I’ll do it. Colossus can now shoot up, mutalisks fire banelings and you can stim thors. Enjoy.
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8/10? 20 characters.
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Protoss did get a big nerf with energy overcharge. It only does 25 energy, which I hope is a big. So Protoss got a big nerf too
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I read on Reddit that the tip needs updating. The overcharge gives 4 25 energy bursts (so 100 total).
That would suck if a 50 energy spell were really meant to give only 25 energy to a unit!
So the Ultralisk isn’t anywhere nearly as derpy to use, and does its job as a front-liner unit.
Honestly the -1 supply is much more of a buff than the -1 range nerf is given that the unit still outranges everything else that isn’t a carrier at max leash range by quite a significant amount. Having the same amount of Tempests for significantly less supply is absolutely massive.
NGL, needed to happen. Battery overcharge was way, way to binary, and frankly the ability was both boring and polarizing. Energy overcharge is much more interesting throughout the entire game IMO.
IMO, Disruptors should be able to one-shot stimmed marauders, but not unstimmed marauders (assuming full HP). Less punishing if you’re not watching your units, but still effective mid-fight. Literally all it would have taken was an extra 10 damage to achieve, which wouldn’t have changed any other break points aside from Lurkers at 200 HP - which they seem to have removed the nerf to Lurker HP that was originally meant to allow disruptors to continue 2-shotting them.
Honestly, I really, really don’t think they have been. It’ll be worse for bad protoss players, sure. But I think good protoss players will get more out of EO in the long run. There will be some teething issues, sure, but that will mostly come down to learning to use the new tool effectively.
I’m pretty sure this is an error of the tooltip, rather than it actually giving only 25 energy. PTR had it giving 100 energy instantly, and nothing about that seems to have changed from what I’ve seen so far on live games, but I’d have to double check.
Yeah, this sounds about right.
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I mean its still important in real life pro level 1v1 situations where its important where your next defensive line is or how far away the viper is and if you can shoot every viper down before it reaches critical units and so on. Only looking at interactions on paper doesnt get us really far and has been my complaint for all that theorycrafting for a loooong time. -1 range is very important. Casters and proplayers alike say range is like the most important stat of a unit which is why you should research something that gives you +1 range before you research something else (often said in terms of hydras).
I really dont think so, but we will see. Its like the ghost change. Its obviously a change that has an impact but its obviously a very small tweak compared to actually change how a unit behaves/ the actual stats of the unit or the ability.
Obviously. I like the change in the sense that having the ability to actually do something useful and not being the punching bag. But now many protoss have the concern to being even more vulnerable in pvt than they already were before. Its a good change for pvz because ling floods are basically dead now but also with the new spore change we will see less (crucial) interaction in early game because both races got better defensive tools against each other.
Idk. Same could be said about ghosts. I think 2/3 of the playerbase would say it shouldnt be capable of what its capable.
I mean i think we all want the disruptor gone. I dont think anyone would say the disruptor is a healthy unit. And further nerfing the disruptor in a state where even the balance council says that p struggles is kinda a d!ck move. Again, why is it forbidden for protoss to have a unit like tank or lurker? Why cant we just have a (slightly) better colossus and delete the disruptor or change its role? Its just so freaking dumb that you kinda rely on luck. And it goes both ways. Sometimes obviously t gets bad luck. Its just soooo dumb.
I mean yeah. We can do it like we have always done it with protoss. Having a patch that is a net nerf for protoss what should have been a net buff. Then saying hey the patch isnt out long enough and let the meta settle. Then look at the results and say well ok seems like protoss needs a buff but give them a net nerf again. Repeat this cycle for some years and everyone will be convinced that top protoss players are simply worse and the race doesnt actually deserve buffs.
