Legacy of the Void

Lets have a thread for discussion of LOTV
Of course so far there hasen't been any official information.

But the hype train has began
Here is the first teaser https://soundcloud.com/starcraft-ii-official/see sent by official Sc2 twitter.

Sounds like a reaver maybe. Overall it sounds like a siege type protoss/zerg unit.

Gett'n my hopes up with this post.

The earliest this would release is summer of 2015, but thats unlikely and unrealistic
It took about 3 years to make heart of the swarm, so it should take about the same amount of time for legacy

So realistically the earliest it would be is janurary of 2016, at the latest would be fall of 2016

I hope they do it right with this expansion. So far, with the exception of the gameplay, Blizz has pretty much failed everything else. The arcade is pretty terrible, the map editor assets are so limited, the comunities are dying ect..

Anyways here is another teaser
https://soundcloud.com/starcraft-ii-official/you

they better announce it at blizzcon, this weekend. 3 years is way too long for the amount of content theyre adding
im hoping blizz goes for the surprise/publicity factor and does a xmas release following a november announcement. hopefully by now theyve realized they cant keep going on as is

bacon wrote:

I hope they do it right with this expansion. So far, with the exception of the gameplay, Blizz has pretty much failed everything else

why do other ppl think sc2 was so much less successful than wc3? why did sc2 have 100% no community from day 1?
i agree with you overall though, bacon

Last teaser, i missed one, but its just more incomprehensible sounds
https://soundcloud.com/starcraft-ii-official/blizzcon
Im kinda excited to see the units though

its kinda spoiler-y but looks pretty cool. i think every single shot of kerrigan was of her getting her ass beat by a hybrid. i like the sc campaign and get a lot of value out of them so ill probably buy the new release

its weird that "co-op campaign" never really became a genre. like a few maps were remade but that's basically it. maybe theres too much rounding to fill out a single mission, but i still dont think thats beyond the community

wooooo

At first i was scared of the speed upgrade for the banshee. But then i realized its from the fusion core and a very terran esque addition. i.e. something thats not economical or easy to get early on, and will only ever be seen in late-late games when they have money to waste.
Like cloaked ghosts, thors, bunker upgrades, nukes or any of those other terran units/upgrades that i forget about cus you never see them.

The siege tank drop/pickup-whilst-sieged ability is pretty cool, and was in starbow.
not sure what the motivation to make thors be able to self heal, since its not that hard to take 5 scvs with you to repair. Especially for terran since you have mules to make up for a lack of workers as the game goes on.
In later stages people even just call down mules to repair thors/tanks. Even though thats incredibly wasteful.

I always played furion in DotA, who had a global blink. So im super excited for battlecruisers being turned into an army of furions.


Not sure how effective corrosive bile will actually be at countering force fields. since ff's dont have a delay, are always placed first, and corrosive bile does have a delay and is reactive. Because, the protoss can still split an army with ff's, deal damage while waiting for the delay of corrosive bile. then repeat with a new wall of ff's. and retreat/recall when out of energy. If there wasn't a delay i'd say it'd be really good, but ff's might still be the overwhelming micro winner.

The swarmhost/lurker chaneg is good. im glad their making the lurker the zerg zpace controling unit. Although i didn't mind SH's nearly as much as most people. Lurkers are still probably more interesting. and the way they redesigned the SH's will probably be cool.

Not sure how i feel about costic spray. I didn't think zerg needed an ability like that. but i guess its a cool toy.
The infestor ability seems very nice though, since it makes infesters a much more generally good unit to get, and more guaranteed to be helpful. instead of "crap i missed my fungals. gg"

The Nydus warm invulnerability while spawning sounds scary. since if you cant get a decent army directly ontop of them, it'll almost be guaranteed that a whole zerg army can just pop into your base. but i like it.


The disrupter on its own seems pretty easy to micro against. But combined with the new warp prism it might be really effective. i guess i should get more comfortable with warp prism micro.

The oracles stasis ward seems super good for early on in TvP, because delaying the terrans first move out if you opened oracle can make a hue difference on how much damage you take, which has a ripple effect throughout the game.

