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Aotearoa39261 Posts
I was reading this thread and in my reply I realised I was basically writing out a blog post I've been meaning to make for a while. So rather than give a proper reply in the thread, I'll write about it here in this blog.
BW is often touted as the holy grail of RTS games which any other game from the genre strives to be like. It's often looked at as a game with incredible depth and with each unit having incredible potency in the hands of the pros. You'll read a lot about SC2 and how this isn't true, barring a few units. The Colossus, for instance, is a unit which is nearly universally hated and is seen as a huge problem to the gameplay of SC2. Compare this to the Reaver which was incredibly exciting and the fans are left wondering 'what went wrong here?'.
This blog is concerned with illustrating that HotS is going to bring a lot more BW-esque elements into the game and actually the various new units (with some exceptions) increase the depth of each unit.
Firstly, some examples from BW.
The Reaver
We all love this little guy, but why do we hold such an affinity for him? In PvP, in large battles Reavers serve very much a Colossus-type role in that they deal big splash damage and that you want to protect them as best you can. Sure, they're not massable like Colossus but that is due to AI glitches which limit their effectiveness past 6 reavers. But we don't love the reaver for this, we love it for it's micro and it's interaction with the shuttle - and let's face it, we're not going to get that back with the Colossus.
But let's really analyze the entertainment value of the Reaver. The Reaver represents 'potential damage' in that it might be able to do a ton of damage, or it might be useless, depending on how each player plays. If a reaver drop comes in and tries to harass a Terrans worker line - if the Terran doesn't pull his workers and glitch the scarab, he's going to take heavy losses. And if he can't shut the reaver down with marines (or turrets) he's going to have a headache in his main.
The point which I'm getting at is that there is a micro dynamic between the Reaver user and the Reaver defender where each side has an opportunity to do something to either increase or decrease the reaver's effectiveness.
The opportunity for the opponent to react indirectly increases the skill cap of the reaver.
Spider mines and Zealots
Zealots represent an incredibly boring unit. They are a melee unit with lots of HP and no special abilities (besides a speed upgrade). But when combined with spider mines suddenly there is a new hidden ability for Zealots - dragging mines around. This indirectly increases the skillcap of the zealot because you need to master how to drag spider mines around to help you break tank lines. This was so important that eventually Terrans would kill their own spider mines as they pushed forward to prevent dragging from being so effective.
Again, the unit interaction between the zealot and spider mine indirectly increased the skill cap of the zealot.
Lurkers and Marines
Marines, essentially, are no different from their SC2 counterpart. Albeit, they have less health and they have ground based medics rather than medivac support. Normally marines get shredded by Lurkers, but with good control marines can trade semi-effectively with them. By splitting to avoid the lurker spines, splash damage is minimised (not unlike marines vs banelings in SC2) and hence increasing the effectiveness of marines.
The lurker indirectly increases the skill cap of the marine by introducing a new skill (marine splitting) which must be mastered.
What about HotS?
Okay, hopefully you get where I'm going with this. Units in a vacuum have a skill cap, but when interacting against other unit the skill cap can increase. In SC2 we have some good examples of that (marines vs banelings, mutas vs thors) and we have some examples of catastrophic failures (forcefield, fungal). However, HotS is actually introducing a ton of new units which increase the skillcap of some of the most hated spells and units.
The Colossus vs the Viper/Swarm Host
The Colossus is going to have its skillcap raised come HotS. It's interaction with Swarm Hosts and Vipers is something to really look forward to.
1) vs Swarm Host.
There are a lot of strong early game swarm host builds in HotS right now. Fact is, they're good. And without some kind of splash (like a Colossus) chances are your base is going to be whittled away in no time. Colossi have enough range to start making dents in Host lines and introduce an interesting Observer/Colossus vs Host/Corruptor(or muta) battle. This is because if you aimlessly try to attack with your whole army chances are you will lose a lot, and then the next waves of locusts will simply finish you off. You need to be picking things off with Colossus (and observers) and Colossus (and observers) need to be protected by stalkers without wandering in range of locusts.