Once in a while you throw in a completly bananas change for cyclones so even 3k players get the feeling of being a gm or even maybe suggesting that the liberator should have a circle of the whole plateau of the spawning location. And while we are at it maybe give thors better splash and also supply depots should be healed and given +100 extra health. And blue flame hellions should get more dmg because they are underused in mech styles. And maybe turrets and sensor towers are now salvageable? I know that not all changes got through but i wanted to show how frustrating it feels if they tell you that they focus on the protoss side of pvt and give you a bunch of changes designed for the better of terran. Obviously you can care about many things equally. But the balance council certainly gives a very one sided impression. If we are shaking up things why dont we actually adress the concerns of many pros saying that ghosts are too strong? Then lets nerf them rather heavily and just see what happens. We still can tweak things and maybe we see interactions or solutions to the problem that we didnt see before. But weirdly this approach only is valid if protoss got the short end of the stick. God forbid that we actually nerf something of terran.
They even patched in a better mothership that is actually dangerous for zerg in early/ midgame. The removal of overcharge and the energy overcharge is also a change that is better in pvz rather than pvt. While with that change pvz earlygame got better, pvt earlygame got worse (defending all kinds of cheeses/all ins in super early game and also obviously the infamous tank pushes). Why are they sooooo reluctant to give ANYTHING for protoss in pvt? Everything doesnt make sense at all.
BTW: Salvaging process should be cancled if the building is damaged. However if you salvage a burning bunker, its not getting cancled 
This should be a bug they need to fix. But i guess the patch is overall pretty buggy.
Original quote: " * Salvage process is now being canceled upon taking damage."
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I would generally agree, however hydras and tempests are extremely different - -1 range for tempests is about a 7% range difference, while -1 range for hydras is almost 16% range loss. The decrease in range for tempests isn’t negligible, but it’s also got so much range that losing 1 range really shouldn’t effect a whole lot when the trade off is more supply which means a stronger army.
Obviously this is somewhat dependent on what the open supply is replaced with; having 1 additional tempest because you made 4 tempests previously is pretty big given it’s got sizable burst damage. But having 2 stalkers instead at that stage of the game isn’t going to be quite as effective. 2 additional storms though, would also be better.
Likewise, you’re losing out on that additional supply with Terran - I’ve certainly noticed the difference already, playing with the increased supply ghosts - your army feels significantly smaller and significantly less powerful in TvZ, and marginally weaker in TvP since they just take up so much more supply.
I personally think that the ghost is fine in TvP; rather the problem there is the Templar itself, since templar used to be able to kill ghosts at 100 energy, instead of requiring the max 200 energy. The ghost is, functionally, identical to its WoL and HotS version - what changed is the templar at this point (supply difference aside, obviously). And the balance between the two back then was tenuous, but very close; it was a micro battle, back and forth.
Mmmm… I don’t think PvT is going to be as much of an issue as people think it’s going to be, personally speaking, but I can also see and sympathise where they’re coming from as well, even if I don’t necessarily agree. Definitely need to see how it pans out.
PvZ is an interesting topic, from what I’ve been able to tell based on past stats it’s been mostly in Protoss’ favour prior to the patch for the most part, and this definitely significantly weakens one of the tools Zerg had to be able catch a protoss off guard.
Eh, I’ve had my talk on ghosts and Terran’s late-game without ghosts otherwise, so I won’t go into this, but suffice to say that I generally disagree, with a few caveats.
Sure, I don’t think I’d disagree with that - at least not entirely; I do think the unit does take a bit of skill to use (and face, obviously), even if it’s frustrating to face. Certainly don’t think it’s a healthy unit; it’s extremely binary in the way it operates, which is definitely problematic.
Obviously I’m not an expert on this, but the thing that comes to mind for both of these units is primarily range rather than damage.
Importanly, I honestly think only one of those is well designed - the tank. I’d actually argue that Protoss has the other “well designed” long range unit as well in the tempest, and to some extent the colossus, though the latter is slightly limited in both range and damage.
When looking at the design tenants of a unit, you have range, mobility, damage. You shouldn’t have all three on a siege unit, You can have range and damage (particularly splash damage), but not mobility (siege tank). You can have range and mobility, but not damage (colossus, tempest) and you can have damage and mobility, but not range (most other units in the game fall under this category).