I liked the tempest. didn't think it needed a change. but this does seem like it makes them stronger. The carrier also looks like it has a small chance of being a useful unit. but its the carrier, so its probably not gonna break its 4 year streak of being useless : P

Terran
Herc: Seems like a fun unit to use, not sure how easy it will be to use, since youd want it to grapple mutltiple targets of the same type as opposed to a single target. So youd have to target each unit individually, seems impractical, but it may still work out.
Cyclone:Looks like a very fun unit to use. In the current meta it feels kinda useless, because turtling is priority number 1, and this is not really a siege unit, but it looks like it does enough dmg to be a part of the terran ball with marine maurauders and medivacs, so you can stutter step
Siege Drops: This seems crazy op, but you said it worked out in Starbow, so i guess it works. It feels super unforgiving though, if you arent looking at your base for 3 seconds, you could use a pretty large chunk of workers. Plus you can secure freaken op footholds admists enemy bases with tanks and marines. If this is used a lot, it seems like it would affect the way bases are built. You wouldn't want to give enemy siege tanks a solid wall in your own base.
Thor self repairs: Eurh, not much a major change. If you wanted to repair your thors you could have, i suppose this makes it slightly simpler.
Banshee speed upgrade: Doesn't seem like a game changing upgrade, it will probably not be used much IMO. The main thing, is banshees now start with cloak, which makes me believe they will be an essential early terran unit, just for the scout and assured dmg to economy. Poor zergs
Battlecruiser Global Blink: Seems liek a super fun ability to use, and its about time Battlecruisers got some love. Hopefully this will let Bcs see more competitive play, instead of the continious stale marine tanks medivacs play.

i Missed the thing about banshees starting with cloak. Especially in tvt banshee openings are probably gonna be even more common then they already are.

They also made a weird general gameplay change: reduced mineral fields from 1500 to 1000, forcing you to expand at a more rapid pace. i think the main thin this disadvantages is terran bio, because that compisition is limited moreso by minerals, and dont get any advantage from havin access to 3 base or 4 base worth of gas. whereas zerg, protoss, and mech all want that extra gas.
it also motivates hidden bases more, since you really want to supplement the lost income from your mined out bases, but cant necessarily defend an earlier 3rd/4th etc

The Herc has a hilarious usage: use that opening reaper to grapple into the opponents main base, then grapple onto the enemy workers and destroy everything with AoE.

The cyclone actually looks ridiculously OP on the surface. with the range 9 upgrade while being able to shoot they're able to stay out of range of a lot of units. 2 cyclones were able to sinle handedly shut down a protoss, kinda like mass reapers manages to sometimes, but they made it look easier.

i absolutely hate the cyclone, it's the least interesting kind of mechanic possible for the early game

but i love every other change theyre doing so maybe ill get over the cyclone thing enough to try ladder somewhat seriously (1 game per mo.)

I didnt watch the trailer due to the last one having so many spoilers but im sure the campaign will be great, will definitely play it

Archon Mode is basically Team Melee from broodwar, except in team melee you could have more than 2 people controlling the same base
It looks like it could be fun but a lot of the fun that came from team melee was that each person could select a different race, so your starting building would be the main building of the first player's race on the team, so if they pick zerg youd start with a hatchery, but the other players could pick other races and the some of the starting workers would be replaced with the workers from those races, so 3 players could pick all 3 races and have all 3 workers (the supplies were kept separately, so making toss units took pylons and didnt add to your zerg supply, so each team could have 3 200/200 maxed armies, it was crazy
The games would start out as a team effort working on 1 base, but would slowly expand into something of a 3v3 with each player controlling 1 of the races in their own base (with the 4th player acting as micro support for the other 3)
Here it looks like you have to be the same race and since its only 2 person it doesnt seem as fun

Allied Commanders is just custom campaigns that blizzard made for multiple people
Maps like that already exist (though there arent enough of them), but having official ones is good

