LOTV VS HOTS, Time to Analyze!

General Discussion
1

Let me know your opinion about LOTV VS HOTS, what was a fail, what was a success?

For me some small basic stuff.

  1. Maybe I am completely wrong, but LOTV feels a bit to fast, maybe revert a bit back to around 20-22 workers per base. You just max out so fast.
    HOTS fells definitely to slow with 30 workers.

  2. Adept, completely fail unit, besides early harass, useless.

  3. Recall, BC, and the teleport fails, some games are just back into the future. It was fun from the begining now it looks silly.

  4. Maps, not all but a lot of fails, too big maps, not balanced at all maps.

  5. Too much Mech, I am more of the fun of slow pushing bio, marine tank etc., it’s also fun to play against T as a zerg, and you attack from multiple directions, clean up the bio with bane ling, and then with Muta get some 4-5 juicy tanks, oh memories…

  6. Balance, short, my personal opinion, HOTS was a more balanced period of games overall, both in tournaments and ladder games compared to LOTV.

  7. In general it feels like a step back, and also it feels like we need another expansion, to fix a lot of issues.

I would even propose remove some units like swarm host adept, and get different ones, more fun and skill oriented.

1 Like
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All units from expansions are bad desing … From best to worse
Hellbat filled gap in mech
Cyklon good defensive unit in early game
Adept P version of reaper
Oracle can win the game in 5s
Liberators . Too op or useless … problems with long range lib harras
Tempest long range flying unit in race with storm same role as cariers
WM do same thing as tanks problems with WM drops
Raverger very strong in all ins negates walls force fields and tanks
Lurkers better siege tanks in zerg lol
Viper flying counter all caster with infinite energy
Disruptors same role as strom and colossus have no counter in biger numbers
SH unit that can snipe your base or units from half map away for 0 cost and no risk.

And economy is to fast there is almost no mid game…

2 Likes
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I can say I agree with most of this here. In other words, what you are saying, it was to little Creativity in the design of units.

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The only thing i liked about hots was the 6 workers start.

Hots had many flaws, number 1 was swarmhost gave us 2+ hour games. Mines remained clocked without upgrade, tempest completely killed any mech play.

As of the units they introduced, Sh was the worst design i have even seen in any rts game, oracles started as a light harass(it was blocking mineral patches) unit and transformed into a worker killer, for the first 3-4 months proxy stargate was the go to build vs all races.

Disruptor was introduced to counter ravegers,bio pushes,2 base all ins in pvp. I can imagine their way of thinking, “big balls that kill 20 supply of units in an instant, this will surely excite the fans” but such a unfun unit to play against and so awkward to control.

Liberator was a good unit the only mistake they made was the aoe auto attack, before the nerfes it countered even corruptors. Units should have obvious strengths and weaknesses.

Cyclone was a mistake, defensively they are ok but they come too early if you proxy them while toss needs blink/charge or enough phoenix to counter that.

Adepts… my god i can still remember the out cry, oracle adepts all ins dominated the game for about a month before -1 dmg and shade vision nerf.

3 Likes
5

I prefer hots at the time where the swarm host was just nerfed, tbh, they should have removed it and the BL , neural.
Toss in hots - strong,
Toss in Lotv start to current = crap joke.
As soon as it became a spectator sport with esports the team got so fixated on that and it ruined the game.
2012, BL infestor, 2019 BL infestor? how did we go into a timewarp?

answer 1- DK left, he was GM w all 3 while balancing, yes he made tankivacs when he smoked some weed but that got removed.

answer 2, blizz doesnt care about sc2 anymore since it wasnt competing with Lol in money and views, then they tried to compete with heroes, we all know how that turned out…

yes some maps are race favored.

needed tempest to kill BCs and BLs effectively and voids to counter their corruptors, back then you just had to mship, templars, voids, carriers, vs BL infestor corruptor, and viper. viper abducting massive units was rediculous and still is to this day, physics not withstanding. its like one cable from star wars pulling an AT-AT. lol.

sc1> sc2.

just give T a goliath instead of 3 specialized ones, tanky(thor) , kiting,(cyclone), and mine, ( semi stealth and decent speed).

with the start of free units effective trades no longer mattered. since Wol.

macro boosters, slow the game down, its like battlecraft on hyper everygame.

they pandered to everyone, casuals included. so no real sense of direction.

either its supposed to be a hard game, or not.

If a game isnt challenging , then whats the point?

even in hots if i lost a game, and i did mostly everything right, and if it was pretty close, I could be happy about that. TvT, PvP, PvT, TvP. ( no free units there)

the all units tab… control groups are better, and making it harder is better.

If you lost because you didnt have all your units in control groups , or you did and you were missing a few that you didnt add yet, that was your fault. not the game doing everything for you.

recall has been around since sc1, but in sc2 it really doesnt have an equal representation, the motherships recall and nexus recall even in hots - doesnt compare.

BCs warping around with no vision required is pretty silly. Toss had warp lorewise way before the terrans reached the korprulu sector…

there was a thread on TL from a millenium pro back in wol…

lurkers in sc2, just became the new equivalent of the swarm host… no it doesnt make free units but the fast burrow upgrade, its basically the zerg immortal but moves way faster than it ever did in BW.

always hated the disruptor design wise…

making every unit a caster was also a mistake.

the sentry existing… thus making gateway units weaker.
when forcefields have to exist at all thats a sign of a poorly balanced game and badly made maps.

combining the shuttle and the medic?
so decision making between mech and bio is no longer relevant, mixing and matching things that dont go together. forcing choices out of the player vs , do whatever you want stimmed bio medivacs.

ultras in sc2 > ultras in sc1

Terrible Terrible damage syndrome. also taken from that TL thread. phoenix vs corsair, etc…

also, why did they think DB was gonna be a good thing when he ruined other games…

2 Likes
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But change from MC to shield battery was best thing for long time.

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I just wish they reverted the game state to blizzcon 2018 except the PvT changes

PvZ was actually a very enjoyable match, now it’s just sad…
ZvT bio vs ling/bane was amazing!!!

ZvZ and TvT remained almost the same

PvT and PvP was the only matchs that actually improved in 2019

4 Likes
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I can imagine their way of thinking, “big balls that kill 20 supply of units in an instant, this will surely excite the fans”

I thought Disruptor was the spiritual successor to Reavers. It just has shorter range, better skill cap by giving micro control, and uses a cooldown instead of minerals.

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The first thing they need to do is to bring back the start worker count to 6.

2 Likes
10

I freaking love Reavers, Reaver drops, Reaver with main dragon zelot push etc.