The Lurker fundamentally breaks this design principle, and frankly it’s one of those units that’s extremely problematic and almost requires several hard counters to be able to engage. It’s one of the most mobile units in the game, it’s damage output is quite high, and it has more range than most other units in the game do too. Which means that engaging it is difficult at the best of times, and you basically have to engage it since it’s mobile enough that you can’t just “go where it isn’t”.
This is what I would prefer, honestly, but in saying that the colossus is a unit that I think you need to be careful with; it’s easy to make it extremely overpowered given its range - which the HotS one almost certainly was, but I also think it’s slightly undertuned currently.
That said, I’m also fully aware that not everyone shares this opinion.
Yeah, no. This patch isn’t a net nerf for Protoss IMO. Probably net even, but I don’t think it’s a net nerf.
Mothership becoming unabductable alone is a massive buff for protoss lategame, and the number of changes this unit has undergone makes it a lategame behemoth. Tempest supply buff is a big change for protoss lategame too, and as I’ve said before outweighs the 1 range nerf it received.
Stalker build time I suspect will actually make gate nexus core more viable in PvT.
Disruptor damage nerf is definitely a net negative, though with the radius increase on the aoe you’re a lot more likely to clip or kill units with it.
Immortal is, I’d say overall a net nerf, the DPS loss is about 9%, and for a 25 mineral trade off that’s kinda silly. I’m not sure it was necessary, but it will make getting immortals out defensively marginally easier I suppose; still, I don’t think this was a good thing
Colossus change - nerf PvZ, buff PvT IMO. Armour is more impactful in PvT than it is in PvZ, and losing the additional shields for PvZ kinda sucks, but honestly I think this is overall a net even, if not a slight buff overall since in the long run you arguably take less damage than you otherwise would due to the effect of armour.
Energy overcharge could go either way; I think it’s better for more skilled players though, which as far as I’m concerned, is a buff in the long run IMO.
Then there’s the changes to the other races.
Terran got nerfed across the board; the only thing that’s a positive for them is the sensor tower cost change and the ability to salvage it (which will basically never be used ever) - which came at a trade off of a roughly 19% smaller size (which is massive). Oh, and the supply depot drop change which will basically never be used ever. In fact, I don’t think in the entire 2 months the PTR was up, we even saw it used once. I know I didn’t use it.
Ghost nerf, PF nerf, and offensive salvage now being unsalvagable has huge connotations for proxy builds; it won’t kill them, but it will absolutely make them significantly more risky than they already were - and we didn’t see a whole lot of them as it was. It will likely eliminate a number of openings (like bunker in the protoss’ mineral line to protect the reaper, for example), which is a shame given that the game already has issues with predictability.
Cyclone reversion is a straight nerf in TvP especially (though it’s current variation is bugged, doing something like 20% more damage than normal), and this alone will almost certainly directly shift the dynamic of power back in the favour of Protoss; a number of builds from Protoss took hits with the old cyclone, and now that’s gone, they’re 100% back in favour.
Honestly it’s arguable that Zerg got the best end of the deal here.
Cheaper hatcheries, Ultra push priority, microbial shroud buff (which Zerg players will still say is useless), hydra getting Nanomuscular Swell, which gives them a 100% speed boost to avoid or mitigate damage (100% speed is huge - it makes it the fastest unit in the game for that brief moment, and allows for some major ground coverage despite the fact that it only lasts just under a second)
Spore change is arguably net even, but it’s getting around a 33% damage buff at the cost of a loss of about 25% HP.
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It was just an example. In pigs recent Video He also Talks about the Importance of range, even for a Tempest. He Doubles down by saying its the Most Important Part of a unit. Nearly right at the beginning of the new Patch Video.
Obviously its more Important for Hydra but its also very Important for Tempest too. Meaning He says No we cannot say its a Buff. Its a net even at best.
