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So I still haven't got into a beta, but I've been watching quite a bit of games and following the patch notes pretty closely. If any of you have been playing I'd like to hear your thoughts but here are some of mine, beware this is gunna be a long read.

I'm loving all the new UI changes, play from replay is just about the greatest feature ever, I like the new things it's bringing to help new players get into the game, also unranked play is great so long as it still pairs you against people your skill level just without a visible ladder rating. The level up thing seems a bit silly, but I think so long as they implement it correctly with lots of room for growth (at least more than there is now) and rewards for those levels it could end up being a really successful tactic to encourage regular play.

The new units, for the most part seem pretty good in idea, but I feel like the majority of them have fallen apart in practice. The exceptions being the hellbat, the tempest and to a lesser degree the oracle.

I feel like the oracle's main idea came from trying to design a fast, protoss, spell caster unit with some sort of harassment strength. But instead they created a fast voidray. The harassment is there, the dps seems a little too high, but whatever, and it's spellcasting function has been pretty much waved in lieu of it's damage output. I really liked the idea of having a flying detector that comes from stargate to make skytoss a viable option, but when nearly all of it's energy is being used to wipe out mineral lines in like 8 seconds, what's the point in using it's spell casting abilities? Perhaps if they decrease the damage it does, or somehow make it more useful as a support unit I can support it more, but as it stands I don't like the way it's being used.

Tempest I feel is doing exactly as it was meant to, and the hellbat is doing pretty much what it was meant to, with the exception that the hellbat drops are a bit too strong. Do they heal from medivacs?! Dafuq is that s**t?

The widowmine I think is stupid, I could see what they were attempting to do with it, when starting with that shredder monstrosity, but this thing is just ridiculous. It's a unit that will usually in all circumstances, when used properly is guarantied kills in just about every match up, unless you're stacked with detect. You're forcing the toss to go robo tech in order to have a good spread of observers, and you make it almost impossible for zerg to engage without losing half their army before they can even get into combat. Siege tanks and widow mines will destroy everything on the ground. Not to mention widow mine's splash damage, wiping out muta clouds so easily just seems absurd. You can't carry an overseer with your swarm of mutas and expect to do the same damage output that you want to, and it wont matter anyways, because once you're in the range of the widow mines, they're shooting on you already and your cloud of mutas is dead as ********. Widow mines are also used in denying bases, and with zerg being a momentum race that needs 3 bases before it can really take off, the widow mine denies this momentum far too easily, far too early, and the investment required to secure that base is too much. All in all I hate the widowmine.

The swarm host was a neat concept when I first heard about it, and I was pretty excited, but with the way the metagame is developing is seems like it will be a long time before it gain any real use. Protoss being so air heavy, and terran being so mech heavy, I just don't see how it can be effective in anything other than possible mirror match ups. The only exception being, I saw a ZvP where the swarmlords were used in conjunction with queens and overseers, the queens were used to snipe any observers, and air, while the swarmlords slowly pushed and did a s**t ton of free damage. I feel like this will be an easy counter once it's build becomes obvious with scouting and the protoss can fast tech to a tempest and win outright though.

The viper is useless. Seriously, I've yet to see anyone use it effectively, the pull mechanic is cute but mostly useless, the cloud is only effective against marines, which can easily just step out of the cloud, and terrans are all going mech now anyways. Darkswarm was way more effective. It's a dumb, gimmicky unit without a purpose imo.

Some of the upgrades that have come out I think are just silly as well. Medivac booster speed? Seriously? ******** off. Also they're toying around with making medivacs even more effective, idk about you guys, but I've seen a small handful of marines with medivacs skill infinite zerglings and roaches based on positioning alone. Why do the medivacs need to be even better?! They removed siege mode as an upgrade which I feel could end up with some devastating old school siege tank pushes. I remember a lot of early pushes being based off of siege mode upgrade being complete, and now you wont have to wait as long for it, or invest the extra gas into it, so it will be even more effective. Do not want. They've just ******** around with the reaper too much to even understand if they are good changes or not, I'm really happy with the combat drugs upgrade, I think that's a really interesting concept in making reapers viable as a straight harassment unit, but there's just been so many changes of late and I haven't seen enough games to know if they actually fulfill that purpose yet or not.

