Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void

[Arce]

The much anticipated 3rd and final expansion of Starcraft 2 is said to release this year. Already, a large selection of ladder players (dia+) were granted access to the LotV beta, as well as anybody who pre-ordered the game.

I've been an active SC2 player since its inception in 2010--nearly 5 years. I used to be very competitive; I achieved master league on several accounts as zerg, and later swapped to random. I can recall when the first expansion, Heart of the Swarm, hit the shelves. At the time, the meta of Wings of Liberty was in a very evolved place; most early timings had been realized and accounted for, the map pool served as a balancing mechanic, and games often extended beyond the 16:30 mark with maxed out armies/remaxes. The big changes include: reaper/mutalisk life regeneration, addition of Oracle, Mothershipcore, Tempest, Swarmhost, Viper, Widow Mine, hellbat, medivac boost...and even some unwelcome changes, like the nurfed infestor/infested terran, removal of Mothership's Vortex/archon toilet, and removal of pre-game builder splits. The idea was to change the utility of some units, like the hydra with the new speed upgrade or medivacs with boost...Yet with all these changes, when the Beta became available to playtest, very little seemed to actually change. Standardized WoL build orders still had to be maintained, and use of "new units" was a great risk in the early meta. Players wanting to "just test the new units" fell flat on their faces against established builds, and a new meta took months to evolve. Eventually players were forced to adapt to the new unit compositions, but there was a long period of time when they were all left to the very late game, after WoL strategies had already been deployed and failed. Now that those changes have had two years to settle, it's very hard to imagine a time when you didn't have to worry about widow mine drops, oracle harass, and hellbat timings. The beginning of the end for WoL timing attacks occurred when people began to lose early commitments to timewarp/overcharge, defensive widow mines, and even 12 swarmhost rushes/mass queen openers. Macro styles eventually became everything.

Before playing the Legacy beta, I was afraid of the game still being "too familiar" with not enough changes, just as I had felt during the early HoTS days. It was depressing to have waited years for the addition of new units, which seemed only to matter slightly in the late-game. But is this the fate of Legacy of the Void? Can it be expected that old metas will prevail, and that the new units will change little of the established builds?

Blizzard took one very drastic step to assure this is not the case. If you haven't yet played the Legacy of the Void beta or are unaware, this may come as some surprise. The number of starting workers has doubled from 6 to 12 in LoTV. The consequences of this change are pretty drastic. Basically, no build orders from WoL or HoTS can exist, and neither can the timings, or even strategies. A secondary change that also makes a large difference (but isn't quite as drastic) is the removal of two mineral patches from each base. So the concepts of "one base" or "two base" play is very different; the player necessarily has more incentive to prioritize expansions to new resource locations. No longer can a player make their way to 3-base, and fund remax after remax. Your main will simply drain too quickly, leaving your production in an unsustainable state.

Not only have they altered the pace of the game and upset existing metas, but they have added and changed units to become more micro intensive. For a full listing of the changes, you'd want to check the official release notes from blizzard...but to summarize, here are most of them:

Terran:
Reaper "detonation" - "C-Click" to throw a projectile that sits for 1/2 a second, then does 25 AoE damage and scatters units in a radial area. Great for builder line harass, insignificant lategame.
Cyclone: Build at factory, with techlab (I think)--can attack while it moves, great en mass
Liberator: Build at starport, can be reactored - Does air AOE, and has 'seige mode' mechanic (which requires an armory) allowing it to do heavy damage to single ground units
Seige-Pickup - Medivacs and pickup tanks while in seige mode (which occupied full cargo space). Great for early harass or maximizing midgame damage output

Protoss:
Adepts - "F-Click" floa ability, allows it to cast a high movement 'shadow' of itself, and teleport to said shadows location at the end of cooldown. They are relatively high hp units with medium damage ranged attack
Disruptor - Ground mech unit, made at robo. Goes invincible for a short period with increased movement, then "explodes" with AOE damage
Immortal change: Now requires manual activation to use shield ability, but can be used on all attacks instead of just >10dps

Zerg:
Lurker: Requires Lurker Den (hydralisk den upgrade) and is the result of a morphed hydralisk. Does AOE "line" damage from spikes, great against low tier units
Ravanger: requires roach warren, and is a result of a morphed roach. Can cast an air shot that does small AOE damage to ground/air targets
Overlord Pickup: Now each overlord can be individually upgraded for 25/25
Corruptor "corruption" - Now does stacked damage to buildings, much like old voidrays

Does anybody else here play or watch Starcraft 2? Any LoTV beta participants? Theory Crafting?

One of my most followed websites is http://sc2casts.com/ for games with commentary

[Arce]

So the new patch is quite interesting and fun to play.

They've added Automated Tournaments. There are two formats: group stage (6 round), and single elimination (3 round). I've already found myself in a Grandmaster tourney (which I failed at pretty hard) and won a diamond one. They are pretty cool.

In addition to these, they've really altered the gameplay again. They took out each race's mechanical macro abilities. For Terran, this means that they have removed mules. For Protoss there is no Chrono, and for Zerg queens spawn half as much larvae, but are on auto-inject (so no more micro-ed injections).This does make it a little more difficult to build up your economies, but ultimately provides for more balanced micro/macro play as it gives you more room and time to deploy micro intensive strategies

Are there any players who haven't gotten into Starcraft 2 because they were waiting for the final expansion? Any old veterans who haven't upgraded yet? Or are there some people right here with me?

[Arce]

They are contemplating putting back in the macro mechanics, in a nurfed way. Autocast mule drop that carriers less minerals/doesn't use energy, chrono boost on cooldown that does less, and 1 more larvae per inject for zerg...

We'll see what changes actually make it to testing.

[eatcomics]

Still play Arce? I've been putting in some time myself. My goal is to get up to diamond.

[RichardM]

Still play Arce? I've been losing a lot of weight on these amazing pills and putting in some time myself. My goal is to get up to diamond.

I started playing SC2 again after it went free to play. I've had all the expansions already but that kind of hyped me up again. I still play every once in a while so if you guys are too, maybe we can spar. I'm a platinum player.