Which again is the opposite of whats pig is saying. The supply Change to him is Not really visible. Same with Ghosts. Its a purely zvt Change because obviously If you build Like 15 Ghosts you will notice the difference. But the difference is still a Lot smaller than actually nerfing the unit itself. Which they should do.
Especially on lower Level i call bollocks. Sry. But 1 supply Change doesnt really have an Impact before lategame 200/200 since you need Like 10 or 20 Minerals more per Ghost If you Break it down to the supply cost. Meaning you need to build more Depots/earlier Depots. This shouldnt bother you at all. Especially compared to how much weaker protoss is in pvt (especially for lower Level of Play)
Also you forgot to get your free win with cyclones it seems. Every Streamer every Player i know Just spams cyclones because of the Bug
Yeah but thats coming from a terran Player that thinks disruptor shouldnt kill an unstimmed marauder. Ofc you think Things that are good vs terran should be nerfed and Things that are good vs other races are fine. Obviously im also a Bit biased but cmoooon. Why dont you See how incredible Ghosts are compared to everything the other races have. They are insaaaane. A Tier 2 unit that is capable of countering 2 races
But yeah…granted…maybe your Change would barely suffice. Making HT actually Kinda OK vs Ghosts would be a First good step. But knowing Balance council they would never do that.
Wasnt there a Interview with Skillous Spirit and maxpax ? Didnt they all agree that the Patch sucks and even Spirit Said its Bad for protoss?
Still…even If you say its net even…the Balance council wanted to Help protoss. Which they really didnt do. This sucks. Again. They rather think about terran for 90% of the time while claiming to Help protoss. Thats so annoying. Yes ofc Shake Things Up for protoss. Its good that Overcharge is gone. Delete disruptor. OK. But give protoss some straight Up Power. Nerf cheese strats.
Ofc it wasnt necessary. I dont think its tooooooo Important tho because its Most Important in PvP and nearly unimportant in pvt. In pvz you have Oracle Energy all day to Deal with roach ravager rushes so i dont think it Matters all too much but its a huge annoyance because its Just giving away the Idea what the Balance council is Up to. They are Just bullying protoss for the Sake of it
Its Not how many nerfs. Its about how hard they Hit. And why do you See Reddit on fire ? Why did they only ask protoss Pros ? Because they changed a Lot of very impactful Things for protoss. Ghosts are hardly nerfed If you compared it to shield battery Overcharge or disruptor.
Its still funny to me how anyone could be Close to complaining about shield battery Overcharge when we have terran pf in mind 
I meeeaaaaaaaaaan. This is a good Thing they nerfed the Number of openings of t and allowed p for some openings again. You either went macro and died as p or you did 3/4 Gate blink pressure. There isnt a Lot coming from protoss compared to terran. Its a good Thing they turned down some Things that are clearly in terrans facor.
Maybe. Either t or z. Looking good for both races. Because zerg got the least nerfs but t has the Advantage in Maps. But again early mothership Rush or the new mothership should be rather hard to Deal with for zerg. Maybe actually the Problem of battlemech turning to mech again ? For lower leagues obviously.
While i understand that some zergs have a hard time because of build Order Change its Like the First time Happen to Them in 14 years. Compared to protoss that Changes nearly yearly. Mothership core, Pylon Overcharge, Nexus Overcharge, battery/battery Overcharge…and while the Changes in build Orders are rather minor for zerg you have serious Trouble to get to know what exactly you have to do now vs every cheese or all in because you dont have a battery Overcharge. You have to relearn soooo much.
But yeah. The Patch wasnt the huuuuuuge Deal. The Patch of the century Like they advertised. It was…maybe for protoss. In a Bad way
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TL has a post and in some videos you often hear it: In balance council, Terrans are very biased and block change. which is consistent with my experience here in the forum.
over the last patch, bio has been buffed more and more. aoe → nerf, toss/zerg weaker early game. MMM can apply more pressure for longer.
what was the goal of the patch? help toss, especially TvP. What did we get more PvZ changes.
