Purify isn't particularly powerful. You'd practically just 2 have photon cannons with more health, and the extra range is partially negated by the fact that Nexi take up a fuckton of space, which also means that if they get attacked in a choke point, your units cant defend them (unlike photon cannons) because they cant get past them either. Nexi have 5x5 footprints, most ranged units have a range of 4-6, meaning stalkers could only hit melee units attacking the nexus if they were behind it.
The widow mine was supposed to be a landmine, but destroying itself made it not that useful. What they did know was practically turn the Widow Mine into a Widow Mine Dispenser (I think they should actually rename the unit and ability to make it look more like something that creates widow mines instead of being a widow mine itself). The only thing that changed about the widow mine is that it DOESNT destroy itself anymore, meaning this is a huge buff. Yes, its a bit strange, but as I said before, it's a beta, the only time Blizzard can experiment with strange stuff. If it sounds weird, they're probably gonna change some model art and names to fit the new widow mine better.
I don't see why everyone hates on absolutely everything blizzard is doing right now, when its fairly obvious that all they're doing is trying out new mechanics for units. It's the early beta, blizzard is testing out to see if new designs for units are working well, and people just go "Yea, I'm not buying the game cause I don't like this one experimental change"
Actually, Tainted, it's an eSport first. WC3 was mainly a regular game, SC2 is mainly an eSport. While they try to balance the game around all levels of play, the main focus is the pro level. Also, wc3 didn't succeed as an esport because of what makes it different from sc2 - Heroes. There's a good article about it somewhere, but I read it 2 years ago and can't remember where. The main point was that in sc:bw and sc2 you easily knew wtf was going without knowing the game - Huge guy firing lazorz? Lightning storms? Tanks with big turrets and explosions? Huge dude with massive cannons? A fucking huge swarm of super fast insects? Its obvious that you dont want those in your face. Ive watched the SCI on my TV once while my dad was working in the same room. He didnt know a thing about the game, yet he found it interesting and could easily tell what was going on. In WC3 it was all about micro, heroes and abilities. Its kind of like watching LoL when you don't know the game - Lots of special effects, health bars dropping, and you have no idea who is doing what and what all does special effects stand for. Its less crazy in WC3, but more importantly, as someone who doesnt know the game, you don't know who's is doing well - Both in wc3 and LoL. There's items and levels, and no real visual indication of the heroes strength. You can't tell the difference between a level 1 and level 10 blademaster, or between a bad and a fed kog'maw. Unless you know exactly what is going on, you have no idea just how powerful (or powerless) a player is. In SC, if one guy has a big army with a decent amount of big dudes while the other guy has a medium sized army of regular sized dudes, its fairly obvious who is winning. You can easily tell that that big chunk of roaches will melt to that tank line or the colossi before they manage to break through the wall of marines/stalkers.
@SoulFilcher: Go
I mean if the pro-games TvZ will last more than 20 minutes it's kind of obvious that zerg will always win since they have so many free units spawner(SW,BL and infestor).
Hasn't that always been the case with zerg? Terrans are really good early and mid game, while zerg mainly just try to survive while expanding as much as possible, because their entire macro system just makes it really easy to wear down the opponent once you have enough hatcheries and money. That's pretty much the core concept behind the zerg - They're called the swarm for a reason, which is why I think that the Swarm Host is just a thematically perfect edition to the race, both lore and gameplay wise.
Locusts do need a nerf right now, they do more DPS than hydras atm, but that's a numbers thing, which is what the damn beta is for. Same goes for widow mines - Just because they are weak right now does not mean they are useless. The point of the beta is to balance the game before release, which means numbers will be adjusted, a lot. Same goes for battle hellion and its bio unit filter - I highly doubt it will stay bio, it was probably just a quick way to test its compatibility with medivacs, and they'd probably just replace the bio unit filter with a validator in the medivac ability so that the BH can be healed without being bio (Or they'd just scrap the idea.)