This dynamic is incredibly exciting and beats the BW lurker contain for entertainment value anyday (fuck lurker contains, seriously, they're so boring). Swarms of locusts force engagement, and that Colossus/Host dance that ensues adds a lot of entertainment value to the game.
2) vs Vipers
Abduct could be seen as a really anti-micro spell. You grab and unit, you kill the unit. But that's an incredibly simplistic analysis. That's like saying that Psionic Storm in BW vs hydras was as simple as "you storm the hydra, you kill the hydra" - nope. Abduct forces late game protoss to use more than one hotkey (oh the horror!). Keeping Colossus grouped with everything else is a sure way to get your colossus grabbed and killed. Hence, they need to be kept in a separate hotkey and kept at a distance until Vipers can be mitigated either via feedback or Stalkers. Conversely, Zergs are desperately trying to grab those key units - and given the opportunity they can with abduct.
The tension around whether or not Zergs will be able to abduct Colossus will be a central point of (I suspect slightly less standard) hydra/ling/viper battles. Keeping your Colossus at a distance, but still being able to make them effective so hydras don't steamroll you will be an art and something that will make the Colossus a more difficult unit to use.
This dynamic, in particular, makes me really excited for how it indirectly increases the Colossus skill cap.
Fungal Growth vs Phase Shield
Fungal growth in WoL was stupid. Once fungaled, units should die unless your opponent makes a mistake. It doesn't take a genius to realize that is bad gameplay. But it did take Grubby to introduce the phase shield as an interesting counter to fungal. Basically, casting phase shield will stop fungal growth (and can even prevent it in the first place for a limited time). One would think that this means that mass phase shield will be standard and render infestors obsolete. Not quite so.
Oracles are expensive, phase shield costs a lot of mana, so in a normal game there is an incredibly small window for phase shield to be very effective. This is by no means a bad thing, that small window should be all you need to mitigate fungal. This indirectly increases the skillcap of fungal growth by forcing more intelligent use of the spell, but also phase shield has a high skillcap because of the small window of use. This results in a dynamic which the best pros will be able to utilize to their advantage every time to outplay people.
While the balance is still being fine tuned, this potential conflict is definitely something to be watching.
To the future...
There are a bunch of abilities and units which still don't have everything figured out. Forcefields, for instance, still have no answer from either race (personally I would love to see an ability on the reaper to deal with this). The Tempest is a unit which has potential to be interesting, but is currently priced at a point where we can't discover its potential use. Battle hellions don't really seem to be adding much at the moment, but again it's difficult to properly assess this given the changes they are undergoing.
HotS represents a great opportunity to indirectly increase skill caps. The Zerg additions have all done this in one way or another. And as a result, the Colossus from WoL is no where near as interesting as the Colossus from HotS. We should be pushing for the other additions to HotS to add new micro elements to other units (in particular, the problematic units from WoL) rather than focusing on units in a vacuum.
P.S. I realise this is nothing new for a lot of you, but there are a lot of posts in HotS and elsewhere which made me think that this post was necessary.
 
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Glad they removed the warhound.... can't say it added any micro the game whatsoever. I'm still somewhat skeptical at the moment, this death ball syndrome is a bit still an issue, I suppose its unlikely blizzard will change any of these fundamental mechanics like unit clumping or limit selection but I do hope some how the widow mines or swarm host breaks up the balls. Even from a spectators point of view its more exciting to see these little struggles than the big shit hitting the fan.
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What I like about abduct is that now toss can no long just roam with a consolidated deathball and have no fear of being contested once they get their colossus out. Abduct forces them to babysit their army just like terran and zerg have to babysit their army to make sure they don't get an absolutely awful engagement. Unfortunately a lot of people will probably compain about how OP abduct is, but imo it's and a very interesting and welcome gameplay mechanic.
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(fuck lurker contains, seriously, they're so boring)
I laughed out loud.
Oh.. the frustrations of Lurkers. You brought back some old wounds Plexa.
I'm not quite sold on Phase Shield just yet, I would rather something be done directly to Fungal Growth to make it more interesting /shrug.
