WCS![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LO36HJj.png)
Well, it's not 1000 tips (or any amount of tips), because we have an expansion instead a completely new game, but I think some facts must be listed, because from what I saw in replays and streams, sometimes people don't know some small facts about new units and how they work.
- Have problems with selecting enemy units and buildings? Options -> Gameplay -> Enable enemy unit selection. Also I highly recommend you to open game settings and read descriptions before start your first match in Heart of the Swarm.
- Two Queens can kill one oracle, 1v1 Queen dies. Similar to duels vs Void Rays and Banshees.
- Spore Crawler will die vs two Oracles. If not microed, one oracle will die too.
- Spore + Queen will die to 3 Oracles. See 3 oracles? Make 2 spores immediately! Or add more Queens
- Vipers and Oracles are Psionical units. You can snipe Vipers (4 snipes required), but not Oracles - they are not biological
- Blinding Cloud does not reduces radius of Widow Mines
- PDD blocks Tempest shots, but does not blocks Widow Mine shots, Fungal Growth projectile and Seeker Missle
- Protoss air weapons also affect Mothership Core weapon. After all upgrades M-Core will have 11 damage every 0.85 seconds, giving in result 12,95 DPS
- You can customize HP-Bars displaying and be able to see only HP-bars for damaged units. With ALT you can see all health bars.
- You can toggle HP-bars viewing by rebinding "Show HP Bars" to a double hotkey, like ALT+Q (for example). To toggle HP-bars, press ALT, press Q (still holding ALT), release ALT and then release Q. Same toggle-trick can be used for rotating camera. More info about this trick you can read here
- Widow Mine attack ignores armor and Hardened Shields (it can 3 shot Immortal), does not detects to cloaked/burrowed units and reacts to time-based units, like Locusts, Broodlings and Infested terrans. It also will kill Changeling if not morphed to Marine skin
- 2 corruptors can kill one Tempest. But in all scenarios even with corruption ability, one corruptor will die.
- Viper will not abduct enemy or your units, if there is unpassable terrain/space under Viper
- Viper can not abduct Larva
- Viper can abduct your own units, allowing to pull Ultralisks to enemy cliff or drones to islands.
- The best building to consume is Extractor, then Evolution Chamber, the worst - Spine/Spore Crawlers. Hatchery is a compromise between buildability, building time and cost. You should read more about Viper here
- Nexus Photon Overload can attack air at very big range. Mothership Core itself can't attack air units.
- Nexus Photon Overload can't detect cloaked/burrowed units
- Don't forget about new dances for Oracle, Roach, MULE and Stalker!
- "Players nearby you" is a semi-LAN function. It shows players who are in your network and logged to Battle.Net too. You can toggle on/off this function in the Battle.net options
- You can't run with small units through Spine Crawlers, even with zerglings. But you can do that through Spores
- You can turn off experience points ingame by going to Options -> Gameplay -> Display Experience Points (latest in a 2nd column)
- Quick access hotkeys have returned in some of latest patches. When game has finished, you can press F5 on Score Screen and open Replay menu immediately, without going to main Kerrigan/Battlecruiser menu. Also don't forget about useful orange button "Play again" on score screen, by pressing it, you will start searching for a next player.
F1 - campaign
F2 - Matchmaking
F3 - Custom Games
F4 - Arcade
F5 - Replays - There are new music themes for all races! You can listen these music tracks by opening YouTube-spoilers below
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler + - You can decrease amount of flying dead bodies on your screen by changing Physics option in Graphic Settings.
Off / Medium - standard deaths (like in WoL),
High / Ultra / Extreme - expect a rain of dead zergling corpses when defending with Siege Tanks or Banelings - Blinding Cloud does not prevents from using abilities.
- Tempests still can do anti-massive damage to Colossuses.
- Oracle's Pulsar Beam can oneshot Larva, because it ignores armor and have anti-light bonus damage. Larva is light unit. On Attack-move it will not work, you should manually target Oracles on enemy Larvas
- Oracle's Pulsar Beam can't attack air
- Warp Field (Mothership Core and Mothership itself) does not affects air and will not slow Ultralisks as it should be because of Frenzy effect
- 2 Queens can kill one Tempests with one Transfusion, but one queen will die in all scenarios. Same for 3 Queens vs one Tempest - without transfusion one queen will die always.
