[HotS Contest] The Zerg Storm is Here

What’s New?

Tempest
The Carrier has been removed from the game since it wasn’t seeing enough play, and it is replaced by the Tempest. Originally designed as an anti mass Mutalisk unit, it has changed into becoming a hyper long range siege capital ship with bonuses against massive units. With a crazy range of 22, it can fire at units that don’t even fit on your monitor! However, one has to wonder just how useful that skill is. Even with its insane range, its raw DPS against non massive units is pitiful, making it unable to deal with large numbers of units. Against the possible massive units that this was meant to fight against there are much better answers than using this costly ship.

In the current state of PvT, the Protoss will rarely invest into any type of Stargate unit, and for good reason. Terran bio is well equipped to fight air units cost efficiently, with marines providing a mineral only investment against the gas heavy Protoss fleet. However, with the changes to Terran with HotS, there might be a new “standard” compositions and a possible place for the Tempest as a way to slowly break siege lines. However, the Protoss player would have to catch the Terran quite off guard in order to protect their investments.

For PvZ, the Protoss can use an early game Stargate opening in order to do some type of harassment against the Zerg, but it is the later solely used to get a Mothership out. There are a few games where the Protoss attempts to get some type of air units towards the end of the game, but those are relatively rare and ineffective.

PvP might actually see this unit in play. In a current style that mirrors an arms race; late game PvP becomes a race to see who can get more Colossi for the eventual fight. However, as some PvPs have shown, a rapid tech change to air can give an advantage to the player, perhaps promoting the investment towards the Tempest.

Final Verdict: However, at the end of the day I have to say I strongly dislike the unit. Everything that it can do can be accomplished with the WoL Carrier. It doesn’t bring that much to the table when considering all the new changes to the game.

Mothership Core
When HotS was originally shown, the Protoss Nexus was granted a variety of abilities, so much so that one had to wonder if Protoss would ever lose now (double gas steal into cannon rush would be a pretty brutal all in). Blizzard took that feedback and now we have the Mothership Core, the predecessor to the Mothership and essential part to the early game of the Protoss. It comes in with the abilities that were originally going to go on the Nexus, but limits them to within the base. Additionally, it is a requirement to become the Mothership later in the game.

I highly enjoy the Mothership Core. It provides a really balanced early game at the sacrifice of three probe production cycles while also giving the Protoss a lot of utility. Ignoring all the midgame issues coming from Mass Recall, the Mothership Core is one of the most exciting units that have been introduced, and it sure quite fun to use.

Final Verdict: I love this unit. It is not the most balanced unit in the game – especially with that Mass Recall – but it is one of the most fun things that I’ve played with. It gives me another unit to micro with in the early game, and a lot of potential strategies can spawn off of this unit. With the changes to the Mothership’s spells, I might even consider just leaving it in the Core form to provide its defensive utility over the Mothership’s more offensive spells.

Oracle
A complete “support” unit for the Protoss forces, and an exciting one as well. Now that the Mothership no longer cloaks the Protoss forces, that power has been shifted to this new unit. The current Oracle has two main ways of indirectly harassing their opponents, and both of them provide a way for a more talented player to showcase their skill.

While not hurting the units directly, with its high movement speed it is able to zip into an enemies base and casts its spells. Early on in the game Protosses would probably favor its Preordain spell, granting vision to the Protoss forces around a certain building. Imagine the strength of being able to know the exact timing of a Zerg’s Lair or knowing the Refinery timings against a Terran. In the current state of the game, knowledge is power and easily decides the winners in so many matches. Players are going to have to decided whether to delay their plans for the duration of the spell, or allow their opponents to know what they are planning to do.

As the game progresses and unit compositions have already been reveled, Protoss players will then shift their Oracles towards using the Entomb spell to lock down mineral patches and divert the attention of their opponents. While Zerg might have a better time of dealing with this due to the number of static Spine Crawlers they make in the late game to remove drone population, this threat will do wonders against Terrans. Either forcing PFs instead of Orbitals or by making the Terran reposition his army to protect his bases, a few Oracles can end up causing a lot of trouble for the Terran’s economy.

