. In any case, swarm hosts aren't lurkers, but they are a good approximation to the kind of tension they create. Definitely a unit to make the game more interesting.
Worker counts on town halls
Yes, this is a good thing. It's a utility which doesn't hinder strategy and rather creates indicators for players of all skill levels to use. Moreover, no more will you have 9 workers on gas because of a messed up rally. Yes this means that top level players won't have to box workers to count how many are at each base - but is that really a bad thing? Boxing workers is inaccurate and doesn't really add anything to strategy.
And don't worry, there are still things to do like this to get an edge at the top level. Like checking mineral counts to guess how long an opponent expansion has been up.
The Netrual
The Viper
I can't quite make up my mind about this unit. I haven't seen it in action enough yet. The abduct ability caused my very first "oh wow" moment of HotS - depicted below. However its other abilities (consume/blinding cloud) seems kinda dumb or at the very least, only useful in ZvT. Consume can only consume buildings and gives energy over time, which seems kind weird to me as well (eating a unit and instant energy would be much better).
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/viper.jpg)
Vipers in their prime; stealin dem colossi
The move depicted above is the viper abducting colossus before I can recall them with my mothership. But as the replay illustrates, abducting a Colossus from within the the recall spell doesn't cancel the recall on the unit. imo, it absolutely should. Recall should be changed to recalling all units within an area, rather than all the units targeted when the spell is cast - that way abduct will be able to cancel recall on abducted units. Small tweak, but big difference in spectator enjoyment.
Collapsible Rocks
Nice gimmick. Hopefully there is the ability to make the fallen rocks become invincible (just so map makers have the option of creating true reverse island maps). One kinda interesting thing is that if you kill the rocks, and there is a unit underneath, the rocks will deal 500 damage to whatever is there. I thought it might kill whatever is underneath it so I sniped a collapsible rock tower next to a hatch - but alas, only 500 hp damage.
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/collapserock.jpg)
My physics degree tells me that these rocks should do more damage
Battle Hellions
I don't really understand why this unit needs to exist. The form your hellions are in is basically decided in the following way:
- Am I attacking/defending? Battle Hellion
- Am I scouting/harassing? Regular Hellion
The battle hellion is quite effective as an attacker but I just wish it added something interesting to the game. The community proposed a number of cool ideas for the hellion (things like napalm trails come to mind) which are infinitely more interesting than the battle hellion and provide the same anti-zealot utility. I just don't get what happened
They are neutral because they are good at what they do, and fulfill its intended role - but are incredibly boring.![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/hotsd16.jpg)
Boring, but they do what the box says they do
Ultra Charge
I haven't seen this used yet, so I can't comment.
The Bad
Automine workers
Okay, I get the argument that for whatever technical reason you can't split workers as fast as the next guy. But this is a bad change for the following reasons:
- split isn't optimal, so you're better off doing it yourself
- making workers mine means any proxy gate strategy is delayed a bit (seconds count!)
As this impacts on strategy, this option shouldn't exist. And if it does, it should be off by default or lower league only. Every masters+ player should have this off anyway.
The Oracle
In its current form, the oracle is a bad unit. Firstly, entomb is just not worth the cost. At 150/200 (+150/150 for stargate) the oracle is already very expensive and a big investment moreover at 100 energy it takes forever to charge up. The net gain from an entomb (vs a good player) is so small that you just can't justify it's cost. The only time it shines is against a low apm player where you can entomb while they are distracted by something to get the full utility of the spell. Any ability that targets mining directly is going to be difficult to balance, and like the overseer (which is difficult to balance because it gives supply), entomb is just a gimmick ability which doesn't actually give the user any benefit. If entomb is changed so that it's easier to access (via decreased energy or oracle cost) then it quickly becomes a broken ability. I don't think the sweet spot exists for this spell - so it's got to go.
