Having played a decent chunk of Terran on the PTR (about 10-20 games all up, I think? I’m only D2 level so take with a grain of salt), I figured I’d drop in my own perspective here and see what others who have tried it out think.
From a Terran perspective, the liberator change is obscenely strong, and it feels to me like they screwed up somewhere with the numbers - the area of the circle doesn’t feel like it matches the numbers they stated. Maybe they made the mistake of area vs radius? I’m not sure. Interestingly, I didn’t feel that the addition of Smart Servos was particularly notable for the liberator, certainly not in comparison to Advanced Balistics new area.
Blue-Flame being buffed presents some interesting potential for Battle-Mech, which I’m okay with; having a more mobile variant of mech does feel pretty decent to play now. In TvZ the blueflame change feels really good to use.
I’ve not tried mech much vs Protoss (I tend to play more bio oriented playstyles in both TvZ and TvP), but the disruptor change almost feels geared towards attempting to make mech more than just a “catch you off-guard” style, as both the disruptor and the immortal were two of the biggest issues for mech; along with Chargelots absolutely obliterating tanks.
PFs definitely feel significantly weaker vs Chargelots, Cracklings and stimmed Marines, so I can see how the intention of weakening turtle play is there, because it definitely made a difference.
I didn’t find myself using salvage at all; there was little, if any reason for me to ever bother with it, so this change was basically nonexistent for me. The sensor tower radius is tiny now; that’s something I did feel quite a bit.
Ultras feel powerful with the ability to shove through units; they’ve never not felt powerful to me, but they feel even stronger. Microbial shroud is really nice to see, and feels like it does its job very well now - possibly might even be to strong, but I’m not sure about that.
The queen/hatchery changes definitely have an effect on some of the early timings around things like metabolic boost, delaying the queen ever so slightly, which made defending the initial reaper early on much harder for my opponents. This particular change might simply be a skill thing, however, so I can’t say for certain. The additional cost of queens definitely added up though, and made massing queens slightly less attractive, though not inviable.
I haven’t had the opportunity to play much versus protoss, however from the few games I did play so far, it seems like Protoss players are going to want to be able to use sentries a lot more vs terran; guardian shield and force-field are going to be very important in tandem with the energy ability, and hallucinations for early scouting is really good.
The new maps are interesting; the only one I particularly don’t like is Amygdala, but beyond that they’re fairly good. I particularly like Ultralove, though do find myself mildly concerned about the lack of overlord placement positions on some of the maps. That said, I’ve heard that these are not the final iterations of the maps, so who knows how they’ll change?
Who else has played? What are your thoughts so far if you have?