I don't see why people are complaining about blizzard trying out stuff - Maybe they added the bio unit filter to see how firebats would do in the game? Who knows, they might scrap the BH next patch and just add the firebat instead if they like the results of the bio-BH. Its a beta, they are testing the game to see what they can do.
Imo making low tech units useless late game is an a lot worse design decision than making them useful via upgrades mid and late game.
But I agree, the capital ships are too weak. The rest of the late game units are fine imo though. Its just the BC and Carrier... They just dont seem worth it. It takes too long to mass them properly, and before you have them massed they aren't that useful.
The expansion is not supposed to completely change the metagame. The only way they could do that is by completely removing the main old units (Zealots, stalkers, sentries, marines, tanks, vikings, roaches, hydras, zerglings, mutas) or by adding even more simple units like those (Swarm Hosts and Battle Hellions, for example)
Keep in mind that they can't add many units because they have another expansion planned, which if it would add just as many units would just have too much.
Battle Hellions were given the bio modifier to see how they would work together with medivacs and bio. The modifier might be removed later and turned into a validator for the heal ability or something like that, or it might be removed completely if blizzard doesn't like the result. I'm not sure whether you've noticed, but they're using the beta to experiment. Right now they're changing the new units to see how they can make those useful, and then they'll take a look at the old units.
The reason they have a seperate button is because they need an upgrade to transform, but can be built without that upgrade (Meaning they will be locked in that form until you research it, which means the upgrade isn't mandatory if you're only going to use one form)
Medics aren't in melee game because stimpack timing attacks were already a problem, and medics were a lot better than medivacs in the campaign. Early healing doesn't really sound that good for me for terran, who are already pretty powerful early if they decide to push with infantry. If they added medics early on, they'd have to nerf marines and marauders. Also, this is not BW, there is no reason that they should do anything like BW. It's a different game. BW was also a lot harder to play due to its limitations (Crappy pathing, smaller control groups, single building selection, and a lot more stuff that pissed me off when I tried it and am happy is gone), so units could be balanced differently - And again, it was a different game. Hydras are still pretty damn powerful, and they don't cost that much (Cheaper than a stalker, tiny bit more expensive than a marauder)
The multiplayer is about balance, the single player is where they add the "cool" stuff that isn't balanced.
Blizzard Allstars will be part of the starter edition if I remember right, it was said on blizzcon I believe which means there is no real source to link to. Just checked my old notes for the mapcraft I and Zelda made to cover blizzcons:
Pricing
They want to allow it to be played free, possibly in starter addition
BUT they would like to “give owners of WoL and HotS bonus content”
Hint....available in WoL?
Other hint: It’s not a “premium map”
Still must be determined, but it doesn’t look like you will have to pay any extra
Beta Testing
Blizzard DOTA will have a beta in a few months
And yea, they will be using little to no WoL assets - I expect they'll still use the regular melee assets obviously, maybe even some of the campaign units like medics, but they won't be reusing doodads and tilesets, which means different critters as well probably, and seeing as HotS includes evolution stuff and we found a list of "primal" zerg or something like that, I think we can expect a lot of neutral creatures, and with them missile, buff and impact models.
Keep in mind that WC3 models were a lot easier to make than models nowadays due to way lower quality, and that they used regular unit models for cinematics instead of high poly models with animations specific to each cutscene, and that there is a lot more side dialog as well. The WC3 campaigns also required a lot less extra features (You practically just played regular wc3 matches with different victory conditions, and there was nothing in between missions, while in SC2 you've got all the unit evolutions and between mission UIs, Kerrigans abilities, etc.), AND the data editor is far more complex for sc2 than wc3, so I think it is reasonable that they are taking this long with it. Remember that the Arcade is technically seen a HotS feature, so even though they released it earlier, it still took up development time from HotS. It included graphic engine updates as well. (Per player lighting and lighting regions, ragdoll animations, which btw require new models for the old units, so even more development time is needed)
RoC to TFT was a decent jump in features and so on, but most of them were just editor features afaik (Correct me if I'm wrong - I didn't own the games back then), and they had lower quality and complexity limitations than sc2 does. Yea, there were a lot of new models, but those were easier to make AND we've probably only seen less than a quarter of the models that are coming with HotS anyway.
