Patch 5.0.18 - desires, thoughts, and reasoning

General Discussion
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Knowing that we’re staring down the barrel of another patch soon™, I wanted to give my honest thoughts about some things that I feel could use some changes, what I personally would change, and why I would change them. A lot of the changes aim to return power to units that were significantly neutered in the name of “balancing the frustration out of the game”, and in doing so, hopefully increases the viability of some early game builds, timings and cheeses that we used to see.

Protoss:

NEXUS

The nexus changes I suggest below aim at curbing the strength of Recharge and how early Protoss can get access to and utilize chronoboost. As Protoss’ various nexus mechanics don’t require any investment to utilize unlike both Terran and Protoss, the aim here is to force decision making in the early and mid-game and hopefully slow down the expansion rate marginally.

  • Nexus starts with 0 energy on spawn/build complete.
  • Energy recharge cooldown increased to 75 seconds.

ADEPT

Adepts are rather polarising; as units they’re incredibly hard to balance due to their ability to shade and effectively be in two places at once, never taking a bad fight. But they’re incredibly niche units in their current iteration, and serve very little purpose outside of one specific timing, and early scouting with the shade. This change will hopefully make them marginally better in the mid-game with upgrades.

  • Adept upgrade scaling modified from 1(+1 vs light) to 2(+2) vs light per upgrade
  • Adepts now do 12(+10 vs light) - originally 10(+12 vs light)
  • New upgrade: Psy-sync Gauntlets - increase base range to 5, from 4.

ROBO UNITS

Robo openings and Robo bay tech feels like it’s the “lesser option” currently. In tandem with the Energy Recharge nerfs these changes aim to make the colossus and disruptor slightly more consistent by giving just a little bit of strength back. For the disruptor specifically, this also aims to make misses marginally less punishing, while also rewarding good aim. Additionally, the immortal change aims to re-introduce some of the early aggressive options that used to be available.

  • Colossus buffed from 10(+5)x2 to 12(+3)x2 - (alternative option, this is added as a research for colossus, allowing for a strategic choice to be made between Thermal lance and the additional damage as to which would be more beneficial in particular situations).
  • Disruptor radius increased to 1.75
  • Disruptor now has tiered splash zones. 1.75 - 50 damage, 1.5 - 100 damage, 1.25 - 145 damage
  • Disruptor Purification nova cool-down reverted to 21.4 (from 17).
  • Immortal attack cooldown reverted to 1.04 (down from 1.14)

HIGH TEMPLAR

Given Protoss’ general AOE and zoning ability with the above changes, Storm’s redesign is no longer necessary (lets be honest, it wasn’t necessary in the first place). The changes to Storm were fairly polarising on all sides, and the current Storm is mostly a side grade of the original due to the larger AOE radius, so we’re reverting it back to the original version.

  • Storm reverted to original values (9 cast range, 2 second duration, 80 damage, 1.75 radius)

MOTHERSHIP

The Mothership in PvZ has become extremely prevalent. While this isn’t a bad thing, it’s redesign has given it some extreme power that Zerg has very little way of dealing with effectively. This change aims to curb some of that power without completely removing it.

  • Heavyweight - Mothership is abductable again, but only travels half distance when abducted.

VOID RAY

This change aims at slightly increasing the viability of early aggression from the lesser used void-ray, without swinging to far and making skytoss to prevalent as an option.

  • Void-ray build time decreased to 40 seconds (from 43)

Terran:

BUNKER

The change to bunkers, and to worker attack range, made proxy rax builds significantly less viable. This change is being made in an effort to bring back some of the more interesting early game options.

  • Bunkers can now be salvaged while under attack.

SIEGE TANK

This change was, frankly, a stupid change and should never have been made in the first place, so I’m reverting it.

  • Siege Tanks can be abducted again

HELLBAT

Another silly change that was completely unnecessary. Reverted.

  • Hellbats now gain +light damage on upgrade scaling again - +2(+1 vs light), from +2.

WIDOW MINE

The Widow Mine was a linchepin of TvP, and it’s nerfs have effectively gutted Terran’s ability to actually play the matchup. These changes aim to restore widow mine’s ability to properly deal with Zealots as well as punish players for not having proper map awareness and/or map vision, and maybe open a new build order up.

  • Widow mine splash damage reverted to radius 1.75.
  • alert changed to start on targeting instead of burrow start.
  • Drilling Claws research time increased to 100 seconds (from 79)
  • Drilling claws research cost increased to 100/100 (from 75/75)
  • Drilling claws no longer requires an armoury to research

BATTLECRUISER

Battlecruisers are a rather interesting conundrum. On the one hand, Tactical Jump is an incredibly powerful tool, and in tandem with BC’s very high HP and armour values, it’s quite strong as an early harassment, especially against Zerg, and can be a lot of fun to use. On the other hand, I feel that tactical jump is just a little too safe, and in tandem with Yamato, it allows for massive damage on a very rapid scale, before jumping away with little opportunity to effectively deal with it.

However, the BC is also incredibly useless as a lategame unit without either of these abilities due to being a short range, slow moving unit, effectively making it a unit that requires you to mass before it can become effective, and in many cases, it still fails to do that because of those traits.

