In the weeks leading up to Blizzcon, Blizzard Entertainment teased StarCraft II fans by releasing silhouettes of the new units that will be added in the first expansion Heart of the Swarm. Now that Blizzcon has officially kicked off, its time to finally see what’s being added to the Terran, Protoss and Zerg arsenals.
As you can see from the images above it looks like there’s going to be some real game changers. On top of these new units, Blizzard has also removed several units from the game (at least in the current build of HotS). For Protoss, both the Carrier and the Mothership have been taken out of the game, while Zerg is losing the Overseer. Other important changes include new Nexus abilities; Arc-shild which grants an “anti-light weapon” to and structure and Mass Recall which was formerly a Mothership spell. Apparently Blizzard has also increased the Hydralisk move speed, Banlings can more while Burrowed (potentially an upgrade like Roach Burrow Movement), and Ultralisks now have a Burrow Charge ability. Terran is also getting some pretty major changes. Thors are now 600 minerals, require a Fusion Core, no longer hit air but have the ground area of effect attack from the single-player. Also you can only have one Thor at a time. Reapers have lost their D8 charge attack but gain a new HP recovery skill. Lastly Ghosts Cloaking has changed, it now spends a specific amount of energy and lasting for a certain period of time as oppose to the on/off system in place now.
It will be interesting to see how the pro scene and the metagame shift with the changes Blizzard has made. Hopefully there will be a public beta released sometime soon so we can get some hands on time and see how major these changes are.
What do you guys think about these new units? Which one is your favorite? What about you least favorite? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.