In addition to the revelation of a brand new IP, Overwatch, one of the most exciting announcements at BlizzCon 2014 was the next expansion to the StarCraft II franchise, Legacy of the Void. Just as Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm continued the Terran and Zerg storylines, Legacy of the Void will explore the Protoss quest to take back their homeland, Aiur.

In the demo machines for Legacy of the Void, I was able to play the first mission of the game. While I would rather not spoil what the exact details of the mission were, I will say that the development team was able to perfectly capture the "essence" of the Protoss race, just as WoL did for Terran and HotS did for Zerg. What distinguishes Legacy of the Void from the other two StarCraft II expansions is that it will tie up Raynor's and Kerrigan's storylines, bringing the trilogy to a conclusion.

While a big portion of StarCraft players buy the expansions for the game's story mode, each new expansion also brings big changes to StarCraft's online multiplayer mode, which in turn influences how the game is played as an electronic sport. Although new units generally receive the most attention when new StarCraft installments come out, one of the most fundamental changes in Legacy of the Void is a reworking of how macro, or resource income, works in the game.

More Workers, Less Resources

Instead of starting out with six workers, all bases now begin with 12 harvester and each mineral patch and gas geyser now contains less resources. What this essentially translates to is a much faster early game that incentivizes quicker expansions over drawn-out turtling, pushing Terran and Protoss players to get up to two and three bases much sooner than the mid-game, while Zerg would likely be on their fourth, or even fifth base. During my playtesting of Legacy of the Void, I found that having twelve workers right off the bat allowed me to produce offensive units much earlier than in the previous expansions, which opens up a variety of strong, offensive openers for all three races.

Furthermore, I found that my main was running out of minerals around the 11-13 minute mark, and at that point I was already transferring workers to my third or fourth base as all three workers. For gas-intensive build orders, I found that I had to get my third and fourth bases up sooner than with largely mineral-based army compositions. While I'm not sure what the implications of this are, I believe the new maps for Legacy of the Void need to incorporate much safer third base locations, as securing a third base is now fundamental to entering the early mid-game, whereas in the current expansion a third base for Protoss and Terran would allow you to get into the late-game with relative ease.

Overall I really enjoyed the reworking of resource income. Being able to get your initial tech up and running by the 3-minute mark meant that I could start harassing my opponent without proxying any of my buildings, and the general ambiance of gameplay felt much faster. I can't wait to see how the faster income and lower resources per base will affect the meta-game, but on pure speculation we will probably see a lot of expansion-first builds, and perhaps even a four-hatch before pool ZvP build become the standard greedy opener for Zerg.

The New Units

While it is safe to say that we're likely to see many of the new units go through significant changes before the game is finally released, the variety of new and reworked units as a whole reflect the development team's efforts to significantly increase the level of micro and harassment options for Legacy of the Void. Here are my impressions of the new units, and what I liked and didn't like about them:

Terran

The Terran race received a new barracks and a new factory unit, both of which help buff bio and mech compositions. Further, four units have been reworked to increase micro and harassment opportunities, bolstering previously less common mech and sky Terran compositions.

Herc

Built from a barracks with a tech lab, the Herc costs as much as a medivac (100 gas/100 minerals), and acts like a melee-marauder with 35 additional health. The Herc has a unique "Batman"-like ability that allows it to grapple and lunge toward high-priority units, soaking up damage during head-on fights or dealing damage to grouped units.

The Herc also has a flame upgrade (I remember this being very expensive, 200 gas /200 minerals?) that allows it to essentially act as a hell-bat, dealing massive damage to light units in a an area of effect. From what I remember, the Herc had a fairly long build time compared to marines and even marauders, so committing to them in the early-game means you would be lacking in other units.However, once your production is underway in the early to mid game, they are easy to mix into your bio composition (I was producing 6 marines, a marauder, and a Herc off three bases).

During bigger engagements it's a lot of fun throttling your Hercs toward enemy compositions, though on more than one occasion I inadvertently lost a few of them by prematurely taking an engagement where the Hercs had no back-up. One of the cooler things the grapple ability provides is the ability to escape out of combat by grappling other allied ground units. As we saw in the show matches, the Herc can also be used with a reaper to jump into an enemy base, expanding Terran's early-game harassment options.

Cyclone

Perhaps the most controversial new unit, the Cyclone is quite powerful. It's lock-on ability allows it to shoot both ground and air targets while moving, and it easily counters non-blink stalkers, roaches, as well as air harassment units like banshees and oracles. With 200 health, the Cyclone can also soak up quite a bit of damage, making it one of the best units to defend your base from drops and attack sieged positions with bunkers, cannons, or spine crawlers.