The clocking ability it gains seems sub-optimal at all stages of the game. Early on it felt like too much energy being invested into a defensive stance while later on all the races had ways to just deal with it. However, I can imagine some Protoss players finding a sick timing attacks that involves this early clocking in order to get some quick wins.

Final Verdict: This unit is pure awesome. While it lacks a direct method of attacking units, it does a unique job of damaging the overall infrastructure of your enemy. As StarCraft moves towards becoming a more competitive esport, this will become one of the defining units that separates a Code B Protoss from a Code S one.

What’s Different?

Mothership
The Mothership had some large changes to probably address the late game of PvZ and even PvT (Squirtle vs Mvp Game 5). Quite simply, the Archon Toilets ability to just instantly win a game regardless of all other stages was rather imbalanced, regardless of how epic some of them were. It’s an interesting thing that when HotS was first announced without the Mothership, but with the changing state of the game, Blizzard ended up keeping the unit.

For this expansion, the Mothership still maintains its role as a utility unit of the Protoss forces. While none of its base stats have changed, a number of its spells have been modified. In fact, the only spell that hasn’t been changed is the Mass Recall. Vortex no longer pulls air units into its grasp, thus removing its principle usage as a way of dealing with Brood Lords and Battle Cruisers. As a replacement to that lost power, the Mothership gains the spell Stasis which removes every aerial unit away from battle in a similar method to Stasis back in BW. Additionally, the Mothership no longer has its lag-spiking cloaking field.

Initially I was a bit worried for the state of the Mothership in HotS, after KiWiKaKi did so much to innovate and push this unit into a standard PvZ style; it seemed that it might be sent back to an “unusable” state. However, after playing around with the Vortex and Stasis spells, I’m confident that the Mothership will maintain its position as the definitive end game unit of the Protoss composition. Stasis’s range is surprisingly large, and with it, it still has the ability to lock out a Zerg’s Brood Lord army to then expose the vulnerable ground support.

Final Verdict: The Mothership changes were absolutely necessary to deal with the balance issues that it had in WoL. Blizzard found a nice solution to still making it a useful part of the Protoss endgame. The removal of the clocking field I find as a personal plus since in WoL it was really annoying when an Infestor took control of my Mothership and now I couldn’t see the Zerg army.

What’s New?

Warhound
Artosis has been for a long time begging Terrans to experiment with the theoretically super cost effective Mech play against Protoss, but a variety of potential problems with an immobile mech composition were brought up. Progamers highlighted units such as the Zealot/Stalker/Immortal/Colossus that could not only outmaneuver the slow mech push, but also fight the army head on. However, with all the new changes to StarCraft II, it might be time to take a new look at this style.

The Warhound is completely deceptive unit. It has a relatively high DPS while also being one of the suitable “buffer unit” for a mech based Terran. What makes the Warhound a strong unit however is its spell, Haywire. Every 6 seconds, the Warhound will fire off an antimech attack that deals 30 damage! That’s an increase of 5 DPS over time, half of a stimmed marine without the health loss.
Of all the Terran changes, this is the unit to look out for. Coming out of Tech-Lab Factory, it provides Terrans a super effective unit to deal with both Terran and Protoss. As more mech based units are introduced to the game, it is inevitable that the current Terran style will start to introduce more mech units, and every additional mech unit, the Warhound will look much stronger. Similarly against Protoss, Terrans will have a unit that outranges both the Immortal and Stalker to provide a stable backbone to the Terran army.

Final Verdict: This unit will become a stable of both TvP and TvT where mech units are always present. With both high base stats and a strong spell, this unit alone will causes changes to way that both of these matchups are played. My only complaint when using them was their artwork, but unit was really fun to control.

Widow Mine
Full disclaimer: Back in SC:BW, I played Protoss and we all know how completely stupid Dragoons were. Now the only thing more frustrating than asking a Dragoon to cross a bridge on Destination was asking a group of Dragoons to demine a piece of the map. It seems no matter how careful I was with placing my Observers and how diligently I microed my Dragoons, one of them would always manage to drag a mine into my group, and soon I would be missing a good portion of my forces. Now I was quite excited when it was announced that the vulture would not be showing up in WoL, since most importantly those dreaded Spider Mines would only be a nightmare of the past. But Heart of the Swarm will be bringing back a new rendition of those mines, now dubbed the Widow Mine. The real question is though, are they really the same?

