HotS - Multiplayer Unit Update Video

[Kimera757]

Abduct has a limited range (too short, IMO). If the protoss player is holding the tempest over space or otherwise impassable terrain, the zerg player must use air. Vipers would only be marginally useful there; it just gets the tempest to the flying attackers a bit faster.

[Visions of Khas]

I'm just afraid all a protoss player will have to do now is craete a swarm of Pheonix around a squadron of Tempests and that's it, game over man. Game over.

[MulletBen]

Tempests appear to do very little DPS. I feel like, with 22 range, there will be a fine line between overpowered and useless. I'd hate to see the Tempest go the way of the carrier, but I'd also hate to see a swarm of tempests that you can never get any units close enough to to fight. That said, I think corruptors and vikings will be more than enough to deal with tempests as they are in the alpha build.

Oracle looks incredibly good, but things to keep in mind are that 1) they are incredibly low health (20 health 80 shields), 2) they have no attack and very limited battle use, and 3) they cost a large chunk of minerals and vespene (150/200). So while they will certainly be able to do a whole lot of economic damage, you will leave yourself quite vulnerable to any attack. Sniping an oracle shouldn't be too hard with queens, and you should probably e building spore crawlers already if you haven't scouted.

Mothership core is a great solution to problems that could have arisen when they had similar abilities on the nexus. First of all, it means protoss will be limited in the number of times they can recall. With every nexus having that ability, you'd be able to, on 3 bases, recall your army a nearly unlimited number of times. This gives protoss extra mobility, and greater options both offensively and defensively. Also, this way the abilities don't conflict with chrono boost, which is working perfectly fine as it is. The ability to turn a nexus into a planetary fortress is good for helping protoss take and defend bases that are farther away from their main, which is good for PvP, but also means that maps can now have thirds that are farther away, which is good for gameplay in all matchups imo. It also functions differently than a Terran planetary fortress, however, because you can only have one of them. Instead of choosing between economy and defense, the choice lies in which nexus needs to be defended. Restore energy seems like an ability that is just tacked on to give the mothership core another ability, although it might be interesting when used in cojunction with chronoboost, as I have heard you can cast it on nexuses.

As for Terran, the warhound still looks ugly (though it has improved), but it should make mech viable in TvP, which is exciting. I only hope it doesn't replace siege tanks, since without them mech isn't interesting at all. Battle hellions are basically firebats, but they share production structures and upgrades with mech units, making mech better to use. It also means that the risk that comes with producing hellions is drastically reduced, since they are better in a straight engagement. A couple months ago I would have said this was a bad thing, but ever since the range buff for queens, hellions have all but disappeared. This buff should more than bring them back.

Widow mines are absurdly strong in their current form, and can make Terran immune to mutalisk harass for an absurdly low cost. Plus, they do like 200 freaking damage. As long as they kill anything more expensive than a zealot, they've already paid for themselves.

Swarm hosts Are probably the biggest addition to zerg play. They give Zerg an opportunity to end the game somewhere between a roach-baneling all-in and hive tech. They also give zerg the ability to apply potentially game-ending pressure that ISN'T completely all-in before hive tech. At the moment, they look really really ridiculously good. With 25 second lifespan locusts, swarm hosts can almost certainly outrange even Tempests. Plus locusts have as much health as marines with combat shields on their combat shields and do more dps than roaches. Love this unit.

Viper should be interesting, although I have a feeling blinding cloud won't be used outside of ZvZ. Against Protoss it is absolutely worthless, and I don't know any situation where I would rather have a blinding cloud than a fungal. Still, Abduct seems like a useful ability, although I don't know if it justifies te 200 gas cost. Withholding judgement on this one for now.

Burrow move banelings are gone :'(

Burrow-charge ultralisks look really good. Between seeing them in the battle reports and watching WoL ultralisks tear things apart at MLG, I'm dearly worried for bio in HOTS. I was worried before that it would be too similar to zealot charge, but it turns out it is really quite different. It isn't auto-cast, has a significantly larger cooldown, from what I can tell, does a bunch of splash damage, and, of course, involves the ultralisks burrowing underground. I still don't understand how they are able to burrow, tunnel, and unburrow under their enemies in less time than it takes them to burrow normally, but it should help them get around not only enemy forces but their own as well to get right into the battle. I am worried, however, that the ultras will be so good that bio will be useless against them. Especially since right now MMM is the best way to deal with them, this makes Ultras counter their own counter. Since Ultras are no longer frenzied, I anticipate that using the thor's strike cannons will be the weapon of choice against ultras, as it was in the WoL beta. Should be interesting.

Hydras are faster off creep, which might be cool if they weren't still made of tissue paper. And not even the good kind; the crappy kind that you blow your nose into and then it breaks and you get snot all over your hands.

Overall, 9/10

[mr. peasant]

I don't...see the point in that. Like are you basing all this on the fact that they're not making the tactical decisions you would? They could just be bad players.

Basing it on the function of the video and what occurred onscreen. Blizzard needs the Battle Report to last long enough to feature HotS gameplay. Ergo, no rushing allowed - at least not to the point it kills the opponent or leaves him/her in an unrecoverable position. Note how every Battle Report has always been about 20-30 minutes long. Secondly, they manage to feature all the new units - either showing them excelling at their intended use and/or being squashed by their ideal counter.

