I wrote a previous blog containing my initial thoughts after just 1 day of playing the LotV beta. I have now talked about LotV with many people, played it a ton, watched it a whole lot, and thought and theorized about it endlessly. I thought I’d go ahead and give my updated perspective before we get the first patch.

I’ve spent my entire time on LotV so far with Protoss, so sorry in advance for a lack of TvZ, TvT and ZvZ talk. As I have more time in a few weeks I’ll focus more on learning what’s going on in those matchups.

I’d like to cover several large, overlapping areas here. Sorry if it rambles some, I’m just trying to channel my thoughts onto the page.

Adepts

I have gone as far as to say both in the GSL and on Twitter, that the Adept is the best designed unit in LotV. It was much to my shock to hear that lots of people were complaining about the Adept. I think the reason why there is discontent about the Adept, is because it’s not very useable at this current moment. It is universally agreed upon that Terran and Zerg are stronger than Protoss in this current build of the beta, so this shouldn’t come as any surprise. Because it seems to be a harass - focused unit, and every Protoss is doing everything in their power to just stay alive vs Cyclones and Ravagers, of course we aren’t seeing it used.

That has literally no bearing on how well designed this unit is, or how good it could be for the game. Let’s think about this unit and what it does for a moment. It’s harass based. It’s Gateway tech, which means that it can be warped in. People are likening it to the Reaper, which is pretty fair for this moment, as that’s about what it can be used for. There is so much potential for this unit. It is going to be such a hard unit to use correctly. Think about the decisions of the Adept:

Do I chase the Adept itself or its teleportation ghost thing?

Do I close my wall off to prevent the ghost thing to get in, or do I let it in to trap it?

Do I get out an Adept for some fast scouting? Or use that build time for another unit?

Here are some cool things that I’ve been thinking about with Adepts:

They could easily be dropped from a Warp Prism for harassment instead of Zealots. They shred mineral lines very quickly.

With their upgrade, last-hit micro now exists in SC2.

I’ve been using an Adept to peak up a Terran ramp and then get away.

While an Adept’s ghost is out traveling, you can guard a ramp or take a Watchtower with the Adept itself.

Adepts are good at chasing down fleeing units.

Just because you can’t go Adepts right now while Ravagers and Cyclones are pounding you does not mean that the unit sucks or is trash. It’s going to take a long time to flesh out this unit completely. The design is great, and the possible skill-cap is ridiculously high on it. Definitely the type of unit that will be cool and exciting to watch and play.



Ravager

I kind of like the design of the unit, to be honest. It’s a really cool idea. The numbers need to be tweaked though, I think. The design of Force Field and how that effects Protoss unit stats makes the Ravager a difficult to balance unit for sure. I find it strange, also, that it can hit air, ground, does splash, and can kill buildings as well. The building sieging part of it I think may be problematic. Static defence is already weak enough as is, without this just completely eliminating any use of it. Cannons often times are only there to help ward off Zergling harassment and provide some detection, but now, especially with the lower mineral counts in each base, are almost not worth making.

I do like how it shows you where the bomb thing is going to hit, and gives you time to move your army accordingly. That’s really cool and is fresh for Zerg.



The Viper’s new Irradiate-like spell

This is kinda neat. It really caught me off guard the first time I played vs it. I like the idea of punishing big clumps of Voidrays…I really do. The only reason that mass Voidrays fell out of style against Zerg was the onset of heavy Swarm Host play, which is now gone. They were called “Skillrays” for a reason. Anything that punishes that type of 1A style, I’m glad to give a try. What I don’t like, though, is that it counters Phoenix so brutally. Protoss is already in a hard spot when fighting against Mutas in PvZ. To fight them properly in a long game, you need a lot of ranged Phoenix. The reason why Phoenixes can counter Mutas is that they move while shooting (duh). Because of this, you get a bunch, and stack them up, then go to town. Already we see in Heart of the Swarm, that Phoenixes will rarely ever (at the top level) chase back and punish all the retreating Mutalisks while they are still at low numbers (even though its possible). A big part of this is because Phoenix micro is extremely time consuming. You have to continually give move commands (generally done through a special hotkey binding, thx Jakatak). There’s so much to do that this is often not the right choice. The lack of time readily available to utilize this micro to kill off the Mutas makes Protosses over-produce Phoenixes to counter Mutas. The Viper’s new spell slaughters this. Like really, terribly slaughters it. Already Fungal Growth is a good counter. Corrupters, in certain situations, are good as well. But now, this spell is going to be a real issue when trying to appropriately deal with mass amounts of Mutalisks.

I want to jump back and talk about Corrupters as well in this scenario. The cool part about the choice on whether or not to make Corrupters against Phoenixes was, in my opinion, the risk involved. Sometimes you would make them, and then after the Phoenixes were dead, you would have a bunch of ‘dead’ or more appropriately, 'wasted’ supply. Now that supply isn’t wasted anymore, with Corrupters being able to take down buildings. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It definitely could make the game more interesting. I guess the problem I’m seeing is 3 really really strong answers to Protoss’ 1 strong answer to the mass Mut-Mut problem.