The Widow Mine, SC2’s rendition of the mini-nuke known as the Spider Mine. It does 200 damage to a single target, enough to almost kill any unit in the game. Additionally, this burrow-able mine will be able to latch onto both air and ground units and it has a splash radius to the explosion, providing it a considerable amount of power. However, the downside to this exploding mine is the extremely long delay after the initial latching on from the mine. For essentially every professional player, it will be almost impossible to deal actual damage, as after the mine attaching to a unit produces an “Under Attack” warning, which alerts the player to the attack. At this point, the player can either (1) send the unit off to die a lonesome death, or (2) execute the unit which cancels the detonation.

Even with how “easy” it is to avoid actual explosion, the Widow Mine will still have a large number of uses. It is possible to place this unit into a Terran Medivac and then send it into the worker line, causing a rather critical distraction. Much like how Terran Nukes work, even if a player stops every single attempt but one, it will still end up doing critical damage.

Final Verdict: This unit will see small amounts of play being loaded up into a Medivac and then placed onto enemy units when they aren’t looking. It will help stress the multitasking of players, but is too easy to deal with and too costly to make so many.

What’s Different?

Reaper
The Reaper has completely lost its crazy speed upgrade, and with it we can say goodbye to the build that changed Morrow's race from Terran to Zerg. However, it has been a long time since we've seen mass reaper builds outside of the occasional allin or monobattle, and possibly the change wasn’t even necessary. The only build that currently ever researches this upgrade is the TvT Reaper/Hellion/Medivac 1 base allin.

But we can't just dwell in the past, there is a new world out there for the reaper, or is there? With the removal of one of the defining upgrades of the reaper, I feel that it will find itself only fitting the role of scouting for the Terran. For harass, the amount of health it gains back is minimal, and without the speed upgrade, it doesn’t fit in very nicely towards midgame and onward.

Final Verdict: Reapers will maintain the role they have now in all matchups, used primarily as a scouting tool for a second pass through the opponents base. I highly doubt that anyone will create a build off this upgrade, as the rate of healing of the Combat Drugs is just so low.

Battle Hellion
The Hellion in Wings of Liberty has had an odd role in the mech style. It allowed the Terran to apply pressure while transitioning to a mech based style but was having the problem of remaining relevant during a large battle. Its sole purpose became “buffer the tanks”, but with its low health and awkward attack, it had a hard time doing anything besides harassing mineral lines (though I'm sure we can all agree it does an excellent job of doing that).

Now with HotS, the Battle Hellion is super strong component of the Terran composition. Light units such as the Zergling and Zealot will no longer be able to so easily break through a force of these transformed Hellions, extending the usefulness of the unit by a quite a bit. This combined with the Warhound will create a viable mech style that can mix with either a Thor or Tank based backbone.

Final Verdict: The Battle Hellion will propel mech to completely viable strategy. The two things I found annoying with this unit was how it was the default transformation of the Hellion while also being extremely hard to kill when I went to try and kill it.

Battle Cruiser
Every capital ship suffers from the problem of being too slow, and the BC was no exception. The BC’s gained a valuable new skill with its “Redline Reactor”, doubling the speed from 1.875 to 3.75, the same speed as a Mutalisk at the cost of energy. This provides Terran’s going BCs as part of their late game a variety of new opportunities. Against Zergs, they’ll be able to catch some of the fleeing units, even if on creep. If used against other Terrans, this fast moving ship will be able to either outrun Vikings or chase them down if necessary. The biggest change will be now Terrans will have some way to spend their energy instead of firing random Yamato Cannons in order to reduce the amount of damage that feedback deals.

Final Verdict: Of all the changes in the game, this feels like the smallest one. Battle Cruisers are a rare sight, and usually getting them spells doom for the opponent. Having the Redline Reactor will merely speed up the process. I will say though it is quite awesome to see your BCs flying across the map.

What’s New?