- 1v1 Queen and Mothership Core, both can die. But if one of those units started attack later, other will have opportunity to win small fight. Queen can kite M-Core, so microed Queen can kill M-Core with low hp left.
- Widow Mine will not trigger to Larvas, but they can kill eggs.
- Collapsible Rock Towers can deal 500 damage to all buildings under it and kill all units, who was blocked here. Blocked means burrowed, deployed, Force Fielded and Fungaled units. Also with Warp Field (Oracle's ability) there is a chance, that some units will not leave Rock Tower debris and die quickly.
- AI controlled allies are voiced by Kerrigan, Executor and Adjutant. Every move they will reply with quotes like "Swarm needs that expansion!" when expanding, "The Swarm coming" when attacking enemy, etc
- Locusts are second unit after Hydralisks, who have biggest speed bonus on creep. Use Speed-Overlords to spread creep and speed up your swarms of Locusts
Locust speed off-creep - 1.88
Locust speed on-creep - 2.65 (40% faster) - Hydralisks got speed upgrade off-creep, that allows Hydralisks to move at 2.81 speed off-creep. Speed on creep always stays same - 3.38.
- Try to combine Nydus Network and Swarm Hosts. This is the only composition, that allows to safely spawn units at enemy bases. Just spawn nydus, unload Swarm Hosts, spawn locusts and go back to Nydus and wait for another Nydus Worm spawn to create small chaos in other place.
- Siege Tanks against Swarm Hosts (both in big numbers) always results with zero damage to Siege Tanks. But Blinding Cloud can change that scenario completely.
- Mutalisks can quickly reach at 4 speed enemy Medivacs (their speed is 2.5). But for 8 seconds Medivacs can fly at 4.25 speed
- For now units will always auto-leave Blinding Cloud (excluding deployed Siege Tanks). Try to block enemy movement with fungals or mass-zerglings to make Blinding Cloud more effective
- Have problems with similar icons of WoL and HotS? Here are alternative HOTS-icons for your desktop
- I saw many thread in HOTS bug-reports forums, that players had problems with pinging on map with Alt-G hotkey. You should know that you can place pings with just Ctrl-Alt-clicks
- You can customize creep graphics on all settings, from Medium to Ultras. Read more about creep sharpness and animation here
- Chrono Boost does not gives any buffs to Nexus Photon Overcharge
- Ultralisks can one-shot Larvas, but one-by-one, because splash not works here normally due to heavy Larva armor.
- PDD does not blocks Thor's High Impact Payload, because it's not a projectile or missile attack
- Blinding Cloud affects Planetary Fortress, all static defences (Spine/Spore Crawlers, Missile Turrets, Photons) and Overcharged Nexus. But not affects bunker
- Revelation used on drone lets to see a building which this drone morphs to.
- Cloak when the widow mine missle is launched let's unit to take only splash damage (40).
- Abducted massive units destroys forcefields on their path.
- Abducted units will land at place where Viper started cast Abduct. During Abduct process Viper can fly away. Graphically abduct tentacle can be larger, when Viper flying away from place where abduct process initiated.
- Try to have as many buildings, as many Vipers you have. Try to consume buildings with full health. Only then average passive regeneration will be higher in long macro games. See the picture below to better understand this idea. More information about Vipers you can find in specific thread about this unit
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vrfk4.jpg)
- Only 6 Marines can kill Oracle. 5 Marines will die to one oracle. But the more marines you have, the less effective Oracles become. 10 marines can kill 2 Oracles. But two Widow Mines can make this scenario better for Terran.
- Try to drop Widow Mines, especially with faster burrow. It can be a new Terran answer to Protoss Storm Drop. Splash damage is shared between air and ground units. it means if you damage enemy overlords, you can kill drones underneath it. Same as against Storm Drops, one of the best solutions is fast reaction from opponent. If he moves all workers quickly away from storms (came to your base on upgraded Speed Prizms) or mines (on Speedivacs), then he can save some workers. Even if there some static defence, Widow Mines are 90HP unit, so they can hold some damage to inflict maximum damage with rocket charges.