This whole Roach thing.

In the last few months, we’ve seen a giant increase in Burrow-movement Roach usage against Protoss. Hell, much of Life’s championship is based off of this strategy. I’m on a plane so I can’t check at the moment, but I know he used it some amount of times vs both herO (#1 macro PvZ player in the world) and vs PartinG (#1 micro PvZ player in the world), and beat them both to win the hardest tournament out there, the GSL Code S.

That alone tells us that the strategy is at least reasonable and playable. Now let’s take a look at the changes in Legacy of the Void:

Zerg Roach Buffs:

Burrow Movement now automatic. Speed upgrade for it comes with regular Roach Speed.

Roaches can now become Ravagers, units that can kill Force Fields.

Protoss vs Roach Nerfs:

Time Warp Nerfed (very good change IMO!)

Immortal Hardened Shield removed (the replacement in theory can prevent more damage than Hardened Shield, but in practice? not so sure about that.)

Oracle Envision removed, paired with Revelation (that means you can only tag areas for detection, if Roaches aren’t there, oh well.)

So let me summarize. Roach tech was already good vs Protoss. It got very buffed in LotV. Protoss’ defence vs Roach tech got very nerfed in LotV. This is, of course, a problem.



Colossus Nerf / Disruptor addition:

I really like the direction this is going in, in theory at least. As a note, I’m not writing about the actual numbers on the Disruptor below. I’m writing about the unit design and possibilities of it once correctly balanced. By the way, I really like how microing the unit feels. It’s like Science Vessels from SC1. They stack up really closely, and you have to be very careful about microing them separately from each other and from your main control group.

PvP: Late game Colossus balls HAVE to be dead. PvP is absolutely on it’s head for a while. Hard to say how it will turn out. PvP is, in HotS, an excellent matchup at the moment. There are tons of builds, lots of styles, lots of compositions. This change might allow that to remain, and take out the part where both players get a bunch of Colossus late game and then are rewarded for playing passively. Or, it might turn it into a Roach vs Roach-esque type of matchup. We can’t possibly tell yet.

PvT: I don’t know how TvP will end up in LotV. Right now, mech is looking pretty cool. Does the Colossus / Disruptor combination just completely kill off the possibility of going bio? I’m not sure. Vs this set of units, Terran should still be looking for retreating engagements where they can split and get away from the Disruptor. Once it goes off, if there’s anything left, it should be picked off with relative ease. Lifting into Medivacs dodges the shot. Hm. I’ve been trying to think of them in terms of High Templars. It costs the gas of 2. It isn’t instant like Storm, where you just immediately start to get damage. All the damage is done at once, and its a lot of damage. Losing one is obviously far more impactful than losing 2 High Templars, due to the Robotics requirement for building it. Not totally sure how it will turn out. I think a lot of it has to do with if mech solidifies as the go-to in LotV vs Protoss or not.

PvZ: I think this matchup is so far off from reality right now that it’s hard to say how it will go. I think if we added this unit to HotS right now, you would not be able to commit to a Roach/Hydra army at all once the tech was reached. Positionally you would be screwed all game long, constantly in a retreat. Kinda have to wait a while to really know how deeply it will effect this matchup as well.

The New Economy

12 Workers is pretty awesome. Games are getting going so much faster now, I can’t imagine that it won’t have a positive impact upon viewer and player fun. Some noticeable things about it: proxys are nerfed. Cannon rushes in PvP, from what I can tell, will completely cease to exist. The travel time is just too long for them to not be ready for it. Proxy gates and raxes? Again, it might be too long. Obviously this will have the biggest impact upon PvP and TvZ. As a former Zerg and current Protoss player, I do have to say that this will eliminate a lot of frustration. It is a bit sad though, because some of the most exciting moments are those when someone holds a rush like this. Oh well, I’m sure something similarly anger-inducing will come along.

About the different ratio of gas - to - minerals: Protoss and Zerg both require quite a bit of gas to function. It’s too early for me to even really guess how this will effect things. The only thing that keeps coming to my mind is prolonged TvZs where no new bases are being taken. I could see the gas in the main base running out being a problem for Zerg sometimes there, but again, this is a really complex thing, so I guess I’ll just wait a bit before giving a real opinion on the new ratio.

About the reduced mineral patches: I’m still really worried that this will choke out certain types of play that are important, not just for certain styles of players, but that it will hurt the uber-complex core of possible strategies that make up the very important tactical wheel that exists in SC2. If a player who just hasn’t taken their 3rd yet can’t possibly be “playing safe” (i.e, getting enough observers, colossus, blink, etc), the game becomes much more binary. The economy of the game, and how changing it will change the game in the long run, is much more complicated than the balancing of various units, so I’ll write more about this at a later time.



I know I didn’t get to touch on everything, but we just don’t know a whole lot yet. The world’s best players are mostly not playing at the moment, the beta itself is on a weird and untested map pool, and some of the units are so far off from correct stats at the moment (ahem, Cyclone), that it’s warping the game. Hopefully we have a patch pretty soon so that we can get even more testing and information on the future of the game.