starcraft HOTS reveal

[leadinjector]

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=277868

lotsa new stuff, i bet sme of it gets toned down though.... banelings can move while burrowed? wtflol?

[Clockwork]

Blizzard still can't figure out WTF to do with the Thor... now that there's a mini version they should just remove it entirely.

[SID|DensitY]

As a protoss player, still worried about early game even with the new units..

Why is everything so gas expensive

[Clockwork]

Not sure how one is supposed to use the Replicant... 200/200 and 4 supply to replicate any currently visible unit, but it's supposed to be a mid game map control unit? Sounds too expensive to be viable, though the fact that it gets all of a unit's upgrades (whether they're researched or not) is a bonus. Someone is going to have to explain its uses to me. The Tempest, Oracle and new Nexus abilities are sweet.

On the Zerg side, Vipers, Swarm Hosts and Ultralisk burrow charge are all good things. Not sure how I feel about Baneling burrow move.

I don't know about the Shredder yet either, it'd be good to use but I don't see why Terran need more map control options.

[Clockwork]

Stolen from Reddit, a member did a big writeup from the HOTS panel at Blizzcon:


GENERAL STATE OF THE BALANCE

So they started off by talking about the numbers in StarCraft. Worldwide, spread between all leagues the game is fairly balanced. Every matchup is only diverting by 1-2%.

Then they cut out every league except Master and Grandmaster League. Things looked a little different then.
• TvZ: Balanced.

• TvP: Fine, except in Korea. (10-12% in favor of terran in Korea)

• ZvP: Fine, except in Europe. (10-12% in favor of zerg in Europe)


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RECENT TOURNAMENT RESULTS (IN TERMS OF BALANCE)

Blizzard are keeping an eye on the major tournaments, and are looking at the results to get input regarding the current state of the game. Here are the observations they made last month:
•GSL Code S: Terran dominance
•GSL Code A: Even
•IEM Guangzhou: Even
•IEM New York: Zerg dominance
•IPL3: Protoss weak
•MLG Orlando: Even

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BREAKING DOWN THEIR 1.4 CHANGES TO PVT IN ORDER TO SHOW AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THEY THINK WHEN THEY BALANCE THE GAME.

Note that many of these changes are still only in the development stage, and it's far from certain that they will go live

Before 1.4 they didn't see too many problems except at the highest levels in Europe and Korea. They also wants to take other factors into consideration such as community feedback. According to the community feedback they received people expressed that Protoss were overall a little weaker than Terran, while the pro players at the same time expressed that Protoss had almost no chance against Terran - especially the 1/1/1 tactic.

So they did an analysis, and came to the following conclusion:
•1/1/1 is too strong, and they should do something about it.
•EMP is a little too strong. Deals too much damage.

The reason we didn't see an EMP change in 1.4 is due to the 1/1/1. They felt that because of the 1/1/1 being so strong, that Protoss had to prep so heavily for it in the early game, they would always have a disadvantage in the late game, and they felt like they needed to see how the game developed a little more before intending to change EMP. Their plans for EMP was to reduce the radius on the spell in order to reduce it's overall damage.

What they decided to to instead was to increase the immortal range by 1. The reason for that was because the Immortal is a unit we rarely saw outside the PvP matchup, and they wanted to make that viable, while at the same time give Protoss the ability to defend against 1/1/1.

When they balance this game, they try to do as small changes as possible, in order not to break any match-up, or flip the entire game around. This is because they feel that the game is fairly balanced, but there's some small issues - like the 1/1/1.

They are also considering making changes to the basic Protoss upgrades. The changes would be a reduced cost for the +2 and 3 attack and armor upgrades as well as the shield upgrades. This is to give Protoss the ability to have a somewhat stronger army all around, and to help the current state of PvT.

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HOTS BALANCE CHANGES

They talked about each race's weaknesses, and how they are planning to fix that with new units.

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TERRAN PROBLEMS/ISSUES THAT THEY ARE LOOKING TO FIX:
• Thor | It's designed to counter the mutalisk, but it has two problems. It's too big, and is easily stuck between buildings and/or units. As well as the high cost of the unit, it's generally very difficult to get out more than 1-2 thors out on the field to defend against mutalisks.

• Late game zealots. They feel like Terran don't have a proper response to late-game zealots from protoss unless they have exceptional micro. They want to give the terran another opportunity to deal with this issue.

• They are aware that Terran have a lot of different options, and wanted to avoid adding more weapons to their arsenal, but rather focus on units that either replace existing units in a better way, or serves a function differently than the normal fighting units.


SO HERE'S THE NEW TERRAN UNITS FOR HOTS:

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•Hellion battlemode

A state the hellion can morph into in order to change it's functionality. While the current hellion too fragile to be used in the lategame, they wanted to add a unit that could add more diversity to the mech-path of terrans, as well as dealing with the late game chargelot problem. So basically.. it's an end-game fighter version of the hellion.