As such, without doing a complete redesign of the Battlecruiser from the ground up, it’s very difficult to address the numerous problems that the BC actually has on multiple fronts, so I’ve opted to lean more into the anti-ground nature that Blizzard initially started down years ago, while also forcing players to make a decision between keeping their unit alive but doing less damage, and dealing more damage but potentially losing their units as a result.

  • Tactical Jump now goes on cooldown when Yamato is used. Yamato goes on cooldown when Tactical Jump is used.
  • New upgrade: Electro-Optical Sensor - 150/150, 100 seconds - Increases air to Ground range by 2. AtG Auto attack damage increased to 10 damage (from 8).

GHOST

Ghosts are another polarising unit. They’re very, very powerful, but the nature of how Terran functions also means that any late-game is basically always going to revolve around them for a variety of reasons. Making them light units certainly helped reduce their general oppressiveness.

Given that Terran now has better tools in the early-game and has some additional power elsewhere in the late-game with some of the changes I’ve made, I feel relatively comfortable dropping their HP back to 100. This will allow upgraded banes to 3 shot ghosts (instead of 4), while colossus will 4 shot them (instead of 5 at 125), allowing for more clear counter-play to them.

  • Ghost now have 100 hp.

LIBERATOR

Liberators received both justified and unjustified nerfs over the years. I completely agree that Advanced Ballistics should not have the extended vision within the circle when they siege up that they previously did, however I think the additional vision nerf on the liberator itself was overkill. These changes aim to restore some of the power to late-game liberators without making them completely stupid again, and also aims to make it so that liberators without Advanced Ballistics can utilize the full radius of their circle again.

Finally, something that bothered me was in relation to their Anti-air attack. In the past, they have been incredibly powerful, but I feel their was better ways to nerf them rather than just straight up making their anti-air effectively useless. This should marginally improve their anti-air against light units, which their anti-air was originally supposed to be effective against.

  • Liberators now have 10 sight range again.
  • Advanced Ballistics now grants 3 additional range instead of 2.
  • Liberator air attacks now have tiered splash damage: 1.5 - 5 damage (current) 1.0 - 5(+2 vs light) damage.

RAVEN

Raven openings have been pretty much neutered into nonexistence over the last few years in pretty much every matchup that isn’t TvT. While Interference matrix changes were warranted, as the ability to shut-down two colossus in rapid succession from raven openings was very powerful, I do think that some of the changes made to them was definitely overkill. These changes aim to give a little more agency to early raven openings without completely reverting the changes that were made, and aim to also restore some consistency to upgrade behaviour.

  • Raven Auto turret life time increased to 10 (from 7.9)
  • Raven Auto turrets now benefit from Neosteel plating again (0 armour to 2 on upgrade completion).

VIKING

Vikings are fragile units that are relatively slow compared to the things they’re meant to counter, and are particularly vulnerable to splash. This change aims to make vikings very slightly less fragile, but reverts their cheaper cost to make them slightly harder to mass.

  • Viking base armour increased to 1 (up from 0)
  • Viking cost reverted to 150/75 (from 125/75)

Zerg:

VIPER

Already explained this viper change above in their respective sections, no more explanation needed.

  • Vipers can target Tanks and Motherships again.

LURKER

A unit that I’ve got personal gripes with due to it’s design utterly breaking everything a siege unit is supposed to be, these changes aim to lean more into its ranged aspect while neutering it’s frankly utterly absurd mobility.

  • Lurker burrow speed and movement speed upgrade removed.
  • Lurkers 9 range at base (up from 8).
  • Seismic spines increases range to 11.

OVERLORD

Hatch tech overlord drops used to be something that could punish early game greed, but probably required slightly less investment to pull off than it should have. This change aims to bring back some early/mid-game diversity by making it slightly easier to punish early greed, while also making the investment to do so meaningful to create strategic decision making.

  • Overlord drop now requires evolution chamber instead of lair. Available at hatch tech.
  • Morph Ventral Sacs now costs 50/25 (up from 25/25)

RAVAGER

The Ravager morph time of old was to fast, but the nerf that it received frankly gutted most early Ravager builds and was far to heavy handed, so this change aims to give some of that morph speed back and hopefully give some early agency and aggressive options back to Zerg again.

  • Ravager morph time dropped to 10 seconds from 12.

QUEEN

Queen cost change was completely unnecessary, especially given how neutered Zerg has been over the last few years. Additionally, the creep change aims at reintroducing a little bit more control and skill to creep spread.

  • Queens now cost 150 minerals.
  • Creep tumours can now be cancelled from the spawning tumour.

INFESTOR

Microbial shroud has a lot of potential; potential that, to some extent, we did see in patch 5.0.16. However, the changes went far to far. I’m aiming to give Zerg some more flexibility with the infestor’s spells and make some interesting strategic decisions with it.
Additionally, I’m aiming to reintroduce consistency across the races by making all ground spell-casters have an auto attack.

  • Microbial Shroud no longer requires a research. 75 energy, 30% damage reduction from ranged units.
  • Microbial Shroud now persists on units after they leave the zone for 2 seconds
  • Infestor now has an auto attack like the High Templar and the Ghost.