As for people not buying the game... I don't really get their arguments. I see it mostly from terrans. They got two new units, what do they want? The units are great imo, and if their argument is "they're useless", they are forgetting that this is the third week of beta. Blizzard is throwing around crazy balance changes simply so that they can find something that makes them more useful faster. The numbers will work in the end, so I don't see what they are complaining about. Also, they should remember that blizzard can't add too much new stuff because they have another expansion planned and didn't cut any units for this one (which they actually planned to do), so if they added as much multiplayer stuff as in wc3->TFT, they'd just have way too much stuff by LotV
EDIT: Just want to point out that terran had the most offensive units to begin with:
Terran: 14 (Ground vikings and medivacs counted, MULEs and auto turrets aren't)
Protoss: 11 (Obs and Warp Prism not counted, and even if, still less than terran)
Zerg: 9.5 (Queens count as a half as their speed makes it really hard for them to be used offensively. Not counting broodlings and overseer obviously)
in HotS:
Terran: 16
Protoss: 14
Zerg: 11.5 (Locusts not counted)
There was a thread on the spoiler button about 2 years ago, but unforunately there was a security issue with the "markdown" markup type which caused it to be temporarily removed, and then added back in a very restricted way, which I believe makes it impossible to use those spoiler buttons for regular users now - I have to use RawHTML if I want to use them (Only available to moderators)
I wouldn't say the late game is air focused, but that the new stuff is. Stargate play is just becoming more viable as a main tech choice, but you can still just go robo for the deathball. Honestily, if they had added new units to either the gateway or robotics facility, the stargate would be used even less than it is now. Same thing with Zerg - They added the Viper and the Hydra speed upgrade to the Hive, which encourages earlier hive tech. As for terran... Well, I think bio is overused, so they just shouldn't add units to the rax, but giving another one to the starport instead of factory would probably be nice (that way each race gets at least one new air unit. But then again, terran already has 5 air units to begin with)
Seeing as the arcade isn't online and I want my map to stay WoL compatible, I don't use the HotS editor. I think Renee is most likely to find changes in it if anyone is.
This unit has a new missile ability called Unstable Payload.
Unstable Payload is an auto-cast ability that initiates once the Widow Mine is burrowed. It cannot be turned off unless the unit is unburrowed.
This ability launches a missile at a target within 5 range, then starts to rearm another missile.
Unstable Payload does 160 damage to a single target and 40 splash damage.
The missile auto-acquires cloaked units.
The missile auto-acquires temporary units like Hallucinations, Infested Terrans, and Locusts.
It takes 40 seconds to rearm the missile. The cost is free for now.The build time of this unit has increased to 40 seconds.
Protoss
Oracle
The Phase Shield ability has been removed
This unit has a new ability called Void Siphon.
The Oracle channels a beam at an enemy structure that deals 3 damage and harvests 3 minerals every second until canceled. (Note: This ability will not cause the opposing player to lose minerals.)
The range is 7.
The damage/harvest effect ticks when you cast the ability and every sequential second following. Void Siphon costs 50 energy to cast.
Mothership Core
This unit’s Purify ability has changed.
When a player casts Purify on their Nexus, it grants the Nexus the ability to attack, no longer requiring the Core to attach itself. The Nexus weapon has a range of 13 and a damage of 20.
Purify now lasts for 60 seconds and still costs 100 energy.
The scale of this unit has been lowered to 0.8.
This unit has had its shield/health lowered to 60/130.
This unit now costs 2 supply.
Purify can now only be cast on your Nexus at max 10 range.
Once cast, the mothership core will attach itself to the Nexus, transforming into a weapon with range 10.
While attached to the Nexus, the mothership core will be unable to cast abilities and regenerate energy.
The damage of Purify has been lowered to 20 and can attack both air and ground units.
Purify will last until cancelled.
Recall has been changed to the following:
Recall is now a simple cast-and-click ability on a player’s Nexus.
