Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm Catch-All: It is here!

That sucks. I thought they had that balanced.

PWAlessi wrote:

That sucks. I thought they had that balanced.

I asked someone on twitter what you're supposed to do as a Zerg if the Terran gets a big ball of Thor/Hellbat/Viking. He watches even more Pro SC2 than I do, is a channel mod for Day9, etc, etc.

His first response was an image link to this:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/V7dZG.png)

Which I admit made me laugh.

He also mentioned that Infestors are now essentially just wasted supply once you see the Terran going mech. The fungal nerf means you can fungal and fungal and fungal some more and they'll just laugh at you and keep coming.

His one suggestion was, if you can manage it, go Viper/Ultralisk and hit the entire center of the ball with blinding cloud. Which I guess could work if you have great control, but so far all I've managed to do with Vipers is throw a bunch of clouds out that seem to do nothing and watch my army melt anyway

Someone else suggested Swarm Host/Corruptor as a good combo, but Swarm Hosts are another thing I've had no luck at all with so far. I build them and they kind of annoy the other person for a few minutes until they get just annoyed enough to throw out a scan and then the swarm hosts all die in about two seconds.

Thin_J wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:

That sucks. I thought they had that balanced.

I asked someone on twitter what you're supposed to do as a Zerg if the Terran gets a big ball of Thor/Hellbat/Viking. He watches even more Pro SC2 than I do, is a channel mod for Day9, etc, etc.

His first response was an image link to this:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/V7dZG.png)

Which I admit made me laugh.

He also mentioned that Infestors are now essentially just wasted supply once you see the Terran going mech. The fungal nerf means you can fungal and fungal and fungal some more and they'll just laugh at you and keep coming.

His one suggestion was, if you can manage it, go Viper/Ultralisk and hit the entire center of the ball with blinding cloud. Which I guess could work if you have great control, but so far all I've managed to do with Vipers is throw a bunch of clouds out that seem to do nothing and watch my army melt anyway

Someone else suggested Swarm Host/Corruptor as a good combo, but Swarm Hosts are another thing I've had no luck at all with so far. I build them and they kind of annoy the other person for a few minutes until they get just annoyed enough to throw out a scan and then the swarm hosts all die in about two seconds.

Against Thor Mech ball, you have to use Abduct or whatever that crap is and whittle down as much as possible. The Cloud/Rush in tactic is sort of that final push you do (And I have not often seen Ultras in that combo, still too slow, clunky, and more important dumb-ass pathing).

Thin_J wrote:

Went through placements again in the beta.

Am now Bronze and unable to win a game in any matchup. Yay.

Every terran I played built like two tanks and then started churning out thors and the mech firebat things, and then just meandering across the map with a big ball that kills every combination of everything I could throw at it. At one point I fungaled the crap out of the ball the entire way across the map and then met it with brood lords supported by infestors and roaches before it got to my base.

Didn't even make a dent. And it's super hard to break them early because of the free siege mode on siege tanks. They can just put out two or three tanks and then giggle at anything you throw at their expansion. And they come out so much earlier without the delay from the upgrade time it breaks most of the early Zerg timings that used to be there against Terran.

Be really surprised if that change sticks.

Menawhile, in the PvT land that they meant this free-tech change to address.

Not much changed.

lol. poor zerg. that siege tech change was/is/will be stupid.

Pikey26 wrote:

Against Thor Mech ball, you have to use Abduct or whatever that crap is and whittle down as much as possible. The Cloud/Rush in tactic is sort of that final push you do (And I have not often seen Ultras in that combo, still too slow, clunky, and more important dumb-ass pathing).

Well, the thing with Ultras in HOTS is that they got a pretty big damage buff over WOL, at least I think they did. I was actually trying for that exact combination in one game, but got to Ultras too late. They take so incredibly long to build that it went like this. See the push leaving his base thanks to a burrowed ling near his natural. Build a ton of Ultras. I think I built 12 or 13. I started hitting the ball with Fungals early on, hit the front lines of it with fungal regularly on its entire path across the map, working down the health the whole way. Ball kills my fourth. Then my third. And then is IN MY NATURAL when the Ultras start spawning.

That was my last game.

Thin_J wrote:
Pikey26 wrote:

Against Thor Mech ball, you have to use Abduct or whatever that crap is and whittle down as much as possible. The Cloud/Rush in tactic is sort of that final push you do (And I have not often seen Ultras in that combo, still too slow, clunky, and more important dumb-ass pathing).