Conversely, the other two abilities from the oracle are really useful if it weren't for one thing (which I'll get to in a moment). Preordain is amazing at scoping out an entire enemy base or for use in conjunction with the tempest. In particular, getting a preordain off on a main base hatch often reveals all of the Zergs tech choices which is quite useful. Revelation is also pretty useful in keeping tabs on your enemies army - or providing detection in a pinch. Both revelation and preordain give good scouting options to the Protoss. Except, Protoss already have a good scout in the form of the observer!! Only in very niche situations can I see these abilities being more useful than having a regular observer.
In summary, the oracle shows incredible promise but fails to deliver on every count. It's prohibitively expensive and it's abilities are either under powered (entomb) or overlaps with existing abilities (preordain/revelation). It's a shame because the oracle had me really excited
Hydra Speed
Why? Just, why? Giving hydras speed doesn't increase their utility in any way and they still have many of the same weaknesses with the upgrade (hi colossus!). Giving the hydralisks an evolution into something more tanky, or an upgrade to increase HP/armor, hell, even an upgrade to split into two locusts upon death would give the hydralisk more utility than the speed upgrade.
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/speedhydra.jpg)
Hydras doing the only thing they know how to do, die.
Yes we wanted faster hydras, but at Hive tech it's far too late and there are already way too many counters for them out at this stage of the game.
Widow Mine
Kinda stupid. They seem very difficult to use properly and seem far more suited to rare situations. Without turtle mech, I find it hard to see a real use for this unit
but hey, it's early days so let's give it time. Still, in its current form it needs work - hence why it's in the bad column. Immortals
What are these guys doing here? Well, immortals suck vs mech. And if there were an anti-mech unit you'd expect it to be immortals. In particular, Warhounds stomp all over immortals which makes no sense what so ever. Upon closer examination I realised that the haywire missile does 30 damage across three rockets - i.e. 10 damage each rocket which isn't sufficient to trigger the immortals hardened shield. The result? Warhounds crush immortals.
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/hots14.jpg)
Immortals being crushed, not pictured; 4 immortals that died seconds before
Another thing that can't be intended is that widow mines do not trigger the immortals hardened shield. So if an immortal wanders into range of one of these the mine deals full damage to it (and subsequently, removes all of the immortals shield).
The result is that immortals suck against mech. Blizzard, please fix this.
The Ugly
The Warhound
Without doubt the worst addition to HotS by a landslide. The colossus is a bad an uninteresting unit, but at least it is fragile and needs protection. The warhound deals ridiculous damage against mechanical units (and really, most units in general), is really cheap and unlike the colossus, hardly needs any support what so ever. There are already threads to discuss how bad this unit is, so I won't add much.
In any case, the unit ticks all the boxes for a bad unit. It's uninteresting, it's over powered, and it's the exact wrong direction HotS should be going.
The Tempest
22 Range? Are you serious. The unit is a flying gimmick and while I love having a siege air unit with amazing range as Protoss, it just isn't a Battle cruiser or a Brood lord, it's just a gimmick. The ultimate Protoss starship should not be a harass unit for crying out loud.
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/tempest.jpg)
BCs pretty much annihilate tempests - that's a yamato gun hitting the tempest btw
Okay aside from that, the Tempest isn't what Protoss need at the moment. The protoss need a versatile air unit capable of dealing with mech at the moment. Void rays don't cut it (and phoenix don't either). Something like the old Tempest (essentially a more accessible carrier but with some modifications to balance things) would be x10 as appreciated because then we'd actually have a versatile air force capable of dealing with mech (and thereby mitigating the OPness of the warhound.).
Please, go back to the drawing board and really think about what protoss need.
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/HotS/Day_1/tempestalpha.jpg)
Hint hint Blizzard
The Dark Shrine
Hugely disappointed that this is still a deadend tech tree giving only a niche unit. Surely Blizzard could come up with something to make it not so dead end? (Incidentally, DTs aren't terrible against mech ._.).