Once cast, the mothership core and every friendly unit within a 7-range radius to the core will be recalled to the Nexus.
A new ranged weapon called Repulsor Cannon has been added to the mothership core while in its mobile state.
Repulsor Cannon deals 8 damage to ground units with an attack speed of 0.85.
The cost of the mothership core has increased from 50/50 to 100/100.
Movement speed has increased from 0.47 to 1.875.
Oracle
Health has increased from 20/80 to 60/100.
Speed has decreased from 3.75 to 3.375.The duration of Entomb has increased from 30 to 45.
Terran
Widow Mine
The duration of Activate Mine has been decreased to 2 sec.
Auto-cast can now be turned off in both activated and deactivated modes.
Zerg
Swarm Host
/
>Locust attack range has increased from 2 to 3.Locust damage has been reduced from 14 to 12.
Bug Fixes
Battle hellions can no longer load into Bunkers.The splash damage from widow mines will no longer hit friendly activated widow mines.
The Stargate Command Card now properly includes a Set Rally Point button.Swarm hosts now have proper collision while burrowed.
If you would like to read David Kim's thoughts on these changes, you can find them here.
The cost of Purify is now 100.The duration of Purify has been lowered to 25 seconds.
The damage of Purify has been increased from 25 to 45.
Oracle
Entomb’s duration has increased to 30 seconds.
The health of Entombed nodes has increased from 100 to 130.The duration of Revelation has increased from 30 to 45 seconds.
We fixed a bug where the oracle was not correctly classified as a Psionic unit.
Terran
Battle Hellion
While in Battle mode, the hellion is now classified as a Biological unit.
Widow Mine
Splash damage has increased from 35 to 60.
Zerg
Zerg
We fixed a bug where the viper was not correctly classified as a Psionic unit.
The locust’s attack range has decreased from 3 to 2.
Protoss
Oracle
We have removed the oracle’s Preordain ability.
We have added a new area of effect ability for the oracle called Phase Shield.
Targeted friendly units are shielded from harmful effects for 5 seconds.
Fungal Growth, Corruption, Contaminate, Graviton Beam, Concussive Shells, Abduct, Revelation, Vortex, and 250mm Strike Cannons – Phase Shield removes the effect and prevents units from being affected.EMP – Phase Shield removes the anti-cloaking effect but not the damage dealt.
Neural Parasite
Phase Shield will not remove this effect but it will prevent units from being affected.
The energy upgrade has been removed.
Entomb’s duration has been reduced to 25 sec, but the health per Entomb has increased to 100.
The cost per unit has changed from 150/200 to 150/150.
Tempest
The attack range has been reduced from 22 to 15.
The damage has changed from 30 to 30 + 20 to massive.
The ranged upgrade has been removed.
Mothership Core / Mothership
Recall will now cost 100 energy.
The mothership core will now start with 50 energy and when upgraded, energy will be set back to 50.
The range of Purifier Beam has been increased from 7 to 10.
Carrier
This unit has returned to the game.
Terran
Warhound
This unit has been removed from the game.
Reaper
We have added a new passive ability called Combat Awareness. This allows reapers to see up cliffs.
Hellion
Battle hellions can now be built from the Factory. It has an Armory requirement.
There is a new upgrade at the Armory that will allow transformation between Battle Mode and Normal Mode.
Widow Mine
We have removed the Armory requirement.
Bug Fixes
General
The following options now default to off:
Simple Command Card
Show Current Order Waypoint
Select Larva Clusters
Team Colored Life Status Bars.
The following option now defaults to on:
Allow Selecting Uncontrollable Units.
An error is no longer generated when attempting to burrow previously un-burrowed units with other units that are already burrowed.
The Select Army button now defaults to the F2 hotkey.
Queens and mothership cores are no longer selected when the Select Army button is used.
Tempest and Oracle now have proper selection sounds.
Fixed an issue where executing certain queued orders would be delayed if an ability was on cooldown.
Fixed an issue where certain units were missing flail animations.