Swarm Host and Locust
The Swarm Host is the new Lurker, and it accomplishes a similar “space control” in a unique way. Instead of doing AoE damage via its ground attack, it now spawns a set of Locusts every 25 seconds. Each of these Locusts have similar starts to that of a Hydra but are restricted to a range of 2 and only survive for 15 seconds. However, after researching the “Increase Locust Lifespan”, each one of the Locusts will be able to survive up to 25 seconds. At this point, every single Locust that spawns must either be killed or when it expiries it will simply be replaced by the next wave.

After a lot of testing, the Swarm Host is one exciting unit. Clunky and immobile, it provides the Zerg a much needed siege unit to help break static lines. Constant production of a free unit slowly wears down even the toughest defenses.

Final Verdict: This is 2nd best change to the Zerg game play. It will completely destroy the current style of ZvP and even do considerable amounts of work in protecting key points in ZvT. The best space control unit in the game with its infinite pressure over time, this was the first unit I rushed to build and I wasn’t disappointed.

Viper
The Viper is the definitive new Heart of the Swarm spell caster. Instead of the offensive spells that the Infestor provides, this unit gives Zergs a strong set of utility spells. The Viper’s Abduct will allow the Zerg to remove both Terran Siege Tanks and Protoss Colossus from their army and then rush in with the Zerg swarm. Similarly the Blinding Cloud doesn’t do damage like Fungal Growth, but instead changes the attack range of all units caught by it to melee.

Above all, this new spell caster provides the Zerg with an enormous amount of utility. In testing the unit with a friend, Protoss armies will have to change their army compositions to something else than “protect the colossus”. Currently Protoss are able to defend their colossi by placing their WarpGate army and buildings in front of it, but with the Viper and Abduct, the traditional “turtle toss” is going to have to change to a much more flexible army. Similarly against Terran, the current standard Marine/Tank pushes will have to change to accommodate the new Blinding Cloud. With the current state of TvZ, the new Viper fits in perfectly with the “Stephano Style” and its mass Zergling/Infestor compositions.

Final Verdict: The key to every matchup in HotS. Any important unit such as a Tank/Thor/Colossus can and will be instantly pulled out of position and eliminated with a stable Zerg background army. With so much utility, it fits right in to all the current Zerg strategies and greatly enhances their effectiveness. It was really fun pull multiple BCs into my Locusts to watch them instantly disappear.

What’s Different?

Hydralisk
The Hydralisk now has the opportunity to dominate. One of the things that always pointed to the weakness of this unit originally was how every single PvZ guide was “now we hope the Zerg makes Hydras so we get a free win!”. IdrA has been a vocal source talking about the weakness of the Hydralisk (and as iNcontrol has mentioned multiple times, IdrA is the only player that makes so many Hydralisks) and how there the unit wasn’t seeing play in any of the matchups. But with the return of the Muscular Augmentation, the Hydralisk is ready to return as a mainstay.

Now with this powerful speed upgrade, the Zerg can now strongly transition into the late game with this unit. One of the biggest strengths of the Marine is how well they scale with each upgrade, allowing a Tier 1 unit to fight into the late game. Hydralisks have always been highlighted for their high DPS but was limited to their immobility off creep.

Final Verdict: This is the much needed upgrade in order to make the Hydralisk a relevant late game unit. They move surprisingly fast across the map, even off creep they felt really agile when compared to their WoL form. Expect a lot of Hydras in the future.

Ultralisk
When the Ultralisk first came out, it had the problem of just being too large of a model to actually reach their opponents. After a rescaling of the Ultralisk, it still doesn’t see that much play when compared the common late game of the BroodLord. But with a few changes, the Ultralisk just might be useable.

Ultralisks now spawn with the a new skill known as “Burrow Charge”. Much like the Zealots Charge skill, this skill allows the melee ranged Ultralisk close the distance to its opposition to actually do damage. However, unlike the Zealot Charge, the Ultralisk is able to bypass other units in the way of its target, and can suddenly pop out of the ground and scatter its opponents. This ability leaves me with mixed feelings. On one hand, it will give the Zerg a much needed upgrade to their Tier 3 units while synergizing with large numbers of Zerglings to deal damage to a scattered set of forces. On the other hand, if the Zerg sends their Ultralisk into an opponent’s army without the rest of their army, the Ultralisk can quickly become isolated and eliminated without actually dealing damage.

