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Thread: Heart of the Swarm     submit to reddit submit to twitter

  1. #1
    blax n gunz
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    Heart of the Swarm

    New Trailer Is Up!



    Battle Report (Day[9]!)


    So in case you didn't notice because there's only one SCII megathread, the next expansion: Heart of the Swarm will be playable at tonight's MLG event at Anaheim (5:30 PM PDT). A few juicy bits have been leaking but there's a strict embargo on media coverage until the doors open. Expect the coverage to include announcement of the closed beta test and additions to Battle.net.

    Edit: Juicy, juicy Twitter leaks!
    Condensed all the updates from that twitter feed and other sources

    Spoiler: show

    Protoss:
    Mothership Core - Build at Nexus and remains attached to it. Can warp to any other Nexus you control. The core is early game unit, can upgrade to full Mothership later. Core has mass-recall ability. 150 Energy. Ability: Purify: Becomes a very strong static defensive unit. Ability: Energize. Fills target friendly unit's energy to maximum. Mothership loses mass cloak.
    Mothership - Upgrade from core requires Fleet Beacon. Loses mass cloak field. Vortex now affects ground units only. Ability: Stasis. Locks mothership and friendly nearby units into protective stasis for 20 seconds.
    Tempest - New air siege unit. Attacks air/ground. Upgraded range: 22.
    Oracle - Cloaking ability like mothership's old cloak ability. Mass cloak costs energy. Ability: Preordain. Cast on any building to turn it into detector for you. Mass cloak only lasts a certain amount of time. Ability: Entomb. Encapsulates minerals in an energy shield, making it impossible to harvest from them. Can destroy these shields.

    Terran:
    Battle Hellion - Transform a Hellion into a walking mech unit. Becomes a durable close-range combat unit. Meant to withstand late game chargelots, but still get torn apart by banelings.
    Widow Mines - New spider-mine type unit. Costs supply, built directly at Factory (can be reactored). Can move around the map, when activated they latch onto the nearest ground/air unit and explode after timer (10 seconds). Opponent can kill own unit with widow mine on it to counter AoE. If a widow mine latches onto a ground unit and explodes, splash only hits other ground units. Ditto for air units.
    Warhound - 2 weapons: cannon with bonus damage vs. mech and missiles that autocast on closest mechanical target.
    Reaper - Now regens out of combat. Loses bombs vs. buildings.
    Battlecruiser - Ability: Redline Reactor. Temporary speed boost.

    Zerg:
    Swarm Host - Slow moving ground unit. Primary attack is used while burrowed, spawns a few small Locusts to attack air + ground targets. Locusts will chase for quite some distance until they die. Recast on locusts is 45 seconds.
    Viper - Flying Unit. Ability: Blinding cloud. Reduces enemy bio units range to 1. Ability: Abduct. Yanks enemy units towards them. Ability: Consume. Devour friendly building life to regen energy.
    Ultralisk - Ability: Burrow Charge. What it sounds like. Bursts back out of the ground and it looks like it does damage when it erupts. Loses Frenzy passive and can now be snared by Fungal, etc.
    Hydra - Speed upgrade at hive tech. Upgrade lets Hydras move as fast off creep as on creep.
    Overseer - throws changelings. Changelings stick around longer now.

    All Races:
    Active Worker Count - Nexus/Hatchery/Command Center now have a counter showing the number of harvesters working nearby resources to make it easier to maintain optimum saturation.
    Map Features:
    Collapsible Rocks - New obstacle that partially blocks access ramps/lanes. Deal 500 damage = becomes wider Destructible rocks.

    Other New Features:
    New SP Campaign - 20 new missions, Kerrigan ever-present as a hero unit. Upgrade paths from WoL are more or less still in, but you're now upgrading units and Kerrigan's powers.
    Custom Model Import - Blizzard has promised mapmakers the ability to import their own 3D models into their creations.
    Global Play - Can match against players across regional boundaries.
    Custom Cinematics - Mapmakers can script their own cutscenes.
    Arcade - Improved custom map searching & browsing.


    TeamLiquid's coverage so far. Includes some screenshots.

  2. #2
    Ranger
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    I am soooo pumped for this

  3. #3
    BG's worst Rangers fan
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    I just recently bought SCII. (today) so I'm not so hyped for this yet, but SC1 was the first PC game I ever played so Im looking forward to continuing the story

  4. #4

    About goddamn time. I really hate having to wait between each installment >_<

  5. #5
    D. Ring
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    Does it really take two+ years to make another round of campaign missions when you have all the tools built <_<? Sure, there's a sprinkle of new units in the mix, but Ubisoft manages to put out a new Assassin's Creed every year...

  6. #6
    blax n gunz
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    Difference being that Ubisoft doesn't build games with the expectation that folks will be playing them 7-10 years later.

  7. #7
    The God Damn Kuno
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    Carrier is not in current build - they are arguing about it daily internally still.
    It's not Starcraft without carriers. Especially after their use in the last GSL finals and recently in the up/downs GSTL.

  8. #8
    Ranger
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    they need to push the broodwar button, thatll make carriers work again

  9. #9
    blax n gunz
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    Updating OP with new info as I get it.

  10. #10
    Can you spare some gil?
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    Some of those units just seem incredibly imba.