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I’ve used it; it’s very, very strong - too strong with the three(?) bugs it currently has. I also don’t particularly like using “bugged features” if I can help it.
Reddit has been a mostly Protoss centric rabbit hole for years that, frankly, has a lot of delusions about what Protoss is and isn’t. I don’t put much stock in what they say when the majority of them - half at least according to one of the polls on the reddit page - have already admitted to not even doing the bare minimum of playing the game, and even less stock when they actively ignore statistics presented from multiple sources because it hurts their feelings and goes against the narrative they’ve concocted for themselves - they will literally witch-hunt you if you disagree with them.
Sure, I’m not denying that; The cyclone change alone does this too, though it should be noted that prior to the cyclone being changed in 5.0.12 version the number of openings Protoss had was arguably protoss favoured, not Terran favoured. Still, I’m quite content to wait and see where the dice falls.
Mmm… I’m not so sure about that yet; I think as far as the maps will go, only time will really tell.
Unironically, mothership is actually really, really strong - I quite like it. I could easily see Mothership rush being a genuine thing for an early game timing. I’ve seen a couple people do a mothership rush already and it’s pretty funny, but it was surprisingly strong.
Sure, not gonna disagree with that.
Again, two very different stages of the game, but sure, you do you.
As far as MaxPax goes, MaxPax is notorious for being slow to change anything when adapting or looking at his builds; he’s very set in his ways and rarely refuses to experiment until someone else shows him the way.
I saw the interview, I do think Spirit said the disruptor change was bad (and I don’t necessarily disagree, but I also don’t necessarily agree either, from a game-play stand point). I do recall that he liked energy overcharge though.
I mean, it would directly restore the balance between Templar and Ghosts from ye-olden-days. Ghosts - and EMP specifically - weren’t OP then, so fixing that should inherently fix the relationship they already have.
Yeah? Because looking away from your army for half a second and having the entire thing get vaporized is a pretty good reason not to have it kill an unstimmed marauder; at least my suggestion means that you still 1-tap stimmed marauders during an engagement, while you’re not as heavily punished for going and doing your macro tasks the moment you look away.
People still complain about the widow mine after its various nerfs, and getting a full 5 seconds of reaction time before it fires. This is literally the same thing here; why should you be punished for not having a 0.1 second reaction time because you looked away? As it is, it will still 1-shot ghosts, marines and mines, and frankly hitting marauders still means the rest of the army cleans them up pretty damn easily.
I mean, not really? I’ve been an advocate of buffing the colossus for quite a while now; I’d rather play against Colossus than Disruptor. The Disruptor is just so… binary, and so, so punishing if you screw up even once - in many cases the game just ends if you’re taking a hit, or at least swings wildly in the Protoss favour.
You say that, and yet it’s still surprising how much faster I reach supply cap when I make them, and how much weaker my army feels because of the smaller unit count as a direct result.
You make 5 ghosts, you lose the DPS of 5 stimmed marines from that extra supply - this obviously increases as you make more ghosts; it seems small, but I genuinely notice the difference because there’s less damage output from both ghosts and other units.
And that’s fine; I’m not complaining about the nerf at all, but to say it doesn’t do what was advertised is, frankly, wrong.
Then start by giving it an armour or light tag; I’m genuinely surprised that wasn’t something that was added - I’d personally say an armoured tag would be less problematic, particularly for TvZ, but it would go a long way. Stalkers and immortals both would gain huge damage buffs to ghosts as a direct result. Frankly, so would Lurkers, but eh.
I’m not disagreeing that range is important.
I AM disagreeing that the range nerf to the tempest was the bigger of the two, given it is a semi-mobile long range artillery platform that actually has some decent micro-capability to it (And no minimum fire range).
On its own, the Tempest has what, 12 sight range anyway (which, btw, is more than any other siege unit in the game)? Meaning it can already fire almost its entire range without assistance. 1 additional range isn’t adding a whole lot more than what it can already do.
