Haven't seen a thread on the HotS updates yet, so this is all of the info gathered so far from Kennigit and others via Twitter. Please close if TL is planning on doing a thread writeup for the updates.
Showing video of multiplayer update. Changing Mothership to "Mothership Core".
Mothership Core - build mothership core from nexus, has to remain attached to nexus. Can tele to any nexus you have. Purify ability makes it into a powerful photon cannon. Can upgrade it to Mothership later. Can mass recall. This is early game unit.
Tempest
Tempest attacks air and ground.
Tempest - long range expensive range of 10 upgrade to 22. Dustin makes scary face ("not sure about that one yet"). 22 is huge. Seeing how bold they can make the unit before nerfing. Despite what you think of 22 range. They've seen people losing games because they went tempest (its not as strong as you think).
Oracle
Oracle has cloaking ability similar to motherships cloaking ability. Has to stay stationary while casting it it looks like.
Also sorry if you think this is spam. Should be done in 30 mins. Oracle - raid unit. Preordain ability, cast on nme building and get vision. Can cast on friendly building and turn it into a detector.AoE cloaking field taken from mothership. Same ability usage wise.
Widow Mines
Widow mines attack air or ground. Spider mines except they have a timer on them and attach to units (you could probably pull them out of your control group to not get owned)
Widow Mine (temp art is a spider mine). Leaps up and grabs ground or air targets. Timer (10 seconds currently). AoE dmg.
Widow Mines trying to break up death balls. If the unit dies (you kill your own unit). It doesn't do AoE to units around it.
Widow mine is factory unit - no tech lab required (can reactor it). Can move them around the map. Dustin expects that most pros will never get hit by widow mine splash. Experimenting with friendly splash. Still testing - if it's air, the splash only hits air, if its ground only ground. Range of vipers is 9 - turrets are 7.
Viper
"Blinding cloud" on viper. Looks like dark swarm from BW
Video showing baneling/line viper vs marine tank. Viper pulls tanks towards them while banelings run in at marines avoiding splash.
Viper can drain live off a building to regen energy. Your own buildings.
Battle Hellion
Battle Hellion discussion: Late game terran vunerable to charged zealots - this is basic answer. Substantially worse vs banelings. Good as part of a larger army comp late game. Showing Warhound now - 2 weapons: cannon +dmg vs mech and missles - autocast (if you want). Missles autocast vs mech units. Shoots closest mechanical target - to break up the monotony of TvT. Gives factory option against protoss.
Other Changes
Removed bombs from Reaper - added regen out of combat. Attack, retreat, reheal, go attack again.
Ultralisk charge (same as we saw last year). Hydra speed upgrade at hive tech. Has had the biggest impact on gameplay they've seen
Overseer is in. Can throw the changling - they can stick around longer in an army. Easier to hide it in army
Experimenting with creep spreading - not in this build. Mass cloaking is timing and energy based - only lasts certain amount of time.
Carrier is not in current build - they are arguing about it daily internally still. End of Q&A. Thanks for being patient with my spam.
Other Stuff
Mothership is still around. It loses its cloaking but keeps Recall and Vortex (ground only now). It has a new spell called Statis, which puts mothership and other air units in range into statis for 20 seconds. Unlocked with fleet beacon, made from mothership core.
No changes to the Thor, it remains the same as the WoL unit.
No burrow movement banelings in the current HotS build
On June 09 2012 05:03 Mr.Pyro wrote: What unit casts Widow Mine?
It isn't in the OP's post yet, but they are a factory unit that can be moved around. Sounds kind of like a baneling that can only attack while burrowed.
CtrlShiftAltGrrrrrrr June 09 2012 05:05. Posts 544
what the fuck monotony of TvT. Havent seen how the Warhound works vs siege tank but TvT is the best matchup in the game in a lot of ways, mostly the positional play and incentives to multitask it provides. are they gonna remove that to make it an A move challenge or what. and mrine tank is gonna be useless vs zerg ? weird ideas...
On June 09 2012 05:01 MCXD wrote: Some of this sounds slightly extreme. I think it needs to be seen in action before we can judge though.
Of course it is thats why its an expansion and not a patch. This has potential to change completely how we play SC2 from opening to mid game to lategame in every matchup.
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CtrlShiftAltGrrrrrrr June 09 2012 05:05. Posts 544