Where the Cyclone succeeds in smaller engagements, i think it suffers from larger battles as you would have to separately micro the unit in order for it to attack. I found the Cyclone somewhat tricky to control (I'm a diamond player) as stimming, splitting, sieging up, and controlling my air units took priority over the Cyclone as I would have to re-target its ability every-time its previously locked on unit died.

Reworked Units

Battlecruiser

I really enjoyed using the battlecruiser's new tactical jump ability, and in my first Legacy of the Void game I made a point to mass-up 12 battlecruisers, scanning my opponent's main base, and warping in there (the ghostly green specter surrounding the battle cruiser is really cool). The amount of energy that the battlecruiser uses while warping in quite high (125 I believe), so emergency escapes in a hostile situation are pretty much impossible after warping in. Also, Tactical Jump takes four seconds to complete, and the battlecruiser takes extra damage while warping in, so you would likely lose your battlecruisers if you are trying to warp out during a big engagements.

A battlecruiser warping in.

I think the battlecruiser can make a real comeback with this new ability. The tactical jump allows the battlecruiser to circumvent its fairly slow movement speed. Further, it improves Sky Terran as warping in allows it to drain its energy, making it less susceptible to feedbacks. I still can't get over the fact at just how cool the new battlecruisers, with Tactical Jump reminding me so much of Star Wars and Star Trek capital ships.

Thor

With the removal of the rarely-used High Impact Payload, the Thor gains an insta-heal ability that allows it to regain lost life at the cost of remaining immobile and unable to attack. While I only used the ability once, I'm not sure it's a good fit for the general direction mech-based play seems to be heading.

The middle Thor is repairing itself.

An already slow moving unit, there is very little incentive to use the ability to use Emergency Repair when in combat, which means you're likely to only use it after big engagements that you would only take when you have a big enough army. I believe this would result into a fairly stiff mech deathball compositions. I could see this ability used in early-game Thor rushes, but even then I don't think it really adds much to the Thor's role in regular mech or bio compositions.

Banshee

If you thought the banshee's reduced 100 gas 100 mineral cloak was hard to deal with in Heart of the Swarm, the new banshees look nigh-unstoppable. With a default +1 range increase and a 200 gas 200 mineral movement upgrade through the fusion reactor, the banshee gains the ability to outrun every mobile detection unit, and becomes very tricky to deal with. With the movement upgrade, the banshee moves as fast as the oracle, and the increased range gives it a lot more micro potential. When playing with the banshee I found it surprisingly effective in regular army compositions, especially picking off priority units and tanks as the speed and range buffs were very hard for non-blink stalkers and marines to deal with.

Considering the new banshee moves faster than vikings and stimmed marines, it is very strong in the TvT match-up, but is countered by mutalisks and phoenixes, though oracles and speed upgraded overseers would be needed to grant vision of cloaked banshees. I think the way the current banshee works is somewhat overpowered, and I think the movement upgrade, while expensive to get, should be lowered to something between the previous banshee speed and an oracle. That being said, I think the banshee further complements the viability of sky terran in all three matchups, a composition that is currently only seen in the TvT matchup.

Siege Tank

A siege-drop in action.

Probably the most "fun" upgrade for the Terran race is the ability for sieged tanks to be picked up by medivacs, one at a time. This upgrade essentially allows for a much easier positioning for siege tank lines, and opens up the possibility of siege tank harass. In my gameplay I found the upgrade extremely enjoyable, as picking up a sieged tank from a wave of incoming roaches and dropping it on the high ground and re-organizing siege tank lines was much easier than before. I do think it's very tricky to hold off against siege tank drops now, and I anticipate that anti-mech will now rely on increased base defenses for all three bases, as well as the utilization of air-to-ground offensive units.

Protoss

Although Legacy of the Void is the Protoss expansion, only one new unit has been added to the Protoss race while five other units received new abilities or stats. For general Protoss gameplay, the warp-in mechanic got a fairly significant nerf, as warp-ins now take longer to warp in, and while warping in, units take 200% damage. This essentially forces the Protoss player to be increasingly careful when warping into an offensive pylon, as well as when defending against harassment back at home. Further, due to the slower warp-in time, Protoss would need to warp-in units at a more regular pace in order to keep up unit production, making it's production mechanics more similar to the Terran race.

While it certainly is possible that Protoss may receive a new unit before Legacy of the Void enters the beta-phase (it is currently in the pre-alpha phase), I feel that the changes that have been made to the current composition largely make up for the absence of a second unit.

Disruptor

Built out of the robotics bay, the Disruptor has a Purification Nova ability that makes it temporarily invincible and allows it to speed boost into an enemy position (through units!), after which it releases an extremely powerful area of effect explosion. While on cool down however, the disruptor loses its speed boost, and with 100 health and 100 shields, is extremely susceptible to enemy fire.

The sweet glow of a Disruptor detonation.

