Community Update on August 6

Hey everyone,

Over the past month, we featured two sets of possible changes on the testing tab. After digesting all the discussion and feedback, we’re ready to announce the final set of changes in the upcoming balance update. These changes will be updated to the balance test mod later today, and the final set of changes will go live on the ladder on August 20th, the start date of season 3.
Before we reveal the final list of changes, we’d like to go over some of the changes we decided not to move forward with:

  • Warp Prisms no longer start with the Warp Conduit passive ability and warp-ins will take 11 seconds when not near a Warp Gate or Nexus, up from 4. The Gravitic Drive upgrade now has the added functionality of granting Warp Prisms the Warp Conduit passive ability, reducing warp-in time from 11 to 4.

We saw a lot constructive discussion surrounding this proposal, and we believe a change along these lines could have a lot of interesting consequences. However, we felt the impact of the change using the numbers proposed would be too great, especially for a mid-year patch.

  • Zealot Charge additional impact damage decreased from 8 to 0. After researching Charge, Zealots will still retain the ability to always hit a fleeting target at least once.

This change was originally proposed to address multiple concerns, such as the potency of all-ins in PvZ, the frontal pushing power of the Protoss army, especially in PvT, and the overall potential for harassment when used with Warp Prisms. However, after further consideration, we now believe the totality of the remaining changes proposed are sufficient to address these concerns for now.

New Change

  • Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon cooldown increased from 0.95 to 1.14.

In the last community update, we proposed fixing a bug, which allowed Infested Rockets to ignore armor. This was in lieu of a different proposal from a previous update to decrease Infested Rockets attack damage from 14 to 12. Though these two changes are comparable, the bugfix is a much greater hit to the Infested Rocket’s effectiveness against naturally high-armored air units.

Following this last update, we received additional feedback that even with the bugfix, Infested Terrans would be still too powerful against Protoss late-game armies. While we considered going forward with both the bugfix and the damage decrease, we thought the combination would synergize too much at weakening their damage output against high-armored air units. And while this is desirable to some extent, our primary intention was to temper the Infested Terran’s strength against Interceptors. Thus, we’d instead like to go with an approximate 20% weapon cooldown increase, which would more evenly reduce the Infested Terran’s effectiveness against all air units. This brings us to our final list of changes:

Final Changes
Terran

  • Stimpack upgrade research duration decreased from 121 seconds to 100 seconds.
  • New upgrade: Enhanced Shockwaves: Increases the radius of the Ghost’s EMP Round from 1.5 to 2. Cost: 150/150. Research time: 79 seconds.

Zerg

  • Overlord/Overseer Pneumatized Carapace upgrade research cost decreased from 100/100 to 75/75.
  • Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon cooldown increased from 0.95 to 1.14.
  • Bugfix: Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon will no longer ignore armor.

Protoss

  • Warp Prism cost increased from 200 minerals to 250 minerals.
  • Warp Prism pick up range decreased from 6 to 5.
  • Carrier Interceptor build time decreased from 11 seconds to 9 seconds.
  • Nexus Strategic Recall cooldown increased from 85 to 130 seconds.

The remaining changes proposed over the last month have generally been well received, and we’re confident in moving forward with this finalized list. As always, we thank you for your valuable continued feedback. We’ll see you on the ladder!

–StarCraft II Team

2 Likes

ROFL ROFL ROFL

Imagine NA server gold leaguers balancing this game. Wait … They are!!!

This is a meme, no any other better words…

  • The stim buff is retarded, straight buff to the already overpowered never ending mule boosted free terran bio. Why? Because of TvP? … But never question the massive AoE protoss options against bio or the overpowered cheap charged zealot.
  • The ghost research, maybe its tolerable. We will see
  • The pneumatized carapace buff is dumb, whats the point choosing any non standard strategy if the zerg will just scout it anyways? You killed a piece of the game with this move.
  • Yeah and the infestor nerfs too … Just kill zerg. No point anymore. Already the hardest race. Played 2 days 24 games, got 1 zerg opponent. Im not saying infestor is not imba, but its a must if you want to win late game against terran … And the ghost buff too … Yeah, dead zerg. But you are so careful balanceing imba units of other races. Like battlecruisers, warp prisms charged zealots …
  • The warp prism nerf is a bait as i said in the previous topic. Its nothing. Protoss players are laughing their a^^^ off
  • And poor protoss dont nerf them here is a carrier buff for you …

This is an imbalance patch, serves no purpose only makes the game worse.
Be ashamed b LizarD, never make an another patch again. You killed just killed zerg. Unskilled NA gold leaguers … Never again make a new balance patch.