Final Verdict:

Sadly, I don't see a place for the Ultralisk in the future of HotS. It has far to many counters from the new units and simply doesn't provide as much as it used for its cost.

PvT
1. Mech based forces coming out from Terran with their new Factory units (Battle Hellion/War Hound/Siege Tanks)
2. Protoss using its air force to fight a mech Terran composition
3. Will see capital ships (BCs and Tempests) from both sides

Final Verdict: 47% Terran vs 53% Protoss
With all the new mech units, Terrans will have the option to use this new composition. The current Chargelot/Archon aggression will be nullified by the Battle Hellion/Siege Tank armies. The Stalkers, Immortals, and Colossi will have difficulty against the burst of the new Warhounds. High Templars will be much weaker against the pure mech compositions. Additionally, none of the additions to the Protoss race will dramatically challenge the current Terran bio styles.

The importance of intel will shift to the Protoss as they are the race that is going to need to quickly determine what they are up against. Will they have to expand rapidly to have the economy to constantly crash against the Terran forces? Or will they have to expand their tech properly in order to combat a bio opening? The Terrans will be able to enter each game with a much more stable plan, while the Protoss is going to need to scout aggressively in order to confirm the composition of his opponent.

TvZ
1. Terrans will incorporate more mech units into their mix of bio and mech, there can be strong shifts in either direction
2. The Viper will become a stable unit, used to gain positional advantages against Terran forces
3. Will remain largely unchanged with the updates
4. Terrans will start to reintroduce large numbers of Ghosts in order to both EMP the variety of Zerg spell casters while also opening up the opportunity to Snipe them much like the Ghost vs. Templar matchup

Final Verdict: 55% Zerg vs 45% Terran
There have been experimentations with pure mech styles against Zergs and although it would seem that Hellions would deal with the Zerglings easily, but because of the awkward attack batter of the Hellions it made it difficult in a head on collision for the Terran. But now the introduction of the Battle Hellion, the Terran mech forces will have a much better time with dealing with large numbers of Zerglings.

Zerg however has a nice number of new units to deal with this type of composition. The Swarm Host will be able to provide expendable Locusts to constantly run into the mech army and slowly wear it down. Similarly, the Viper will have the opportunity to lock down certain positions or pull key units out of position.

However, I feel that Terrans will maintain a biomech composition against Zergs. Letting a Zerg flush out their economy with no harassment is almost a certain death, so both reactor Hellions and bio pressure will be necessary to keep the Zerg from just building drones. Much like in BW, Terran is in the driver seat for much of the matchup. Zerg as the reactionary race will wait until the Terran chooses a composition to use for the match.

ZvP
1. The Swarm Host, upgraded Hydras, and Vipers will create large problems for the current “turtletoss”.
2. Protoss will commit stronger harass off 2 bases while grabbing a third, and then save their army via the Mass Recall.
3. Tempests will see play in the late game as an answer to the Mothership Vortex no longer catching air units
4. Protoss will deviate away from Robo based play and instead start to favor Templar tech

Final Verdict: 55% Zerg vs 45% Protoss
The ZvP state of the game is going to have to change dramatically. The current style of turtling off three bases until the Protoss reaches a critical mass will be extremely ineffective against a Viper abducting the critical Colossi. The increased speed of the Hydralisk will make the unit much more consistent throughout the game, and for all the faults Hydralisk’s have, they are extremely strong against Protoss Warp Gate Units.

While the changes in the Mothership’s Vortex will change the usage of that spell, it won’t alter the overall style of that matchup since Stasis will accomplish roughly the same thing by removing the Brood Lords to then quickly eliminate the much weaker supporting ground army.

PvP
1. Air compositions will become more popular with the heavy hitting tempest and Oracle harass
2. Still will be a largely Colossus based armies in the mid to late game, but possible rapid shifts to StarGate tech

Final Verdict: PvP will no longer become an arms race of who has the larger number of Colossi. While the early game will still be quite volatile, the mid to late game will change with the new Oracle. By having essentially a perfect scout of the others base, both players will be able to make changes to their composition.