In my experience with the disruptor, I found that it works well when you've gotten to the point that you're ready to trade armies and when you're producing off of two robotics facilities. In one engagement, I sacrificed three disruptors into an enemy line and then moved my army to kill off the rest of the damaged enemies. In essence, I think the disruptor is a great unit for starting engagements. By releasing the disruptors toward the enemy, you are forcing them to back off from sieged positions, creating an opportunity to move your army into a good position to initiate combat.

The disruptor can also be used to harass enemy lines, especially considering the buff to the warp prism (more on that later). Just as was mentioned in the multiplayer panel, I'm concerned that there is too much overlap between the colossus and the disruptor, but I am very eager to see how actual PvX games will be played out when Legacy of the Void enters beta.

Reworked Units

Warp Prism

The new warp prism can pick up units from a fairly long range (I think it was 6?), which adds quite a bit of potential for increased warp prism harass, which I'm excited to see. Losing dark templars, zealots, and high templars will be much harder, which ameliorates the nerfed warp-in mechanic. Should the new warp prism make it to the final release of Legacy of the Void, I think it will become an indispensable part of the new Protoss army.

Immortal

With hardened shield removed from gameplay (to better enable Terran-based Mech compositions), the immortal gains an ability called Barrier, which grants it a temporary 200 hit point shield, giving it more longevity in bigger battles. While I barely had to use the immortal's barrier in most of my games against the A.I., I think it takes the immortal to a pretty good place where they are able to better fight against groups of marines and won't hard counter larger damage dealing units like siege tanks.

Immortals with Barrier enabled

I could also envision an increased use of immortal drops, especially considering the warp prism's pick-up range and the fact that you would need to commit quite a few units to deal with two immortals with barrier enabled.

Oracle

Revelation, the ability that gave the Oracle the ability to detect surrounding units, has been removed in favor of giving Envision the ability to both tag and reveal hidden units. The more exciting ability that the Oracle received is the Stasis Ward, which is essentially a hidden trap that paralyzes nearby enemy units.

While the units are invincible while they remain in stasis, this ability allows the Protoss to "freeze" certain units (kind of like the vortex used to be able to) while dealing with the rest of the now weakened army. I really enjoy these Oracle changes as they improve the general longevity of Oracles, and improve their role as both a harassment unit as well as an air support unit.

Tempest

Broodlords affected by Disintegration.

The tempest's role as a long-range air siege unit has been changed into that of an aerial skirmish unit that can only deal damage to ground units. With a speed upgrade, and a very powerful Disintegration ability that deals 500 damage over 50 seconds, the tempest is now an active air unit that should be used to pick off high-priority targets.

I found the new tempest very useful when combined with the new disruptor unit, as disintegration forces enemy units to attack into you, giving the disruptor a great opportunity to do high amount of damage. The movement speed upgrade also opens up the tempest to fill in a harassment role against production facilities and mineral lines.

Carrier

The new Release Interceptors ability is really good for preserving carriers during bigger fights as well as performing fly-by attacks on enemy bases. In my experience, the carriers worked really well in small groups of two to four, with the combination of a mothership core. I'm not exactly sure how carriers will be used in professional play, however, because releasing interceptors forces you to rebuild all of your interceptors and effectively outs your carriers out of commission for a while.

For now, the new ability is good for dodging out of a sticky situation or forcing armies to go back to defend (releasing three carriers' worth of interceptors onto a main base requires a pretty big force to deal with) while you attack another location, like a third base for instance.

Zerg

Although I'm mostly a Terran player, the new changes to Zerg may make me want to switch races (that, and, Life just won the Global Finals). With the addition of the lurker and ravager as well as a reworking of the previously "stiff" units like the corruptor and swarm host, I think Zerg has the most potential to really innovate their meta-game in the upcoming beta—and considering how well though-out these changes are, I wouldn't be surprised to see most of them make it to the release version of Legacy of the Void.

Ravager

The ravager is a brand new unit that morphs off of the roach and, in addition to dealing more regular damage than the regular roach, the ravager is equipped with a Corrosive Bile ability that allows it to skill shot enemies that are further away while dealing area of effect damage. The ability can hit both air and ground targets, and is able to break through forcefields. It's essentially a lava-roach with a fireball catapult.

I really enjoyed playing with ravagers. The stronger attack damage works well against small numbers of bio units, and I found landing successful Corrosive Bile shots very rewarding. The ravager gives the Zerg a greater incentive to utilize the Roach Warren in all three matchups, and the Corrosive Bile ability gives Zerg an easier time dealing with forcefields.

Lurker

Making a return from its Brood War days, the lurker is a great unit for sieging enemy positions as they will outrange defensive structures like cannons and spine crawlers when upgraded with siege range. They are also great to place on top of ramps, as the linear damage is extremely strong against light units like marines. Like the old swarm host, the lurker cannot attack while it is unburrowed, which makes strategic placement and good creep spread essential to using it successfully.