+ Show Spoiler + - Try to make Oracle hallucinations to force enemy spend resources on anti-air, especially against Zerg try to fly near some of his Overlords. Oracles are more dangerous than Phoenixes, so it can cause a bit more panic for the enemy, than Phoenixes. Another reason why Oracle hallucinations are better than Phoenix hallucination is that fake-Oracle will not autoattack Overlords, so enemy will not know are Oracles real or hallucinated. Also try to combine 1-2 Oracles and 4-5 their hallucinations. You will be able to kill something like Zergling on Xel'Naga tower and force enemy to react quickly, because he will think that you're coming with mass of Oracles. You're not wasting a lot vespene gas (just energy for Sentries), but he will waste a lot minerals and drones on spores and queens. I think, his reaction will be similar to this
- Force Field does not blocks Widow Mine attack. It can fire missile when it's placed under Force Field
- You can't abduct units that are in warping process
- You can abduct deployed Warp Prizm. It will stay in deployed mode, like abducted deployed Siege Tank.
- You can abduct enemy SCV that building something. Of course building process will be stoped
- Blinding Cloud is very effective against mass of Infested Terrans, because they're very slow and can't quickly leave cloud
- You can abduct some enemy Ultralisks away from your army allowing some time to kill other Ultralisks. But it's not that effective
- Blinding Cloud also works on Ultralisks, because they have 1 weapon attack range. Not much will be changed, just Ultralisks will stuck more around your units, also they can leave cloud quickly, so it's not that effective
- Abducting Ghost cancels Nuclear Missile spotting
- Splitting or spreading Swarm Hosts and adding creep spread from Overlords or Creep Tumors will significally buff Locusts against Siege Tanks. Locusts can reach enemy tanks quicker and when splitted, they're getting less splash damage.
- When you're relocating your Swarm Hosts after spawning Locusts, half of your Locusts will try "move away" your Swarm Hosts in different direction. Try to use Hold-mode on Swarm Hosts, so they will stay at position untill all Locusts leave Swarm Hosts. On picture, highlighted with green Locusts moving to the left, Swarm Hosts - to the right, when red colors means, that some Swarm Hosts will stuck with Locusts, both going in different directions. Hold-mode on Swarm Hosts will allow them stay at place normally, without walking with Locusts.
+ Show Spoiler + - Highly recommend you to view these videos with nice demonstration of how Swarm Hosts can be powerfull with Infestors and Hydra/Viper
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8F6Lo.jpg)
- You can bind 3 hotkeys on one button. Can be useful for Grid users, especially for Zergs, because their Grid layout was changed since WoL. For example burrow and cancel button were merged into one, unlike WoL where burrow was on G and Cancel worked well as Escape button. More info about it here
- After Mass Recall, units will stay at same places as before. If there is a high ground nearby Nexus, after Recall units will be placed on that high ground
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ob68v.jpg)
- If not masked, Changeling can drain Widow Mine Charges. But if there is a visible enemy unit nearby, Widow Mine will not trigger to Fakerine. So for Zerg side, against mass Widow Mines you can try to use mass Overseers and send Changelings one-by-one to drain WM charges. For Terran side, to prevent that, try to place something visible near Widow Mines, so it will not trigger to Changelings.
- After Burrow research is completed, Roaches become very useful against current Widow Mines with 125 damage and 40 dmg splash. Because you will not lose every roach to every Widow Mine charge, but you'll also be able to heal Roaches quickly from WM splash damage.
- You can turn on/off auto-cast via hotkey. Just press ALT+hotkey to toggle autocast mode. Works in WoL, but can become more useful in HotS due to Locust autospawn ability.
- Carrier Micro has arrived. In HotS you can switch targets for Interceptors and at same time stay with the Carrier at bigger interceptor distance, than official one. More info in this video
- Reaper's Combat Drugs heals after 10 seconds of no combat actions.
- Reapers can regenerate health when starting attack enemy after healing process started.
- If enemy attacks Reapers, their healing will be interrupted.
- 4 Reapers can double-shot Sentry.
- 3 Reapers can deal with Queen or Stalker, if microed with moving away damaged Reapers.
- 3 Reapers can double-shot Drone (even with regeneration), SCV (24x2 versus 45 hp), Probe. Marine & Zergling.
- 2 Reapers can double-shot Baneling.
- Reaper vs Marine: Reaper wins with low amount of health. In small fights with multiple Reapers vs multiple Marines you should micro Reapers to save them.