The automated tournaments are something that should have been added a long time ago, so thats good, hopefully they add in cool portrait rewards for winning tournaments, im more likely to do 1v1 tourney than 1v1 standard ladder

Units

Terran

Herc:
This unit goes against the stutter step micro that makes bio so good
I really dont see this being used that often, it counters banelings and thats really it, banelings are already pretty easily countered by stutter step so i dont see much point in it
I guess its supposed to give bio a unit that fills the hellion role, small aoe for melee units, but i think hellions/hellbats are just better for that

If it can grapple to buildings, to friendly units, and up/down cliffs it could have some use (reaper/herc harass, or grappling to a marine in the back to save a herc similar to stalker blink micro) though that may be too powerful

Cyclone:
This unit is OP to me, its like a really good ground version of phoenix (9 range and it attacks both air and ground too wtf) and plays into terran stutter step micro
It doesnt require any extra micro to work either so you can just throw it in to an MMM ball and make it wreck even more
It also gives terran a hard counter to lurker (previously it was just siege tanks, but that was more of an incidental counter really)
Moving and attacking is a really bad mechanic in terms of being fun (its bad on phoenix too but its the only thing from preventing the phoenix from being unplayable) so i dislike it

Siege Tank Drop:
I think this is OP, its like a better version of hellbat drop (better than the old version, before it was nerfed, when you could drop 4 from a medivac) it has more dmg output then the old hellbat drop, but at a slower rate, all you really need is 5 medivacs with tanks to drop in range of a mineral line and you wipe it out easy, its more powerful than HT storm warpin back when HT still had the energy upgrade and could storm once right after warping in
If the 4 hellbat drop or HT storm warpin wasnt nerfed id say this is ok (a bit redundant with 4 hellbat drop) but because those things were nerfed (rightly so) i dont think this is a good idea
It works in starbow because stuff is just more durable in general there, the damage tanks do there isnt as devastating as the damage they do in normal sc2

Banshee Changes:
Bacon said they get cloak by default now, i havent seen anywhere that it says that, but if its true thats a terrible change, they are straight up better at harassing than DT if they dont need to upgrade cloak, sure DT is cloaked forever without energy, but you rarely need them to be cloaked for more than a few mins at a time at most which banshees do fine at (unless you are doing something super cheesy)
The speed upgrade from fusion core also buffs them to be better than DT at harass, but since its a high tier upgrade i dont have an issue with it

Thor changes:
I feel like they made the thor with the idea of people bringing SCVs into battle with them to repair them, but the players thought that was too much hassle (and wasteful of supply on scvs that arent mining, plus the 50 minerals each that will probably all die by the end of the battle) and thors themselves not really that great to dedicate scvs too like that so blizz just gave up and added a self healing ability to the thor
Im fine with it since im 1 of those players that thinks using scvs (or even mules) to repair thors during battle is too annoying/wasteful to do, i dont think we will see a rise in the use of thors because of it though

Battlecruiser changes:
Warping anywhere without vision is probably OP, starbow gave the BC the ability to warp, like a longer range blink, it wasnt map wide but it made BC way better
I think a map wide version of that would be crazy, me and ach played a game today where 2 Ts countered our standard T counter with MMM and BC (1 of them made standard MMM with some vikings (which is what we counter since all T does normally is that) but the other made pure BC it was surprisingly effective the only reason we pulled out ahead was due to econ, even with our large econ lead we still struggled against it, if BCs had map wide teleport in that game we wouldve lost
The MMM ball with viking support is really hard to deal with as P, theres only 1 way to deal with it really, and even just a few BCs mixed in with MMM can counter that counter, its kindve a good thing that people think BC sucks and never make it, with map wide teleport people might start making BC and will realize they actually can beat P in the late game
Though i do think overall (not just looking at the TvP matchup with specific unit compositions) that BC did need something like this, i think starbows warp ability did it better than this change though

Overall thoughts:
I hate the terran changes


Zerg:

Ravager:
The ability to break shields in the early-ish game is good, i like the idea of shield vs bile micro battles where toss frantically tries to keep shields up and zerg keeps knocking it down, with units that break shields you cant have something like that
As long as the energy of them is exactly the same as the energy on sentry it should be great
Shields should win out eventually since they are instant but the micro battle should be fun
In some ways i think this is worse for Z than it is for P, Z needs to dedicate more APM to macro than P does, so the extra micro required to keep shields up isnt really an issue for P, where as it will be for Z trying to tear them down
I think the main and most common use will be for destroying shields at ramps between the Zs main and his natural, 1 shield at a ramp can wreck a natural if the Z pulled his army into his base for w/e reason (or if P warps into the main and the army is outside the ramp stopping it from coming in), Z really needed something in the early-mid game to deal with that so i think its a good addition
Using it to damage air units seems highly specific and impractical, i guess if you can catch a lot of muta bunched up with fungal followed by bile until they all die it would be amazing, but other than that i dont see that being a combo people use often

Lurker:
FINALLY, took like 5 years but its finally in sc2
Best addition imo, proper ground AOE something zerg has needed forever, now hopefully T will stop doing nothing but mass rine/mine against Z and i would actually find Z fun to play as again (even if they do mass rine/mine lurker even more fun)
They seem exactly the way they were in bw (i thought theyed make it weaker) so it should be great

Corrupter changes:
This change looks good, muta's do crappy dmg to buildings, zerg has no mid game air unit that can deal good damage to buildings so this fills an empty role (infact its similar the old verison of voidray, but much less mobile and lower initial dmg output), more importantly this gives the corrupter something to do once theres no air targets for it during a battle (before you get brood tech, or if you just want to make sure you keep corrupter around for any more potential air they might have)

Infestor changes:
This looks OP, this + corruption can deal ridiculous amounts of damage, they said flat damage buff, corruption works based on % so the extra damage from both of these should chew through archons/collusus/tanks/thors/ultras/broodlords any big unit since corruption is a single target thing
Even without that combo it looks too powerful
Imagine it with the ling attack speed upgrade, mass lings late game would be insane

Swarmhost changes:
I hate current swarmhosts, fighting against them is incredibly frustrating, even when you win legitimately (legit meaning that they controlled them properly and protected them)
And using them is just boring to do
This change seems to fix that, he specifically said mass swarmhosts arent viable because the spawn time is so low, but since they are stronger the slower spawn time shouldnt matter
So i dont have faith that this will fix the problem but i hope it does

Nydus worm changes
Nydus needed something, it is a bit weak, but this isnt anything near what should be changed, it forces the enemy to pull most of if not all of their army (depending on what stage of the game it is) to the worm to kill stuff as it comes out, which leaves the front or an expansion vulnerable to a real attack
But thats all it does, since emerging units come out so slow i dont think this will make nydus drop any better, just will act as a diversion that cant be ignored to create an opening at the front or at an expansion, which the worm already kindve does
Really its just more annoying for the player playing against the Z using nydus
The only thing it has going for it is the army of nydus worms thing in super late game situations, which seems like it could be OP if you put a bunch of them everywhere at once since they cant deal with it in every location and you can send your army to whichever location is the least defended instantly, still just annoying to the other player though

Overall thoughts:
I like them, luker is best unit addition imo, hopefully swarmhost change pulls through, and while i dont like the nydus change they at least acknowledged that nydus needs a change so maybe they will make it a better change before release or in a patch at some point

Protoss

Disruptor:
I like the idea of this unit, but dont like its implementation
The thing i dont like is "after a short duration" does that mean its always the same timing after it goes invulnerable, cause that sucks
It should go invulnerable for a duration, and you should be able to trigger the splash ability at any point after that
With the way it is now, if you cant trigger the splash manually its so easy to avoid like ach said so its almost worthless
I dont think the new warp prism mechanics will help either, unless you can transport it while its in its invul state and it saves the timer thats left until you unload it, basically put it in its invulnerable state, and when its about to detonate pick it up with prism, then take it somewhere and it detonates right as it unloads (its slightly less OP and requires way more prep than siege tank drops so since thats a thing this tactic had better be possible)

