Holding onto hope for a new BALANCE PATCH 2022

General Discussion
1

All,

It has been quite some time since the last balance patch, most say it is very unlikely, but I still have hope that Blizzard cares somewhat about the community even with the Activision overlords shadowing them.

For anyone who says the game is balanced, I think a game, a masterpiece, and just about anything can be perfected. SC2 is balanced in a sense but not completely, and even minor changes can make for a much better result in product, and will make for much more exciting games.

General changes I think that are needed,
Protoss/Stalker ground armies need a late game buff, air needs a nerf.
Zerg needs a stronger A-A option
Terran widow mines should be less effective late game, mech army should be more mobile late game.

More specific changes that would require some work,
PROTOSS

  • Protoss/Stalker range increase, or spell to cast that makes for stronger anti-air.
  • Move hallucination to Adept, make it just an orb for scouting while the Adept remains stationary
  • Give Sentry late game ability that increases stalker range or A-A damage for a short time.
  • Increase carrier interceptor cost to 15-20 minerals each, and remove autocast on building interceptors to require more micromanagement.
  • Void ray speed values swapped between prismatic alignment, and not.
    *Voidray has 25% speed reduction then current value on regular movement, but gains increased speed on prismatic alignment. This will make for more difficult decisions to be made on when this is used, and if the voidrays can retreat properly once PA ends. It will also offer a more aggressive and committed push for engaging attacks.

ZERG
(this is a lot, so stay with me)

  • Zerg Nydus worm no longer generates creep and has TTL,

  • Hydra is tier 1 unit with lower stats but still able to get to existing 3/3/3 Hydra stats late game.
    *Hydra now has, 4 range, +2 with upgrade
    *costs 1 supply
    *cost 75/25 with 80 health doing 10 dps

  • Spore requires EVO chamber

  • Spine crawler now does 5 extra damage to light units rather than armored units
    (All of the above means less of a reliance on Queens, with that said).

  • Queen Acid spine attacks reserved only for air
    *Queen ground attack Talons now deal 4 damage, with splash effect (releasing a ‘gas emission’ resulting in another 4 damage (for clumped up units attacking queen front) This can benefit the queen more when using proper micro

  • Queen transfuse REMOVED

  • Queen new energy ability that grants vision to a nearby overlord for 8 seconds with animation on overlord.

  • Queen health recharges an additional .5 a second when on creep

  • Transfuse now added to Infestor, removed MICROBIAL SHROUD

  • Swarm host can mutate (with upgrade) into Scourge Host.
    *Scourge host, anti-air only unit similar to existing locust, but acts as a kamikaze unit.
    *Slow build up on movement but has movement acceleration after 3 seconds of continued movement (for predetermined attacks)
    *25-35 health, deals 100-120 damage (both with upgrades), has a 20 second timed life. *Eggs land on ground before hatching into air to offer a moment of vulnerability.

  • Lurker adaptive talons no longer decreases burrow time, but Lurker now has 1.5 speed multiplier on creep (rather than 1.3)
    *Adaptive talons upgrade cost reduced to 100/50, 50 second upgrade time.

  • Overlord generate creep reduced from 11 seconds, to 5 seconds

  • Ultralisk speed reduced back to 2.25, but has new upgrade, ANABOLIC FRENZY
    *Anabolic Frenzy allows the ultralisk to increase in speed as it absorbs more damage
    *Stacks 3 times when health is reduced by 50/75/150 and remains permanent until health is regenerated or transfused back to previous values. Must take place in 3 separate attacks, meaning a Yamato cannot bring Ultralisk to max level.
    *unit becomes enraged on activation with a red, brighter hue within each stage
    *Healing of this unit based on these thresholds causes the ability to revert back or completely end at full health.

