Interesting. I’m still hoping for a Mothership slight buff/buff.
Time Warp:
– 2 seconds delay will change to while the delay is happening it also slows down movement speed from 0% to 50% in that 2 seconds window (it grows from 0% to 50% in 2 seconds). Not exactly a full delay though it will be interesting so enemy units won’t instantly escape Time Warp as before.
– Increase Time Warp effect duration from 7 seconds to 8 seconds.
Voids are going to be dead again…
While there were a few void builds that needed to be addressed, I was happy that Voids were actually a usable unit. This patch effectively kills them again. I’d be fine with just the build time nerf, the 200 to 250 minerals will remove them from the meta again. Otherwise, this looks like a solid patch.
Actually the total time for a lurker is longer than a siege tank due to the requisite hydra.
As for why they should have their advantages:
Lower range than a siege tank even after upgrading
They do cost more (yes 25 gas adds up, imagine if they added 25 gas to the siege tank, there would be more salt here than in the sea of the same name).
They have a costly, high investment tech tree to invest into just to unlock
They require 2 expensive, slow to research, T3 upgrades to be effective
They are substantially less effective without Hive caster support
They have no auto attack (let alone an auto attack that has a high single target dps than their siege mode)
So yes, they should have an advantage or two over a unit that comes out in the first 5 minutes of the game.
Protoss is so OP in PvsT now. Terran had the worst performance in 2021 to 2022 Premier Touranments: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/587061-terran-had-worst-result-in-21-22-premier-tourneys
Terran was nerfed so hard into the ground and Protoss was buffed so much against Terran, the Terran pros had trouble performing in Premier tournaments, often losing to Protoss.
Sure, if youre making them one by one. But you generally dont make them one by one. Generally you make them in batches. If you tried to produce 12 siege tanks and 12 workers off say… 4 base production (assuming all upgrades are equal and researched, and assuming you both have the necessary money to do so) getting those 12 tanks is going to take longer than getting those 12 hydras and then morphing them into 12 lurkers due to the way the production mechanics work.
True. If I recall though, they can also fire the full length of their attack range without external spotters, which tanks cannot do, and unlike tanks (not that this is a bad thing) they also have no minimum firing range (nor should they, with how zerg units work).
How would you feel about removing adaptive talons and making seismic spines a lair tech upgrade? Earlier power spike, but not quite as mobile or fast to siege.
Its still reasonable to defend with considering Zerg has creep which allows spectacular vision and mobility even without the upgrade.
After the Wardi announcement, I didnt expect a patch to be honest. But then again I am happy as they haven’t abandoned StarCraft altogether.
Liking the patch as of now as it addresses the current issue with the PvZ. Its like also they are making a cheese Protoss more ineffective which is nice. Less Skytoss opener and cheese is good. Protoss is interesting with ground units anyways at least for a viewer perspective.
However I wonder if they will add some buffs and nerfs as its only on the PTR. If we can voice out some more the issues maybe the Balance Team will provide additional tweaks here and there.
How about you fix the raven and bring back the seeker missile and give it a buff and nerf the carriers which are OP?
mixed fillings.
The question is how early and how long does this “Earlier power spike” last. otherwise you have a weaker late game for nothing.
hydra den → Lurker Den vs Hydra den / infestor pit → Lurker den / Hive.
You can stay longer on lair and in certain situations you have to invest less for lurker.
generally good start for a revival of Sc2.
Cheese strategies are weakened.
boring all round units get a production nerf.
Toss should now be less afraid of queen walk timing and can play ground army.
Hope there are bigger changes coming for Skytoss, where better players are rewarded and worse punished.
Raven is fine. Seeker missile needs to stay gone.
They never will because protoss had enough game where tons bane walk mass lurker or just mass ravager spam kill any type ground
Carrier are op? Lol you can’t made thors or infestor fungal plus shroud? K made buch of marine they kill any carrier as long as one ghost in your squad
I still feel like this is still not enough change to counter the Protoss air armada in the late game. Especially in ZvP. They will just take away the ability to transfuse, which was basically one of the tools against Protoss Air, but without weakening the Protoss Air too much. So for me this patch makes Zerg’s weakness against Protoss even weaker.