- Hellbat damage against all targets now is 18 per 2 seconds (9 DPS). It means that it's more similar to Roach (8 DPS), except small splash, smaller range (2 against 4 for roach), a bit lesser HP (135) and flat 30 damage to all Light units, but only for 100 minerals.
- Unmicroed Roaches without kiting can die to same amount of Hellbats. But Hellbats must be microed a bit too, under Hellbat micro I mean walk closer to Roaches for a better effect from splash.
- Due to Light armor type of Hellbats, they're still weak against Banelings.
- Hellbats are Light and non-Armored, meaning that they can tank more damage than any other Terran unit. Especially when splitted and not on a-move. Walk with them directly to Siege Tanks into a melee radius and burn them with flames!
- Because of better splash, Hellbats can clear Larvaes quicker, than Helions. Current Hellbats can double-shot all larva.
- 2 Hellbats can kill a Queen.
- 3 Hellbats can kill Spine Crawler. If microed with moving away damaged Hellbats, all 3 of them can survive. Without micro one Hellbat will die.
- Hellbat versus Stalker. Both dies at same time, but microed Stalker can win.
- Hellbat versus Zealot. Hellbat wins with low amount of health.
- Hellbats also can tank Widow Mine charges and can be healed/repaired after that.
- Due to Light-armor of Widow Mines, Hellbats can be a soft-counter against Widow Mines.
- 2 Hellbats can kill one Widow Mine without detection. But don't overkill! You can't do that with standard Hellions, due to 90 HP against 125 damage of Widow Mine.
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/g2t26.gif)
- Oracle is very good in PvP to deal with Dark Templars. Oracles are faster than DT, have anti-light damage bonus (DT are light units), Oracles also can detect with Envision.
- If you have troubles with mass Zealots, try Oracles too, if you don't have other tools to deal with them at time.
- Oracles are also good at clearing future expands from burrowed zerglings. Envision + Pulsar may help you do that, so it's not need to pre-build Pylon+Photon or grab slow Observer.
- Against Widow Mines Oracles can fight too. One Oracle can kill one Widow mine, because it has Envision and Pulsar Beam which is good against light targets (Widow Mines are light too). But if you turn on Envision/Pulsar and then just move onto Widow Mine field, you will probably lose all Oracles. But if try to tank Widow charges (if Widow Mines are spreaded and not clumped) by every Oracle, one-by-one (first oracle, then 2nd oracle, then 3rd one, etc), and all Oracles will survive one Widow Mine shot. So after that you can clear mines with pulsars and envision.
- Widow Mine can trigger to Interceptors and kill some of them.
- If Graviton Catapult (Carrier upgrade) is researched, WIdow Mines can kill more Interceptors per shot. Why? Because faster launched Interceptors means that there will be more Interceptors over widow mines at the moment, when they launching widow-rocket. Without that Graviton Catapult upgrade widow mine can hit less Interceptors per shot.
- There is an interesting trick, that allows WIdow Mines to deal damage against Carriers at bigger range. When Interceptors returning back to Carriers, and at same time Widow Mine charge was launched at those returning Interceptors, splash of widow-rocket can damage Carriers at 6-8 distance. Widow Mine designed to if it launched a missile, it will reach target no matter how far it is, even if it's located at bigger distance than Widow Mine default attack range.
- This tip is good for Protoss, but again about Widow Mines. Splash-damage from them is shared between air and ground. It means that if Widow Mine launched a rocket at Interceptors above, it can also kill or damage your units with that splash.
- Reapers can heal themselfs even in Bunker. When someone started attack bunker or Reapers are attacking from bunker, healing process will not be interrupted
- Reaper DPS against targets with 1 armor - 5.45
Marine DPS against targets with 1 armor - 5.81 - Try to get Overlord speed upgrade and use them to tank Widow Mine missiles when harassing enemy base with Mutalisks
- Overseer can tank Widow Mine charge too, but this unit is more valuable than Overlord
- You can avoid Widow Mine shot on your Mutalisks. Just be more carefully control your Mutalisks, especially when flying into enemy base.
