EPTObviously I'm excited to be playing LotV since the way SC2 tends to work has Terran seemingly broken every time we get a new toy and we seem to be getting quite a few. Remember early wings 2010? And the early HotS tournaments where no Protoss could handle boosted medivacs? Gee those were great times. We need to enjoy things like Reapers and Hellbats before the inevitable nerfs or adaptations, and I'm excited to be a part of this process.
Anyhow let's start with the economic changes.
12 workers at start! I'm all for something like this though I'm curious how Blizzard came to the number 12. I was thinking perhaps 8 or 9, perhaps also giving 150 minerals at start so the first thing you do is make a depot and a worker (or mine 50 mins and make a spawning pool if you're a Zerg and a dick). But 12? 12 throws off all old timings I was comfortable with! It might actually be tough for the Reaper, which is quite precisely balanced in the current HotS early game but I suspect will play out much differently in LotV now that everyone has more minerals to work with once their gateway/spawning pool/rax is complete. Curious to see how this one plays out.
What I do like about this change is that it actually favours Terran. You see, Protoss in HotS are able to finish their 12th probe faster then Terran thanks to their Chronoboost ability. Now we both start at 12 and therefore they will have less minerals in the early game. Hah. Thanks David!
2/3rds Resources at Bases! I initially kinda liked this one as it seemed an elegant solution to turtling strategies. With fewer resources to spend on defenses and tanks and whatnot it seems very difficult to hold onto 3-4 bases whilst amassing ravens or whatever and you're going to have to go out onto the map and take bases and actually, you know, do shit. But what concerns me is that this might favour matchups were one side has a map control advantage during midgame, like Terran vs Protoss. As it is now a Protoss on 3 bases must be attacked by Terran lest they chronoboost forges, get storm and start slapping the Terran about with their superior army. Terran get to do quite a lot of attacking and pressuring with their medivac and bio forces so it sort of evens out.
Now Terran might just be able to contain Protoss to 3 bases and try and get them when they move out to take a 4th. I'm curious how close to mining out their main the new Protoss will be by the time they have 3/3 and 200/200. I'm also curious how this will affect other matchups, and Terran mech as well, which I suspect will be given another spirited attempt to become viable.
And now to discuss the new units
The Herc! My first thought was one of slight disappointment as it's a bulky melee unit and I always kind of thought we weren't supposed to get those. Even the Hellbat and the Firebat have a bit of range to them. Sure scvs have melee but they're not really a combat unit and it's just to keep a bit of symmetry with the other two. Terran is about mass firepower attached (mostly) to fairly fragile platforms and here we have Clockwerk just running around defying all established convention. Fie, I say, Fie!
But it looks like it's good at slapping Queens around and those are always fun I suppose, even though half the current Terran roster already kinda does that pretty well. It might even make the reaper redundant in TvZ, judging by how much pressure they were able to put on in that showmatch game. I'm not sure what else against Zerg I'd use them for and I was curious that they would recommend using them against Ling/Bane. Ling/Bane isn't a huge problem right now, it's quite manageable, and we don't need a specialist unit to wreck that composition you just need to micro like innovation.
I also suspect it will be a valuable anti mech unit since at 150hp and Light it takes quite a lot of Siege tank blasts to kill, and with it's Bionic Commando move it can close with siege tanks much like a chargelot can. Just as long as it can avoid all the hellbats I can see them really giving mech users the shits.
Against Protoss I'm less enamoured. They seem like they could be a nuisance for stalkers and sentries in the early game but once Protoss gets a good army size I don't see them lasting too long in bigger fights. Still, a few in the early game seems a worthwhile proposition so hopefully that'll work out well for me.
Overall I'm looking forward to mucking about with the Herc, I'm just curious why Chargelots are now T1 and they are coming out of the Barracks.
The Cyclone! I feel discussing this is almost pointless because the version of this unit in Blizzcon is totally not making it's way into release. Or even Beta. Or even this weekend, I'm fairly confident they've already nerfed it and rightfully so, did you see those showmatches? Holy crap. And the way David Kim was all "yea maybe they should have made Zerglings to counter those". Please, lings? The only thing Zerglings counter is the Zerg players happiness.
Anyway, it's kind of an odd one. It seems like a Hellion but designed to beat the sort of things that hellions can't beat easily, like Queens and flying units and Roaches and Spine crawlers and such, but struggles to remain relevant once the opponent has a good army size. Perhaps it's meant to be like Blink Stalkers in current PvT; a pack of roaming arseholes that show up to pick away here and there and then get out safely but without the staying power or raw dps that necessitates making other units. At least that's the balancing act Blizzard will have to perform, we can't have Cyclones beat everything in the game and simply be Warhound 2.0, that will not do.