BANELING

Bane nerfs really, really hit PvZ very hard, in tandem with the inability to punish early greed. It made them significantly less effective against zealots, and additionally means that banes couldn’t one-shot probes and drones at +2. This change aims to give that power back.

  • Banelings now get +light damage scaling on upgrades again.

Please tell me what you guys think - what should stay, what should go and why!

3 Likes
SCII needs to put more weight on strategy and tactics
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zerg changes are minor, but great. didnt really read the rest but the i like your suggestions for zerg.

edit: as for the others just skimmed through most are sound reasonable suggestions, dont see really nothing bad at all. pretty good take on all this miro.

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I’ll read through this again later and “steal” any ideas that I think are good for my own mod. Hope you don’t mind.

1 Like
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Absolutely, go ahead! Most of these are reversions to previous changes, but there are a few new things here and there too.

1 Like
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i agree with the lurker burrow, the upgrade is way too fast, and doesnt give time for someone to really get a chance to take a shot at them before they do. At most im maybe able to snag one or two before they all burrow. The range was a problem as well, they just dont initially have what a siege unit really needs with out the range upgrade.

me personally as a zerg aint really a fan of the lurker in general. sure its a strong unit but the cost, and skill required to use it correctly is high. Its one of those units that if you dont do everything right they just die to dumb stuff. and yes thats 100% user fault for not having the skill.

3 Likes
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Most of these changes seem reasonable. A couple potential concerns:

  • I’m not sure the Void Ray change would have any meaningful impact outside of cheese. I’d prefer something with more meaningful impact that doesn’t make Void Ray cheese stronger. Maybe an upgrade that adds extra shields or something.

  • The BC anti-ground changes sound outright broken honestly. I think they would need to be toned down, or another approach would be needed. Maybe Yamato gets splash damage against ground? Maybe AA can fire simultaneously with AG to increase DPS against mixed lategame armies? Maybe double weapon cooldown and damage to scale better against armor? Not sure, but upping damage and range both against ground at the levels you have sounds broken to me.

1 Like
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I’m sorry but this one is completely laughable and i can’t believe that D2/D1 player like you can be this ignorant.
Vikings are not fragile because of 0 armor but very low HP compared to their counterparts like void ray or corruptor which makes them super vulnerable to AOE spells. They literally disappear like flies the moment when zerg uses their fungal/para-bomb combo (and this is pretty much the reason why you never see vikings in late game TvZ. If you want vikings to be more tanky without actually changing much of their stats you need to significantly nerf all forms of AOE vs them.

Other changes seem okay.

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I’m aware of that. But I also want AOE spells to remain a solid counter to them, which is why I didn’t just give them a flat increase in HP. Increasing their base armour gives them significantly more survivability against things like marines, hydras, stalkers and pretty much anything that isn’t spell damage.

Fair. I did consider that, yes. But the problem with that is that it leans heavily towards making skytoss a lot stronger if you’re just giving them a flat shield increase, even if it’s just through an upgrade.

That’s definitely a fair concern, and I could very easily see it becoming to strong too.

My thought process was mostly that:

A) the BC is a low range unit, and
B) a slow unit such that pretty much everything that isn’t a slowverlord or a queen off creep can either out-run them or out-range them.

Making the range an upgrade also prevented it from being an issue against queens for early builds, and presents a choice of Yamato or range.

The damage buff post upgrade might be overkill though, even if it’s an upgrade. Not certain; the current AtG on it is 8, bringing it up to a flat 10 does make it a fair bit stronger.

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Well, going down the list and comparing with my mod:

I removed energy overcharge in favor of other changes, so this really doesn’t apply to my mod.

Seems good, so I am adopting it.

That damage is baseline in my mod.

Adopted, but instead of messing with the cooldown I slightly decreased the Disruptor’s maximum range. It can’t hit tanks from beyond their range anymore. My version is here:

Adopted, although based on some other threads I am wondering if it makes sense to change the Immortal a bit.

Technically it was closer to a 2.8 second duration with 8 ticks of 10 damage on a 1.5 radius. I did have that in my mod already.

I actually removed Abduct’s ability to abduct massive units. Tanks will be abductible again, but I’m not sure if I want to let that through either.

  1. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.
  2. I’m not sure if I want to.

As much as I do miss Hellbats one-shotting Zerglings, they are fine without it. I also have an upgrade to buff the Hellbat’s health by 15 in my mod, so that might be overkill.

Is the goal here to strengthen Widow Mine drops, or just for combat purposes?

I’ll consider this later.

Done, although my Ghosts are very different from the live version.

Steady-Targeting is replaced by a “Restoration” ability that removes and protects the target from CC for a limited duration. This changes the Ghost into more of a support unit that enables other targets to do their jobs unhindered.

I might try the AOE change later.

My Raven replaces Auto-Turrets with Defensive Matrix (50 energy for 150 damage absorption over 14 seconds).

I really don’t think this is necessary, especially when the potential problem here is that some spells over-counter Vikings rather than the Vikings just “losing” some fight against anti-air. In my mod I simply nerfed the radius and duration of Parasitic Bomb, although Zerg received other buffs to compensate.

I might revisit this later.

Honestly, I believe this is a tech problem with Protoss.

