Good day! We are professional players, content creators, and high-level enthusiasts representing the Protoss race. We stand CATEGORICALLY AGAINST the upcoming changes in patch 5.0.16, announced on May 29, 2026.
**1. Reverting to 8 Starting Workers (instead of 12)**This change significantly slows down the opening phase of the match, making the game less spectacular. It completely breaks absolutely ALL build orders for every race-strategies we have spent years practicing and refining. Furthermore, this adjustment increases the viability of cheese strategies, making defending against them much more difficult.
**2. Alteration of the Warp Gate Mechanics**The overhaul of Warp Gates completely eliminates tactics such as all-ins and aggressive timing pushes. The strength of a Protoss push has always relied on the ability to warp in units directly onto the battlefield. This now becomes impossible because warping in becomes too expensive and critically delays attack timings, which opponents already defend against reasonably well in the current patch.
Consequently, the gameplay variety for our race is substantially narrowed. This will allow Zerg and Terran players to play much more greedily without any fear of being punished.
Our Position: Balance adjustments should be careful, surgical, and thoroughly tested. They must not break the core mechanics and fundamental design concept of the faction we love and chose to play many years ago! Otherwise, this is not just an update—it is a clear sign of disrespect toward our community, our time, and the immense effort dedicated to mastering the builds we have spent years perfecting.
**3. Lessons from Patch 5.0.15 and the Psionic Storm Issue**The previous patch, 5.0.15, demonstrated that controversial changes are often pushed directly to the live servers without any developer commentary regarding the reasoning or necessity behind them, only to be rolled back later following community backlash. In effect, the community was forced to compete under the conditions of failed experiments. It creates the impression that players are being turned into testers for balance decisions after those decisions have already been released, paying the price with their own gameplay experience. A clear example is the ban on abducting Siege Tanks, an issue that is only being addressed now.
Additionally, patch 5.0.15 was rushed to live servers with bugged Ghosts and a poorly reworked Storm mechanic that required hotfixes post-release. Initially, Psionic Storm became overwhelmingly powerful, giving Protoss an unfair advantage, but after a subsequent rework, it became extremely clunky, ineffective, and sometimes even detrimental.
In PvZ, we frequently cast Storm on the Zerg army during an attack and immediately pursue them. The newly reworked Storm not only fails to deliver the required burst damage, but its duration is also excessively long.
As a result, when chasing the opponent, the Protoss player is forced to walk their own units into their own cast, suffering friendly fire damage.
Nevertheless, Zerg and Terran players frequently claim that the new Storm is stronger, even though it is factually weaker and highly inconvenient for us. It appears this balance change satisfies neither us nor them. If that is the case, let us simply roll back Storm to its previous version. Therefore, alongside the complete cancellation of the upcoming patch, we request the return of the old, well-balanced Psionic Storm as it was in patch 5.0.14 and for 15 years prior—a mechanic that worked flawlessly.
Summary
We respectfully request the following:
1)Do not release patch 5.0.16 in its current form.
2)Abandon the transition to an 8-worker start.
3)Preserve the existing Warp Gate mechanics.
4)Restore the version of Psionic Storm from patch 5.0.14.
The worst part is that the handful of developers left at Blizzard couldn’t even come up with a single sentence to justifiy reducing the number of workers to 8. In their thick heads, they see a couple of benefits: that players will “FIND NEW BUILDS” (single-base cheesing and two-base unit farming), and that inactive/new players will come in with the new changes. All at the cost of losing all existing timings, builds, strategies, and tactics honed by pro gamers over the years. A slap in the face to the players
Coming up with new, interesting units—no.
Coming up with new maps with a high level of activity—no.
Coming up with new abilities/upgrades for races—no, not that either.
Break existing mechanics and tweak the “NUMBER” of workers so that a dying game can writhe in agony a little longer before it finally dies.
Damn it, why isn’t there anything like this in Warcraft 3? Why do they have to kill what was once the most popular RTS in the world?
Team liquid map contest produces new maps every year for sc2 1v1. Its the one constant this game has.
i totatly agree with everything else.
also, if they were so concerned with new players haveing a slower time, they could simply fix the matchmaking algorithm so that new players only play new players. Id personally like to see anyone under 5k games stuck in bronze league permantly till they pass that threshold. You really cant understand this game with so little experience. Make the new players work to get better, and get higher ranked. This needs done for both team games and 1v1.