Fixed some missing text in the zerg tab on non-grid hotkey profiles.
Races
Terran
Simple Command Card has been removed from the Planetary Fortress.
The Build SCV command card button on the Command Center has been moved back to the top left slot.
Raven’s Seeker Missile once again costs 125 energy.
Fixed an issue where the unit icons for grouped hellions would sometimes change.
Dead marines will no longer display Stimpack’s expiration effect animation where they fell.
Units destroyed by the widow mine no longer display two death animations when the Reduced Violence option is toggled on.
Units launched into the air by the siege tank’s sieged attacks now display properly under Low settings.
A bug was fixed that caused battlecruiser anti-ground damage to be more than 8.
Protoss
Unpowered Warp Gates will no longer show as Gateways under the fog of war.
Protoss structures are no longer invisible through the fog of war if vision was lost just as construction was completing.
Mothership and mothership core now play appropriate ready sounds.
Revealed debuff tooltip for Revelation has been clarified.
Mineral Shield no longer uses a placeholder icon.
Zerg
Missile Attack upgrade has been corrected to increase locust damage in increments of 1 instead of 2.
Banelings will no longer play an incorrect death animation if they are killed while suspended in the air.
Ultralisks no longer emerge from Burrow Charge slightly ahead of their target destination.
Burrow Charge now deals the correct amount of damage when the ultralisk has received melee attack upgrades.
Burrow Charge ability icon now matches the new upgrade icon on the Ultralisk Den.
It is now possible to set custom hotkeys for the swarm host and viper.
Viper’s Consume ability no longer uses the Corruption icon.
Viper no longer uses a high quality death model on Low graphics settings.
Hydralisk speed on creep is now consistent before and after researching the Muscular Augments upgrade.
Fixed an issue where drones would not be automatically re-selected after canceling construction of a building.
@KingRadical: Go
Purify isn't particularly powerful. You'd practically just 2 have photon cannons with more health, and the extra range is partially negated by the fact that Nexi take up a fuckton of space, which also means that if they get attacked in a choke point, your units cant defend them (unlike photon cannons) because they cant get past them either. Nexi have 5x5 footprints, most ranged units have a range of 4-6, meaning stalkers could only hit melee units attacking the nexus if they were behind it.
The widow mine was supposed to be a landmine, but destroying itself made it not that useful. What they did know was practically turn the Widow Mine into a Widow Mine Dispenser (I think they should actually rename the unit and ability to make it look more like something that creates widow mines instead of being a widow mine itself). The only thing that changed about the widow mine is that it DOESNT destroy itself anymore, meaning this is a huge buff. Yes, its a bit strange, but as I said before, it's a beta, the only time Blizzard can experiment with strange stuff. If it sounds weird, they're probably gonna change some model art and names to fit the new widow mine better.
I don't see why everyone hates on absolutely everything blizzard is doing right now, when its fairly obvious that all they're doing is trying out new mechanics for units. It's the early beta, blizzard is testing out to see if new designs for units are working well, and people just go "Yea, I'm not buying the game cause I don't like this one experimental change"
Balance Update 5 added
@Flinkelinks: Go
Updated the main post, sorry its late - They post the updates after midnight, so I sometimes forget to check.
Actually, Tainted, it's an eSport first. WC3 was mainly a regular game, SC2 is mainly an eSport. While they try to balance the game around all levels of play, the main focus is the pro level. Also, wc3 didn't succeed as an esport because of what makes it different from sc2 - Heroes. There's a good article about it somewhere, but I read it 2 years ago and can't remember where. The main point was that in sc:bw and sc2 you easily knew wtf was going without knowing the game - Huge guy firing lazorz? Lightning storms? Tanks with big turrets and explosions? Huge dude with massive cannons? A fucking huge swarm of super fast insects? Its obvious that you dont want those in your face. Ive watched the SCI on my TV once while my dad was working in the same room. He didnt know a thing about the game, yet he found it interesting and could easily tell what was going on. In WC3 it was all about micro, heroes and abilities. Its kind of like watching LoL when you don't know the game - Lots of special effects, health bars dropping, and you have no idea who is doing what and what all does special effects stand for. Its less crazy in WC3, but more importantly, as someone who doesnt know the game, you don't know who's is doing well - Both in wc3 and LoL. There's items and levels, and no real visual indication of the heroes strength. You can't tell the difference between a level 1 and level 10 blademaster, or between a bad and a fed kog'maw. Unless you know exactly what is going on, you have no idea just how powerful (or powerless) a player is. In SC, if one guy has a big army with a decent amount of big dudes while the other guy has a medium sized army of regular sized dudes, its fairly obvious who is winning. You can easily tell that that big chunk of roaches will melt to that tank line or the colossi before they manage to break through the wall of marines/stalkers.