Terran can consistently deal with dropperlords using units that they already want to have, but Protoss is very dependent on walls or air units for defense in the early game. That is the match-up where this will likely become a problem.

Definitely trying this.

Also adopted, but I couldn’t get the tumor thing to work.

That definitely would help a lot, that Microbial Shroud’s scaling (before armor) is ridiculous. However, I went in another direction. once I realized that I couldn’t get the ability to apply after armor instead.

My version of Microbial Shroud is like Defensive Matrix or Barrier. It is an AOE instant-cast spell that applies a ranged-damage absorbing shield to all units that it hits. The shield amount varies based on the current health of the target, so the tougher a unit absorbs more damage. This caps out at 75 damage absorption for targets with more than 140 health.

All of my casters have auto-attacks.

This was removed because Baneling-busts were absolute murder for Protoss. It is a case where something was removed for a very good reason and should stay gone.

My mod’s details are available here:
TerranicIIRandomTweakMod3 - Map Showcase - SC2 Forums

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Honestly? I hate the idea that it can’t abduct massive units; those are exactly the sort of units that abduct would want to target, and it feels like a completely unnecessary nerf to it.

A bit of A, a bit of B.

Widow mines don’t function as they should in TvP. They were a gargantuan part of stemming the tide of never-ending zealot onslaughts, and the drops themselves were a large part of being able to actually hinder and slow down protoss in general.

The Drilling claws change is meant to allow for new potential build orders as well, and force some element of respect by requiring detection when it’s researched.

It’s mainly there as a means of making them slightly tankier against non-spell units; because I changed the colossus to be slightly stronger vs marauders (it’s honestly pretty substantially stronger), this should serve to allow Terran to more easily deal with colossus when stalkers are present, and also make them less generally garbage vs corruptors.

I do actually want to retain the spell damage being a weakness for them.

True, which is part of the reason why I increased Ventral Sac’s cost. But feasibly you could also make it so Pneumatized Zarapace was only researchable after lair, so that you only had Slowverlords to do the drop with?

Fair.

Also fair; this is the one I probably am least sure about.

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Yeah, that is true, though I’d also say Void Rays are not the reason Skytoss is so strong. But really fixing Skytoss means some serious redesigns, IMO. I don’t trust Blizzard to properly test and implement big redesigns, but if it was like one of the more serious community patch efforts, here is the direction I would explore:

  • First, Tempests and Void Rays swap roles. Meaning, Tempests take over the early/midgame skirmishing and anti-armored role, and Void Rays take over the long-range attrition role.

Why? Because it’s way more fun to micro with and against units balanced around high burst damage projectiles for skirmishes in smaller unit counts, and the timed aspect of prismatic alignment I believe has more potential to be interesting in lategame attrition scenarios, allowing opportunities for the opponent to properly time attacks against the Skytoss army. Tempests can retain lategame building busting, but must be in the range of the opposing army to do so.

How?

Tempest: Remove fleet beacon requirement. Reduce range to 6. Increase speed to 4.13. Change AG and AA damage to 30 + 20 vs armored. Reduce weapon cooldown to 1.36. Reduce damage point. Reduce unit size.

Tectonic Destabilizers damage bonus vs structures reduced to +20.

Void Ray: Reduce base range to 5. Increase base damage to 8 + 4 vs armored. Prismatic Alignment bonus damage vs armored removed. Instead, it adds 5 range to the Void Ray. The Flux Vanes upgrade no longer upgrades speed, but instead increases the range bonus of Prismatic Alignment by 2.

  • Second, Carriers are changed to be better in lower numbers and a bit worse in higher numbers, and are given options for specialization.

Why? Because sitting back to mass a unit that isn’t good enough until it hits a certain mass, and then snowballs to be very difficult to engage is awful to play with and play against. Specialization increases use cases for Carriers but also reduces their a-move effectiveness when massed.

How?

Carrier: Decrease build time to 43s. Decrease max Interceptor capacity to 6. Carriers spawn with max Interceptors.
Add ability: Corsairette Configuration. Cast time: 5 seconds. Clears the Carrier’s hanger of Interceptors, returning 50% of their cost. Enables “Build Corsairette.” Disables “Build Interceptor.” Disables anti-air targeting.
Add ability: Build Corsairette. Costs 25/25, takes 2 Interceptor slots. Same build time as a single Interceptor.
Add ability: Interceptor Configuration. Same as “Corsairette Configuration” but reversed for Corsairettes and Interceptors, and re-enables anti-air targeting.

Interceptor: Weapon damage changed from 5x2 to 10 + 2 vs armored. Weapon cooldown increased to 2.72. Health and Shields increased to 50/50.
Intended effect: Interceptors are now effective with focus-fire against targets with armor, allowing a small number of Carriers to be used to snipe units from the rear of the army. Interceptors are also made more durable so they don’t die as easily in smaller numbers. However, combined with the Interceptor limit, the max DPS per Carrier is significantly reduced, reducing their effectiveness when massed and encouraging a more diverse mix of units.

