New HotS Units/Abilities in Blizzcon - Page 344

On October 23 2011 13:46 JinnAxel wrote:


Lol sentires. They'll tickle the mutas to death.

Archons are on the same tech level as Tempests and have the same gas cost, their aoe is significantly smaller than a tempest though. Phoenix can't adequately deal with mass muta unless you're willing to micro them around the map continuously. Honestly, they just tried to buff Protoss air and kind of failed.

On October 23 2011 12:59 nazdrovie wrote:
Can anyone explain to me the idea behind scrapping protoss' hero unit from the game and adding one for terran? I've been trying to figure it out but just can't seem to wrap my head around it... Why not go ahead and either give each race one or forget about it completely?

On October 23 2011 13:52 Paper117 wrote:


If I understand it correctly, they felt that the mothership wasn't very good not because of the design flaw of a hero unit, but because of a flawed design of the specific unit itself. They wanted to try again, with a different unit for the hero, this time choosing one of the Terran units that would have otherwise been scrapped entirely in favor of another new unit. The fact that it's going to a different race seems irrelevant. Terran just happened to have an opening.

They seemed to feel that a big, purely combat behemoth would be a better hero than a bizarre massive support unit. I think I'd have to agree. The way the mothership originally appeared kind of suggests that that was how it was originally conceived. I bet the new thor with SCV's to repair dropping those big bombardments from the middle of a Terran army would be a lot more formidable and entertaining than the mothership as it generally appears today.

On October 23 2011 09:41 Ourk wrote:
dunno if this has been asked yet but how long untill the beta is out for HOTS and can everyone download it or do you opt in? like WOL beta

On October 23 2011 13:13 muffinsssss wrote:

Wow I never thought of that...talk about broken. Might as well remove Zerg as a race.

On October 23 2011 12:57 awesomoecalypse wrote:


Carriers sucked in BW too, and for the exact same reason. They're just way too hard to balance--anything that flies, with that level of health and dps vs. both air and ground, need either some really hard counters, or to be insanely expensive/hard to build, or both. Giving the Tempest different attacks vs. air and ground is a good start, because its much easier to play around with in such a way that you can give it a defined role without making it too strong overall.

Seriously if you look at the units that fly and hit both air and ground, they *always* have some drawback. Usually, its being super fragile, like Mutas and Voids. But if they aren't that fragile and still do great dps vs everything, then you have to provide really strong incentives not to just make that unit all the time...hence the Carrier we got in both BW and SC2, awesome in theory but way too expensive/slow building to ever be really viable.

Whereas with the Tempest, they can just nerf its ground attack or something if necessary, and voila, its countered by basic ground anti-air. Once that niche is clearly established, with the unit having clear weaknesses as well as strengths, its much easier to set the cost/buildtime more reasonably so people can actually use it.

On October 23 2011 13:47 Daralii wrote:

The main thing is that those stop working once zerg gets an enormous cloud of them, which is pretty common if they want to force a baserace. I *think* phoenixes can infinitely kite mutas, but it's going to take a long time and a lot of focus. Storm works, but it's going to take a lot of storms if they're not just letting their mutas sit in it.

On October 23 2011 13:58 Ryder. wrote:

What? First of all did you even watch that video of Tempests fighting mutas? That was 4 tempests (1200min/1200gas) and the mutas all died but they didn't instantly vanish...2nd tempests get bonus damage to light, overlords are armored so we have no idea what kind of damage they would do, and 3rd they are meant to be only slightly faster than carriers, you think protoss is gonna risk flying in a 300/300 slow unit just to kill a couple of overlords? God damn it man think.

On October 23 2011 13:52 Paper117 wrote:


If I understand it correctly, they felt that the mothership wasn't very good not because of the design flaw of a hero unit, but because of a flawed design of the specific unit itself. They wanted to try again, with a different unit for the hero, this time choosing one of the Terran units that would have otherwise been scrapped entirely in favor of another new unit. The fact that it's going to a different race seems irrelevant. Terran just happened to have an opening.

They seemed to feel that a big, purely combat behemoth would be a better hero than a bizarre massive support unit. I think I'd have to agree. The way the mothership originally appeared kind of suggests that that was how it was originally conceived. I bet the new thor with SCV's to repair dropping those big bombardments from the middle of a Terran army would be a lot more formidable and entertaining than the mothership as it generally appears today.

On October 23 2011 13:45 nazdrovie wrote:
What I'm saying is that kiwi found out that the mothership is fine the way it is (at least against zerg) and it is only a matter of time before motherships can have a real part in the metagame, many protoss players have been integrating them into their games recently, which is why i don't understand blizzards decision to remove it.

Kiwi didn't rest on one ability to win, he used several: mass recall, blink, vortex and mass cloacking amongst other things. you said yourself that the game was good because of mass recall, so why are you taking the "omg he only won because of vortex" stance? And why are you in favor of a major buff to mass recall?

On October 23 2011 14:03 happyness wrote:


Actually it's been used off and on for a few months now in PvZ, and most games I've seen it hasn't produced good games.

I take back that he relied on vortex to win the game, you're right that there were many things that went into him winning. But as for the final battle, it was completely dependent on whether or not Kiwi got a good vortex off because his army and composition were much weaker at that time.

I like mass recall because it is an interesting ability and made it exciting. I don't like vortex because it usually gets auto wins for protoss if they manage to aim one right.


In short, I don't like the mothership because it adds to the deathball playstyle of protoss, and I hate the deathball. On top of that vortex so often can be an auto win for protoss, and that just isn't exciting to me.

On October 23 2011 13:49 Reaper51 wrote:
What if phoenixes got the overload ability back from sc2 alpha?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDCSPCA_Zqo

On October 23 2011 14:03 YoungNV wrote:
Terran:
+2 new units (Shredder, Warhound)
-0 existing units
+ 5 new abilities/buffs [Thor, Hellion, Ghost (cloak), BC (boost), Reaper (regen)]
= Net gain of 7

Protoss:
+3 new units (Tempest, Oracle, Replicant)
-2 existing units (Carrier, Mothership)
+2 new abilities/buffs (Nexus: Arc Shield, Recall)
= Net gain of 3

Zerg:
+2 new units (Viper, Swarm Host)
-1 existing unit (Overseer)
+4 new abilities/buffs [Corruptor (siphon), Ultra (charge), Baneling (tunnel), Hydra (speed)]
= Net gain of 5

On October 23 2011 14:08 happyness wrote:


lol that's funny. Just shows how fucking much the game changed from alpha. It's largely going to be the same for HotS so this entire discussion is probably pointless.

On October 23 2011 14:03 YoungNV wrote:
Terran:
+2 new units (Shredder, Warhound)
-0 existing units
+ 5 new abilities/buffs [Thor, Hellion, Ghost (cloak), BC (boost), Reaper (regen)]
= Net gain of 7

Protoss:
+3 new units (Tempest, Oracle, Replicant)
-2 existing units (Carrier, Mothership)
+2 new abilities/buffs (Nexus: Arc Shield, Recall)
= Net gain of 3

Zerg:
+2 new units (Viper, Swarm Host)
-1 existing unit (Overseer)
+4 new abilities/buffs [Corruptor (siphon), Ultra (charge), Baneling (tunnel), Hydra (speed)]
= Net gain of 5