Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm Updates

[Lore]

So, you may or not be aware of this, but I'm a pretty big Starcraft II fan. I know several of you around the community are as well, so I wanted to bring this to everyone's attention: Blizzard is at MLG announcing the hell out of some Heart of the Swarm updates.

If anyone needs me, I'll be drooling over the Mothership Core. And the Oracle. And the Tempest. Oh god.

[Kazeyonoma]

Mothership Core was good. in pvp it definitely provided a strong boost to defense by activating purity. I also played around with mass recall, it has a lag effect in that your units warped back aren't usable for a delayed period but the recall effect is instant (pull from safety moment you cast).

Oracle is op. like wtf, seriously, i kept freezing mineral lines everywhere, even if they had cannons in their mineral line it wouldn't clear much of the deep freeze in time. definitely scary to see how it gets used in the future, only costs 75 energy to cast, and blankets entire base worth of minerals easily.

widow mine is cool, definitely a nice addition to terran meta game, better than the shredder originally was. I think serves same purpose as shredder was intended without OP mineral line shenanigans. Warhound is whatever but combined with battle hellions definitely makes tvp mech viable.

zerg viper is so sick, consume + abduct is so strong, i have to believe they'll have to nerf it from pulling massive units or increase the mana cost a lot, because it was wayyy strong. swarm host, while weird to use at first, is very strong. spawns 2 semi beefy units with a 2 range attack for 16 damage (can hit air)? That's 32 damage siege unit. very strong, and requires infestor pit, something you'll be getting on your way to hive tech anyways so you can get.... the best upgrade in the game now, the fast hydra movement makes them 100% usable like they were in bw again. semi cheap, fast, strong, high dps unit. so good. ultra charge i didn't even mess with yet.

overall the changes definitely look like a shift towards BW-esque style play. and I ain't complainin.

[Scottpoet]

Terran vs Terran looks good
The standard Marine/Maurader vs Marine/Seige game is made more interesting by the Warhound. And who knows how the mines will be used. Terran vs Zerg or Protoss... uhh just at first glance looks bad to be human.

Vipers and tempests look like they will just own everything when used correctly. Kind of wondering what will happen in a ZvZ when two Vipers grapple each other?

[Quinafoi]

Oracle is op. like wtf, seriously, i kept freezing mineral lines everywhere, even if they had cannons in their mineral line it wouldn't clear much of the deep freeze in time. definitely scary to see how it gets used in the future, only costs 75 energy to cast, and blankets entire base worth of minerals easily.

One thing I'm definitely worried about is how the game actually alerts you to deep freeze happening.

Do workers become idle? If so then they need to be reassigned to mining even if you have automated defenses to deal with it. Do workers not become idle? Well that's one less possible means of noticing that it even happened. Naturally since no damage is actually dealt by the oracle I would not expect to hear an audible "we are under attack" warning and a map ping indicating where to draw your attention. The core problem right now with the ability as demonstrated in the battle report appears to be recognition of it. Because it doesn't have all the traditional means of altering the player to it happening, it is easily missed and therefore creates a huge skill differential in the use of the harass versus the counter to the harass. I think that this type of "attack" requires its own special warning like "nuclear launch detected".

More food for thought... mothership core can recharge your oracle.

[Kazeyonoma]

it clearly indicates that you're units are 'under attack' so it notifies you, once the deep freeze ends, the miners automatically go back to mining.

[Krenian]

/wipes puddle of ooze by Lore's feet.

That mineral blocker one just sounds so vicious. You will want to watch your mines a lot. Crazy.

The Zerg one where he pulls them out of siege mode is also crazy stuff. You can really hurt some long ranged with that sucker. Will be fun to see people react to the new changes in the competitions.

[Quinafoi]

Does the baneling counter the widow mine or does the widow mine counter the baneling?

Can't wait for those monobattles...

[Scottpoet]

hmmm I wonder if you can load widow mines into medivacs and do widow mine drops in your opponents mineral patches?

[Kazeyonoma]

the burrow time is pretty slow but i think widow mines don't get triggered by builders. At least if they meant to implement it the way vulture mines used to work. Didn't think to try it.

[Scottpoet]

seeing mines in action a little bit more, my guess is using them to scout/deny expansions like a burrowed zergling can currently will be the best niche for them. I don't see pros having too much trouble micro'ing them away from their army cores, ofcourse at the level I play it will still be fun to see them blow up entire armies.