Hasn't that always been the case with zerg? Terrans are really good early and mid game, while zerg mainly just try to survive while expanding as much as possible, because their entire macro system just makes it really easy to wear down the opponent once you have enough hatcheries and money. That's pretty much the core concept behind the zerg - They're called the swarm for a reason, which is why I think that the Swarm Host is just a thematically perfect edition to the race, both lore and gameplay wise.
Locusts do need a nerf right now, they do more DPS than hydras atm, but that's a numbers thing, which is what the damn beta is for. Same goes for widow mines - Just because they are weak right now does not mean they are useless. The point of the beta is to balance the game before release, which means numbers will be adjusted, a lot. Same goes for battle hellion and its bio unit filter - I highly doubt it will stay bio, it was probably just a quick way to test its compatibility with medivacs, and they'd probably just replace the bio unit filter with a validator in the medivac ability so that the BH can be healed without being bio (Or they'd just scrap the idea.) I don't see why people are complaining about blizzard trying out stuff - Maybe they added the bio unit filter to see how firebats would do in the game? Who knows, they might scrap the BH next patch and just add the firebat instead if they like the results of the bio-BH. Its a beta, they are testing the game to see what they can do.
@SoulFilcher: Go
Imo making low tech units useless late game is an a lot worse design decision than making them useful via upgrades mid and late game. But I agree, the capital ships are too weak. The rest of the late game units are fine imo though. Its just the BC and Carrier... They just dont seem worth it. It takes too long to mass them properly, and before you have them massed they aren't that useful.
The expansion is not supposed to completely change the metagame. The only way they could do that is by completely removing the main old units (Zealots, stalkers, sentries, marines, tanks, vikings, roaches, hydras, zerglings, mutas) or by adding even more simple units like those (Swarm Hosts and Battle Hellions, for example) Keep in mind that they can't add many units because they have another expansion planned, which if it would add just as many units would just have too much.
Battle Hellions were given the bio modifier to see how they would work together with medivacs and bio. The modifier might be removed later and turned into a validator for the heal ability or something like that, or it might be removed completely if blizzard doesn't like the result. I'm not sure whether you've noticed, but they're using the beta to experiment. Right now they're changing the new units to see how they can make those useful, and then they'll take a look at the old units. The reason they have a seperate button is because they need an upgrade to transform, but can be built without that upgrade (Meaning they will be locked in that form until you research it, which means the upgrade isn't mandatory if you're only going to use one form)
Medics aren't in melee game because stimpack timing attacks were already a problem, and medics were a lot better than medivacs in the campaign. Early healing doesn't really sound that good for me for terran, who are already pretty powerful early if they decide to push with infantry. If they added medics early on, they'd have to nerf marines and marauders. Also, this is not BW, there is no reason that they should do anything like BW. It's a different game. BW was also a lot harder to play due to its limitations (Crappy pathing, smaller control groups, single building selection, and a lot more stuff that pissed me off when I tried it and am happy is gone), so units could be balanced differently - And again, it was a different game. Hydras are still pretty damn powerful, and they don't cost that much (Cheaper than a stalker, tiny bit more expensive than a marauder) The multiplayer is about balance, the single player is where they add the "cool" stuff that isn't balanced.