Corsairette: New unit. Looks like a Corsair but with a smaller model. Health and shields are 50/80, base armor 1. Weapon: Neutrino Flares, anti-ground only. Damage: 7x2, splash radius 0.6, cooldown 1.34.
Intended effect: Allows Carriers to fill an anti-ground splash role, including in low numbers, offering utility against Terran Bio and an alternative to the Colossus - in exchange for susceptibility to air-to-air, a higher cost and build time considering Carriers do not spawn with Corsairettes, and reduced effectiveness against single targets with high armor compared to the Interceptor Configuration. Corsairette configured Carriers do synergize with Interceptor configured Carriers, but the Protoss must control which Carriers target which units for optimal play.

Yeah, choosing range or damage might be more reasonable here, and if range then maybe start with +1 instead of +2.

You could also explore reducing their build time (increasing the Fusion Core build time to delay the first Battlecruiser coming out if needed).

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The question is whether guaranteeing a kill with one spell cast is really “balanced” for most massive units. That’s the reason for considering this.

I might give back that splash radius on my mod then.

I’m not sure that Vikings need to be buffed in either of those two cases, and buffing them in those cases really doesn’t do much to bring them back as an option in TvZ.

In my own mod, I simply nerfed Parasitic Bomb’s radius and duration; although that mod also makes Corruptors less all-or-nothing (they have a ground attack now), and it adds an anti-air specialized Hydralisk morph.

I’m not sure if that is enough, and it is probably better to just delay Overlord transporting to the point where we know it is balanced rather than just nerf it overall because it comes out too early.

2 Likes
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Why exactly does Colossus need buffing?

I could see the argument for buffing void ray rush, but I don’t know why we need Void Ray rushes.

I’d like to think the world has grown past the need for Void Ray rushes, much like cannon rushes.

They’re only viable on particular map setups where they opponent cannot utilize ground.

They don’t need to be made viable by given them overpowering production.

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I think most of these changes are reasonable here are my thoughts:

I would lean towards the nexus starting energy nerf as too much of an eco nerf.

The robo changes are nice and I don’t think they broke the game when they were implemented last patch, although if it does increase robo viability in PvZ, I’d like oracle openings to be nerfed slightly. I think you can compare oracles to queens where they are both bandaid design covering too many roles in the early game, but oracles are better in PvZ because oracles grant outward map control and harass potential. This puts zerg in a bit of a catch 22 because either they eat the 2-4 drone damage nearly guaranteed from proper oracle control, or they make some lings to harass the third and force the oracle to stay home which also results in an eco loss. But that is just 1/2 of what makes oracles so frustrating, the other being that oracles are an air unit so zerg has zero ability to kill it until lair tech if micro’d properly. So protoss gets to harass zerg, but zerg can’t really harass protoss, protoss punishes zerg harass through the inherent sacrifice in drones from the larva mechanic, but zerg cannot punish protoss harass because toss sacrifices nothing to open oracles, protoss gets more lax mechanical requirements because they just need to shade adepts into chokes, while zerg has to drone drill every time oracles fly by, protoss gets more map vision that zerg can’t deny while protoss can deny zerg vision with oracle’s attack and revelation, and they hold nearly every all-in with a lowskill hero unit, while holding protoss all-ins is significantly harder for zerg. The worst part of it is that no matter how well the zerg controls, the gamestate after the early game is 100% dependant on the protoss’ control because there is nothing zerg can do to force him to lose an oracle.

You can compare this to TvZ to show just how lobsided this early game dynamic is. Terran is forced to wall-off vs zerg but zerg has to open 4 lings because of reaper, fair. Terran can open hellion to punish speedling, but zerg can metagame and punish hellion with roach, retaking map control, although terran can scout warren and open cyclone first, giving terran back map control but making them vulnerable to speedling and is very control heavy, fair. TvZ early game is like a tit for tat that is circular because hellion > speedling > cyclone > roach > hellion, but zerg has zero agency in the pvz early game it feels like because oracle > everything zerg can do until lair. Sorry for derailing but this is basically my rationale for wanting oracle openings nerfed, especially if robo is significantly buffed.

Old storm is fine, abductable mothership is fine although I’d prefer just reverting its attack buffs because I think it kills hydra timings, especially if colossi are more viable I don’t think it’s necessary for mothership to be so good vs hydras since every toss tech path can already hold hydra timings, what stops robo openings from being viable is muta imo. Likewise I think it’s better to leave voids as is until mothership is nerfed, and even increase tempest build time as well or revert its supply to 5.

Bunker salvage is fine I think, before there were a decent portion of terrans that would open proxy rax nearly every TvZ and macro out of it, it’s very rare nowadays and I don’t think that was the correct nerf, rather they should have made the money back proportionate to the % remaining bunker hp.

I don’t like hots radius widow mines while they keep their 25% build time buff, so I’m gonna have to disagree with you there.

BC changes are great :+1:. You wanna murder my hydras harder and more than tickle my ultras, that’s perfectly fine as long as you don’t get to yamato 15 corruptors and blink home.

I don’t like the idea of hellbats one shotting lings late game again, but I don’t think that’s gonna break the game. But I also think you could revert 1 or 2 of the broodling nerfs and it wouldn’t break the game.

I liked the last patch ghost because snipe was signifcantly less plentiful and that made TvZ lategame feel a lot more handleable even with 300 cc, but maybe that was too much, at the very least I agree with the hp revert as I think that resulted in them being buffed in TvZ when they were supposed to be nerfed.

