I’ll give my reasons for why I think these changes are awful. I’ve said this in the past many times, and I’ll repeat it here: I don’t mind when they put out changes or try to fix issues in the meta, but so many times they go overboard and just straight up delete strategies from the game. Hoping someone on the scrapped up balance team reads this.
Starting with the obvious: void ray proxies. This is an obvious issue, and I think we can all agree that it’s fairly overpowered in its current state. While it is defendable, it takes significantly more effort from the defender than the attacker. This is mostly a PvT issue (not PvZ, and we can skip talking about mirror match ups for now).
In my eyes, either the shield battery change or 1 of the void ray changes is fine. My issue here is that they want to pile this up all at once. This is not nerfing a strategy. This is deleting the void ray proxy from the game with no counterbalance whatsoever. Never mind all the other repercussions that follow from making the shield battery basically useless. Look, I’m not a fan of proxy shield battery strategies, but there is only so many ways that Protoss can cheese the other races. Deleting this type of cheese gives Protoss much less flexibility (and no I will not hear anyone out about Protoss being the cheesiest and most flexible - while it is currently debatable, it certainly won’t be if that shield battery change goes through).
The next issue: opening void ray in general. Let’s be honest here - even in the current state, you will not find many Protoss players massing void ray against Terran. It’s not an issue in PvT, so let’s talk PvZ. Currently, it is a nuisance for sure, but Zerg players have found ways to combat it - and let’s talk Zerg macro first. Zerg players are fully capable of macroing against void rays in its current state. Hydras, queens, corruptors - yes I said it. Corruptors also work okay against void rays believe it or not. It’s doable. My point is that Zerg has ways to combat it.
So what do the changes mean in terms of the void ray and macro Zerg? It means it takes 6 seconds longer for every void ray produced, and 50 more minerals. This is essentially a reversion to the old void ray build time and cost, leaving the void ray with only speed buffs. Disregarding shield battery changes, this is extreme enough in my eyes to consider it unacceptable. Pretty sure they did something with the immortal/robotics facility/warp prism and look what that did to that push/strategy - deleted from the meta.
I might be okay with one nerf or the other, but pushing both at the same time is excessive. Clearly no one on the balance team studies history, because they are clearly doomed to repeat it. Once again, these changes pinpoint to another era of bullying Protoss with unnecessary nerfs.
Onto the allin scenario: the queen walk. Not even an allin sometimes honestly. That’s how crazy it was. Fairly easy for the Zerg to execute, VERY hard for the Protoss to hold. Now let’s ask - how large is the nexus field? Is it the same size as shield battery overcharge? That would mean you are not as likely to extend your shield batteries to protect certain parts of your base. Maybe I’m a bit paranoid in regards to the shield battery change, but I’ll leave it up for something to think about.
As for the queen transfuse issue, this is HUGE, and would make holding queen walks much easier… Except you have less void rays because of the increased mineral cost and production time. So what they have done is make it worse for both sides, and while I think the net is certainly a little worse for Zerg due to the power of transfuse, the void ray opener in general just gets weakened to begin with - will it even be viable? Void rays were not viable back in the day. I am very much worried that we are just deleting Protoss strategies once again.
Now let’s address the nydus worm change. This is basically telling Zergs to try and use the nydus worm instead of a queen walk. This means the Zerg needs to invest in: a lair, a nydus network, and a nydus worm. Nydus worms close the travel gap though - and let’s not forget the buffs that nydus worms received a while back. Will these changes balance out the queen walk? I don’t know for certain, but it doesn’t sound great. It just sounds like Zerg is just going to find another angle/timing to attack a nerfed Protoss to me.
Regarding creep, I am curious about creative strategies with overlords or fast creep tumor spread. I think I have seen this in the past - you can just use your overlords to generate creep, and in this case, that would give room for the queens to transfuse (remember also that queens can immediately just put down creep tumors as well once the creep is on the tile). I really want to know how deeply this mysterious balance team thought through these interactions, because honestly, I doubt they thought this far.
I think I could ramble on, but I hope my main point is clear: this is not strategy nerfing, this is strategy deletion. And I don’t stand by that at all.
For the other changes, let’s see…
I think this is kind of silly all around. I really don’t know if it will solve the planetary fortress/blink onto bio crisis. On the other hand, it could make dark templars useless in terms of the element of surprise. 0.75 seconds is plenty of time for bio to shred dark templars more than they already do. Maybe this new balance team did enough testing to determine it actually helps? I really have no idea. I smell bias, but I do agree that something needs to be done about making planetary fortresses disappear in the blink of an eye (even though terrans still manage to defend it sometimes, meaning it’s not that broken). Maybe 0.5 seconds is better?
I’ve said this a lot - widow mines are broken. Any nerf to them is a good nerf.
Lurkers could use this nerf. Protoss needs it more than Terran honestly. The fact that bio in its current state can handle a fully upgraded lurker should speak miles about how silly the whole interaction is.