Vipers are amazing because the AI is far too stupid to move out of the “negate damage” cloud.
Also, I basically never used banelings. I know they’re good, but I just have trouble bringing myself to use suicide bomb units even though they’re really cheap.
For roaches, vile is completely broken. 75% decreased attack speed? It makes anything it hits completely irrelevant to you.
Banelings are more useful for the ones that Kerrigan can spawn endlessly. But there are a few places where they are useful- in the mission where you have to defend Kerrigan’s Chrysalis (Crucible?) there is a bonus objective where you have to kill this creature at the bottom of the map. I did it by making a bazillion jumping banelings and just having them all bumrush the thing 
Almost forgot, Ultralisks! I went Torrasque with Lifesteal. This combination makes them extremely durable. Torrasque is an example of a mutation that is SO GOOD, you’d be crazy not to take it. Some of the other ones are a tough call; both raptorlings and swarmlings are very useful in the right situations.
One thing thats fun is you can customize your army to have a ‘theme’ to it. Kerrigan, zerglings, and banelings can all cliffjump with the right mutations (Roaches can burrow-move, but I don’t know if they burrow past cliffs).
Man, that’s smart, I just threw like twelve mutas at it. I’ll have to keep that in mind if I ever try to get that “kill it in under one minute of spawning” achievement on hard.
Well, once you keep in mind that you don’t need to win the mission to get that achievement, it’s pretty easy to short change your defenses enough to survive until it spawns in not-great shape, and also have that dozen mutas sitting right at the spawn spot.
Raptorlings are more fun with all the jumping, but I got a lot more utility out of swarmlings… mostly because the near-instant spawn times let me short change my defenses until I actually needed them.
As for the campaign in general, which I finished this past weekend: it was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed what they did in terms of missions, but wow, was the writing bad. Also, massive amounts of phone-it-in voice acting. This isn’t Mass Effect though, so that doesn’t bug me that much; I had a lot of fun with it for what it was, and before I really dive into the multiplayer I’ll probably replay most of it chasing the achievements that I didn’t pick up the first time through.
How much of the different Zerg evolutions and bonuses carry over into multiplayer?
In WOL, I remember some abilities and stuff would be available that wasn’t in the main game. Off the top of my head, I remember you could do the stacking of the Supply Depots in multiplayer but I don’t think that was ever an option in the campaign. And no mercenaries unless you’re playing the story, obviously, and no bonuses from the Protoss and Zerg research branches (though I can’t remember if the special units like the Hercules dropship and that cheetah thingy was offering in multiplayer, I never used them in campaign).
Are any of the weird evolutions available in multiplayer for Zerg in HOTS? What about Kerrigan, can you use her?
You can’t use Kerrigan in multiplayer.
Some of the mutations kind of carry over, others don’t. The ones that do are generally researchable, although swarm hosts are hidden automatically when burrowed in multiplayer. You can make both brood lords and vipers (although neither is made from a mutalisk - the brood lord is evolved from a corruptor, which you can’t make in the campaign, and the viper builds right from the hive). Most of the other evolved units would be hideously unfair in multiplayer, so you can’t build them.
A lot of the different unit options were/are upgrade options available since WoL.
For example, you get to choose between 3 different zergling mutations for any mission: speed, attack power, and maximum life. Zergling speed and attack power were WoL researchable upgrades from the spawning pool (the attack power requires Hive).
Also, some skills work differently.
For example, a hatchery won’t spew larva indefinitely in multiplayer. There’s a max of 3 for each hatchery (which also build much quicker in the campaign). For the campaign, expecting people to remember to keep their larva occupied is probably too much to ask.
Swarm queens act very differently from queens in the WoL and HotS multiplayer. In multiplayer, queens don’t auto-transfuse (their heal ability). It costs more energy for a bigger HP heal. They’re also way slower off creep than the campaign version. They also have a spawn larva ability that lets you get more than 3 larvae at a hatchery. You absolutely must use that ability in multiplayer if you want to win.
The infestor’s neural parasite works differently, too. In WoL and HotS multiplayer, it only lasts 30s. The HotS infestor has range 10 on its fungal growth while WoL infestors have range 8.
Vision is also interesting. There are no overseers in the HotS campaign, since cloaked units will never be sent against you. And you can take advantage of this. If you neural parasite a banshee, you can cloak it (even if the AI never uses this ability) and use it to snipe at enemies.
I have to say, I’ve never been that interested in watching Starcraft, but watching HOTS matches are really fun. WoL matches always kind of devolved into a few silly, somewhat standard exchange of blows, but in HOTS the units they added really seemed to up the ability for each race to harass, allowing for a lot more interesting matches where something is always happening even early on. Especially with the Hellbat and Oracle which seem to have really made a semi-early harasses very, very deadly if not properly responded too.
