Blizzard’s Heart of The Swarm Multiplayer Preview

June 14th, 2012 by Mitchell Lockey

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have probably heard about Blizzard’s two HoTS Multiplayer VODs. Casted by Day[9] and Rob Simpson, the two go through a full ZvT and ZvP with most of the new units. There are definitely a lot of new tactics and strategies avaliable, with Zerg even getting what appears to be a new late-game unit composition.

One thing to keep in mind is that the balance team has decided to start the units off really strong, and then scale them back as need be as opposed to starting weak and scaling up. This means the damage, ranges, or even abilities could be changed or removed. It’s still in the testing phase so anything seen in the video might not be there or might be changed once HoTS finally drops.

Here are a few of the high-lights from the videos:

Hydras: These things are fast. It’s kind of ridiculous now. Once you hit Hive Techyou can research a movement speed buff that makes them just as fast off creep as they are when they are on it. They are now really easily micro-able, reminiscent of how they were in Brood War. They look really powerful, doing hit an runs with their amazing DPS and escaping easily when the enemy arrives. Looks awesome.

Vipers: The new Zerg caster unit. Abduct looks awesome, able to pull key units of your opponent into the jaws of your swarmy army and take them out. It works especially well with Lings and the new faster Hydras, preventing the units from retreating back to their friends. The Blinding Cloud ability is only usable against biological units, but it’s going to help a lot when Terran starts massing up Marine balls.

Swarm Host: This is the new Zerg siege unit. It’s an interesting take on the role, as this thing does slow sustained damage by spawning small, free ranged units rather than doing bursty damage like the Siege Tank or Colossus. If you can get enough of them together, combined with spines they seem like they’ll be able to lock down positions really well.

Widow Mine: This thing looks a little ridiculous right now. It can one-shot queens, they do AoE damage, and they are only 75min 25gas. Luckily there is a 10 second or so delay before the mines actually explode, so microing your army to make the mines less cost efficient shouldn’t be too hard. Still, if you aren’t careful you can lose valuable units like Queens or Infestors to a cheap factor unit. You can also build them 2 at a time with a Reactor.

Oracle: Protoss’s new economy harassing unit. It’ll be interesting to see if they change this one. Right now they can move into range of mineral patches, and use spell to lock them down with a shield, forcing the opponent to break them down before the mineral patches can be used again. In the ZvP video, spines were used to that the player didn’t have to manually tell his units to break the shields. It looks a bit powerful right now if you aren’t paying attention. It can also cloak your units, but it has to stay stationary to work.

Tempest: It’s a flying 22 range siege unit. And it flies. \ o.O/

Over all it looks pretty awesome. More units means more options. Excited to see what changes and what stays the same!

ZvT VoD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv-i8s0ipII&feature=channel&list=UL

ZvP VoD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gcs52bErU4&feature=relmfu