Of course, you could always claim that Blizzard could have scanned the hundreds upon hundreds of internal matches they've recorded but getting two players together and telling them which strategies to employ and how hard to push is much, much easier.

[RamiZ]

Viper should be interesting, although I have a feeling blinding cloud won't be used outside of ZvZ. Against Protoss it is absolutely worthless, and I don't know any situation where I would rather have a blinding cloud than a fungal. Still, Abduct seems like a useful ability, although I don't know if it justifies te 200 gas cost. Withholding judgement on this one for now.

Good review MulletBen, this is the only thing I disagree. Blinding Cloud will mostly be used against Terran bio, which forces Terran to micro, or to go for mech, and even if they go for mech, abduct is extremely useful.

You said that you don't see the reason why would you use Blinding cloud instead of the Fungal? Well, if you have watched MLG matches, you saw that when Terran has enough Medivacs, fungal just doesn't do enough damage to kill anything. You surround his army with huge numbers of Zerglings and Roaches, followed up with few fungals, and after 5-6 seconds, you realize that all your units are gone, while half of his units are on red, half full hp.

This ability will force Terran to micro, which is great thing, I am an Zerg player, and I think that fungal would be 10 times better as a slow instead of a root. It just breaks the game, you are killing half of his stuff by just chain fungals, and he can't move at all. When Terran has huge force of Marines, Medivacs and Marauders, even with great fungals, Terran just has sick fire power and will probably kill all your units before you kill his. So, how about blinding cloud and fungal on top of that? That sounds completely broken to me, and I hope that they will do something about fungal growth.

[TcheQuevara]

Cloud + Fungal would be a killer and boring combo. I know it would be rare, and costy. Still, I agree with Ramiz, and I think that maybe HotS is an opportunity to switch Fungal to a slow debuff. But a slow debuff is also a micro denier.

Talking about micro deniers (Fungal and FFs being the classical exemples), I think that removing frenzy from Ultras is a good thing. As MulletBen pointed, now Ultras could be countered by Thors. Any thing that is invencible, or an automatic succes, of a "Save or Die", limits the possibilities of the game. Now Ultras will have a mobility buff, rather than a "mobility debuff imunity". Not sure about Abduct though. I like how it brings some positional strategy to the game (or so the Report made it seem), but maybe, if it could be denied by moving the target away it could be even better.

Do you think there are others "something-deniers" in the game that could be ripped?

I think that the Viper's design so far is unusual. It has got only one use in ZvP. I don't know of any other caster with no attack and just one use in a certain match. I think this design philosophy is very different from WoL's. They're batlantly trying to fill up holes, so weird things appear. They mentioned the Warhound is in it's tenth version...

In Blizzcon, my favorite new units were the Zerg ones. They were so solid that they are still the same. But my new favorites are the Protoss. Gone from tottally lame to really interesting. Oracle and Core will obviously add versatility. I think Tempest will do the same, it currently does something unprecedented in Blizzard RTS games. I hope the range upgrade is kept.

About the Core's "loreability", I think this is easy. The Motherships are rare, but not because they big giant pieces of metal. They are a masterpiece of a psychic race that can store people inside crystals. If the Motherships are such a Masterpiece, and remember, Nexus are the "anchor" that holds the "psionic web" in certain planet or region, one of the possibilities of the Mommaship would be kind of "fuse" with the Nexi, and like a transcendent Megazord, achieve even greater control of time and space. Now, why would you have to pay more to make it back into a ship, that makes no sense, but half of lore cracks in MP anyway.

And sue me, but I liked the previous Warhound more. Yeah, I know it needed to be polished, but the that clanky look is what gave BW Terrans so much personality. Now they're too much "epic" and clean and space-opera standard.

(yay, debut post )

[Aldrius]

Basing it on the function of the video and what occurred onscreen. Blizzard needs the Battle Report to last long enough to feature HotS gameplay. Ergo, no rushing allowed - at least not to the point it kills the opponent or leaves him/her in an unrecoverable position. Note how every Battle Report has always been about 20-30 minutes long. Secondly, they manage to feature all the new units - either showing them excelling at their intended use and/or being squashed by their ideal counter.

Of course, you could always claim that Blizzard could have scanned the hundreds upon hundreds of internal matches they've recorded but getting two players together and telling them which strategies to employ and how hard to push is much, much easier.

I guess I just don't see scanning games for ones they want is really all that hard.

People are going to be testing the new units regardless. I dunno if they have to be told to do that.

[RamiZ]

And sue me, but I liked the previous Warhound more. Yeah, I know it needed to be polished, but the that clanky look is what gave BW Terrans so much personality. Now they're too much "epic" and clean and space-opera standard.

Well, tastes are different I guess. :P
But to be honest, new Warhound isn't something original, it reminds me on Dreadnought from Warhammer 40k, even though Dreadnoughts are a lot more bulkier than Warhound, it is like an taller version of Dreadnought.

And the old Warhound looks... I just don't know, like that it is made scrapped parts and model looks ridiculous.


Dreadnought.


New Warhound.


Old Warhound.

[mr. peasant]

I guess I just don't see scanning games for ones they want is really all that hard.

People are going to be testing the new units regardless. I dunno if they have to be told to do that.

I feel it is. No matter how quickly you scan through the footage, you're still talking multiple hours' worth of work before you can be certain you have a good one. Far, far simpler and quicker to just direct two players what you want to have featured.

[phazonjunkie]

(yay, debut post )

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