Haha great little speech at the end. It was a great finals and I'm glad it wasn't a Terran who won purely to keep the 'Terran OP' stuff down a bit. I'm not saying they may not need some adjustments but I think it's too soon to change anything. I'll even admit they were looking pretty nuts yesterday when Terran was running over everyone but a lot of it was Korean Terrans against foreigners. Those drops didn't look nearly as dangerous when Life or MC was playing against them.

Given that we were watching people trying to defend multiple drops while having their army on one hotkey, I would say yeah they aren't nearly as scary against a more equal opponent.

That was a decent final. The whole tournament was so good. I liked the semi-finals a bit more (especially Flash vs. Innovation). The whole top 4 deserved to be there. Life played amazingly well in the final.

@ben_h: Agreed all top 4 players were amazing. This MLG had some of the best games I've ever seen, real glad I didn't miss this one.

Considering HotS just launched and a bunch of new viewers were expected (based on the message when you launch it), I'm glad it was a great tournament to make a strong first impression for many folks.

@thesoutherndandy: Yeah, I'm glad there won't -just- be talk of how OP Terran is right now. I do think you'll see a patch soon though. They have to do -something- about the Medivac boost ability. The balancing there is clearly off. They may also modify the widow mines, but then, they're still being figured out a bit. I'm guessing Zerg will see some kind of boost. Mutas won't get touched, but the newer units will probably see some adjustment to make them more viable. Top Zerg players still aren't really touching them, and they need more incentive to do so. Protoss will probably get the least adjustment of the three. I feel like they still need to improve their anti-air capability, and the carrier might see some buff. Zealots could see some buff, or at least Archons and maybe High Templar. They may tinker here and there, but I don't think Protoss is really too much in one direction right now. So, any changes will probably be small.

Overall, a nice tournament. I do think it and IEM will lead to a patch in the next few weeks, but we'll see. For just coming out, even with some rough areas, it already feels surprisingly balanced. Good on them.

Really excited about Life vs Flash's new rivalry. Their games at the HotS launch event in Korea were fucking amazing. I hope they meet in the finals of GSL as well.

@truthtellah: Yeah medivacs and widow mines seem most likely to get some adjustment if anything gets changed. I wouldn't be surprised if boost gets removed entirely at some point.

@thesoutherndandy: Nah, I don't think boost will get axed. I think it will just see either an increase in its energy cost so it can't be used so willy nilly or the time duration of its effect is decreased. It should be an "in the pinch" tool that allows for meaningful micro, not just something that allows Terran to do effortless drops early on.

I doubt they would do anything other than maybe something to medivacs and voidrays. The game is really fresh and new and they made it sounds like didn't want to rush things like they did in WoL because of how it turned out. I still don't think they should do anything with medivacs yet, at least nothing harsh. People still haven't adapted to the game properly and it would be a shame if it was balanced because people wouldn't change how they played. I've been doing a phoenix opening style similar to what MC did today for a while now, including the beta, and it does work very well, though I was using it to defend hellbat drops before, and now marine/mine drops. If you go on ladder you will still see Protoss going mass colossus in PvP, Terrans going pure bio without mines or hellbats in TvP, and zergs going fast third into turtle to hive in ZvP (Which Blizzard straight up said, in response to complaints about Protoss Air, that people can't expect to treat games as No Rush 15 and still win. It is a different game) and this all has to change before we can look at balance. People have not adapted yet, even pros.

@truthtellah said:

Maybe if they made the medivac boost an upgrade, because when they made Hellbats a little harder to get, there was a huge drop in Hellbat drop. Just delay the medivac boost and increase its cooldown or add an energy cost. Widow mines I'm a little more indifferent to, but they maybe reduce can splash damage or area, then again, I'm fine with how it is.

In the Life vs Flash games, there wasn't an opportunity to use the new units, because the games didn't last long enough to see vipers. Swarm hosts are still unusable in ZvT even against a mech army which turns out to be much more mobile than a swarm hosts-centric composition.

For the protoss, there needs to be some kind of change to the void ray, because they still do so much damage especially against the anti-air corruptor which doesn't make sense. I don't see them changing any of the ground units. If anything, I think anti-air for zerg should be improved.

@truthtellah: A cooldown increase would solve a lot of problems (if it even is a problem, I'm not convinced it is) but Blizzard can make some pretty weird moves when it comes to balance. I don't think it should be removed but if Blizzard did it wouldn't surprise me in the least. I kinda like where things are for now, the only problem is hearing TERRAN OP for the next few months.

Even making the boost ability an upgrade doesn't really solve how powerful they are once you have them. I think some kind of adjustment to their duration and/or energy cost would at least make it less of an "every time you drop" power.

As far as the unit mix, I was talking more about the whole tournament, not just the Grand Final. In the tournament, you did see one Zerg take advantage of Swarm Hosts, and there were a few instances of Vipers. But overall, they were still very underrepresented, even in long games. The Swarm Host just isn't there yet, and Vipers, while nice occasionally, don't seem consistent enough yet to really be relied on. I don't know if they'll mess with them right away, but I think they'll try. They want these new units used, and they don't want the message of these tournaments to just be "people who try to incorporate the new units tend to lose", which it kind of seemed like. People need to embrace these new units to make Heart of the Swarm different enough, and I think you'll be seeing some level of patching to make newer units in all races seem so useful that they can't be ignored. That's just a guess, but after this first big tournament, I think it's likely rather soon.

@truthtellah:

Like I also said, an energy requirement or increase to their cooldown would help make the medivac boost less powerful. People also said that the hellbat transformation to the armory and the increased space of a hellbat in a medivac wouldn't stem the hellbat drop, but it's not as often as you would see it before. So moving the medivac boost to be an upgrade at techlab would/could be a viable solution as it slows the amount of medivacs being produced since ideally a starport would be reactored to crank out medivacs faster.

It's still very early on and this tournament while great to see new strategies and stuff, it's too risky to experiment to see if new units work in certain unit compositions. Watch streams of players to see players experiment and such. With zerg you see exact conditions when to start bringing out the vipers which is a late game unit which also requires a lot of gas and time. Swarm hosts, as I keep saying, is just too risky to bring out against zerg and terran, but is viable against protoss. It's not very clear if you can even use swarm hosts in ZvZ or ZvT. However, there were huge changes to the mutalisks and the hydras (enough changes that almost makes them new units), which were used a lot in this tournament. You can say the same about the reaper.

Units like the Viper and the Oracle will take awhile to get used to incorporating, as finding out how to use energy units is what I see the hardest to figure out. Widow mines, reapers, hellbats, mothership core, and the tempests (probably even the swarm hosts) I think people can incorporate a little easier.

That is the one thing we have to worry about. Blizzard does some pretty dumb changes. Rather than nerf Khaydarin (sp?) Amulet they straight up removed it even though people were saying to just switch is so you started with like 15 more energy rather than 25. Then there was the queen patch which is now universally accepted as being the dumbest patch of all time. Zerg did need help scouting at the time. They didn't need invulnerability in the early game combined with improved scouting. It is hard to tell how much the queen change affected things until you go watch old games. People were actually able to scout with workers and gateway or hellion pressure actually made the zerg make units, not just another queen. It was crazy to see after seeing 5 range queens for so long. That patch ruined a nearly balanced game.

@mrpandaman: Well, to be honest, I agree that having it be an upgrade would make it less likely to be used(similar to the hellbat), but I -want- it to be used. ha. I like Terran, and the ability is nice. Balance-wise, though, I just think it should be available with slightly different costs and duration. So, it should still be there; it just shouldn't quite so powerful and frequent as it is right now. :)