PIC: Hellion battlemode in action

Video of transformation

Video of hellion battlemode in action

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•Warhound

A replacement for the Thor's current role in the game. While they won't remove the Thor entirely from the game, they will make it the new "casual über-unit", like the mothership is today. And yes - they are removing the mothership. The warhound is an anti-air unit, with an anti-mech ground attack, designed to wipe out siegetanks and protoss-armies. The warhound is pretty much just a smaller and faster version of the thor. Nothing much else to say.

PIC: Warhound

Video of the warhound in action

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•Shredder

This is an entirely new unit. While they didn't want to add another unit to the Terran unit arsenal, they did something entirely different. This unit works alone, and alone only. It's basically a unit that does nothing while un-deployed, and has a fairly short deploy-timer. Once it's deployed it sends out pulses of energy which deals damage to all enemy units in a radius of something which i think looked like 7 or 8 (you'll have to see for yourself). If you have a friendly unit inside the shredders radius, it will de-activate, and not deal damage. So this unit is designed to gain map control, as well as defending chokes etc.

PIC: Shredder

Video of the Shredder in action

Second video of the shredder in action - demonstration of how it works with allied units too

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• Reaper health regeneration while outside combat.

• New ghost cloaking system. The cloak is now a fixed energy-cost fora fixed duration of time.

• Battlecruiser speed boost. Cooldown ability. (He mentioned 110%, i dont know if he was being litterate with that number)

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ZERG PROBLEMS/ISSUES THAT THEY ARE LOOKING TO FIX:

• Siege challenges | Basically the fact that it's too hard for a Zerg to end a game on tier 2 tech, if the Terran/Protoss player is playing defensively. They are having problems with breaking siegelines, and their only viable option right now is to expand, instead of attacking. This is something they want to fix.

• Missed opportunities | Some of the zerg units are being useless and/or are not viable enough. The overseer abilities are not powerful enough, but due to the no supply cost - they feel it would be too OP to give it too powerful abilities. Same with corruptors once you've killed colossus, and the ultralisk size.


SO HERE'S THE NEW ZERG UNITS/ABILITIES FOR HOTS:

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• Ultralisk burrow charge.

That's pretty much all. They felt like the size of the Ultralisk is a big handycap, but still want to keep the model for the ultra.. as it is a big unit. They want zerg to have the ability to get rid of marines even with a lot of siegetanks on the field. Because of that, they added the Ultralisk burrow charge.

Video of Ultralisk burrow charge

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•Viper

New full zerg spellcaster. Replaces the overseer. Have three abilities. The first one is to grant another unit detection permanently (thus replacing overseer). The second one is "blinding cloud", what it does is prevents units inside the cloud to shoot out of it. The main purpose of the Viper unit is to break chokepoints, and this is it's "main ability". The third spell is <don't have a name>. What it does is either pull a unit towards the Viper, or pushes it away (i think). Sort of like death grip and life grip in wow, if anyone catched that reference. Designed to snipe expensive units such as colossus, siegetank, immortal etc.

PIC: Viper

Video of blinding cloud

Video of death grip

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• Swarm Host

Zerg artillery unit. It's sort of like a mix between a burrowed broodlord and a lurker. The intention of the unit is to give zerg a unit that gives map control, as well as being able to set the enemy base at "siege". It does nothing while unburrowed, and it's attack only works while burrowed.

PIC: Swarm host

Video of Swam Host attacking

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• Baneling burrow movement at hive tech.

• Hydralisk speed upgrade at hive tech.

• Corruptors get a new ability called "Siphon". Harvests resources from enemy buildings.

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PROTOSS PROBLEMS/ISSUES THAT THEY ARE LOOKING TO FIX:
• Raiding/harassing | Protoss don't really have any early to midgame unit's that can harass. While there's a lot of units in the game that revolves around being able to kill workers quickly, they didn't want to add another unit like that. They also didn't want to add another unit to the "protoss deathball".

• No effective anti-aoe air. | Protoss lacks the ability to handle mass air, and to deal with those critical balls of mutas (30-50). While the phoenix is effective vs low numbers of mutas, they don't really have an answer for the mass balls of mutas.

• Protoss also have a lot of options, and in similarity to terran - Blizzard didn't want to add more units to the "deathball" and focused on making units that plays other roles.


SO HERE'S THE NEW PROTOSS UNITS FOR HOTS:

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•Tempest

This is the new "capital ship" for Protoss. It's a tier 3 air unit, that's going to replace Carrier. This unit is a powerful aoe anti-air unit, and does + damage to light units (mutalisk). It also have a fairly powerful ground attack, and is therefore a pretty all-around tier 3 air unit, with lots of utility.

