New Thoughts on Hallucination

I would like to preface this article by saying that I’ve neither had experience in the Heart of the swarm beta, let alone am I speaking from experience. This is primarily thoughts on the change from a financial/hypothetically strategical point of view.

In the most recent patch for the Heart of the Swarm beta, Blizzard removed the upgrade for sentries to get hallucination, and made it standard on all sentries. This makes room for many new options on how people will use sentries in the early game, and could easily cause a large shift in the meta-game for all races.

Let’s assume that blizzard doesn’t make any alterations to hallucinate before the release and let’s assume that no changes occur to the sentries. This change to the sentry can lead to a few major changes in the way protoss players use their armies and, more importantly, it could eliminate the need for robo-tech in some situations.

Sentries are an integral part of the early/mid game. With hallucination costing 100 energy, and forcefield costing 50, having 2 sentries early and pushing, warping one in right before reaching the enemy base, the attacker can have 2 sentries, each with enough energy for a hallucination, and 1 sentry with enough energy for a forcefield.

Say, for instance, we are against a terran that has fast expanded and has an army with a few marines and marauders – a typical opening for a terran – and we have 2 zealots, 3 stalkers and 3 sentries. If we attack with this, the terran shouldn’t have much of an issue pushing us back with some marines and marauders. But, if we use the energy in the two sentries with around 100 to make 2 hallucinated immortals – units of terran would most likely try to target down and kill quickly to avoid the large damage the immortals would take – we will have more time to dispose of their marines/marauders without taking damage to real units.

After the hallucinated immortals die, the player can retreat and have taken virtually no damage economically, as long as no potentially suicidal attack comes from the terran.

This is neither subtle nor strategically sound. They will notice.

As well, hallucinate not requiring an upgrade may cause an insurgence in early blink stalker pressure, without the need for an observer/warp prism. The players can now hallucinate any air based unit into the enemy base and then blink in to do damage. Without the need for robo tech + an observer or warp prism, the protoss player will save 225m/175g or 400m/100g, which allows the player to have an extra stalker + sentry or two extra stalkers and minerals for a zealot or some tech.

Like this, but with stalkers following it!

There is also the other benefit seen with hallucination being convenient and likely to be used frequently: the trick based nature of the ability. It can certainly be used for silly, ridiculous “builds”. Having an excess of sentries, and being given the hallucinate ability immediately; can lead to the fun, exciting silliness that people love to see. Things that make crowds at esports events scream.

Things that is new, and non-traditional – like Stephano surrounding his own hive with the hold command to prevent a dark Templar from killing it, or MC blinking into a base while dropping sentries at the ramp, or a double cannon rush in a tournament game. Hallucinates new potential to be used makes way for a potentially great development in the way games are played.

Players may start using their sentries for fake warp prisms to make drops seem more threatening, or just to make their armies seem falsely impressive. The silly things this change can bring to the game of Starcraft 2 will be the most interesting, most memorable things for the viewers to see, and the players to use.