Rebirth of the Skytoss - A HotS Lovestory

Introduction

When they released Starcraft 2 back at the end of 2010, everyone was pumped to test the new units and see them in action. There were many players who decided which race they would play before they even played a single game - i see myself as exactly that kind of player. From my understanding there are four reasons why people choose to be protoss. They... :

... were Protoss in Starcraft 1 (Popular examples: WhiteRa/NonY).
... like flashy lights, special effects.
... loved the new mechanics like warping units in at virtually every point of the map at any given time.
... felt in love with the Carrier and Archon (visually) as iconic units of the game-universe itself (Example: Myself).

Like i already pointed out, i was betrayed by the fact that i loved the visual concept of the carrier and archon. I have to be honest, that i really loved to make these units in Starcraft 1 just because of how they looked.

Starcraft 1

I remember myself and a couple of friends playing SC 1 with a rule. We were not allowed to attack each other for the first 8 or 9 minutes of a game. I think i was like 15 years old at that point and me and my friends really hated these early rushes who end the game in like 4 minutes. I mean i don't play a game to feel good about the fact that i win - no matter how. I want to see the cool units, cool effects and that big boom in the middle of the map. So my memory of Starcraft 1 was that there were these amazing units called Carriers and that holy shining unit called Archon who would destroy everything that comes into his way. Protoss had an epic feeling for me back then.

Starcraft 2

10 years later Starcraft 2 was around the corner, so i guess my choice was an easy one, right? Protoss all the way no matter what! Little did i know, that there was more about Starcraft than just not attacking for 10 Minutes and then having this big clash in the middle of the map. I was surprised about how deep this game was, how much it had to offer tactically and at the same time, i was very sad i never played Starcraft 1 the way i do play SC2 now. I remembered this little kid inside of me very often and i still loved the Archon aswell as the Carrier. But what happened in Starcraft 2 was kind of frustrating. The Race that i loved and that made me feel great while playing it, made me feel bored when i reached a certain skill-level.

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Disapointment

The reason was that i've seen flaws in the design of the game itself. When i first started i was in Platinum League so i never blamed the balance of the game or the game design itself not being able to go for Archons and Carriers. But once my skill level raised i started to realize that i'm waiting for something that would never happen. Protoss wasn't meant to use Archons or Carriers. Every time you tried to get to these units, you were supposed to die. Especially at higher levels of the game. The Archon was easily countered by bio units in PvT even though Archons were meant to counter them. When i remember correctly the Archon had a range of 2 at that time, sucked against Mutas (because he NEVER reached them) and was countered by Marauders with concussive shells (Archon was only psyionic back then) who were slowing them down and would kite them to death.

Like i already said the other unit i loved - the carrier - wasn't viable either because the allmighty carrier that i remembered was countered by a low number of stimmed marines in Starcraft 2. And at the same time when a Zerg has seen that i had like 3 Carriers already, 40 seconds later he had an anti air army that my carriers couldn't handle. Hell, it took forever to build these flagships and they die to every anti air unit in the game. Thousands of patches later - it's nearly 2 years ago they released the game - i realized they never touched the carrier, they buffed the Archon a bit so that he is kinda playable now but again, not once touched the carrier.

And no one knows why... the best idea Blizzard came up with at first was: Remove the Carrier in HotS. I felt terrible at this point playing protoss because i felt like the race was forced to go for high templars or colossy every single game. In PvT, in PvP and in PvZ. There was no other option in the mid or lategame, which made it very predictable to play and to watch. So i mentally quit on the game...

Hope on the Horizon

In September of 2012 Blizzard released the Beta for Heart of the Swarm. The first official Starcraft 2 add-on. I have to be honest and say that i was amazingly tired of watching AND playing lategame PvZ and PvT already. PvZ was all about hitting or missing the vortex with your mothership and that would pretty much decide the outcome of a whole game - ~~often~~ no matter what happened before. And i don't blame protoss players for it, it's a design mistake because Protoss hasn't any other chance of beating the lategame army of Zerg (which is kind of strange because i always thaught that Protoss was the scary race once reaching the lategame army). But with the upcoming release and the addition of new units there was hope for me. Protoss got a new Air Unit and a week later got their Carrier back and combined with the new stuff i think that changed it all.

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An old flame never dies

Once i started to play the Beta i regained the inspiration i had lost while i played "Starcraft 2 - Wing of Liberty". I lost it because the design of the game forced me in a direction i didn't want to go and as a result i had to play styles that were standard because other stuff wasn't viable at all. A pretty fitting example are Hallucinations, did u ever tried to use them without being overwhelmed by your opponents manpower while u teched to it? Right, doesn't work because the effect you gain of it doesn't pay for itself - which as a result ended up in hallucinations only purpose being... scouting. When i first played Starcraft 2 i always thaught some day i will create that crazy style that makes Hallucination so strong... sadly it never happened. If we look at PvT for example it's clear why. Even if Terrans don't go for detection, a random scan can ruin the whole thing because he starts to see blue transparent units. Blizzard put in great ideas but killed the ideas at the same time by making them impossible to use. Another great example is going for air. Once you decide to harrass with air units you automatically make DT play impossible because of spores and rocket towers. Its the same in the other direction.

In general i think pushing a creative mind in a corner really can kill someone. I'm not only pointing towards Starcraft in this line, i'm talking about other aspects of life too. For example: Try to get an artist being satisfied if you switch jobs and from the next day he wakes up, he's the manager of Coca-Cola Industries. Will this make him feel better?

