Starcraft 2’s Heart of the Swarm is currently being played in a closed beta by people more lucky than us. They might be reading this post, but more likely they’re up to the wrists in Zerg guts, Protoss blood, and Terran gizzards. For we onlookers we can only get close to the action through the medium of patch notes.
Details below.
It’s largely minor tweaks and pruning. Things like the Zerg’s new unit, the Swarm Host, having its attack range reduced. Though, something a little more impactful is the removal of the Terran’s Warhound. Blizzard haven’t said whether this is a temporary removal while they tweak the unit internally or whether it’s a straight up cut.
Here we are in exactly the same order as they appear onBlizzard’s blog but in a far more pleasing colour pallatte:
Zerg
- Swarm Host
- 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 basic damage has changed from 30 to 30 + 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.