[nirvAnA]

For those familiar with Wings of Liberty and new to HoTS, this three part series will serve as a complete guide to get your familiar with all the new HotS units. You may be aware of your race's changes but understanding the other races too will help greatly with your understanding of the game. It will talk about their abilities, costs and how they are used in competitive play. It will assume you are already familiar with Starcraft and have played Wings of Liberty. Apart from the mechanical changes which make the game easier to play, HotS has made the game more micro intensive. The ability to cheese has been significantly reduced too.

This final article on our new to HoTS series was written by Singapore's last Starcraft 2 WCG champion nirvAnA with input from top Australian Zergs NXZ and PiG.

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New HoTS Zerg Units

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+ [An overview of changes in the Zerg matchups] +

Zerg Changes

• The Burrow and Overlord Speed upgrades can now be researched at hatcheries instead of lairs.
• Building Spore Crawlers no longer require an Evolution Chamber
• Creep Tumors can be placed on ramps
• A Hydralisk speed upgrade is available, increasing its speed by 25%
• The Mutalisk has been reworked. Their speed has been slightly increased to 4 from 3.75, with health generation receiving a huge buff to 1/s second from .2734/s
• The Infestor has been reworked. Its fungal growth is now a projectile with range 10, speed 12 and its damage has been decreased to 30 from 30(+10 armored)

Although Zerg has just two new units, the way all three matchups are played have significantly changed because of the other changes in HotS.

NXZ on ZvP: In HotS you now have a stronger "tier 2" tech army that can fight colossus armies. You can stay on that army for longer instead of heading to straight to broodlord infestor. All the following things help with mid-game aggression:

1. You can use vipers to pull colossus
2. Hydras got buffed making ling/hydra and/or swarm hosts useful in certain timings
3. Mutas got buffed making them a very good tech switch transition in tier 2

On the other hand now voidrays are fantastic against corruptors and tempests have sick zoning so the protoss late game army is much stronger now.

NXZ on ZvT: In ZvT and ZvZ you just have to go muta now. In ZvT if you don't go mutas medivacs with the boost upgrade just rip you apart. And also because of the infestor nerf.

PiG on ZvZ: ZvZ is vastly changed from the WoL metagame. Infestor's projectile fungal growth is now much harder to hit and deals significantly less damage. As a result, well-controlled mutalisks reign supreme in this matchup. The most solid long-term way to play this matchup is to learn a solid and safe pool-hatch opening into mutalisks. (All these new build orders will be covered in detail in TGM)

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+ [Swarm Hosts explained] +

The Swarm Host is a lot like a Tier 2 ground brood lord, and is relatively gas cheap at just 100 gas. It has no 'attack' of its own, but when burrowed it can produce infinite amounts of Locusts in pairs that have timed lives. These locusts deal 12 damage and have a decent range of 3. They are commonly used as a siege unit to wear down opponents armies and buildings. Locusts have a 15 second life which can be upgraded to 25 seconds with the "Enduring Locusts" upgrade (150 150 120 ). This means locusts should be optimally positioned safely far away from their intended point of attack, giving them ample time to retreat or for the 25 second cooldown to reset should the opponent try to make a push.

PiG gives a sneak preview on how he uses swarm hosts in ZvP:

• The whole point of this style is to siege your opponent from approximately two "screens" away. That's exactly what it sounds like, 2 of your monitor-lengths is about the distance your swarm-hosts can effectively attack from!
• Your swarm hosts should sit amongst static defense, even if your opponent is ground focused you should have a few spores mixed in to deny observers.
• You should unburrow your swarm hosts whenever new swarm hosts arrive, and burrow them all together so the locusts swarm in tightly organised waves.

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+ [Vipers Explained] +

Vipers are the zerg's spell caster and it works quite similarly to how the defiler worked in Starcraft 1. Just like in SC1, it requires Hive tech although it does not require a building of its own. In ZvT it gives Zergs the ability to force Terrans out of favourable choke position and in ZvP results in a stronger tier 2 army that can deal with collosi and immortal play.

Abduct (75 ): It gets casted from a large range of 9 for relatively cheap, just 75 energy! This spell pulls in the target unit to the viper, and is normally used to slaughter expensive units like thors, immortals and collosi but removing them from the safety of their main armies and in direct firing range of the zerg swarm. Vipers have relatively decent health, at 150 hit points.

Blinding Cloud (100 ): Creates a cloud for 14 seconds on a target area and can also be casted from a large range of 9. It reduces the attack range of units and structures in this area to melee range. This is especially effective against Terran as it nullifies Marines and Marauders forcing them out of the cloud and out of position e.g if they are defending a planetary fortress or choke. I feel they are super powerful when used with ultralisks against Terran late game but vipers are quite micro intensive.

Consume (0 20 ): Consumes energy from friendly buildings translating 200 damage dealt to these buildigns to give them up to 50 energy.

Against protoss there are several viper-roach-hydra timings where you can deal critical damage with blinding cloud and abduct.

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This article was written by Singapore's last Starcraft 2 WCG champion nirvAnA who is one of the authors of the Starcraft 2 Guide - The Grandmaster Manual, along with mOOnGLaDe , PiG and iaguz . This will be the start of our TGM guide revision which will be updated with all the latest strategies for HotS and later Legacy of the Void. All new subscribers will also receive access to our earlier WoL TGM content too. Check out the glowing testimonials we have received!

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- A complete guide to Starcraft 2 HotS changes for each race -

Protoss HotS Changes | Terran HotS Changes | Zerg HotS Changes

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