Immortal changes:
Damnit, a toggle-able anti air mode that deactivates the hardened shield and disables its ground attack would be so much better than this
This change really adds nothing, just adds micro to something that doesnt need micro, i think it makes immortals weaker overall
Adding micro to stuff that doesnt need micro isnt a good way to add more micro to the game, its just lazy game design

Warp prism changes:
I really like this change, i still think prism should move faster but picking stuff up from a distance makes up for the slow speed a bit, being able to drop at a distance along with pick up would be ideal but this is good enough

Oracle changes:
I like that the 2 are combined, but does oracle still act like a detector when using this ability, or are the only things detected the things that are hit by the ability
If it only detects things that you hit then i still think its good, but it really should still act as a detector during that time because i have a feeling there will be games where you hit a group of cloaked units, run out of energy, then another group of cloaked units come in
The stasis trap is the best ability added in the expansion imo, lets you set traps around the map to delay timing pushes, if it has the same vision as a unit its a good way to get map vision in mid game without spending 100s of minerals on pylons
I actually like it more than maelstrom from bw, it has more or less the same function but can be set up in advanced and has more utility
Also gives oracle something to do after they stop your initial harass with it and defend against future harass from it so you might make more than the 3 (at most) you would normally make

Tempest changes
The faster movement speed is great, but now that it cant attack air theres not really a BC counter, voidrays arent bad at it but tempests are way better
I guess you can still use the ability on BC thought its not the same at all, as far as i can tell that ability will kill w/e its used on no matter what which might be OP, even if its really slow sentencing a unit to die is ridiculously strong, there are many games were players managed to save important units after an even engagement, but this ability means your enemy cant save anything so if you use it on broodlords ultras,  other tempests, or thors (i wonder if thor heal can out heal the DOT) its potentially huge, you could even swoop in and use it on units (now that its faster) to force that unit to either die or attack you
I like it, but think it could be OP

Carrier change:
This change makes a lot of sense, i never really thought about it but the interceptors shouldnt need to stay close to the carrier all the times, now that they added this i want the ability to control the interceptors completely, each 1 as a separate unit, i mean you can control locusts which are free from swarmhosts yet not these things that cost minerals so why not
I dont think this change is enough to make carriers better, now if you could manually control interceptors as individual units like i was saying, yeah it would be great but the change as it is isnt enough to make it better
Its a step in the right direction though

Overall thoughts:
Good changes but i was expecting more since this is toss's expansion, 1 new unit, really
Terran got more new units, even zerg got more new units (even if 1 is an old 1 being added back in, but i dont see the reaver so lurker counts as "new"), so disappointing



I think its funny that a lot of these changes are things starbow changed first, they should just add starbow's gamerules to the matchmaking and have starbow rankings like how wol hots and lotv all have separate rankings

Stasis ward looks like a really cool idea. I'm not sure how the tempest change is going to work out, as the tempest was Protoss' almost only counter to the brood lord.

So stoked that the lurker is making an appearance.

I read on the forums that Blizzard is hoping to make the game more focused on mobility. They're also nerfing mineral patches from 1500 to 1000 and gas from 2500 to 1700, to make people expand more. I don't really like this change, but it could work.

I can't actually find the thread, I think it was linked from the /r/starcraft subreddit.

Quote :

Allied Commanders is just custom campaigns that blizzard made for multiple people
Maps like that already exist (though there arent enough of them), but having official ones is good

anyone feel like playing through one of these?

pat wrote:

I didnt watch the trailer due to the last one having so many spoilers but im sure the campaign will be great, will definitely play it

what why
WoL was fun but it ended up too plain and didnt have any of the defining moments that made sc1 great, and HotS was almost as fun but had a terrible story
the ironic part is im saying this having played both campaigns at 2-3 times. im not saying its impossible the 3rd will be great, but between having to push forward with a shit protagonist and the same dumbass heading the project im

joe wrote:

I read on the forums that Blizzard is hoping to make the game more focused on mobility. They're also nerfing mineral patches from 1500 to 1000 and gas from 2500 to 1700, to make people expand more. I don't really like this change, but it could work.

why dont you like it?
i think it could be fun. players will be forced to be more mobile, unit value will increase and map control/vision will be more important. slashing off 33% right off the bat seems big to me
the main thing ill complain about is how theres a huge divide between the races for compensating for this. i imagine it will straight up suck for toss. zerg will be okay, although the general playstyle will probably be more aggressive than it is now. terran has wet dreams about this change

Seren wrote:

what why
WoL was fun but it ended up too plain and didnt have any of the defining moments that made sc1 great, and HotS was almost as fun but had a terrible story
the ironic part is im saying this having played both campaigns at 2-3 times. im not saying its impossible the 3rd will be great, but between having to push forward with a shit protagonist and the same dumbass heading the project im

Man i couldn't agree more. The campaign gameplay for sc2 was really really fun, but i feel like they messed up the characters and therefore, the story. Sc1 characters felt more complex and less stereotypical. And jesus did HOTS have a terrible story, there were so many cringy moments. Although, i gatta say the sc1 campaign gameplay did not age well at all. Every mission restarting you with a command center and 5 workers, was so god damn tedious.

MrJoe223 wrote:

I read on the forums that Blizzard is hoping to make the game more focused on mobility. They're also nerfing mineral patches from 1500 to 1000 and gas from 2500 to 1700, to make people expand more. I don't really like this change, but it could work.

I can't actually find the thread, I think it was linked from the /r/starcraft subreddit.

I doubt this change will stick if it even exists right now, i read some other stuff like you start with 12 workers instead of 6 and some crazy stuff like youll need 6 bases by 15mins and that mineral saturation is 12 workers instead of 16
I doubt any of it is true, changing something as core as the economy at this point would just be weird
It would be a very different game if any of that was true

This is a summary ive what ive seen people saying:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/15140654347
http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/2llldh/new_units_discussion_thread_legacy_of_the_void/

The important part is:

Quote :

Bases will now mine at maximum efficiency with 12 workers instead of 16 now
Starting workers: 12 (you basically make a depot/pylon/ovie in the first few seconds as it stands right now)
Minerals per patch: It was like 1500 before now it's 1000

Serenity09 wrote:

WoL was fun but it ended up too plain and didnt have any of the defining moments that made sc1 great, and HotS was almost as fun but had a terrible story
the ironic part is im saying this having played both campaigns at 2-3 times. im not saying its impossible the 3rd will be great, but between having to push forward with a shit protagonist and the same dumbass heading the project im

The gameplay is great, story no where near as good as bw, but i never expected it to be, what there is isnt that bad

Serenity09 wrote:

i think it could be fun. players will be forced to be more mobile, unit value will increase and map control/vision will be more important. slashing off 33% right off the bat seems big to me
the main thing ill complain about is how theres a huge divide between the races for compensating for this. i imagine it will straight up suck for toss. zerg will be okay, although the general playstyle will probably be more aggressive than it is now. terran has wet dreams about this change

If all the economy changes were true i think it would be bad

Rush would be ridiculous, zerg could pump out so many lings without even having to make workers if they wanted to
Terran can pump marines out too easily and just overwhelm the enemy (and be about as zergy as zerg is)
Toss probably about the same as they are now, proxy zealots would be way more aggressive though
If no one rushes the game would hit mid game almost instantly and stay there for a very long time, 90% of the game would be mid game
Super late games would never happen as the map would run out of minerals
Terran could realistically use nothing but mules to burn through an expansions minerals, zerg would burn through expansions so fast theyed spend more time expanding then doing anything else unless they rush, toss would burn through them pretty fast too and would have difficulty affording mineral heavy tech without having at least 4 bases running at once

These changes feel unbalanced, favoring terran, since they have temporary mineral collectors that can be summoned anywhere and the ability to move their CC to start mining another base. both of which are way more useful with a quick economy like this where as zerg and toss dont have anything to compete with that