I like the queen nerf. Next time I will see zerg player making any queen in the game I will tell him “STAY IN BASE YOU QUEEN”!
hashtags:
#NotFunny #DukeCringeJoke
Myanuz says good. Queen nerf is proly vs other races not tvz. Other stats too insignificant to make much fifference
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.
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.
There is no balance team
En Taro Adun,
We are releasing a Balance Patch which was put together by our very own SC2 community. Over the past couple months, we have been working with various members of the community and tournament organizers to create a balance update for the game. We would like to recognize and acknowledge the members of the group for the upcoming changes you see below
It says they didn’t make the changes, they just gathered them from pros/community people.Apparently Showtime already knew the changes so it makes sense for the top players knowing some things.
lol what? Shield battery is unchanged on the defense, which is the purpose it’s supposed to serve. Offensive shield batteries are partially nerfed. That’s it.
Good.
Like queen walks that, oh wait, no…those are not going to be a thing anymore…crazy that they also took out the mass stargate from minute 1 option now that the only counter pressure is gone. It’ll be back to what it was before: ling/roach pressure against ground toss until Stargate is survivable. It also gives phoenixes an identity again instead of being a slightly worse void ray.
Nydus play is completely unchanged. The new creep is just so you can heal the nydus like is already currently possible. It’s literally a non-change.
German Taxi and Creep Highway are not used anymore because they come so much later that the Protoss would have to try to not be prepared for it.
It literally only nerfs proxy void ray, and not even entirely. It just isn’t as cost efficient…and used in one matchup total…amazing that you can find a way to be upset about that. Take the stick out, I promise it’s more comfortable to sit down after.
I’m under the impression that there is a group involved in brainstorming these changes based on the line “various members of the community and tournament organizers” so I refer to them as the (makeshift) balance team.
I get that they are (supposed) to be for the defensive, but let’s not play around here. This is a very strong nerf and could potentially delete all shield battery strategies.
K.
That’s my point. It’s a non-change, but Protoss gets nerfed along the way overall. Zerg just finds a different timing to hit a weakened Protoss skytoss. Either that or Protoss goes back to running ground, which was already piss bad due to all the previous nerfs that took place back in 2019/2020. These current changes call for a dangerous slope that could return us to the state the game was in back in 2019 and early 2020 when Protoss was getting slapped by Zerg.
How about we factor back in the fact that each void ray costs 50 more minerals and 6 more seconds per unit? Put into this perspective - was void ray a viable strategy before it got its set of buffs? In its current state it is strong, and I get that. But when you add up both changes it doesn’t look that great.
It’s strategy deletion when you put in all the changes together. Don’t even try to brush it off like it’s nothing. Immortal sentry zealot was also a PvZ exclusive move and look where that strategy ended up. If you want to continue seeing things through a delusional and biased lens, go ahead, but don’t act like you’re the voice of reason. And I’m not saying the individual changes are bad either - I’m saying when you put it all together, it looks ugly. I think a while back, I may have joked that the void ray is going to end up just like the tempest - buffed nicely only to be dragged through the dirt again. To see it becoming a reality is terrifying.
The thing is for me and im Protoss, playing void rays into skytoss or against void rays into skytoss was ultra boring. It was also boring to watch. If i see one gate stargate in pvp i do a4 gate blink all in, i dont want to play lame sim city for 10 minutes for 1 big fight. So yeah im pretty happy with the hvy nerf, even if it means void rays will be only used occasionaly. Ground play is much more fun and interesting, and hopefully will be boosted for Protoss, if needed.
Except the void ray is still buffed from then, it just costs the same now while still being one of the fastest, most versitile units in the game. It can still deny nydus play perfectly fine. Nydus play was dead because of how cheap vrs are, now protoss have to decide if they’re worth making each game isntead of it being a 100% of the time, yes they’re worth making.
Good. Shield Battery strategies should be the following: Built defensively or used to supplement an all-in. End of strategies. Same with PFs. Same with Bunkers. Same with Spore/Spine.
Just Void Ray should never be a strategy. That’s how it was in WoL. No one in their right mind wants to go back to that.
It’s literally just a proxy void ray nerf and that’s it. It’s not deleted, it’s just an all-in now; which it should be. If you proxy high value tech, that should be it. Either you win off it or you lose. Period.
Your nightmare is everyone else’s dream. So…have the nightmare. I welcome it.