Viking, raven, lib changes I don’t think zerg really cares much about, but specifically the viking and lib might be too strong vs toss.

Abducting tanks is great, I don’t really think lurkers deserve that nerf but it’s probably fine because zerg lategame isn’t even really reliant on lurkers I don’t think, and actually I had fun with some lair tech lurkers on last patch so the base range buff might be nice.

Hatch tech drops I would be very careful with, maybe protoss can hold the ling drop pressure better with energy recharge, but keep in mind it also enables queen all-ins without lair, although they’d need to bring a drone and hatch cancel if they want creep ig. Maybe hatch tech drops are ok and help keep oracle openings in check because it takes advantage of its energy drain and that it can’t hit air, that might actually be quite an elegant solution to oracle openings. Personally, I’m fine with lair tech drops, and would prefer instead for ventral sacs to be re-added for mass ling drop styles, I think it’s fine to give zerg a choice whether than want to pay more for all overlords to be drops or a little for 1 and its removal was unnecessary.

Yay much thanks for 150 queens, it really goes a long way to making zerg feel good to play and I’m assuming you’d pair it with the 300 hatch which is perfectly fine.

I’d rather have banelings deal more damage to marauders and stalkers again than 1 shotting probes and drones.

Overall your changes seem pretty conservative, well thought out, nice :+1:.

4 Likes
16

Thanks for your thoughts, appreciate it!

Chrono nerf should only delay the first chronoboost; by the time the gateway is up, you would be able to get out your first chrono, so there shouldn’t be to many issues with early proxies, but I can see where you’re coming from - it could possibly be an issue when fast expand builds don’t have the first chrono from the expansion.

The main thing is that I’m trying to force a choice between safety and greed; chrono, recall or recharge?

Oracles are always going to be prevalent if Energy Recharge exists, unfortunately. But I don’t disagree here.

I’m not so sure about that; we used to see, for example, Twilight/robo openings with archon drops and DT harassment from prisms. Mutas come out to late for them to really be a problem here, but it does make it much harder for them to deal with mutas since they don’t already have a stargate.

The Widow mines only cloak (post firing) on drilling claws research, so you would still have to do that first. But now it’s something you could more easily make into a dedicated build.

Additionally, it’s reverting the mine splash to 5.0.12 values, so it’s something that was in the game for more than a decade after HotS was released.

I’d be less inclined to revert the broodling nerfs and more inclined to give back the Broodlord move-speed.

Ooh, good point, I didn’t think about hatch tech queen walks. But that is more build order diversity too…

Fair. I suppose you could go the other route and have banes do 18 (+17 vs light) instead of their current 16(+19 vs light) to make them slightly more effective vs non-light units, but I really don’t think they need to be. The bane change is something that I’m not entirely certain about though - it’s definitely the one I was most leery of adding.

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Focusing on engageable message, so this post is “full negative” ie. minimal ooo yay, and replies to op only;

There’s a lot of (! oh that’s really smart!) moments that I had going through these.

Things like 'oo yay', ie. low-meaning comments

Entirely unrelated to the quality of this as a change, I hate you.

This is a very good change – Being allowed to actually overcome breakpoints with high scaling brings longevity to a unit that’s sorely lacking it, and reducing the specialisation helps the unit be less dead weight.

I think any instance of changing the Disruptor’s efficacy should include this (if not more), because it’s so bound to that damage that it struggles to be useful considering its weaknesses.

and like mans the laser giraffe. the lon legs. it really feels like they got dumpstered just to make the disruptor more appealing and i just think the disruptor is a not fun unit.

I personally think this isn’t what the Immortal is looking for, but I didn’t really understand why this was changed in the first place. (I mean, I know what they said, that damage output seemed to be too high in PvZ, but like… that’s… the only thing the Immortal can do? And it’s slow, so Zerg, especially, can just… go around?)

yeah. it was bad like the cyclone stufffff!!! Actual Storm ::::::::)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

This is cute but does it not just.. prompt the player to abduct the mothership twice, possibly even with the same Viper? like you’d still be trading energy for the mothership, which is a problem onto itself.

That aside, yeah, the current state of affairs is very silly and in a very ungood way. Absolutely can it.

The change is not that silly, though. It’s to specifically prevent two problem interactions – +2 Hellbats usually one-shotting Lings and +3 Hellbats always doing so. Admittedly, reducing pre-igniter’s bonus by 1 or 2 damage would’ve done the same thing without being as harmful vs late-game Zealot ball stuff.

I don’t think there’s a reason to revert this, if that makes sense. I’m in favor of putting it back but it’s not for gameplay reasons, y’know? It was a change that made sense and that has good aspects, it just also is ??? and hurts something else that also matters.

w/ Light, don’t forget, so +1 colossi actually did 17x2, so equal upgrades Colossi did 4-shot 125-HP Ghosts.

but yeah, ghosts still need the tap down, but i agree it has to be quite gentle like this.

yes yes yes more more more!!! graaahhh

auto turrets are so clunky to put down they deserve so much more for how difficult it is to get them out.