TERRAN

  • Increase size of widow mine presence by .5 and radius of widow mine burrow by an additional .5
    *This prevents widow mines from clumping together as much, but still offer the same effect as before early game. (Think of Burrowed Swarm host proximity)

  • Thor late game upgrade, Reactive Treads
    *Reactive treads allows for a 1.5 second dash in any direction at 4.75 speed
    *Cannot attack air during this 2 second duration, prioritizes ground

  • Increase Reaper damage to structures by a multiplier of 2 (with upgrade)

  • Reaper now has proximity scan ability
    *Proximity scan, a late game ability, allows reaper to grant vision within his surrounding area

  • Command Center supply depot “drop” now caps depot health when injured, or adds a total of 100 health to supply depot. (150 health with base armor upgrade, 2 armor with Neosteel upgrade.

  • Cyclone, revert change to armor (120HP) and Cyclone now starts with 150 HP.

  • Base damage attack range remains at 5, but lock on range reverted from 7 - 6

  • Engineering bay, High sec-auto tracking now grants back +1 to Cyclone lockon target range

  • Neosteel upgrade no longer upgrades bunker by capacity of 2, but increases range of bunker by 2.

  • Command center now able to transport 12 scvs at a time, without Neosteel upgrade.

  • Viking Hull Fortify upgrade
    Adds 10 HP to viking when they are 75% low on health
    *Hull Breach animation in automatic, but takes 2 seconds to equip (so essentially forcing unit to kite for 2 seconds to prevent destruction). Still able to attack during this animation, but added health wont be applied until after the animation completes.

2

The hope is strong in this one.

5 Likes
3

Blizzard doesn’t care, stop giving them a free pass. Until Blizzard cares about their franchises again, I’m not going to spend a cent more on their products and I’m going to enjoy that they don’t want an unpaying customer using their servers as much as I do.

4

We’re currently on version 5.0.8.86383.
We’re approaching version 5.1.0 (probably a good time to get rid of the 5 digits on the right).
In fact, only 1 more in-between patch could fit in.

This may put pressure, encouraging to not release anything before it’s worth a higher rank number in the version increasing.
I know as a developer I feel this kind of effect, not sure how it goes for a dev team (or what’s left of it regarding SC2)

5

The suggestions are not a balance patch, but overhaul of many different units and abilities.

3 Likes
6

where do you fins this

7

Hatch tech Hydralisks and AOE damage Queens, hilarious

1 Like
8

Game’s been out for 12 years. 12 Years of endless rebalaning should prove that it has never been, and never will be, balanced properly. For reference, it only took ONE upgrade for Starcraft 1 to get it right, and that was with the introduction of a whole new campaign and several units per race. tl;dr : not gonna happen bro.

2 Likes
9

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

2 Likes
10

Yeah but people still talk about how BW isn’t balanced. So to say that 1 upgrade “fixed everything” is specious at best. If it was actually balanced perfectly, there wouldn’t be a concept of “balance by map.” Presently, on some maps, certain races in a matchup have a notable advantage; which also couldn’t happen even if we accept “balance by map” as being admissible as an aspect of perfect balance.

1 Like
11

Perfect balance is illusory. If one has to choose between balancing the game by nerffing/buffing half the units of a race each week (impossible even when Blizz actually “balanced” the game), and creating a map with certain characteristics, then the second way is perfectly viable.
This was the way SC1/BW worked.
They got it right on the first try in the long gone year 1998!
Also, the old (balance via maps) had the added bonus of eliminating the whine that the first option created (if no one is going to buff your units you don’t whine).
But all this is theoretic now, game is permanently at a frozen state.

1 Like
12

This is literally a lie. Professional Korean BW players whine about units and specific unit interactions, map independent, all the time. It was their whining that finally convinced Blizzard to patch Flying SCVs.

Your claim is also antithetical to human nature; just because something will never happen doesn’t mean human beings won’t ask for it. If that was the case we wouldn’t have religion. I mean heck, this forum would not exist anymore; no one would post in it if no one whined for things that will never happen given Blizzard officially declared SC2 abandonware.