It's pretty obvious that Blizzard is taking a lot of time focusing on spicing up Protoss vs Zerg, and thank god for that. The match up looks very promising from everything I've seen of it so far.
One thing missing from this list slightly is what the Tempest potentially brings to late PvZ and PvP. Its role as a long distance anti-massive unit could potentially do a lot in changing the way those late game match ups are played out, which is something I'm really hoping for.
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I definitely agree with this post, Plexa always has great articles. The one real negative thing I would say, is that as a protoss player, while PvZ will become more interesting and dynamic in HotS, none of the changes really do anything to improve or affect the PvT matchup at all to make it more interesting (it is mentioned in the article that the battle hellion is boring, and also phase shield has no place in PvT at all, nor does the Tempest). This is somewhat disappointing.
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On September 23 2012 16:41 RedChaos wrote:
I definitely agree with this post, Plexa always has great articles. The one real negative thing I would say, is that as a protoss player, while PvZ will become more interesting and dynamic in HotS, none of the changes really do anything to improve or affect the PvT matchup at all to make it more interesting (it is mentioned in the article that the battle hellion is boring, and also phase shield has no place in PvT at all, nor does the Tempest). This is somewhat disappointing.
Honestly, is that so bad?
PvT is watchable, it produces some amazing games. Terrans cry about Protoss lategame, Protoss cry that Terran can still win with EMP/Viking + amazing splits, drops, you name it. People say that PvT is imbalanced.
Well, PvT hovers around 50%. It's pretty balanced and I would say it's very watchable. It's interesting. Even if there are "deathball vs deathball" fights, I've seen Terrans and Protosses have their unique flair. Look at HerO's multitasking or PartinG's storm-based style or Rain (the Kespa player) or on the Terran's side, TaeJa (sick multitasking/doom drop play, sick splits vs AoE, sick lategame control), Mvp (he always brings something new, mass BCs anyone?), SuperNova (tanks in TvP, yes!).
On the other hand, who actually enjoys PvZ nowadays?
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I think the entertainment value of lurker contains depend on the players and the map. Some maps (like sniper ridge) are way too abusive for lurker contains and lead to drawn-out unbreakable contains, but a map like fighting spirit (where protoss can take a 3rd and break out through a back entrence) it can be pretty cool. I'll always remember that game on fighting spirit where JD lurker contained kal for like 10 minutes and then kal broke out the back-way and almost killed jaedong (and then jaedong came back with insane dark swarms off of like 1 defiler and killed kal).
Also corruptors shooting at observers isn't nearly as cool as scourge sniping observers 
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nice article. I always think that people don't really realize that micro potential comes from how unit interact with each other not from forcefully making so called "micro intensive unit".
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Italy12246 Posts
The ghost vs templar mechanic is part of one of those too, and it's really exciting to watch.
Anyway, the viper/swarm host might mitigate the problems with the colossus, but those problems are still there and not addressed in the other two matchups, so the unit will still be pretty boring a lot of the time. At least it's a step forward though.
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Also spidermines were great for entertainment value not just because of mine-drags but also because they created the extra element of mine-sweeping / laying. A good terran would lay mines all over the map while building up his tank count and a good protoss was proactively clearing the mines. But you had to pay just attention to your goons because otherwise an observer can get too far ahead and your goons will walk into mines (basically same principle for ZvT too if the Terran goes mech).
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They should try to change the lesser used units, especially the reaper to have specific roles, like as mentioned above destroying force fields or such. I just want a game where every unit can be microed to the users advantage, unlike units like the thor/colossus.
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I hadn't been complaining about the lack of strategic depth being added in HotS so far, but I hadn't made any of those connections. Actually makes me more excited, lol. Thanks for the post. 
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nice changed blizzard do , warhound was hard to beat in mech setup
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On September 23 2012 16:17 Vindicare605 wrote:I laughed out loud. Oh.. the frustrations of Lurkers. You brought back some old wounds Plexa. I'm not quite sold on Phase Shield just yet, I would rather something be done directly to Fungal Growth to make it more interesting /shrug. It's pretty obvious that Blizzard is taking a lot of time focusing on spicing up Protoss vs Zerg, and thank god for that. The match up looks very promising from everything I've seen of it so far. One thing missing from this list slightly is what the Tempest potentially brings to late PvZ and PvP. Its role as a long distance anti-massive unit could potentially do a lot in changing the way those late game match ups are played out, which is something I'm really hoping for.