So does anyone have any cookie-cutter build orders for HOTS? I’m looking for something macro-focused, most of the HOTS build orders I’m finding are aggression or harassment builds and such which require a little better timing and micro than I currently have. I favor Protoss, but I’m planning on playing all races, at least for a while (I’m using Apollo’s practice strategy – 50 games each race, though at my level I may go more like 10-15 games each race).
And when I say “build order” I don’t mean “oh, just do a 15-pool 4gate fast expand into a planetary hatchery”, which is what I’m seeing all over and are kind of hard to parse for me. I mean the more detailed:
9 Pylon
12 Gate
16 zealot
(etc)
I’m basically just looking at something I can abuse in a build order tester or map vs very easy AI to get my fingers in shape and practice not getting supply blocked, keeping my money low etc – but something that’s still good enough to use in a real game.
You can get into Gold by just massing one unit with excellent macro. At least, you could back in the day. Just mass Stalkers.
I understand that I can, but I’d prefer to use an actual build so I have the foundation already in place when I push to plat.
i don’t know any builds, but i figure a good place to look would be the replays from the top leagues?
Heck, I got into Gold just by getting pretty good at a cannon rush. And by “pretty good”, I mean that I could consistently beat the AI, but any player who’d ever heard of a cannon rush was still able to beat me. I’m sure that I wouldn’t have stayed in Gold for long that way, but I sort of faded out of multiplayer shortly after that.
I do suspect that I could have tweaked my strategy to where it could beat humans, too, but I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.
Liquipedia has some builds going. The HotS builds are still works in progress, of course. Check the forums there and over on the Blizzard Battle Net SC2 forums. Some players like posting builds.
And don’t be afraid of not hitting all the timings. Now that Blizzard has adjusted the percentage of players at Bronze through Gold, getting to Gold is actually pretty simple once you get reasonably good at basic gameplay.
Cannon rushing can work at any level. But it rarely works consistently, especially at the higher levels. Also, because low ground pylons no longer power high ground cannons in HotS, it’s gotten much more difficult to pull off.
I’ve suffered from it a couple times in HotS, but it’s more often the case they fail. Once you know you’re facing a protoss opponent, you can either scout for the early forge and/or check the obvious cannon rush spots in your own base. At higher levels, you don’t really see it much because it’s usually a game ender if it fails and opponents are usually on the ball to see if it’s happening.
Don’t try to learn everything at once. Get your fingers nimble and macro automatic.
Huh, I wasn’t aware of this change. Yeah, that’d certainly make things harder, though you could still use cannons on the bottom of a ramp to contain.
They did that because you can now build a mothership core (which flies) directly from the nexus as soon as you have a cybernetics core. Since flying units give high ground vision, this enabled a situation where protoss players could just bypass a front walloff and warp directly into an enemy’s base if they had a pylon there. Hence the change, which prevents that particular use of pylon power.
You can try, anyway. A cannon rush is really intended to deal significant economic damage - either directly or to lost mining time and lost attention.
The problem is that it costs a lot to make cannons. A single cannon is an additional gateway. Or 1.5 pylons. Or 3 probes. Or 1.5 zealots. So, if you fail to deal enough economic damage, you’re not going to have enough army to beat back the inevitable reprisal.
So far, the most successful cannon rushes are when you can sneak a probe into an opponent’s base. That’s still viable at lower levels when scouting isn’t so good and occasionally at higher levels where people are risking shortcuts.
What I’ve found is that it’s often better just to have the lone pylon to directly warp units into a base. Cannons don’t do fast enough damage to stop a sizable army. But a bunch of unexpected zealots or stalkers or dark templar are mobile enough to wreak havoc on undefended mineral lines.
i am a terrible player but before the expansion i could openly cannon rush a gold protoss player and still win. it probably should still be the same now since it didn’t involve cliffs.
Ok, try this for a basic Zerg build.
9 overlord (slightly more economic than making the overlord at 10)
12th drone - go scout with this
15 hatchery
14 pool
14 extractor
When the spawning pool finishes, make Queens as soon as possible, and perhaps 2 sets of lings for scouting, and Xel’naga towers.
You can then usually continue droning up, but make sure to scout, and respond to whatever your opponent is doing appropriately.
For a slightly safer, but less economic build, make the spawning pool before your expansion.
Against Zerg opponents (or T and P that don’t wall off) you could always try the 7 roach rush, a strong push that can be very effective, but that you macro behind.