2 Likes
13

I did not meant to say that the whine would disappear, just would be at the level of SC1/BW that all agree that had way way way less whine than SC2.
The fact that there are people that would whine under any circumstance (the game is frozen and people still whine) simply denotes that exists a delusional and sick minority (1 maybe 2%) that require just some mental-health support.
Blizz can build a balanced map in a day or a weak (when they had the SC-team), compare it with changes in cost, range, DPS of multiple units that cause happiness in the race that is buffed and rage in the remaining 2 races.

14

It went downhill when they stopped making FUN games and tried to design an E-Sport – ironically after their previous fun game accidentally invented E-Sports. Nobody gives a rat’s arrse about some Korean try-hards, and quite frankly, the idea that you can make a living playing games ‘professionally’ is laughable to me; yet here we are. I think they quite intentionally DON’T want balance because a new meta every six months keeps the Koreans doing new stuff. They don’t care that average Joe can’t play; they hope that average Joe WATCHES someone else playing.

3 Likes
15

Less laughable than making some ugly ape drawing and start getting tons of crypto money.

16

Your Angrish is good

Clueless person,

Esports has made games great it is what many watch thsese games for. SC2’s design flaws of units and protoss race has NOTHING to do with esports as a whole!

Was warcraft 3 not great and still is? Yes it is and was.
Was LoL not made with the idea to have esports too? Yet look where it is.

It may look laughable to make a living out of it but some of the foreign players have proly made more bucks in a year than me working for years.

So leave your anti-competition attitude out of here

Also esports >>>>>>>>>>>> nowadays games. like a mobile crap game that is all about paying money. They add more and more features to it, it has card game, hearthstone, some tower defense, what next they gonna add dota and fornite modes ? And ofc all with money is that fun to ya?

I agree with FUN games but that existed till they were turned into cash grabs for every buck - LOOOTS, premiums, and all that crap that FREEMIUM games are about, paying to win or looting you to be useless player if you dont pay.

SC2 has never been that, you do not get resources for money, you can get skins if you like, some call it advantage, thats bs like 1 unit to have caused it with their confusing skin. Gawd forbid known and starting to get old games on PC to ever go this way of today’s games

Oh and besides you are wrong about AVERAGE JOE, the balance and overall lack of sponsorships and finals by Blizz’s ignorance has killed the scene. Koreans have gone military then their skill is ruined, now Koreans that play are toe to toe with foreigners… still a bit better but most better already return from service as 2nd class players

If you like seeing some protoss average joey beat a KR terran, now is best time for it. I mean Harestem is good… for the inferior foreign scene he is almost equal but then vs Maru :roll_eyes:

17

I was briefly excited to see they had an ESL update that “[evolved] in an important step for the longevity of competitive StarCraft II.” I genuinely thought Blizzard suddenly became intelligent and handed over balance management to tournament managers so that someone would be looking at it critically and with the opinion of pro players at heart.

But nope. No news of that. They should still do it. The best time was 5 years ago, the second best time is right now.

1 Like
18

You’re too blinded by your bias to make balance suggestions. You didn’t even bring up nerfing BC free teleports all over the map BUT you want to nerf spores.

Ok terran crybaby, move on.

19

Why Terran cry baby, and why would the BC receive a nerf?
Its extremely niche as it is, and free teleports are one thing the unit actually has going for it.

What suggestions have I made that are more biased to Terran?
"Increase size of widow mine presence by .5 and radius of widow mine burrow by an additional .5
*This prevents widow mines from clumping together as much, but still offer the same effect as before early game. (Think of Burrowed Swarm host proximity)"

This is a huge nerf to widow mine…

"Cyclone, revert change to armor (120HP) and Cyclone now starts with 150 HP.
Base damage attack range remains at 5, but lock on range reverted from 7 - 6"

This is for more early suitability for the Cyclone since its a techlab unit, but its increased lock on range requires an additional upgrade to prevent early snipe attacks.

20

I wouldn’t hire you to balance a game. Game is already a mess and not even funny anymore.