I kind of respect why Blizzard are implementing this, and that's their stated aim of "more micro and faster". Ok, I'm paraphrasing, but reading their multiplayer aims post over on b.net the first 6 bullet points all read as "we want players to spend more time microing shit because we think that's cool" and they're right to think that. I can definitely imagine a few cyclones early in the hands of Marine King or some similar wanker causing all sorts of problems for opponents and that cheers me up.
I also see this as an important unit in TvT since it seems like with the exception of sieged up tanks this unit beats everything in the early game. And that's going to be relevant now that Banshees have 7 range and poor 5 range marines will be powerless to stop them. Which segues well into...
The Banshee! Range 7 and a fusion core required speed upgrade. Range 7 is a scary proposition. For TvT that means marines cannot fight a banshee and you must make either vikings or a cyclone to stop it. It also means it'll be very easy for a banshee to sit just outside of a turret's detection range and pick off the scvs on the side minerals and gas. Considering that cloak banshee is a fairly popular opening already and that timing wise you only have marines and a raven/viking when the enemy one shows up (in the situation that you're both making banshees, of course) then I can see TvT early games getting really nasty. I hope the cyclone and herc make enough of a difference in early TvT that range 7 banshees don't reign supreme.
It's also useful against Protoss as their stalkers only have 6 range, and I believe I read somewhere that the Photon Overcharge won't be hitting air units any more. I doubt this will lead to banshees kiting stalkers and forcing Stargate openers all the time but it does seem like a nice bit of spice added to the early game of TvP and I'm sure we're all very excited by that prospect since TvP early game is usually a matter of hoping your sacrificed reaper sees vital tech structures and that you don't get molested too heavily by an oracle. And that's not very fun.
And against Zerg it's just another big 'fuck you' to Queens. Yay.
The speed upgrade seems irrelevant though, and I suspect it'll see roughly as much play as the Caduceus reactor. If it requires the Fusion Core and a tech lab starport then surely we're making Battlecruisers instead. They state that this is to open up late game harassment options but we already have medivacs for this. They tend to do the job pretty damn well and for cheaper and without a tech lab starport. I don't imagine this will make it through. The only way a speed upgrade for banshees would happen is if the unit were completely redesigned so you can make more then 2-3 of them early and work them into proper compositions like they're a normal unit and I can't see that happening at all.
The Battlecruiser! We can still make those? Whyever so?
The Siege ta- Ok I should really talk about the cattlebruiser shouldn't I.
Basically Battlecruisers are mostly rubbish in this game and they don't need a teleport effect to make them viable. We don't make them currently for two main reasons.
One is that they aren't sufficiently dominant. If you're going to forgo most aggression, dig in and start making 400/300 cost units then those units better damn well win you the game at some point. BC's can't do that. They're less useful than Ravens late game vs Zerg and vs Terran mech and thanks to Feedback and tempests they struggle to do anything relevant vs Protoss too.
Second is the Raven. Like I said, the Raven is our late late game unit du jour because its abilities complement a mech composition very well and can grind opponents out. They are suitable for attrition based play which is what you're going to want once you've cut the map in half.
I don't see how a teleport is useful since it's not mobility that is the problem, it's one of power. They simply don't win fights. I will concede that it might be viable for Battlecruisers to be at 200/200 energy, teleport into an opponents base, wreck shit up for 20-30 seconds and then teleport out. That sounds like it would be really strong. But in a game that's trying to be about more constant attacking and expansion taking I don't see that really happening too often unless the Terran already won and is just having fun (see Hyun/MC vs Jjakji/Stardust).
The Siege Tank! For real this time!
Lifting the tank around to drop does seem cute even if it might not be strictly speaking the strongest thing you can do with a medivac. I do predict the ability to be a cunt with tank drops will be a consideration in map design lest every game turn into Lost Temple 2010. But really what I'm seeing in LotV is a push towards more tank play in TvZ and TvP.
You see, with Lurkers back in the game and the ability to micro medivacs to save them from mutalisk targetting (currently the biggest reason why you don't see them so much against Zerg right now, mutas are the mongoose to the obese diseased snake that are Siege Tanks) I reckon Blizzard want us to be making Tanks again. And I kind of like that since Siege Tanks are one of the most iconic Terran units and it's a shame they've spent most of HotS inside the factory. But I only kind of like it since I'm a little bitch and I find the mobility issues of tanks to be a real pain in the arse. I quite like the current marine marauder medivac mine thor composition since it's quite powerful without being quite as easy to ambush or delay. But with Lurkers coming back it might not be feasible to engage them with marauders and thors once there's a good enough number of them out. We'll see.
