Sounds like a good excuse to play SCII again. Considering the last time I played it was the BETA.
Apocalypse: Dirge Of Swans.I can't help but wonder if the competitive scene will only stabilize after the Protoss expansion like the SC 1 scene did after Brood War, or if it will get 'stuck' on Wo L or Ho TS due to less than favorable metagame changes. I guess Blizz (and Boxe R) will try to drag everybody along but it won't be an easy ride.
One of the founding players of competitive Starcraft back in the Brood War days and also one of the earliest tournament champions. He has since switched over to SC 2. He's one of the highest profile advocates of E-sports.
edited 21st Oct '11 7:03:41 PM by Recon5
Or maybe not, considering there's no one unit to focus-fire, and with enough time and resources a Zerg army could have every unit be a detector.
I'm not really sure how a Viper is any easier or harder to use than an Overseer for seeing cloaked things. Heck, you could Occular Parasite the Viper itself and it's exactly the same. Although it's sort of implied that they might have natural stealth detection abilities.
Actually, I guess depends on what you need to build them.
I'm actually pretty surprised that Blizzard is removing units from melee in the expansion. The only other RTS I have played that ever did that is Command And Conquer Generals, and that just got rid of a building and gave it's only use to another building that had other uses.
edited 22nd Oct '11 10:33:41 PM by nuclearneo577
Hm, the mega Thor is an interesting idea. Also, the mobile hive thingy sounds a lot like a ground version of the Broodlord for some reason.
Am I the only one who sees the new protoss caster being used to utterly buttfuck a base by locking down the command center?
Fight smart, not fair.Supposedly the Swarm Host is more like a Reaver or something. It has to spend a small amount of resources to build its units, but they're pretty strong. I've heard the created units compared to Zealots.
And the Oracle can't target Command Centers.
Those details come from being playing the test build itself.
The Lurker was one of the most widely requested units from BW, so Blizzard decided to make burrowable Brood Lords instead so that Colossi won't be obsoleted. Smart.
Strangely enough since the Thor was revealed I've had the feeling they were going to introduce a cheap and less powerful version due to how essential the Goliath was in SC 1 but I kept telling myself that such a unit would be redundant. Seems Blizzard disagreed.
Also: Protoss get Scourge, Changelings and P Fs now. How ironic.
edited 23rd Oct '11 5:39:24 PM by Recon5
I wonder how the protoss changeling works. Do you need to somehow find the enemy unit or can they just summon anything they want?
Swarm hosts requiring resources sounds like you will need quite good macro.
Vipers I am not excited about. I dislike how Zerg in SC 2 need excessive micro for things the other races have automatically. Now you will need to manually add detectors to units. The good thing I guess is that you could make detector ultra lisks or queens or other things with high hp. But then I wonder if you can detect while burrowed.
If you have vision of it on the map, you can change your whatchemacallit to that unit.
Swarm hosts don't need money to produce units. That would ruin the point. It creates units endlessly.
You can probably detect with burrow but I don't see how just three extra clicks in a game would be so hard. Zerg is probably the most attack-move race at the moment and the only spellcaster they really have is the infestor.
Until it uses the ability that removes its eyes.
If I were using the game (which I don't), I'd probably changeling into a healer/repair unit to keep my units hp up.
Let's look at the spell casters and abilities:
Terran: Raven: detector (passive), Attack Drone, Splash Damage missile, point defense drone. Ghost: stealth (self cast), EMP, summon nuke, Fixed Damage attack, basic attack. Orbital: summon mule, summon supply bunker, scan.
Protoss: Sentry: area blocking spell, damage reduction spell, hallucination, basic attack. High templar: Area of Effect spell, Mana Burn spell, transformation spell. Mothership: teleport spell, stealths friendlies (passive), Vortex, basic attack.
Zerg: Queen: healing spell, creep tumor, larva (limited use), basic attack. Infestor: burrowed movement, burrowed unit summon, Area of Effect DOT that locks in place, mind control. Overseer: detector (passive), changeling, contaminate. Overlord: creep poop, shuttle.
I think the goal was to make it so that the Zerg have less dedicated spell casters, and more abilities.
Fight smart, not fair.The main problem with Zerg was that Overseers didn't cost any supply, so Blizzard felt that they couldn't give them any combat abilities that would unbalance the endgame when you might have a billion of them. The Viper is essentially what the Overseer was always supposed to have been.
edited 21st Nov '11 1:02:13 PM by Clarste
^^ What Zerg needed was a defense breaking unit. Basically the only thing you can do as Zerg to attack into a well defended position is with hive-tech. Ultralisks and Brood Lords. Vipers and Swarm Lords will give an option before hive tech. And SC 1 people like me were screaming about bringing back the defiler and lurker so Blizz gave us pretty good equivalents.
^ Costs no supply. Overpowered spell. Sounds familiar (cough orbital command, cough).

Don't really care about Combat-EX. I've heard about Destiny but don't really watch his stream. I'd rather watch the best like idra or ret. Not saying he's bad but I hear he's more for entertainment than learning.
Right now, currently trying to get really good. Like enough to compete in top tournies. Probably won't make it but won't know if I don't try. Here's my sc2ranks profile
. Cheer me on guys :).