Starcraft 2 put me in a corsett that really doesn't fit me well. I want to be crazy, i want to do stuff people don't expect, but it's simply impossible. Until now. As said before, i regained my inspiration and played a little bit of the HotS Beta. And what i see is stuff that i like. Doing crazy things like going a bit of ground, holding everything, cutting corners, take risks and then BOOM... here comes my air army ~~that doesn't die 30 seconds later to some fungals and instantly popping corruptors~~. Now deal with it! I think when something comes by surprise it should pay off... they way Starcraft 2 was made this effect isn't possible. I go air, he has 2 Starports with double reactors and kills everything i have even though he started to produce Vikings so much later. Same with Corruptors ~~which you can go from 0 to 100 in 30 seconds~~.

"What am i supposed to do against this?!?"

Once i started to play a whole different style from what i was used to see in Wings of Liberty, i began to enjoy the game. I toyed around in PvT a bit and came up with the following, a fairly standard opener with a bit of oracle harrass, the standard HT/Colossy switching BUT, at one point i switched to air:

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What happens, if it comes to a battle of around 20 Flagships and 5 Archons -VS- 36 Vikings and 6 BCs... in WoL it's really easy to say that the Terran is gonna win that battle. But what happens with a Mix of my beloved Archons/Carriers AND a couple of Tempests in the Background?

The Meeting
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The Battle
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The BBQ
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Conclusion
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9 Tempests and 2 Carriers survive. Success. Why does it work you may ask.. it's easy, because the Archons do splash damage. So you focus fire the Vikings with them, they die quickly to archons (more or less). So you lose a couple Carriers in the process BUT the tempest - with their +DMG vs massive units - are pretty good at killing the BCs, even if they are getting repaired.

The game ended with a puzzled Terran asking me for advice how to handle the situation better next time. My answer was: "You should scout more." He thought we were trading armys during the mid to lategame and waiting for the better micro to win at the end. To be honest i didn't rely on micro and coinflips in this game, but more on tactical thinking. It's not possible anymore to counter it spontanously ~~like in SC2-WoL~~, because what u need aren't only Vikings and BCs, i think you would need a couple Ravens too for some PDDs. Tempests have very slow attacks so they have a hard time dealing with ravens IF you dont already have some HTs in response to his response where Terrans response would be ghosts again.

The shaken up PvZ Mid- and Lategame

At the beginning of my text i mentioned the situation in current PvZ too, which both sides - Zerg and Protoss - agree is not very good for a game of Starcrafts caliber. So i tried my new playstyle versus Zerg too and there you go. It was the more or less standard PvZ at first. He was extremely greedy and went for three very early bases focussing on economy... because jeah, why not. Protoss can't do anything about it without losing their whole army and then die to a counterpush. In WoL i agree on that. HotS... not really. What i did was this:

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Force-Field my way into his 3rd base with my initial units
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Snipe it
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And say goodbye teleporting back home
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Conclusion
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Protoss is able to punish greedyness in any matchup again without risking to lose the whole army and lose to a relatively small counterpush. This will change PvZ metagame pretty heavy because Zergs will have to make armys faster to deal with it, which opens other windows again and makes the game way more entertaining.

So the game started with a less stressfull mindset for me because we were even on bases now. Afterwards he tried a counterpush with mass roaches but it was useless because i had enough forcefields - thanks to my recalled units. What happened then was the standard PvZ. I harrassed a bit with Phoenix-Play after i sniped his hatch at the beginning, sniped secret other expands on the map with warp-prism play and Zealots, then he went for Broodlord/Infestor on 4 base and wanted to catch me offguard. Little did he know that i was waiting with Tempests and carriers for him.

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I didn't win that fight with only 5 Carriers and 2 Tempests, i flanked him with my whole ground army from the left side to kill all infestors. So it's not an A-Move thing, but again a more tactical approach than before. The Game ended in a big fight for expansions around the map, sniping his hatches everywhere with drop-play and in the end a similar fight like versus the Terran:

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So what basically happened is that i focus fired the clumped corruptors with the archons, he even mindcontrolled some of them but at the end it didn't matter. You can snipe the Infestors with the Tempests. Spontanous reactions to stuff like this don't work anymore. The Zerg has to prepare some kind of Viper play which takes a little more preparation because they need to get high energy for casting purposes. Oh and no, i didn't use Vortex with my Mothership in that final battle. I used it the whole game because i was sniping bases with my army and then recalling it again to the Mothership so it was pretty much energyless, which is good because i want to prove that the issues we had in lategame don't exist anymore if you play it smart.

The bottom line

I have a very good impression of HotS and like where Starcraft is heading: Good tactics and strategies as well as well prepared transitions are way more rewarding than they have ever been in the lifetime of Wings of Liberty. It's much more important to make the right moves and prepare them well instead of hitting timing windows (which most of SC2 was about). Just my two cents. The reasoning behind my opinion is a wider range of abilitys and units, which creates a lot more opportunities. My first result of that is my Skytoss-Play which seems to be pretty solid at the moment. However i hope i can get a little bit more creative stuff working... it's just the beginning.

People i want to thank

Blizzard - For finally making a way more polished experience out of SC2.
Liquid'NonY - For fighting for the epic carrier. I think his video as well as the whole community are the main reason why we got i back.
My english teacher AND the NBA - For teaching me how to write stuff like this even though english isn't my native language.
TeamLiquid.net - For giving me a place where i reach many people with my post.

Rebirth of the Skytoss on Reddit

I want to reach as many people as possible with my little essay so please go check out "Rebirth of the Skytoss" on Reddit too and give it an upvote to spread the word. I appreciate any kind of help. I dont have a twitter account where i would reach many people so maybe there are others who want to share the links too + Show Spoiler +

Reddit: http://de.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/10jftv/rebirth_of_the_skytoss_a_hots_lovestory/
TL-Blog: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=371829

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Greets,
MiND.GaMeS.

Rebirth of the Skytoss - A HotS Lovestory

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