Absolutely. This change failed its goal – Mass Queens remains what people do and it ended up just punishing Zerg for playing correctly when Queens were not part of the direct problems hehehe.

yayyyyy.

I always cringed seeing these aspects get some of my other friends (both using and against it). I’m a bit surprised that you think 30% is a reasonable compromise between appreciable and engageable? I kind of expected re-indexing on the anti-air mode since that’s where it started.

As I mentioned in passing but to write proper; I agree with the impetus – Protoss gets too much Nexus energy especially considering how Chrono Boost is the ‘least essential’ of the macro mechanics.

However, my worry is removing the first Chrono Boost will stomp out options – present state that initial Chrono is why Protoss is able to actually have an economy but still be able to have a unit to defend with. Being unable to afford the build time for an early Adept without immediately getting behind economically is a travesty vs Zerg for the actually competent players,

I’m a bit worried about this in combination with the improved upgrades letting Adepts overcome breakpoints with the high scaling, though. While the unit isn’t really used that way much, the two perks together mean that the unit now has respectable raw DPS and also the ability to stack up a lot deeper – and unlike the Marine, the Adept wears bruises well, and unlike the Roach, it’s Light so the options for beating it are a bit more limited. Not a problem for ZvP because of Baneling/Roach, but poses one to TvP to me – Hellbats and WMs are the good-at-task counter, but those will get bullied a bit by shots scaling up to 34.

I suppose that just means like, the unit is beaten with positioning, but as you said, Shade projection means doing that is very difficult.

This is not, exactly, a criticism of this change, but there’s a reason the WM was changed out of this, and I know you’d scream bloody murder over that being changed back to this type of scalar :p

This is a fairly substantive nerf to some of the unit’s actual uses – which Protoss really lacks a substitute for. Of course, mitigate that with that I felt similarly for the change to 100 damage in the first place, and that didn’t do as much brutalisation as I expected (though as the CD buff demonstrated, still quite a punch).

145/100/50 zones, though, looks unaesthetic, displeasing, clunky; please 150 inside so it’s a pleasant 100/66/33% damage.

I don’t really feel like these changes help beat that allegation. Gateway units need Twilight to be strong, which is a huge portion of the value in the Warp Prism; Observers aren’t exactly combat influencers; and the Robotics Facility units have their strengths allocated in counter-functions more than anything else. Oracles let you “do” things out forward, Phoenixes let you shave value from enemies and twist fights, Carriers are centralising for a reason.

I don’t disagree that it did. But on the other hand, proxies should require investment, and being able to buy back 75 minerals is significant at that stage!

I agree with everything else immediately, but note that WMs gut playability of TvP. Games should not be lost at the speed that WM detonations cause, considering how low-price and repeatable they are.

Like, you’ve complained repeatedly about the basic notion of Adepts having 23 base damage or Oracle Pulsar Beam doing 23 damage – I have great sympathy for “well, play better” as an argument but the WM splash radius is like those.

The WM being able to game-end things with so little warning – yes a “when target starts” warning is not sufficient for a lot of people! It’s fine for actually good players but the speed at which Medivacs move with Ignite Afterburners is pretty extreme.

Full cooldown? Wow you hate this unit.

I agree with the logic, but I think abbreviated cooldown (10-15s) would be sufficient and still give the necessary room for the extra upgrade to not be oppressive. I wish to express clear worries about this being 8 range though. That’s a huge zone to control and, particularly, this is a unit that has relatively few vulnerabilities in the first place.

The easy to write example being BCs in front of a marine ball nearly beats all similarly simple options
-- Storm/Colossi get screened off by BC auto; Disruptor/VR gets Yamato; Zealot/Stalker are comparatively low DPS-per-unit; leaving basically Adept/Tempest?
-- Roaches can get peeled apart despite their base armor; necessitating the Ultralisk; Hydras lose to Marines; Banelings will incur too-heavy loss on approach unless the BCs are busy – and only Corruptors can do that.

Loud caveat that Very Obviously that’s not actually how the game works but you parse the thrust of that argument.

Unfortunately, any iteration where the Liberator can independently shoot into the mineral line while sufficiently in dead space has the problem, and that threshold on a lot of maps is 9 range. I agree that watching the Liberator be unable to shoot in a bunch of places looks incredibly sad and pathetic. It really is.

I’m all in favor of giving the Liberator more range when it has assistance – But the unit’s premise completely ruins a dozen map designs and the a bunch of other things that get close to that type of issue? Had features removed because they caused those problems in WoL.

The Liberator can’t have 75 per 1.14 – combat unit dominance – if it’s going to be able to siege up in a useful location where the fact that it can just be circled around doesn’t come up. If you’re willing to make it not trivially win fights when it can shoot its foe, then yeah, it can have that reach; but that goes against the other point of the unit, exerting air to ground zone dominance.

It creates so many problems if you were to have it be that way that you would have to neuter the other thing you want from the unit. That’s the same problem that made the WM have 1.5 radius, which is reasonable against mineral lines, but too small for army units. The Liberator is given the opposite: 9 sight range is really unfortunate when unsupported, but 75 per 1.14 is a fight-deciding amount of damage output.

Agreed on that Liberators could have more damage on their anti-air. I don’t, personally, think they need it like at all, but that’s entirely because ‘the unit is its defender mode’.