  11. #11
    The God Damn Kuno
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    Preordain looks to be super imba. Permanent vision on enemy buildings and you can see what they are building. Uh.....

  12. #12
    Yarglebargle
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    Doubt you can cast on enemy buildings.... I took it to mean that you can just make it so your own buildings are detectors for DTs and the new burrow upgrades for zerg units.

    EDIT: Didn't see the videos in OP, disregard if it actually shows Preordain being used on an enemy building.

    EDIT: Hah ok gg, switching to protoss. They better still fucking give us burrowed moving banelings. >_>

  13. #13
    blax n gunz
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    More details:

    (Tempest) starts at range 10, increases to 22 range with upgrade (compared to 13 for siege tanks). Said to have relatively low DPS to balance it out.

    (Oracle) cloaking has a mana cost and is temporary. It isn't a permanent passive like the mothership. Preordain has a 30 sec duration in this build, but it's been tweaked a lot.

  14. #14
    LazyShell
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kuishen View Post
    Doubt you can cast on enemy buildings.... I took it to mean that you can just make it so your own buildings are detectors for DTs and the new burrow upgrades for zerg units.

    EDIT: Didn't see the videos in OP, disregard if it actually shows Preordain being used on an enemy building.

    EDIT: Hah ok gg, switching to protoss. They better still fucking give us burrowed moving banelings. >_>
    They had burrowed moving banes in the blizzcon build.

    Also, 30 seconds of vision from protoss is pretty nice, but I'd trade that and half the protoss units for a single viper... THOSE things are fucking crazy.

  15. #15
    The Shitlord
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    Saw this in the random image thread, reminded me of this thread. I hope carriers stay in, I like them. Not that I play Starcraft much, I'm not very good at it and get stomped too often.

  16. #16
    blax n gunz
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    Carriers now have a severe identity crisis with Tempests as the new capital ship. Carriers have better DPS but shorter range and they just plain lose to too much. Top it off with the constant mineral drain to rebuild interceptors and you've got yourself a unit that is really really bad. I can imagine what the arguments at Blizzard surround.

  17. #17
    The Shitlord
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    Yeah... but they're so cool! They'd be better if map minerals weren't finite.

  18. #18
    LazyShell
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    Well Blizzard can change anything, so its not like its inherently a bad unit. Really, they should have been a lot stronger in the first place, I'm not sure why Blizzard was so scared to try to balance them into being useful early on when everything else was getting changed as well. They just sort of ignored carriers until it was too late to reasonably change them without worrying about hurting the existing balance too much.

    It's not like it would have been hard too, there is so much they could still have done with that unit. Higher range, better mobility when interceptors are out, different hp/shield value on interceptors themselves, free interceptors, lowered cost for the main carrier, shorter build time, etc.. Any of these could have made a tremendous difference in their effectiveness in any/all matchups.

    I'm most partial to the first 2 potential changes I mentioned, as just making them more microable alone I think would almost entirely solve the unit. They were strong units in BW, but would have been useless in most straight up fights against their many counters just like they are in SC2 (at least until they were in huge numbers, which is still really the case in SC2). It's that ability to dance back and forth, using either terrain or a supporting ground army to force their opponent to commit to unfavorable situations or just give up the free shots to the carriers that made them so impressive to watch and useful to use.

  19. #19
    blax n gunz
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    It's not just the unit though, is it? It's a ton of tech that is impossible to camouflage during a long game and the second your fleet beacon is scouted your opponent knows (a) you don't have any colossus or high templar and (b) will beat you to producing counter units before you've even built your first Carrier pops and is loaded with interceptors. Especially Terran opponents.

  20. #20
    LazyShell
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    In SC2, TvP is a bio matchup, so 2 base carriers is never going to work in like a 2-base carrier situation the same way it did in BW, but that doesn't explain why its not used in the lategame. It should, at least in theory, be an amazing transition away from heavy upgrade zealots + high templar + archon style at 3+ bases, right about the time we currently see Protoss add in colossus to that composition. Rather then giving you an extra source of AoE, it should instead help you to fair far better in smaller engagements, give you greater mobility and counter potential, and threaten compositions that are too marauder/ghost heavy to counter zealot/ht/archon. And then stalkers and HT should absolutely wreck terrans that overproduce vikings or marines to try to deal with the carriers.

    But then in practice, that is not the case. It's possible that it's just too cost-prohibitive for this type of play to ever work in the current build, but I think it's not really that.
    It's definitely possible to make that transition if you are in the right spot in the game, I just think the unit itself is making it unpalatable. The carrier should be strong in small numbers only when micro'd exceedingly well and with great caution, and then wreck face in mass numbers. This was how it was in BW and why pros always tried to hide their carrier tech for as long as possible but were still able to win if they were scouted early and reacted to if they were controlled well enough. SC2 has the second part of that equation down (though we never get to see that in progames, anyone who has played some teamgames knows just how strong a fleet of carriers can be, even against their supposed counters), but the first part is lacking. Carriers are just absolutely useless if you don't have AT LEAST 5 or 6 in the mid to late game. Before that, they contribute practically nothing, they will just sit there and die, usually after losing the paultry amount of interceptors deployed in mere seconds, and there is no way to micro them to make them last any longer.

    So if they could find some way to make them more useful in small numbers, which is always going have to come through some means of micro, then carriers can definitely become viable again in my opinion.

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