Category Archives: Legacy of the Void (LotV)

My first Legacy of the Void Zerg build order

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(Author’s Note: if you are looking for real LotV build orders, check out http://lotv.spawningtool.com, where you can see build orders extracted from beta replays)

This evening, I played my usual Tuesday night StarCraft with my friends, but we changed things up by using the “Legacy of the Void” extension mod to try out the new economy in our 3v3 games. Specifically, it bumped up the starting workers to 12, increased starting supply for the different races, and reduced the resources at each base. A few observations off the bat about what Legacy of the Void (LotV) might look like.

Bases ran out of minerals really quickly. I was scrambling to take extra bases and ended up broke while trying to hold onto my 4th base. That felt chaotic.

Minerals come in so quickly. The game starts, and it feels like your economy is zooming. It’s only 4 workers away from roughly optimal saturation on your main base, so the emphasis on building workers is diminished. Despite that, you feel like a macro monster because your minerals are climbing so quickly, and you just want to expand.

The aggro starts quickly and hard. Although it feels like you’re ahead because of the strong macro, that also means it’s a lot easier for big pushes to come sooner. You have to get units out quickly.

Given that, I put together what felt like a decent starting point for a Zerg build order.

ZvX 17 Pool Expand

  • 12 0:10 Overlord
  • 17 1:05 Spawning Pool
  • 17 1:40 Hatchery
  • 16 2:10 Queen, 6 Zerglings

This build is relatively straightforward. Start with the Overlord first because if you build a worker first, you will be supply blocked. Crank workers continuously until you get enough minerals banked for a Spawning Pool. Pick up a worker, then save larvae for the 6 Zerglings. Oddly, you actually have enough money to get a Hatchery in-between there. The Zerglings can arrive at your opponents base before 3:30.

This, of course, skips scouting. I think it might be necessary to scout with a starting worker, particularly for 4 player maps. All of the timings are pushed back.

I imagine we will be refining a lot in the coming days, but it’s interesting to see how completely different the threats and timings are. The above build will probably fall out of favor very quickly: it’s easy to defend without sacrificing economy, so it may not be worth getting the Zerglings out so soon. I do think that with so much money, though, it might be worth the earlier Spawning Pool just to get Queens for more spending. We might also see early gases for very fast Zergling Speed.

Anyways, there’s obviously a lot of time ahead, but I thought I would share what I have seen so far. I’m very excited to see how the meta develops!

Legacy of the Void: Diversity is very interesting

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(This is part 2 in a series on the multiplayer changes announced for Legacy of the Void at BlizzCon)

Since my initial post, Blizzard put together a blog post summarizing the multiplayer changes in Legacy of the Void (LotV), and they look good. Hopefully it isn’t a surprise for anyone following the LotV news closely, though it is nice to see the numbers. Sadly, I don’t understand the game quite well enough to make anything of them directly.

I’m pretty excited about all of the new units. The Herc, Cyclone, and Ravager were all well-featured in the showmatches. The Lurker is quite the Brood War favorite, and the Disruptor seems like a bigger, badder, Protosser Baneling. The mounds of changes to existing units as well help to re-align the strengths and characteristics of existing units for more dynamic play as well.

What I am most excited for, however, is just having more stuff. I’m not too worried about the details of the changes because those will get figured out. What I would like is a sufficiently complex game that leads to a long series of choices, both within a game and in the meta-game. And the best way to encourage these pivots is diversity of choices.

As a connoisseur of build orders, there is a lot of detail and refine to be had, but if you really think about it, the different matchups aren’t so dynamic. HotS gave Terran new toys for TvZ, but most games still come down to Marine splits versus Muta-Ling-Baneling attacks, even if there are a few mine dodges. Mech still isn’t very popular in TvP. The Immortal-Sentry push still works in PvZ. Of course there are alternatives, but the game doesn’t feel like it has had many dramatic changes or revolutions in strategies.