Edit: So apparently - and somewhat reinforcing my point at how little it actually mattered - there are reports that the Tempest is bugged too, and still has 14 range. IF this is the case - and I’m not sure how true that it is - then it’s a straight buff.
The game isn’t built around a tier-based system. Stop it with this BS.
Unironically, I think we need more aggressive strategies in the game (from all races). Every game is a macro game, and there’s little deviation in them these days. That’s something I think that needs to be fixed. I don’t think cheese strats should be broken and unholdable, but having viable timings, pressures, aggressive attacks and all-ins should be much more feasible than they are - from every race.
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I would say that’s pretty questionable. The cheaper hatcheries offset the more expensive queens, but don’t offset the fact that because the queens are more expensive, you’ll probably end up with less of them (you don’t get as many hatcheries as you do queens), meaning you need to commit more larva to defense, slowing down Zerg’s economy that didn’t even really overtake Protoss until quite late in the game. Additionally, your queens also come out slightly slower, delaying the initial creep tumour/inject and giving the initial reaper more time to harass.
The ultra change is whatever. The push priority is nice but the ultra was also straight up nerfed, both in increasing its size again, and the nerf to ultra speed off creep.
Microbial shroud is fine, will probably be used for some timing attacks, but probably won’t change the lategame much where the meta is going for corruptor/viper/broodlord to deal with airtoss. I guess you can use shroud on lurkers if you still have them, but fungal is probably a better use of energy.
Nanomuscular swell is a meme when coupled with the hydra speed nerf. Plus being a hive tech research for a race that already has ridiculously long tech paths in comparison to P/T. It should have just been rolled into hydra speed at lair tech.
Honestly I don’t see ZvT changing that much, with lategame maybe slightly swinging closer into Zerg’s favour with the ghost change, but ZvP lategame is going to be much worse than it was due to the mothership changes (and the spore change). The spore change is better for initial oracle harass, but almost definitely worse for lategame. The mothership change never should have made it into the live game with both the damage buff and being unabductable. Double buffing the unit is absurd.
I’ll just wait for Serral and Reynor to play some big matches before I make any judgement calls, but that’s just what I can think of that would lead me to disagree with you saying that Zerg got the better end of the stick.
Overall I don’t think it was a bad patch for any race, but the idea of going lategame vs Protoss at least for me is now completely off the table.
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No, I’m sorry, I have to disagree. That push priority is huge, even with the size increase offsetting how many can push through (though I’ll say this felt unwarranted).
The speed nerf was negligible as well since you’re always going to be able to catch whatever you’re chasing, including stimmed bio; after all, you have to stutter-step and ultras will catch up every time you stop to fire. Stimming and running away, they’re the same speed, but stim will run out fairly quickly there too.
While it’s true that you don’t get as many hatcheries as queens, hatchery offsets the initial queen costs for the initial queens enough that the difference is almost negligible against the 1st reaper.
Why on earth would they come out slower (for the initial couple queens) if the cost is offset for the initial couple queens?
Mmm… I’m generally inclined to disagree; we’ve definitely seen both used quite well in PTR tournaments and both were extremely good, though Microbial is definitely situational, I’ll give you that.
Both the ghost change and the PF changes in particular will directly effect this, yes. I don’t know how much, if it will change all that much, at least at pro level.
Yeah, I can’t disagree with that.
Understandable.
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I am not a zerg, but from experience, when I am playing against a 3-base zerg in the early game, he will have more than 3 queens prior to this patch. So zerg gets hit with the price change fairly early.
I am surprised to read that people think this is a terran patch. Yeah, the cyclone is bugged but that wasn’t the intent. There are some nerfs to other races that benefit terran but terran got a lot of nerfs, too (how impactful remains to be seen, though).
Push priority is one of those things that will help bad (i.e people like me) players, but it’s not gonna make a difference to players that can already micro their ling/ultra armies well anyway. Ultras could already attack over lings, so it helps if people go roaches into ultra for some reason I guess? I don’t think it’s a bad change don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great for players like me, it’s just not gonna make a difference to anyone probably M1 and above. For them it is pretty much just a straight nerf when coupled with the rest of the changes to the ultra.
