My HOTS experience so far

I am enjoying all match up, except for TvT, it's like the new PvP
TvT basically dump down into this:
1 rax reaper expand = win against most of everything, lose to 2 rax reaper/maybe 1 rax maurader
1 rax FE doesn't work against reaper opening at all, after the high ground vision is given to reaper.
1 rax maurader loses to 1 rax FE in Econ terms. unless you proxy it I suppose and add CS.

I have faced some mine drops, but doesn't seem all that effective if you know how to counter it. Just sac a worker or a marine for the mine to go cool down and scan to snipe it off.

Every matchup for Terran feels a bit harder. The overall feel is similar to WoL but it's more interesting, now you need different ways to combat against the other race's new units. Personally, that's "new" enough for me, though a little extra would be nice.

Blink stalker is really difficult to stop right now. I haven't faced much against tempest harass but in my games, mine isn't exactly THAT good against Toss even though it can one shot a stalker.
Mech works at my level (I can beat players around plat level, being a plat terran level myself), it's easy for the toss to screw up and just loses everything.
I haven't face much for stargate.


Against zerg, my experience has been really good. quick widow mine to block their quick third is good. Even if you can't block it, you can force some detection (spore doesn't need evo chamber now)
I barely lose to zerg, maybe it's because my main is zerg and I know the weakness better.
I had a few games widow mines being useful in early to mid game, but not so much in later stage of the game.
Mech works better now that you have hellbat. So why is hellbat better? It's mostly because you can get a bigger splash, you don't need to run to sides to deal the line splash.
But my main style is pure bio. I am trying to add in extra hellions to go with my bio. It completely destroy lings heavy composition if you can spread well.
The reason is that when you split, the lings do more damage to your less clumped bio, but now you have battle hellions as an extra buffer. It also opens up new ways to harass with hellions, and just like marines, they are relatively expendable.
not a lot of zerg uses swarm host and viper. I have yet to see ONE viper from my zerg opponent to be honest.

An extra note. I really like the mine. It put in quite a lot of mind games to it. In a game I placed around 6 mines around my tanks and I only had 2 tanks. The zerg saw and thought it's a good chance to go in and boom, he lost most of his lings and banelings without killing both tanks.

What should I say? I feel that this expansion makes Toss a lot more fun to play, more than the other 2.
Stargate is viable.
It's probably why I am loving Toss so much right now.

PvP is actually ok now. I don't know about high level in early game, but at least, PvP end game isn't only about colossus anymore. You now can have tempest zealots and immortals to counter the old deathball and it takes up quite a lot of micro, while the WoL deathball will have to fight it out by positioning.

PvT however, I feel it is still the old WoL style. I can't get stargate to work yet. I would just lose to a bio counter whenever I go tempest long range harassing.
It's good to see Terran trying out mech, but I suppose a lot of them don't have much experience in mech against toss. The two way to win is by dts warp in and warp prism chargelot to force unsiege and go for immortal chargelet archon void ray/tempest combo.
Or just transition into mass air. (see, again, AIR)

PvZ is probably another I like the most from the Hots experience. Stargate into 4 oracle is so very powerful. Sniping off the quick third is extremely easy to do, zerg don't have much mobile AA. even if you cannot, you can snipe off gas, any tech building.
Basically anything to tax the zerg's multi tasking, and zerg has it hard because they don't have mobile anti-air, so they need extra attention to deal with them.
One cool build I tried is to build 4 colossus off 3 bases and force some corruptors, then get ready to switch to chargelot archon. I snipe off the roache warren when he is engaging my ball, I just FF and stay back and warp in those archons and chargelots and he can only defend with lings.

sadly I don't have much success in hots Zerg. Probably much less than other two race so far. The main problem is how difficult it is to deal with different timing attacks.

Another reason why I am not having so much success is the swarm host and viper are really difficult to use. Where to place the swarm host, how to protect them swarm host. They are extremely expensive and a missed timing can mean that you lose every single of them.
On the other hand, Viper comes at hive tech. It can be sniped really easily, the AI automatically move out from the cloud from the opponent.

against terran, I have faced quite a few who rushed widow mines and constantly harass me along with hellions run bys. Extremely difficult to deal with even with spore not requiring evo. The mine can one hit my queens, making hellion even stronger.
Lings are really not that useful anymore.
A bio terran I faced used mines as baits, similar to marines baiting lings into tank fire. A mine+bunker almost shut down any number of ling run bys. It is really good at shutting down counter attacks.
I have also lost around 10 drones while transferring, FML

Against toss, I haven't faced much toss who use any Hots units. the only time I saw was an oracle harass which gets shut down by me quite easily because it was only 2 oracles.
I have tried to use roach speed hydra and corruptor and it works mostly just like WoL. can win engagement but extremely cost inefficient.
ZvZ is similar to WoL. swarm host isn't that strong in this matchup. Muta is more or less the way to go for now.

Personally I think infestor bl is still the better path to go, especially when swarm host doesn't offer the same level of consistency in terms of defending pushes etc.