Blizzard Allstars will be part of the starter edition if I remember right, it was said on blizzcon I believe which means there is no real source to link to. Just checked my old notes for the mapcraft I and Zelda made to cover blizzcons:
And yea, they will be using little to no WoL assets - I expect they'll still use the regular melee assets obviously, maybe even some of the campaign units like medics, but they won't be reusing doodads and tilesets, which means different critters as well probably, and seeing as HotS includes evolution stuff and we found a list of "primal" zerg or something like that, I think we can expect a lot of neutral creatures, and with them missile, buff and impact models.
@Triceron: Go
Keep in mind that WC3 models were a lot easier to make than models nowadays due to way lower quality, and that they used regular unit models for cinematics instead of high poly models with animations specific to each cutscene, and that there is a lot more side dialog as well. The WC3 campaigns also required a lot less extra features (You practically just played regular wc3 matches with different victory conditions, and there was nothing in between missions, while in SC2 you've got all the unit evolutions and between mission UIs, Kerrigans abilities, etc.), AND the data editor is far more complex for sc2 than wc3, so I think it is reasonable that they are taking this long with it. Remember that the Arcade is technically seen a HotS feature, so even though they released it earlier, it still took up development time from HotS. It included graphic engine updates as well. (Per player lighting and lighting regions, ragdoll animations, which btw require new models for the old units, so even more development time is needed)
RoC to TFT was a decent jump in features and so on, but most of them were just editor features afaik (Correct me if I'm wrong - I didn't own the games back then), and they had lower quality and complexity limitations than sc2 does. Yea, there were a lot of new models, but those were easier to make AND we've probably only seen less than a quarter of the models that are coming with HotS anyway.
As for people not buying the game... I don't really get their arguments. I see it mostly from terrans. They got two new units, what do they want? The units are great imo, and if their argument is "they're useless", they are forgetting that this is the third week of beta. Blizzard is throwing around crazy balance changes simply so that they can find something that makes them more useful faster. The numbers will work in the end, so I don't see what they are complaining about. Also, they should remember that blizzard can't add too much new stuff because they have another expansion planned and didn't cut any units for this one (which they actually planned to do), so if they added as much multiplayer stuff as in wc3->TFT, they'd just have way too much stuff by LotV
EDIT: Just want to point out that terran had the most offensive units to begin with:
Terran: 14 (Ground vikings and medivacs counted, MULEs and auto turrets aren't)
Protoss: 11 (Obs and Warp Prism not counted, and even if, still less than terran)
Zerg: 9.5 (Queens count as a half as their speed makes it really hard for them to be used offensively. Not counting broodlings and overseer obviously)
in HotS:
Terran: 16
Protoss: 14
Zerg: 11.5 (Locusts not counted)
@JacktheArcher: Go
There was a thread on the spoiler button about 2 years ago, but unforunately there was a security issue with the "markdown" markup type which caused it to be temporarily removed, and then added back in a very restricted way, which I believe makes it impossible to use those spoiler buttons for regular users now - I have to use RawHTML if I want to use them (Only available to moderators)
I wouldn't say the late game is air focused, but that the new stuff is. Stargate play is just becoming more viable as a main tech choice, but you can still just go robo for the deathball. Honestily, if they had added new units to either the gateway or robotics facility, the stargate would be used even less than it is now. Same thing with Zerg - They added the Viper and the Hydra speed upgrade to the Hive, which encourages earlier hive tech. As for terran... Well, I think bio is overused, so they just shouldn't add units to the rax, but giving another one to the starport instead of factory would probably be nice (that way each race gets at least one new air unit. But then again, terran already has 5 air units to begin with)
Added Balance update #3 to the first post. Tidied up first post a bit.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6572447751
Wave 2 of beta invites has been sent!
Seeing as the arcade isn't online and I want my map to stay WoL compatible, I don't use the HotS editor. I think Renee is most likely to find changes in it if anyone is.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6571787498
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6572357553#1
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6606902604
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6758675889
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6794980782
I will add new updates to this thread as they come out.