Zerg burrow before lair sounds brilliant, I like the idea, I think it could develop some neat timing pushes, possibly with roaches, or whatever, but I've heard a lot of people saying it's going to be a pointless buff, and wont have it's purposes. So I could be wrong, but that's how I feel about this newest change. Overlord speed, which some players are saying COULD be useful, I don't agree. Overlord speed is not a common enough upgrade in the match up already, it has it's uses, but they aren't widespread enough to give any real advantage in specific match ups, where as burrow always seems like a useful ability to get if you plan on getting ANY number of infestors. Getting it earlier could allow you to do other things with it as well, like running lings in, and then burrowing them when the armies come to engage, forcing them to stick around for a scan or an observer, or some sort of detect, pulling armies away from the front to engage with a second force or something. Overlord speed at hatch? When do you have the gas available to get that, as well as lingspeed and lair? The same could be said about burrow, but at least burrow has tactical advantages, overlord speed just has scouting advantages, and to be getting it before lair anyways seems odd to me, but I suppose we'll see. I feel like even with all the hydra changes they're still weak and we wont see much use from them. The infestor nerfs I feel are getting just silly to the point where it seems blizzard is realizing zergs rely on this unit in every match up, and they wanna change that by making it less and less useful so that we'll try other options, but instead they're just making the zerg race weaker and weaker. Mutas seem ridiculously strong, but only in ZvZ, which is dumb to me. I mean they may still be good in the other matchups, but only if they are countered incorrectly. As stated before widowmines destroy mutas, so a few well placed ones make the massive muta investment pointless, and I discovered that the muta speed boost is actually a buff for protoss phoenixes, in that it's easier than ever now to micro against mutas due to the way the phoenix v muta speed scales, it took MORE apm to micro phoenixes against slower mutas than it does now, and phoenixes still kill infinite mutas when microed correctly. So with addition to all the ridiculous infestor nerfs, and the muta buffs, it seems we'll be returning to the old style of zvz where it's a rush to muta and the player with the most mutas wins. I think it's dumb.

Then protoss, oh man, protoss. I really like the direction protoss is going, somethings are pretty overpowered, but the direction and feel of protoss coming with hots is great. Which is why I'm in the middle of race changing from zerg to protoss right now. Skytoss just seems so much fun. I've always felt like that was the way protoss should have been designed is for a strong air presence. Listen, you HAVE to get the cybercore anyways in order to do your tech, and most people will get it, and then only ever get the warpgate tech from it, and then it just sits there gathering cobwebs. But with a skytoss player, they're set up to immediately begin getting air upgrades from their cybercore, it now has a full game purpose. The oracle serves as a great way to allow players to go air, it's harassment capability allows you to buy time while you build the army, and it's envision and revelation spells allow you to forgo the robo for observers. It's perfect with it's only exception being it isn't being used right now the way it was intended, and it's damage is too high. The voidray micro button is a bit silly, and from what I've seen also overpowers, also it will rape corruptors which I think ruins the balance of ZvP, so something needs to be done about that. Tempests perform as desired. Phoenixes are great, and you can follow up with an endgame mothership and carriers just like in WoL. In addition to that, mothership core is a brilliant addition, I love it's purposes and the ways it functions, timewarp is cool, everything is good about the mama core. The only problem I see right now, besides voidray and oracle balancing is that the mamacore actually ******** up PvP by backtracking the metagame back to an observer, blink stalker push, but instead with the mamacore, which will attack way faster, way earlier, and way more effectively with the help of timewarp and the extra little bit of damage from the mamacore. Protoss needs a lot of balancing, but I feel out of all three races, it's the only one that is developing correctly.

Anyways those are just my thoughts, anything you agree, or disagree with? Anything you noticed that you like/dislike or ideas on how it will develop the game by release time, what changes you would like to see, let me know.

I preordered through a gamestop retailer who apparently isn't receiving beta codes, so alas, I have to wait unless I were to cancel my preorder through them and buy it on amazon instead, and risk not getting it on release day.