TvT
1. The WarHound will play a critical role in the Mech vs Bio compositions
2. The Widow Maker and Reaper allins will not be used
3. Battle Hellions will not see as much play as normal Hellions

Final Verdict: TvT’s will become a game between biomech and pure mech while an only a few professionals will still use a pure bio based play. The Warhound will be critical in this matchup regardless of what the player picks due to both their range and damage.

ZvZ
1. Hydralisks will return to the matchup
2. Vipers will become more critical than Infestors and become the principle spell caster
3. Ultralisk Burrow Charge will only get the Ultralisk killed

Final Verdict: ZvZ is currently going through large changes to what is “standard”. In fact, with all the new units that are being introduced to the Zerg race, the matchup will become quite turbulent. Does one go for a Roach/Hydra composition, only to be shut down when a Blinding Cloud is thrown on top of them? Or one can open with the mass Zergling and double Evolution Chamber to eventually transition to the upgraded Ultralisk, but then lack the raw power of the Zerg’s ranged units? All I can say for certain, is that I’m glad the moving burrowed Banelings didn’t make it into the game to make this matchup even more complicated.

1. Mothership Core - The current Mothership Core is too strong. Protoss players shouldn’t be given a “redo” with Mass Recall if they get their units caught out of position early on. The Energize upgrade would make the double forge styles much stronger by providing a near limitless number of chronoboosts for both forge and tech upgrades.

2. Locusts – Locusts being able to fire at both air and ground units provides too much utility at no cost. While the Swarm Host itself is both immobile and costly, Locusts damage numbers should be closer to Infested Terrans rather than Hydras. The synergy between the Abduct spell on Vipers and Locusts is, although gas intensive, uses only energy and time as resources to kill opponents.

3. Reaper – The Combat Drugs shouldn’t be an upgrade, but rather a default ability on the Reaper. Speed was moved to require the Factory because of the strength of the early 5 rax Reaper openings; but health regeneration doesn’t mean the same thing as unlimited kiting.

4. Tempest – This unit seems questionable at best. Its super long range can create a lot of problems but it lacks the power really do anything with it. Against the compositions that a Protoss would want to build a Tempest, a Carrier seems equally viable. Perhaps change the range to be much shorter and it has energy based spell that can be used to fire its long range attack.

5. Zerg Building Color – Alright this is a really minor complaint, but can it be an option to leave the Zerg building orders green instead of yellow? I just can’t get used to seeing all this bright yellow flashing at me.

1. Late Game Protoss – Zergs and Terrans both gained a variety of new tricks to deal with the Protoss late game such as the Viper and Battle Hellion. Additionally, the Mothership changes removed a win condition from the late game PvZ will force Protoss players to adapt.

2. Carriers – They got removed from the game and replaced by a unit that seems to do everything that it could do originally. It’s a little sad that this unit was labeled as “un-useable” without receiving a single change throughout its entire WoL life.

3. Bio – Terran bio styles will start to go out of favor as new mech units accomplish everything bio can do cost effectively.

4. Low APM Players – As more units and spells are added in, slower players will struggle with all the new abilities and units.

5. Diablo III – HotS is coming soon, it will be a fresh enough new game to get everyone to come back playing a real esport!

1. Zergs - they have some of the best new unit varieties while also coming off the backbone of a well developed map of each matchup.

2. KeSPA Players – they will have become much better at StarCraft II when HotS comes out, and with all the changes the understanding of WoL will not matter as much in this new game

3. 2 Base Protoss – Mass Recall is a strong spell, and now being able to cast it well before the late game will be a strong asset to 2 base aggression

4. Artosis – With all the new mech units introduced in this expansion, it would be crazy for Terrans to still stick with a pure bio style. The Terrans that win championships will figure out how to play both biomech and pure mech.

5. Semipros – The up and coming players who were trying to break into the WoL scene will now have to start over, but they are not alone in this. With the release of HotS, I’m confident at least a few players will make a name for themselves.

6. The Innovators – Players such as TLO, KiWiKaKi, CatZ, and MarineKing will all dominate early on in this game. With more complex unit compositions, innovation will show more easily as players start to try to figure out the game.

7. Elizabeth Esports – The more units and spells that are introduced, the more that a player can differentiate themselves from the rest through their control. A successful esport should be a game where the better player wins at the end of the day, and with HotS becoming more complex, the more solid players shine through.