It’s not just the first queen that matters though, it’s common to go up to like 9 queens in ZvT to stay safe and still be able to have a good economy, with the increased price to them now, something else has to give if you still want 9 queens.
I fully admit this could just be me being bad, but it certainly feels like I’m without queens for slightly longer after the reaper arrives now. I would be interested to hear other Zerg’s experience with this and find out if it’s just a me thing.
Yeah I forgot about the planetary change tbh. It’s definitely a good thing for Protoss and Zerg that planetaries are slightly weaker. Probably more of a buff for Protoss tbh, as most Zergs tend to over send units to planetaries anyway, usually if a planetary doesn’t have the army at it, and a Zerg wants it dead, it’s gonna die regardless of if it’s 2 or 3 armour. Planetaries also tend to just explode in ZvT compared to PvT (unless the Protoss has a bunch of Immortals)
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The initial iteration of the patch definitely felt a bit more Terran favoured, didn’t contain the ghost nerf or the cyclone revert, salvageable missile turrets. It feels a bit more even across the board with this iteration.
Like MCanning said, if you want to see if it’s a good patch do this:
Go to HeroMarine’s stream, listen to his opinion and his chat’s opinion.
Then do the same for a Zerg streamer, and the same for a Protoss streamer.
If they’re all unhappy with the patch, it was a decent patch.
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While true, I’d argue that as a direct result of the armour nerf It’s a lot easier for lings - particularly cracklings - to take them out now as well, meaning less resources sacked on killing the PF.
Maybe.
The number of times we’ve seen ultras derp even at a pro level prior to the push priority is pretty high though, so IMO it’ll absolutely make a difference there.
I do still think that the bigger ultras were definitely unnecessary though.
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possibly with numbers:
start: 2xbase and 2 queens = -25
followed by 3x base and 4queens = -50 already lost the first drone
There was already the comment that larvae are left over because you have no resources.
we may now see creep tumor over inject at the first queens.
I have the feeling it’s another MMM aka bio buff patch. nerf P/Z early game. aoe and ultra nerf → you can sit on bio longer.
It also deletes pool first openers. Pool first was already bad since they took a larva from inject and gave it to the hatchery, but then they nerfed transfuse and creep (from queens) while buffing creep from hatcheries. So the reward of a queen was lessened compared to previous versions of the game, meaning pool first is inferior to hatch first. But now it’s even worse because each queen is -0.5 drones. Hatch first builds are definitely the superior opener. This is a net nerf because cheesers can rely on hatch first openers more often. Cannon rushes are indirectly buffed.
The one up side is that early hatchery styles (hatchery before overlord, for example) are slightly buffed. So 14 hatch 14 gas 14 pool 15 overlord ling floods are better. You don’t even get queens with that build anyway. The reason it works vs terran is because the hatch first makes terran think he can send the reaper across the map when in reality the lings are fast enough to dodge the reaper and kill the command center. From there, you outright win if he decides to pull scvs and save it. He does this because his brain is thinking 12 pool defense vs slow lings, but this is a speedling flood. Anyway I’ve personally used that build to take games off code s players and it’s technically buffed by the hatch/queen cost change. It’s impactful because you have to get the lings out fast enough to dodge the reaper and with gas this is too slow on small maps. With the cost change it speeds things up enough that you can do this build on small maps.
The net result is that terran has to keep a worker present at your natural until the reaper arrives, and that interferes with his ability to block your third. He can’t both block the third and see if lings leave before the reaper. So if you send a drone to the third he has to make a scouting choice and can’t do both.
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Thought experiment. We delete the nexus, command center, and hatchery from the game. The only thing you can do is fight with your starting workers. All three races are unhappy, therefore it’s a good patch. Everyone is unhappy isn’t a good metric. The balance patch is quite good but that’s just bad logic from mcanning.
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