Well, the thing with Ultras in HOTS is that they got a pretty big damage buff over WOL, at least I think they did. I was actually trying for that exact combination in one game, but got to Ultras too late. They take so incredibly long to build that it went like this. See the push leaving his base thanks to a burrowed ling near his natural. Build a ton of Ultras. I think I built 12 or 13. I started hitting the ball with Fungals early on, hit the front lines of it with fungal regularly on its entire path across the map, working down the health the whole way. Ball kills my fourth. Then my third. And then is IN MY NATURAL when the Ultras start spawning.

That was my last game.

Yeah their damage like doubled I believe. Like 30-40ish DPS, which is insane considering it's splash as well. I guess you' will just have to build the ball preemptively, once you start to see his ball growing large enough, but if you commit too many to ultras too soon, it also makes you reallly prone to multi-prong harass* and him eventually tech switching to loads of ravens/banshees or whatever would counter Ultras.

I don't know. it's weird. I know HOTS is supposed to make the game harder with the addition of all these units and expansion of the tech tree and builds, but there seems to be too large a gulf between opinions of the players right now... well toss seems to be considered 'OP' across the board, but terrans/zerg it's very black/white. For example, the top-end terrans are all up in arms over the siege tank change saying it does nothing for viability of mech play, where as all the goldies/plats on my friends list seem to love it for the early aggression and defense. Zerg seem to be mixed across the board, except most Diamond and below seem to find themselves ill-equipped, where as Masters and beyond are saying "Vipers OP l2p".

* = On the topic of harass, did you see the game between Jaedong and MC? Crap ton of spores/spine around the bases (like in the mineral line and around the hatch itself) seemed to shut down any kind of harass from Warp Prism drops with verrry little effort from JD's end.

Are we posting HotS news here? Because:

ahahahhahahaha.

the trailer...

Spoiler:

i was like 'wait... huh? wtf?' until.... ITS A DREAM!!!!

ok.. sure there's NO WAY the zerg wouldn't have gotten COMPLETELY and UTTERLY f*cked from getting into a choke like that. of COURSE, kerrigan was f*cking dreaming.

lol, it was hilarious to see how Ultras exist in Blizzard's ever so imaginative mind.

cool trailer still though. ;p

Pikey26 wrote:

ahahahhahahaha.

the trailer...

Spoiler:

i was like 'wait... huh? wtf?' until.... ITS A DREAM!!!!

ok.. sure there's NO WAY the zerg wouldn't have gotten COMPLETELY and UTTERLY f*cked from getting into a choke like that. of COURSE, kerrigan was f*cking dreaming.

lol, it was hilarious to see how Ultras exist in Blizzard's ever so imaginative mind.

cool trailer still though. ;p

The trailers have always been more along those lines, with massive Battleships and such. I imagine that canonically it would be the gameplay itself that's abstracted, rather than the other way around.

In WoL the cutscenes showed Kerrigan killing Hydralisks with a single bullet, which certainly never worked in StarCraft. I've always taken the view Redwing posits, that the game is the abstraction.

Redwing wrote:
Pikey26 wrote:

ahahahhahahaha.

the trailer...

Spoiler:

i was like 'wait... huh? wtf?' until.... ITS A DREAM!!!!

ok.. sure there's NO WAY the zerg wouldn't have gotten COMPLETELY and UTTERLY f*cked from getting into a choke like that. of COURSE, kerrigan was f*cking dreaming.

lol, it was hilarious to see how Ultras exist in Blizzard's ever so imaginative mind.

cool trailer still though. ;p

The trailers have always been more along those lines, with massive Battleships and such. I imagine that canonically it would be the gameplay itself that's abstracted, rather than the other way around.

oh yeah it's all in good and fun. one of those things i've always appreciated about Blizzard was the way they restrained their imaginations/fantasies to the cutscenes and stories, and not letting all that get in the way of how fun it is to actually play the games (supply limits in all their RTSes for example, although technical limitations have a little to do with that as well other than pure gameplay balance reasons).

ahrezmendi wrote:

In WoL the cutscenes showed Kerrigan killing Hydralisks with a single bullet, which certainly never worked in StarCraft. I've always taken the view Redwing posits, that the game is the abstraction.

That was snipe duuhh, before they removed it during Alpha of BW.

Science Vessels are apparently the size of a small moon. Some of the missions in the original game take place on one.

New patch for the beta adds group watching of replays and the ability to resume a game from a replay.

It apparently rewrites significant portions of code to accomplish those updates though, as you basically have to redownload the entire beta. The "patch" is over 8 gigs.

Thin_J wrote:

New patch for the beta adds group watching of replays and the ability to resume a game from a replay.