Overall I liked playing with lurkers, as they provide a great way for Zerg to establish positional control. Also I can't wait to see the lurker be utilized in the Zerg vs. Zerg matchup, because, as mentioned in the multiplayer panel, they provide a great way to counter mass roach strategies. Considering how much I enjoyed playing with the lurker, I think there is a lot of promise in re-introducing older units back into the game.

Reworked Units

Swarm Host

Considering the staleness of mass swarm host strategies, I really welcome the new swarm host changes. The swarm host can no longer burrow, and locusts must be manually released. While they can be released while the swarm host is moving, the cool down for the Spawn Locusts ability is much longer. With Hive tech, the locusts can be upgraded to flying units that can swoop down in order to engage enemies. In my experience, the new swarm hosts worked best in small tactical squads, and were great for harassing undefended bases.

The flying locusts are really, really good, but getting the upgrade takes quite a while. Also, because swarm hosts now need to be manually controlled in order to release units, they require quite a bit of micro as you have to activate the ability and then separately move the locusts to attack a particular location.

Corruptor

Nerfing the corruptor's anti-air attack capability with the removal of the corruption ability, the corruptor's role has been transformed with the new Caustic Spray ability that locks on to a unit or building, and deals quite a bit of damage. This ability is especially useful against production facilities and other buildings, as the ability is cancelled if the targeted unit moves out of range.

Using the new corruptor was somewhat useful in attacking high-priority units, however when used in small squads to target down important tech structures, or even enemy Command Centers and Nexi, they proved very effective. What I particularly enjoyed about the new corruptors was the fact that they can now be built not as a counter to mass phoenix, colossi, or sky terran, but as an air support unit that should work well with ground- and air-based Zerg armies.

Nydus Worm

The Nydus is back with an exciting change that allows it to be invincible while unburrowing, effectively making Nydus-based plays extremely hard to stop. The increased feasibility of Nydus worms should allow Zerg armies to build several worms around the map, allowing their units to teleport wherever they are needed, although I have a strong suspicion they will be increasingly used for aggressive plays (three-hatch roach all-in with nydus worms, hell yeah!).

Multiple Nydus worms spawning around immortals and photon cannons.

Overall I like this change, but I'm worried defending against a strong Nydus push might be too difficult. With enough money, it would be possible to put Nydus worms in every one of the opponents' bases simultaneously, making it extremely hard to defend against. Nevertheless, I am happy that the development team is taking a serious look at the nydus worm, as I think it is one of the most unique and interesting structures that can be built in StarCraft.

Archon Mode

While there was no possibility of testing out automated tournaments at BlizzCon, I was able to test the new Archon mode, which gives two players the ability to control a single base and play against two other opponents controlling another base. Although it took me and my teammate several minutes to not wrangle for control over certain units, I did find the gameplay quite interesting as it really promotes cooperation.

Although I've played several hundred 2v2 and 3v3 games, I found the level of cooperation that is needed to successfully play Archon mode much higher than in team games. Choosing which player takes control over macro and production, and which player takes control over micro sounds easy enough, but things can get pretty complicated during the mid- and late-game when you are defending your own base while your team mate is trying to pull of a multi-pronged attack.

I think the best way to play Archon mode would be to team up with a friend while being on Skype with them, as you need to establish things like build-order, strategy, and unit control in order to prevent a tug-of-war scenario. During the multiplayer panel, it was mentioned that there is a high possibility for Archon mode to have a ranked ladder, which will surely be a boon to those who enjoy competitive team games.

Thoughts and Impressions

Although the beta for Legacy of the Void won't be available until sometime during the first half of 2015, I think there is a lot to look forward to. Considering that Legacy of the Void will be released as a stand-alone title, the new expansion will provide a real opportunity for newcomers to try out the game without needing to make a big up-front investment. Further, Legacy of the Void will satisfy those who are enthralled in the StarCraft universe, bringing the trilogy to a conclusion.

As far as the changes to online multiplayer are concerned, I believe Blizzard has taken a bold step into a new direction that should make the game more exciting and dynamic. While it is likely that many of the new units will be reworked during beta testing, I strongly believe they will leave the new resource gathering mechanics largely untouched, which will change every single build order and bring about never-before-seen strategies.

Lastly, the inclusion of automated tournaments is something that I think will really help integrate the competitive spirit of StarCraft across all levels and leagues, allowing them to get the same adrenaline rush that professional players get when preparing and battling against their opponents.

Looking back at Heart of the Swarm, if Legacy of the Void enters beta in March or April of 2015, we are likely going to see the final version of the game be released around BlizzCon 2015 after the conclusion of next year's World Championship Series. As painful as the wait is going to be, after having spent a few hours with the pre-alpha version, I'm pretty confident it will be well worth it.