Compelling. I don’t personally like it (my problem w/ sc2’s lurker is its range, to me the shuffly nature of the unit is its stronger identity), but I see the vision and I agree that this is a way to push it to having a cohesive strength instead of its current frustrating smogasboard of powerful traits.

This was removed because that happening early was a problem. For the same reasons that WMs need tampering to prevent early worker devastation basically being an auto-loss condition; though at least Banes needed to walk or be in slow Overlords and have +2.

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6??? 6 range isn’t “low”? It’s average? What? Maybe if you compare it to a Siege Tank it’s short range, but 6 range is not “low”. Static defense has 7 range.

I personally think the Immortal should be changed but solely because I think Hardened Shields is waaaaay cooler than Barrier and I’d rather redo its vitals and adjust another unit or two just to make bringing it back not ruin things.

Oh. That’s interesting. I don’t particularly like it, but that’s very interesting and I think that basically justifies attempting it some.

The massive jump between 5 and 10/12 range is a bit silly, but I see the idea of those vulnerabilities. I’d be concerned that at 12 there’s nothing that can fight back against that raw 22.4 dps, but having only 33% uptime makes it sort of like the BC in that regard.

I agree with the idea you’re outlining here; but uh,
(1) As long as Interceptors can shoot up and down I think you’re mostly going to end up with players focusing on the ‘normal’ mode,
(2) You nerfed the Carrier’s damage output by almost 40% (-25% interceptors and +27% weapon cooldown). It’s absurd but it isn’t that absurd.

The anti-ground mode is neat, to be clear.

I do not think that the secondary unit is worth two interceptors in hanger capacity, because it’s squishy. With only 3 of these bombers per Carrier, they will die into Marines trivially, and that’s one of the units you specifically said you want them good against.

imo, no, Abduct lets you trade energy for units in a way that is related to the Infestor – especially since you can chomp buildings for energy.

So being allowed to abduct any arbitrary target is something that I’ve felt was janky in a way that deserved a second look, but I couldn’t come up with anything that made sense – Being unable to abduct massive units would somewhat force Zerg into building and managing multiple casters to deal with skytoss since VRs beat Corruptors but Carriers beat Hydralisks, and PBomb’s 120 damage makes it mediocre against both such units.

Does… does that make sense? I think I’m just about out of brain juice, because reading that back a few minutes later I feel like I’m not envisioning something that I had in mind.

I don’t disagree with any of this, to be clear, it’s very ugh.

On the other hand, remember that Zerg outbases Protoss relatively easily so “the onus” to do something is on Protoss and while having one unit that is so much ‘the best’ at that job is excessive, that unit also has a problem in that its high gas cost inhibits Protoss’ other tech development and Protoss can’t afford to get many bases without developed tech because of its vulnerability to Zerglings.

Also that the Oracle is made of tissue paper and doing anything offensive with it is pretty difficult.

As written you nerf the first, fourth, sixth, tenth… Chrono because you robbed 50 energy per base. And the 2nd/3rd base really ask – if Protoss wants to do anything on the map – that you also hold up a recall because of how few units Protoss has to work with at that game state that the nature of damage per unit causes them problems at that step.

Buuuut yes, it’s a bit too easy to manage to wedge all at once.

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I should mention here that the Disruptor currently deals damage in a 1.5 radius circle, so this change is actually a damage buff in all cases. The only “nerf” here is that the Disruptor has a longer CD.

You can always rephrase that to make it clearer if you need to. In fact, I encourage it when you are not tired.

I might go back and forth on abduct versus massive units multiple times until I am satisfied, or maybe I’ll try to see if I can change the cost against massive units.

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It can be pretty strong, but unless Flux Vanes also came with a vision buff, they would still need something for vision for the full 12 range - and with it slowing the VRs still, it could be useless or even dangerous if the Protoss chooses a bad position for it.

The damage value can also be tweaked (e.g., +2 vs Armored instead of +4, or keep the base damage as it currently is in the live game and see how that does).

Would also need to potentially nerf the “leash” behavior, and lock a higher portion of the PA to the upgrade if cheese was too strong.

You’re probably right, but the idea is to nerf the power of “thoughtless” Carrier massing. Would people still do it? Probably. But it wouldn’t have the same payoff it currently does.

That said, a lazy but potentially beneficial fix would be to be able to make a Carrier directly from the Stargate that spawns with the Corsairettes (with the cost appropriately adjusted).

This is true in most cases, except armor reduces less damage, and high armor reduces significantly less damage. Interceptors can do more than just tickle Ultras and BCs with this. But it is intentional that it makes, for example, mass Interceptors into Hydras weaker.

Yeah I’m honestly not sure what the right numbers are here for the Corsairette. Gas cost could go down to 15 or 10. HP or even base armor could go higher. Range could potentially go higher than an Interceptor. Rapid shield regen could be an ability for them.

But at the same time, the idea is to encourage the Protoss to still have a front line when attacking, like Chargelots to soak some damage. But ultimately the Corsairette would need to be beefy enough to not require exact timing for Chargelots hitting to be worth it as a Colossus alternative. This could even mean making them cost like 0.5 supply to balance higher durability.

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