On top of fixing the algo, one of the biggest problems this game has is free to play. Put it behind a pay wall again. One it aint fair to the people who actually paid for this game back in the day, and two it would eliminate alot of the smurfing, and cheating. Most people wont repay for a game once an account gets banned. And they need to crack down on the bad actors and get rid of them, clean the community up, and make it a better place for the rest of us.
This flat out rejection is unjustified. Protoss Warp mechanics have been problematic from day 1 and reworking them is a good thing, the goal of creating two effective options so Gateways remain a viable option is a great. If this is the best means to do so will take time and more experimentation (I’d prefer a single high cost research over individual building cost).
The starting worker changes have been discussed for litteral YEARS in moding communities and are a way to move the game out of it’s expansion treadmill which has gotten stale. Contrary to much belly-aching not all builds are broken, you can just make 4 workers first if you have no imagination. But players with imagination can start doing different things and specifically do more aggression on fewer bases etc.
Btw I am a Random player.
Again, Warp has been part of the game since the very beginning. It is a core mechanic and one of the defining features of the Protoss race, and it is one of the main reasons many of us chose to play Protoss in the first place.
As for build orders, if you have ever learned even a single build, you should understand that this change does not break just some builds - it breaks all of them. You cannot simply build four extra workers and continue playing as before. The economy changes, timings shift, opponents gain new attack opportunities, the Nexus provides less supply than before, and the new Warp mechanic has a major impact on every existing build order.
While Zerg and Terran players can still play something relatively close to their previous strategies, this is simply not the case for Protoss. Higher-level players often spend hours refining build orders against the AI, optimizing every detail and timing.
If these changes are implemented, everything will have to be reinvented from scratch. Many Protoss players simply will not want to go through that process and will quit the game, and honestly, I can understand why. Those who do decide to adapt will see a significant drop in their rating while relearning the game.
This change, especially if it is introduced in its current form or something close to it, could seriously damage the game. Even now, on the test server, many Protoss players have almost stopped playing because they strongly dislike these changes.
Core mechanic dosn’t dispute the fact it was problematic from the very beginning. And this is not to deny that other races have problematic features as well mind you.
Your conflating the strategic VALUE of your build order being undermined with ‘breaking’ it. Under that wide a definition then EVERY change breaks every build order every patch and the complaint means nothing. I’m already watching pro-gamer streams of them just building 4 workers and recycling their existing builds as if nothing has changed.
Everyone will be affected by the worker change so Protoss is not singled out for disruption, everyone will be in flux at the same time. Yes the Warpgate changes cause MORE disruption but that’s why they combined them together so the medicine could go down with the least harm to Protoss, you should be greatful for that.
I would highly recomend Protoss players test and give feedback on how to make the Warpgate rework better (I have my own ideas in that regard) rather then try to boycott it as your very likely to just get a poor version of it as a result.
The warp mechanic was supposedly so bad that it remained untouched since the very beginning of the game? And only now, near the end of the game’s lifecycle, they decided to rework it?
I’ve tested the new balance myself and have also followed balance testing by other players. For example, Harstem said that the early game for Protoss versus Zerg now largely depends on getting the right opener, and even if you do get the right choice, your chance of losing is still around 80%.
I’m curious, what’s your MMR?
he has no sc2 pulse info, so he probably dont even play the game.
Problem warp gate is that it beffit of over building.
say your economy can only support 10 warp gates. But protoss build 20.
This just allow spawn 50% faster but main reason they didnt fixed early because it will alter how it functions which can be huge loss revenue when they where at hight of making money. Now the game become stale so there making huge changes to see if they can revive it.
pluss this still allow protoss to power creep just it takes longer time in in early and mid game.
Storm was broken because zerg didnt really have answer for it, and well we hurt are guys but that is unit control problem. Most zerg units didnt option to back off once land since it melted half zerg unit. Now they made more zonning tool which was its main design but became nuke option. Because zerg low health units couldnt fall back. So it made collosus pointless when you can just build high templer and storm everything. Now nerf made it going mass high templer not better option but allow more mix units . Storm is effect but force to have better position and cant just drop in begging fight and call it a day.