With immortals getting a big change to their hardened shields it seems like Blizzard want mech to be finally viable against Protoss. I don't imagine it will happen since it's only immortals that are getting changed and they're not doing anything to make up for the fact that tanks do roughly fuck and all to most Protoss units. Though with the ability to pick them up it's possible we can see Terran retreating with stim and boosted tank-vacs. It might actually be possible that instead of making vikings we make tanks and medivacs and just boost them around with the bio force as needed but that seems a bit too optimistic.
Which brings me to TvT. I don't see this affecting doom drops too much since a doom drop usually has enough room for the dropper to siege up, assuming they haven't fucked it up, but it will mean that when retreating in TvT you can pick up your tanks whilst stimming and that's going to be kind of weird.
It is interesting how much cute stuff you can potentially do with tank vacs. Drop, shoot and lift, move on seems like it would be common, and the ability to retreat them seems huge. Mobility is the classic weakness of the Siege Tank and now Blizzard are letting us counteract that a bit. Thinking about this more as I write it makes me really excited at the prospect of having my own Shuttle Reaver combination (someone tell Legionnaire!)
The Thor! Well I guess no one will miss high payload shot other than possibly Goody (he once countered by BC transition with mass high payload Thor. God BC's are shit) but this ability doesn't enthuse me either. First off let me state that whilst I like the thor as an anti mutalisk unit I despise it in every other capacity. It's slow, it's durdley and you can barely micro the fucking thing because its ground attack is really awkward for some reason and it's huge hp total violates Terran's identity of comparatively low hp units that, if used correctly, dish out tons of damage ("but so does the BC!" Well, I think you should be allowed one unit that's kinda tanky, but only one! Starcraft 1 was like that and it's beautiful goddammit!)
Anyway, the self repair ability seems nifty for keeping their health topped up between fights but using it midfight seems awkward. Not just because it's a simple thing for opponents to ignore but because opting to do it means it's not handling all the mutalisks and that's why I made the bloody thing!
I can see a use where you get a few to block off a choke and then start mass repairing so the opponent has an arse of a time trying to break through and that does sound kinda fun. Otherwise, kinda meh.
Other Stuff!
The warp in change seems really brutal for drop defense and warp prism play. I predict that many protoss are going to reflexively warp in vs drops and then experience severe depression once those 6 zealots and 2 templar get sent straight back to Aiur in bodybags. Also weakens warp gate pushes in general, as well as that ling blocking zealot they occasionally make in emergencies. Good change! Fuck Protoss!
Disruptor. What the fuck is that anyway? As long as stimmed bio can outrun it I guess I won't mind too much. I'm quite confused at it's existence though, if you have a robotics and you want to kill ground units then surely you make the Colossus or immortal. I don't see why you'd make this thing instead.
Ravager! Hopefully doesn't shit all over my lovely tanks I might be strongly encouraged to make. I liked how in their intro video you see them blasting all over some tanks whilst there are a few medivacs nearby that could have lifted them to safety. Oh well. Micro!
Lurkers! I was surprised to see these guys show up since it really doesn't seem like they'd be good in this game. But loads of people seem to have this delusion that inserting them into starcraft = alive game so here goes I guess. In small numbers marauders and thors will smack them around but with range 9 a good row of them might be really nasty. We'll see.
Swarm hosts! Ding dong the bitch is dead. Stephano will be most upset I'm sure. I find it strange blizzard wants to turn this into a harassment focused unit since Zerg already have something like that (mutalisks) and that generally Zerg tend to perform little run by moves and pokes rather than proper harassment. I'm also curious if the new Nydus worm is enough of a counter measure to hardcore turtlers now that the swarm host is allegedly not the answer anymore. I'm also doubly curious if this means we can be aggressive with ground based mech armies since previously that's what Swarm hosts did; shut down ground mech aggression and force Ravens and bleeding from the eyeballs.
Infestors! That new upgrade seems nifty. Good on blizz to realize no one uses neural parasite, not even ironically. Hopefully not broken, hopefully allows more diverse Zerg composition.
Warp prism lifting! Oh fuck you.
Tempests! Whatev's.
Carriers! What are those again?
Oracle! Why are they getting buffed? They're a pretty strong unit as it is! I'm mostly wondering if Protoss will continue to use Revelation with their starting oracle or prefer stasis mines instead. I can kinda see Protoss setting one or two of those up along a common pathway just outside their 3rd or something and then setting up a stacked engagement right when it wears off. Yea, goddamn I'm gonna be shitting intestines next year I can tell.
And that's what I got to say. Holy shit I wrote more than I thought. Good thing I can't get to sleep right now. Sure am looking forward to this new game. Now let's sit in a circle and discuss which units and upgrades won't make it to beta those obsoleting this entire post!