Very glad to see some changes not going trough! Overall, great job. Keep it up.

1 Like

In sum of all: no balance will come in the game, sad… Why you ignore all terrans say about TvP? Listed changes will do nothing absolutely with TvP. Oh you think there are too many nerf to toss? Oh… So tosses must do something more micro?
Toss microing skills too low vs same mmr Terran micro skills. You just must understand that if real balance will come then all toss will have 1000 lower mmr then now and will cry, right?

Don’t want play anymore for Terran because of:

  1. Charged zealots dont needed any micro and overpowered damage. Toss just do 2 clicks (1st is warping, 2nd is a+move). Terran have to manually click Stim then shoot then move then shoot then move then … oh loose because of prism with other Zealots on Main. And you physically cant kyte 2 marine groups at same time so you loose one. But what do toss there? Nothing he just warped and now look other places, build base, etc, while its 2 groups of charged zealots dont need any micro and win. Why Charge is auto casted but Stim not? This is imba. Make Toss have to micro at least here, i really want they to push charge manually. Why Stim can be clicked twice and decrase HP twice while not giving double damage? Maybe you make so it will not be possible to click Stim if previous not ended? Why i need micro there too counting time, waiting scaring not to loose another HP for nothing. If i merged 2 groups of marines and 1 of them was previously stimmed i cant just use Stim on merged group or i will loose HP twice. Is this fair? Why charge give power and speed to Zealots and takes nothing but Stim give power and takes HP. Do you think this is balanced when one player need to do 2 actions to kill other player who MUST to micro as hell just to have chance to win?

  2. Mobility. Warping at any point of map is real imbalance. Terrans just can do nothing like that. If you push toss base you have Warp prism on your Main, you have to return long time or build long time other units (if have not supply limit). But what if toss push terran and terran do drops ? Toss just recall. Recall any type of units for free, no need to wait building unit in factory or barracks, no need to go long way on map, just recall and win.
    There is HUGE problem in mobility in TvP, Terrans cant teleport whole army (BC dont count because is just 1 unit type and is too expensive), Terrans cant blink, Terrans cant go 2 paths at time to counter Adept, Terrans have to split their army to be everywhere BUT you cant micro all these splitted groups at same time BUT you MUST micro as said before is impossible. Zerg have Nydus that teleports army, yeah it teleports, but it must take long time to go from one map corner to another underground in worm, dont it? How roach can go into and get out just in 1 second from another side? There is definitely teleport. No balance in mobility at all, terran cant teleport whole army (and again even dont say about BC). Somebody say medivacs is mobile but it have not teleport like Nydus or Warp/Recall… and is tooooo expensive for just transporting purposes, and it could be easy killed while transporting army. BTW what was you thinking when Dark templars recieved blink ? Something like “oh Dark Templars is not enough imba with its huge damage and infinity cloacking, lets add blink so they can teleport thru walls, terran have marine”. Terran must have some teleport for any type of units to counter recalls/nydus, and (not or) must have reinforcement on battlefield to counter toss warps.

  3. Map control/Scout. All that terran can do for scout is Scan from CC or risk any unit to see something probably loosing it. What can do toss: FREE illusions (4 probes at time, fenix, etc.), free unlimited invisibility of detectors, adepts shadow, any unit with minimal risk having recall. Too many free options for toss, terran have no one free - scan takes energy for mules that already part of economic in game not just option. I would like widow mine have option to disable shooting, to have it just for invisible map control just like detectors do.

  4. Ghost cost. Yeah many problems can be resolved with ghosts but it is really expensive to have some, but it need to be in army to counter late game. It must price twice lower, you can make nukes more expensive but we need ghosts to have many EMPs vs Storms and Infestors.

You are seriously not keeping the Charge Nerf While its a fact that you mentionned that Zealots are way too strong for the micro they require ?

You guys proposed 2 posible set of changes (that most of people where fine with it) and at the end you didn’t use one of them instead left somekind of mash up of both changes but really don’t adress the problems why people are getting angry .-. I, I really don’t undertand why you do it like that. Let’s see what happens but in my opinion things will be the same only protoss maybe dieying to stim timming, and any other zerg besides pro diying to inmortal zealot all-ins.