I agree with the author
I hope they don’t introduce such a terrible new patch. It simply ruins what I’ve been practicing for 8 years.
They could have added units from co-op or campaign, or nerfed the Zealots. But they decided to make another major change to the Protoss. It’s difficult to adapt to 8 workers alone. At the same time drastic change to the core mechanics of the game.
8 workers are too crazy and unplayable… It makes the game slower and it’s too bad. I hope that 12 workers will be in game forever
Why was it necessary to change the worker count? There’s nothing new, just pretty animations and broken gates. It would have been better to add co-op units: the Protoss Drakagun to revive the robo style, the Terran Goliath to make the passive mech stronger, and the Zerg Aberration, for a tank unit against the Terran mech. Or 8 workers and co-op units—that would have been much more interesting. Otherwise, it’s the same old units and the meta hasn’t changed at all.
Also, if you nerf Zealots, you need to nerf the gates, not the Zealots. For example, Zealot charge requires manual input, not autocast. And after the charge upgrade, a Zealot costs 115 minerals.
And if we nerf gates, since the warp gate costs 50/50, then the cooldown between warps should be 50% faster for units, not 35% faster for STANDARD GATES.
And it’s better to buff Protoss, nerf Zerg, and leave Terran alone, although we could just rebalance Ghosts a bit.
With the reduction in worker count, something else needs to be added and the meta needs to be changed.
Conclusion: 8 workers for now - minus
Nerf gates - minus
Increased Ghosts in TvZ - plus
Nerf Ghosts in TvP - plus
Fungal growth radius - minus
Microbial curtain - plus
Warp gates - minus
Zoning has never been the primary purpose of Psionic Storm. The ability dates all the way back to StarCraft: Brood War, and I’d like to point out that in Brood War it is significantly stronger than even the pre-patch 5.0.14 version of Storm. So the claim that Storm was originally intended mainly as a zoning tool is simply not true.
As for Colossi, they are unpopular in PvZ because they are hard-countered by Vipers. Colossi are strong only until the Zerg player gets Vipers into their army. Once that happens, they lose much of their effectiveness in combat and often become a liability. At the moment, aside from Storm, Protoss does not have another equally reliable tool to fill that role.
dont bother listening to that guy, hes always wrong about everything and if i remember correctly silver league.
yes hes currently sitting at 2660 mmr
Good afternoon, Blizzard Entertainment. I would like to express my opinion about the recently released patch in the game Star Craft 2. Firstly, I believe that Protos may soon become an unplayable race, even if you want to make warpgates paid, then the cost of one should be reduced to at least 30 minerals and 10 vespen. Secondly, I understand your position with 8 workers, but if you want to diversify your builds, I would recommend adding new units to the game. The game looks a little empty. If you increase the unit limit to 250, as well as add mothership analogues to other races (for example, Leviathan Zergs and Odin Terans), then I’m sure new game styles will appear. Regarding the new units, for example, I would be glad to see psiolisks, Darguns, Valkyries and Brutalisks. I also propose a new mechanic for zergs: subspecies of Zergs. For example, the subspecies of Thorasses in ultralisks. in order for them to have more health, but a mutation from an ordinary ultralisk cost, for example, 100 minerals and gas, and the technology required research in the ultralisk cave.
as someone who hasn’t really played ladder since 2018, the switch to the worker counts has made me want to get involved with 1v1 again, it also makes me want to try out the other races some more
Some of these changes seem insane to me though, the storm switch makes no sense. Why are carapace upgrades getting cheaper? Spore Crawlers were already crazy strong against mutas. The fact that they made tanks unabductable is unbelievable, hah
Anyways, overall I’d rather see these radical changes made than to let the game stay the way it is forever with tiny tweaks, +15 health on Vikings certainly didn’t make me want to jump back into the game.
there is no storm switch. Storm was changed a bit in the last patch, not this one.
tanks have been reverted in this patch, and it only was changed last patch.
Yes, I saw these, my astonishment wasn’t regarding this patch in particular but regarding how weird and nonsensical some of these wilder changes seem to me - like the storm and abduct changes