A few people have experimented with using Tempests in PvP to snipe Colossi (which works rather well). That could possibly be another way to increase the Colossus skill cap as it would be much harder to protect them.
Also, given that Stalkers don't do much dps, I think that keeping your Tempests alive is a doable job. All in all, PvP seems to develop in a very fortunate way (mainly due to imba mothership core :> fast expands yeah!).
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Awesome write-up with great insight! I think I knew it back in my mind but didnt realise it. Thanks for pointing it out!
Only thing that I dont like is that there is not much by terran but maybe we had a lot of interaction in TvX in WoL already
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On September 23 2012 16:17 Vindicare605 wrote:
One thing missing from this list slightly is what the Tempest potentially brings to late PvZ and PvP. Its role as a long distance anti-massive unit could potentially do a lot in changing the way those late game match ups are played out, which is something I'm really hoping for.
I would have loved to have talked about this properly, but with its ridiculous cost I haven't found many situations where I can use them. The one PvP I had where I used them was kind of weird since neither of us where really sure what to do. In the end my opponent won (without tempest) because he got mothership and I forgot to (doh). Tempests killed his mothership pretty quickly but I lost a lot of army because of it. Also my brief playtime with them suggests that people will work out the optimal number of tempests to have (I think 4 so they can 2 shot Colossus) and have that as a standard addition to any protoss lategame army. Although with that said, Tempests really don't kill Colossus fast enough for them to be effective in battle - just from a distance.
On September 23 2012 18:25 Tppz! wrote:
Only thing that I dont like is that there is not much by terran but maybe we had a lot of interaction in TvX in WoL already Yeah I don't like this either. Battle hellion is in a confusing place what being biological but a mech unit? It would make x10 more sense to bring back the firebat if that is the direction they want to go. I can see them being a balance problem down the road as well because their splash damage at the moment is insane, so 4 bhellions in your mineral line will kill almost everything whereas 4 hellions won't necessarily. If you overnerf the splash then battle hellions lose a lot of their utility, so I really think its time to split it into a different unit.
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At this point though, I don't have any ideas for terran that even sound good to me. They're trying so hard to make HotS the BW of vanilla SC, but except for the valkyrie and spells/skills that would be OP with smart AI, everything is already in the Terran arsenal.
I think Blizzard is going to have to introduce a new mechanic for Terran rather than a new unit in order to compete with what Protoss and Zerg currently have and will get in HotS. Maybe some sort of universal salvage ability? Upgradable skills (mammoth tank from C&C: Generals)? Attack mules? I can't think of anything that wouldn't break the game, while not being completely useless at the same time.
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Protoss can delay fights with zergs already with forcefields, phase shield sounds so strong. There is no other efficient splash damage option for zerg.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On September 23 2012 18:54 imBLIND wrote:
At this point though, I don't have any ideas for terran that even sound good to me. They're trying so hard to make HotS the BW of vanilla SC, but except for the valkyrie and spells/skills that would be OP with smart AI, everything is already in the Terran arsenal.
I think Blizzard is going to have to introduce a new mechanic for Terran rather than a new unit in order to compete with what Protoss and Zerg currently have and will get in HotS. Maybe some sort of universal salvage ability? Upgradable skills (mammoth tank from C&C: Generals)? Attack mules? I can't think of anything that wouldn't break the game, while not being completely useless at the same time.
Or they could just make Ravens usable. That would be like getting a new unit in itself!
On September 23 2012 19:19 D4V3Z02 wrote:
Protoss can delay fights with zergs already with forcefields, phase shield sounds so strong.
Phase shield isn't great, it has the area of a forcefield and costs 75 mana for a 5second immunity to fungal. Not so great when your army is massive. But its big enough to counter fungal if done properly. Good in the right hands, very average in the wrong hands.
Forcefields lose their effect as the game goes on and sentries become dead supply.
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EPT