It apparently rewrites significant portions of code to accomplish those updates though, as you basically have to redownload the entire beta. The "patch" is over 8 gigs.

Can you resume a replay against an AI opponent? I'd like to be able to set up some replays where someone executes a few cheeses and then I can replay them over and over against the computer.

PWAlessi wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

New patch for the beta adds group watching of replays and the ability to resume a game from a replay.

It apparently rewrites significant portions of code to accomplish those updates though, as you basically have to redownload the entire beta. The "patch" is over 8 gigs.

Can you resume a replay against an AI opponent? I'd like to be able to set up some replays where someone executes a few cheeses and then I can replay them over and over against the computer.

I don't remember seeing anything about that in the patch notes. Just talked about doing it with players IIRC. There's a post on TL and a blog up about it on Battle.net if you want to check them out to see for sure.

Thin_J wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

New patch for the beta adds group watching of replays and the ability to resume a game from a replay.

It apparently rewrites significant portions of code to accomplish those updates though, as you basically have to redownload the entire beta. The "patch" is over 8 gigs.

Can you resume a replay against an AI opponent? I'd like to be able to set up some replays where someone executes a few cheeses and then I can replay them over and over against the computer.

I don't remember seeing anything about that in the patch notes. Just talked about doing it with players IIRC. There's a post on TL and a blog up about it on Battle.net if you want to check them out to see for sure.

Ok, thanks. Regardless, it's an awesome feature for noobs like me. After one of you guys smoke me, we can go back, watch the carnage, and you can narrate how you smoked me.

Terran is fun.

Mine OR tank all-ins OP.

That said, nothing I hate more than Mine drops. People complaining about oracles are crazy when the mine sh*t is in the game.

The best thing about Terran so far is that TvT is a way less ridiculous mirror matchup than ZvZ is from a player's perspective. The early game in particular is almost leisurely in comparison.

Not dealing with ling/baneling micro wars is just the best.

I'm sure this will backfire on me slightly the first time I fail miserably to split marines against banelings or something, but for the moment it is pure win.

So I am guessing that patch where they tried to end the near mandatory reaper vs reaper wars worked?

Pikey26 wrote:

So I am guessing that patch where they tried to end the near mandatory reaper vs reaper wars worked?

The damage nerf was fairly huge. I believe it stopped pretty much immediately after that patch hit.

*Also worth noting, they added all the additional AI difficulty levels in to the beta. There's a lot of options there now where you can direct what kind of build they try and whether they focus on econ or aggression or whatever.

OOOOOH.

The new AI is much much better.

Went through the 'quick match' AI, reached the hardest difficulty. Sometimes they're a bit funky, but they're still miles ahead of 'let's make the AI get double income so it can make more of the random ass sh*t'.

That's not to mention all the customization options for what type of play you want the AI to do.

A combination of the much improved AI (although I have a feeling some of the army composition for the AI will be out of date pretty soon), and the Unranked match options makes race switches for casuals (Diamond or below in the beta and Low Masters or below at launch) that much accessible I think.

Ok, so some of the new changes and new units, there will always be someone that has a problem with any one of them, but some of the more meta changes and additions to the game so far? It's lookin purrty good.

Just received a notice this morning that the 'publisher changed the release date' for my Heart of the Swarm pre-order. Not seeing anything online about the official release date changing- can anyone confirm?

Dax wrote:

Just received a notice this morning that the 'publisher changed the release date' for my Heart of the Swarm pre-order. Not seeing anything online about the official release date changing- can anyone confirm?

I haven't gotten anything like that from Amazon.

Thin_J wrote:
Dax wrote:

Just received a notice this morning that the 'publisher changed the release date' for my Heart of the Swarm pre-order. Not seeing anything online about the official release date changing- can anyone confirm?

I haven't gotten anything like that from Amazon.

There's reports of some Amazon orders getting this email message. There is a post on the Blizzard forums that says the release date is unchanged but doesn't mention what's up with Amazon.

I added a bunch of you guys in HoTS this morning. I'm hoping to get some time in (and some practice) with the beta before it ends.

Pikey, I couldn't find your BN ID.

The beta just won't work for me. It showed up in my available list of games so I downloaded it but a I get an error message when I log in. Something about it not matching with my region (US).

EvilDead wrote:

The beta just won't work for me. It showed up in my available list of games so I downloaded it but a I get an error message when I log in. Something about it not matching with my region (US).

Yeah, I get an error every time that I log in that says that I need to switch regions or something. But, it still just let's me log in as usual.

Preview cinematic dropped today.