PIC: Tempest

Video of Tempest in action

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• Replicant

A new unit that's being built in the Robotics Facility. It's (only) ability is to duplicate a unit that's currently visible on the map. What's interesting to note about this unit is that if you replicate i.e. a banshee, and the terran player doesn't have cloak researched - your replication will have cloak. In other words; whenever you replicate a unit, you'll have all the available upgrades for that unit. Tanks will have siegemode, ravens will have seeker missile etc. It costs 200/200 and 4 supply, so if you replicate a marine, you'll use 4 supply to hold a 1 supply unit. You can indeed replicate workers and build structures with the new worker.

PIC: Replicant

Video of Replicant in action

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• Oracle

This is the new protoss harass unit. It's a flying units. I'm not certain of which building it's being produced in. It's very "worker friendly", and can't deal damage to workers. It's designed to harass the enemy economy. It has three abilities (as far as I know), the first one is a mineral-block, that puts a shield around enemy mineral-fields, preventing them to be mined until the spell expire, or until the shields are destroyed. The second ability is somewhat similar to what we've seen Zeratul have in the WoL campaign. You can place a "force field" around an enemy building to disable it. I don't know if this will work on production buildings yet, but you can neutralize buildings such as the spine and sporecrawler. The third ability is to see what's being produced in a building.

PIC: Oracle

Video of the Oracle doing economic harassment

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• New Nexus ability. Allows you to attach a weak photon cannon to a building.

• New Nexus ability - mass recall.

[Ultimative]

Tbh I can't see the Replicant making it all the way through. Sounds like it's going to be far too hard to balance right. The way it is at the moment you can replicate an SCV, make an Orbital and get Mules o_O Being able to grab things like Siege tanks, Banshees or even Vipers sounds quite powerful.

The Shredder looks completely ridiculous. Seeing their example on Metal where they had 2 of them and slew of lings got absolutely minced... seems to me like it'll do the opposite of what they want it to do.

New Zerg units look pretty cool, only thing I'm worried about is Vipers snatching my Colossi and the game ending right there. Burrow move blings is kinda interesting too. Sounds like it should be pretty op, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Looking forward to the Tempest, but annoyed at the Oracle. Blizz said they want a harrass unit which doesn't actually kill workers, but other races get harrass units which mutilate workers? I guess so long as it's meaty enough and fast it'll be alright, but I'm still not really sold on it.

[leadinjector]

it sounds like it would be the most annoying unit ever >.>

the terran mech units look... wrong. the walking hellion and the mechwarrior ri off thingy look really gumby, and the mechwarrior attack looks pretty weak. also, wtf at them just walking through tanks taking no losses. OP?

[pxpx]

Originally Posted by Clockwork

• New Nexus ability - mass recall.

Any info if this is researched first or is available at the outset?

[Clockwork]

IIRC it's available at the outset and costs 75 energy.

[Ultimative]

Yeah, available from the start. They said the point of it was to allow Protoss to be more aggressive in the early game. Too many times you'd go and try to be aggressive but just end up losing your Sentries/Zealots when you try to retreat.

[Clockwork]

Apparently a fun new Protoss cheese attempted at Blizzcon was a gas steal followed by the Arc Shield upgrade, denying 3 mineral patches until it ran out.

I was on the fence about the Shredder until I saw it in action in that video. WTF? The retarded DPS would be fine if you were only allowed one shredder per radius (as I initially thought,) but they dropped four of the fuckers and minced everything.

[Ultimative]

The damage from the Shredder doesn't stack, like how fungals work.

I don't really see how they can make it work. It's a nice idea and kind of an interesting unit with its little no friendly fire gimmick, but it seems to me there are eventually going to be some maps which it's almost impossible to play vT on because of how much map control the Shredder would give in its current state.

Tbh though there's probably not much point in thinking about it, Blizz will likely cut/redesign a lot of this stuff anyway.

Just leave the Tempest as is ;p

[Cyberbob]

I'm expecting a lot of the "too hard to balance" units becoming campaign only.

Looks damn good so far tho

[SID|DensitY]

Its possible to play with some of these units right now!!!

On NA server, do a custom game and search for "HOTS Custom -" or simply "HOTS".

There are a list of maps made by XenoX

HOTS Custom - Antiga
HOTS Custom - Metalopolis
etc etc

He's implemented a version of the units demostrated at blizzcon.

As a Protoss player I've had a big play with the Oracle and I really like it Hopefully the cost of the unit is adjusted by blizzard, 150/200 to 200/150 would be nicer.

[Cyberbob]

Offensive forcefielding rocks

[Nich]

Anyone playing HOTS ? I'm kicking it in 1v1 Gold league, looking to spar and skill up with some peeps regular like.

Add me, Nicholas#1402

Also, the Oracle unit is a goddam beast. When you trigger the ground attack ability it's basically a Banshee firing and flying at twice the speed. and it can be on the board way faster than Banshee too.

[leadinjector]

im plat but ill ream you if you want

[Nich]

yus! Kicking my ass is ok by me