- Not need to morph any of your Overlords to Overseer at home base. Better to do it with an Overlord that is staying near enemy base to save your time. This tip can help you a bit when you need to save time. For example you have some Mutalisks near enemy Terran base, but you know that he have burrowed Widow Mines. So best choice will be morph Overseer from nearest Overlord rather than use Overlord from home base and fly with newly created Overseer through the map.
- You can bring back High models at low Shaders in Heart of the Swarm by opening variables.txt and editing these parameters (It's fully legit because technical support sometimes suggests to modify variables.txt to solve some occuring problems). Just find these parameters below and edit them to looks like here:
GraphicsOptionModelQuality=2
lowqualitymodels=0
useLowqualitymodels=0
Well, it will not give you more visible Force Fields, but you will have better Pylon power radius, and detalized models of warping units instead - You still can turn off alternative low textures, but it's not recommended to do, because based on some tests, these special low textures require less memory from your PC. And they're looking better than default low textures.
- As in good old times in WoL, highly recommend you to add these 2 parameters to increase stability of your game via limiting maximum FPS
frameratecap=90
frameratecapGlue=60 - There is a big guide about Swarm Hosts. If you love this unit, recommend you to read it
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=394256 - Creep Tumor scouting trick. Heart of the Swarm expansion introduced one nice cosmetical upgrade to Creep Tumors. Instead instant tumor spawn, you can see snake-animation, which lasts 3 ingame seconds. During this time you can cancel it. But the trick is about small range scouting around future placement for Creep Tumors. Even if it's not placed, you still will be able to see around at 3,5 range. It means that you can do some scouting at the edge of your creep zone by placing tumors and cancelling them during 3 ingame seconds.
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iKFSazq.png)
- Abduct can unburrow enemy units, if you have detector. Works well against enemy Swarm Hosts, Widow Mines and burrowed Infestors.
- Mass Recall is a spell that comes from the Mothership Core, a 100/100 unit that builds from Nexus in 30 ingame seconds, requires Cybernetics Core, and comes with all 3 of its spells by default.
- It costs 100 energy, and teleports the Mothership Core and all (both air/ground) nearby units owned by the player to the Nexus that you targeted.
- The radius is very large. Maxed ground armies, as long as they're bunched up around the MSC, will all be recalled.
- Unlike the Town Portal from WC3, the player cannot choose specifically where around the nexus they want to Recall to, it always is directly on top of the nexus.
- Even if the MSC dies while Recalling, the surrounding units are still transported.
- It has a cast time of 2 ingame seconds, during which the MC and the nearby units being recalled are all stunned and cannot receive any commands (they turn blue while they are stunned) but can still take damage.
- After the Recall, they're stunned for an additional ***5*** ingame seconds and can take damage.
- You can use the minimap to target the Nexus you want to Mass Recall to.
- If the Nexus dies during the 2 second cast time of Mass Recall, the units are still magically teleported to the ashy, rubble of the nexus's corpse.
- If you use Mothership's recall, the stunned time after recall is 2-3 seconds shorter than Mothership Core's. (Try larsevss for this tip)
- From FractalPrison@reddit: Any units within the radius of Recall who are currently controlled by Neural Parasite, will not recall.
- Neural Parasite can be cast on units while Recall is being cast, whereas Abduct cannot be cast on Recalling Units.
- If you Neural Parasite when an opponent casts Recall but right as Recall is finishing, your Infestors will run across the map to the Nexus Recalled to, in an attempt to cast Neural Parasite.
- When you Neural Parasite an enemy Mothership/core, you can cast Recall / Photon Overcharge, if you have a Nexus.
- Widow Mine splash damage can't damage your and enemy buildings. In early beta versions it was possible to damage enemy buildings when attacking enemy units near those buildings, but later that was fixed, so Widow Mines can't splash-damage enemy or your buildings.
- Sometimes some of your Swarm Hosts will want to be a Locust, walking with their minions and trying to do something. But on serious note, it can be a problem for you, because you can lose that single Swarm Host. Solution is simply - just use Set Rally Point more often. Also if you don't have Grid hotkey scheme, highly recommend you to rebind "Set Rally Point" hotkey to something which is easier and more comfort to reach for your fingers..
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/75s0cOz.png)
- ... More - later. PM me, if you found something cool, I will add it.
Original russian article
http://pr3d.ru/existor/120-hots-tips
Thanks!