If you believe it, there are a lot of reasons for it. Perhaps it’s the system of hard counters that StarCraft 2 has. When certain units are intended to counter other units, players don’t really have a choice because there is only 1 optimal response. Maybe it’s a lack of creativity on the part of the players. Or maybe I’m just wrong about the lack of changes in the meta-game.

Or maybe there just isn’t enough stuff in the game. Every new unit significantly increases the complexity of the game as a whole because that unit can interact with every other unit. Overall, the space of possible strategies is much larger. When confronted with some strategy in a game, there are more possible responses. And the meta-game can change more rapidly as we explore the space more.

This does make Blizzard’s job harder in keeping things balanced, but I think their incremental approach is consistent with more complexity as well. Many of their patches fit into 2 approaches. First, they will sometime buff units to give them greater prominence for players. With a more dynamic meta, this shouldn’t be necessary, but it’s not problematic to me. Second, they will nerf units that nullifies other units or otherwise exerts a large influence on the meta. These are also good changes in encouraging diversity in the game.

In that sense, Blizzard isn’t trying to control and carefully craft a set of interactions within StarCraft, nor should they. If Blizzard can design a game to anticipate all possibilities within it, then it’s probably boring because an entire community will quickly master the strategy of the game. That still of course leaves the mechanics, but StarCraft thrives because of its combination of strategic and mechanical talent required. Instead, Blizzard should (and I believe, is) provide the basic constituents of a rich ecosystem for players to explore. They can intercede when something looks or feels wrong, but how the scene develops is unknown.

So I hope Blizzard keeps as much in as possible. If StarCraft is to survive for years to come, it’s going to need to stay fresh, and the best way is to design it beyond our current comprehension. Build in good micro mechanics, but more importantly, provide a lot of them. As a community, we will learn which ones are useful in different circumstances. However, if the changes are few, we can’t use the pieces that aren’t provided. The diversity of options can make StarCraft rich and enduring.

 

One more thing: here’s maxilicious’s first impressions of LotV. If you’re not reading TerranCraft, you are missing out because it is definitely one of the best StarCraft analysis blogs out there. Don’t waste your time on my ramblings, and go check out his work!

Legacy of the Void: throw out the playbook

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(This is part 1 in a series on the multiplayer changes announced for Legacy of the Void at BlizzCon)

I am kind of obsessed with build orders. Since I’m not actually good enough at StarCraft to give real advice and analysis, it is much easier to create content by transcribing builds from professional games. That turned into a much larger endeavor in Spawning Tool, a website dedicated to build orders. And with Legacy of the Void (LotV), I can now throw away everything because players now start with 12 workers.

The worker change isn’t the splashiest part of announcement, but it does disrupt the meta-game in a far bigger way than the new units. With all of the LotV changes, there are 3 different ways that build orders will change:

  1. Some build orders will no longer be possible
  2. New build orders will be possible
  3. All build orders will have to adapt to the meta-game

Eliminating build orders is straightforward. Zerg cannot 10 Pool because they start with 12 workers. Proxy 2 Rax at 12 supply is probably gone because you should have more SCVs by the time you start your proxy.

Adding build orders is also straightforward. As seen in the showmatches, both the Herc and the Ravager can play a huge role in the early game. These build orders were previously impossible because we didn’t have those units.

How the build orders interact, I think, is the most interesting effect because when other build orders are added or eliminated, all build orders must change to remain optimal. Some build orders had safety strategies built in for eliminated build orders, so these can be streamlined. Some build orders are unprepared for new strategies and have to adapt for those.

It’s hard to overstate how meta-game specific builds are. The Forge fast expand is a strange build, and yet, it (and other fast expand variants) is relatively standard because of the threat of Zergling rushes. As Zergling rushes waned, the 1 Gate expand gained popularity. Through several iterations of meta-game shifts, we can arrive in places where “outdated” builds could actually work better against current builds, but modern builds are adjusted for the current context. With a sudden change in possible builds, every build will have to change to react.

I do think most of this thought process will be more natural than it sounds. The radical change in the game will cause players to start from the ground-up rather than tweaking existing builds, and even in tweaking, the reactions should be clear. The general point, however, is that early game looks very different from before. Old school cheese is basically gone. Instead, every build order versus Zerg knows that it has to handle a 12 Pool at the fastest and work from there. The jumpstart means that a player doesn’t even have enough time to scout some of these openings before they have already arrived with a rush.

Despite all of the negativity above, I am actually really excited to get the global reset on build orders. HotS changed some openings, but not a lot. The Reaper Expand became standard, but it is still a 1 Rax Expand. Protoss had to figure out where to add the Mothership Core. Zerg didn’t really need to change much. LotV is a chance to cast away years of strategies and start over again in a fresh world with a lot to explore.

Refining builds is interesting, but I think we have the most fun being surprised and trying to work on completely new build orders. I will try to do my best to provide content and tools to help the community as much as possible, but don’t be surprised if things change very quickly.

My thoughts on the Legacy of the Void changes

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I have to admit, my interest in StarCraft has waned over the past few months. I haven’t watched much StarCraft this year. /r/starcraft hasn’t been as interesting to me. Even my weekly games with friends has switched to StarCraft every other week with a different game in the off-weeks. I think the biggest problem is that the game has just gotten kind of stale for me since I don’t play very seriously.

But at BlizzCon this weekend, Blizzard showed off the changes to multiplayer in Legacy of the Void (LotV). And now I’m really excited again.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4i11hPX5tNBXRY30dLU30xknsrmy6-Ex

For a good summary of all specific changes, see the TeamLiquid thread. To see a show match with the new units, here’s Stardust and jjakji playing against MC and HyuN.

People much more qualified than myself have done a lot of unit analysis, so I’m going to take a different approach and offer my thoughts across a few topics. Instead of a long post here, I’m going to write a series of blog posts on different topics, each of which are roughly summarized below.

Throw out the playbook

As a guy whose blog and website are dedicated to build orders, the biggest change might be starting at 12 workers instead of 6. This change should instantly void every build order that exists, which might actually be an awesome way to reset.

Diversity is really interesting

Blizzard is very careful to make sure that all units have a place in the game. The new units like the Ravager, Disruptor, and Cyclone look awesome, but regardless of the details, I think having more options alone will make the game much more enduring.

Micro your hearts out (part 1, part 2)

Although we appreciate drops, players of all level tend towards deathball strategies with large numbers of similar units attacking together. Blizzard has made a lot of changes to emphasize the abilities of individual units to make combat broader and more dynamic.

Team games are probably dead, but that’s okay

These days, I play a lot of 3v3 and 4v4 with my friends of varying skill levels. Blizzard’s changes to early game and micro could be a deathblow to this format. To compensate, they’re adding new modes that I think people will like a lot.

Let’s be supportive during beta

I think a lot of people are very excited right now about the changes. Because of Blizzard’s development policy of refine, things are never going to be more exciting than right now. Let’s figure out how we can keep that energy in the coming months.

Keep an eye out for upcoming posts!

What 3 changes are you most excited about in Legacy of the Void?

  • Increased starting workers from 6 to 12 (22%, 11 Votes)
  • Archon mode (16%, 8 Votes)
  • New Terran units (Cyclone, Herc) (16%, 8 Votes)
  • Automated tournaments (12%, 6 Votes)
  • Single-player campaign (10%, 5 Votes)
  • "New" Zerg Units (Lurker, Ravager) (8%, 4 Votes)
  • Alllied commanders (6%, 3 Votes)
  • Existing Terran tweaks (Battlecruiser, Siege Tank, etc) (6%, 3 Votes)
  • Existing Protoss tweaks (Carriers, Oracle, etc) (2%, 1 Votes)
  • Existing Zerg Tweaks (Nydus Worm, Swarm Hosts, etc) (2%, 1 Votes)
  • New Protoss units (Disruptor) (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 20

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