PTR 5.0.15 Patch notes:

General Discussion
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StarCraft II 5.0.15 PTR Patch Notes — StarCraft II — Blizzard News

Copying the patch notes here: I would like to hear your thoughts:

Zerg

  • Spire cost reduced from 200/200 to 150/150.
  • Centrifugal Hooks now give +5 HP bonus to Banelings again.
  • Microbial Shroud reduces range attacks by 50% damage.
  • Microbial Shroud effect no longer persists for a few seconds after the unit has left the shroud.

Protoss

  • Energy Overcharge grant has been reduced from 100 to 50 energy.
  • Energy Overcharge cooldown reduced from 60 to 45 seconds.
  • Mothership HP reduced from 350/350 to 300/300.
  • Psionic Storm duration increased from 2.86 to 8.58.
  • Psionic Storm damage reduced from 10 to 5 damage per tick.
  • Dark Templar Blink attack delay reduced from 0.75 to 0.25.
  • Surveillance mode now reveals the Observers.
  • Surveillance mode increases vision from 13.75 to 15.

Terran

  • Siege Tank can no longer be abducted when in siege mode.
  • Viking cost reduced from 150/75 to 125/50.
  • Drilling Claws effectiveness increased from 1.07 to 0.71 seconds.
  • Hyperspeed Rotors research time decreased to 79 seconds.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue with Cyclone attack upgrade giving +1 instead of +2.
  • Fixed an issue with Mothership attack at max range.
  • Fixed an issue with Cyclone Lock-On cooldown.
  • Fixed an issue with Orbital Commands not auto rallying.

=============================UPDATED NOTES BELOW=============================

Zerg

  • Spire cost reduced from 200/200 to 150/150.
  • Spire build time reduced from 71 seconds to 66 seconds.
  • Centrifugal Hooks now give +5 HP bonus to Banelings again.
  • Microbial Shroud reduces range attacks by 50% damage.
  • Microbial Shroud effect no longer persists for a few seconds after the unit has left the shroud.
  • Microbial Shroud cost increased from 75 to 100.
  • Microbial Shroud now requires an upgrade again (150/150).

Protoss

  • Energy Overcharge grant has been reduced from 100 to 50 energy.
  • Energy Overcharge cooldown reduced from 60 to 45 seconds.
  • Mothership HP reduced from 350/350 to 300/300.
  • Mothership movement speed reduced from 2.83 to 2.25.
  • Psionic Storm damage reduced from 10 to 5 damage per tick.
  • Psionic Storm duration increased from 0.39956 to 0.53312.
  • Psionic Storm radius increased from 1.5 to 2.25.
  • Psionic Storm period reduced from 0.7994 to 0.39956.
  • Psionic Storm period count increased from 6 to 12.
  • Dark Templar Blink attack delay reduced from 0.75 to 0.25.
  • Surveillance mode now reveals the Observers.
  • Surveillance mode increases vision from 13.75 to 15.
  • Purification radius increased from 1.5 to 1.75.
  • Purification cooldown reduced from 21.4 seconds to 17 seconds.
  • Stasis Ward duration reduced from 170 seconds to 90 seconds.

Terran

  • Siege Tank can no longer be abducted when in siege mode.
  • Viking cost reduced from 150/75 to 125/75.
  • Drilling Claws effectiveness increased from 1.07 to 0.71 seconds.
  • Hyperspeed Rotors research time decreased to from 100 to 79 seconds.
  • Liberator Sight reduced from 10 to 9.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue with Cyclone attack upgrade giving +1 instead of +2.
  • Fixed an issue with Cyclone Lock-On cooldown.
  • Fixed an issue with Orbital Commands not auto rallying.
  • Fixed an issue with Mothership attack at max range.
  • Fixed an issue where Mothership had a leftover redundant Psionic tag.
  • Fixed an issue where Mothership weapon behaved erratically when targeting Changelings.
  • Fixed an issue where Mothership was unable to designate and maintain the correct number of targets (4) for target-firing (including during movement).
  • Fixed an issue where Mothership’s target-acquiring process would cause it to overly-prioritize low-priority targets (such as Larvae).
  • Fixed an issue where Mothership’s range was less than intended.
  • Updated Protoss AoE UI indicator.
  • Fixed an issue where units with beam attacks would conflate each other’s cooldowns.
  • Fixed an issue where Probes would become unresponsive near Assimilators.
  • Fixed an issue with Psionic Storm ticks were applying incorrectly, causing unintended reduced damage.
  • Fixed an issue where units unloaded out of transports would not reset their acquired attack target to the closest unit.
  • Fixed an issue where addon-build commands would be issued to the same barracks repeatedly rather than spread out.
  • Fixed an issue where hitting the key to construct an addon twice could result in the production structure lifting when certain settings were used.
  • Fixed an issue where “Set Rally” could not be issued if both flying and ground structures were simultaneously selected.
  • Fixed an issue where visual effects from abilities could be seen through the fog of war (Parasitic Bomb, Stimpack).
  • Fixed an issue where visual effects from abilities could not be seen even when large portions of the model were well within vision range (Guardian Shield, Microbial Shroud).
  • Fixed an issue where Disruptors lacked an AoE indicator.
  • Fixed an issue where units were using an outdated AoE indicator.
  • Fixed an issue where Stasis Wards had no pre-placement visual indicator or sound.
  • Fixed an issue where Liberators could designate an attack target while morphing from AG to AA but not while morphing from AA to AG.
  • Fixed an issue where Liberators commanded to siege in areas inside their range could result in slower execution than being commanded to siege outside their range.
  • Fixed an issue where the model for Zerg 6x6 rocks was set to be too large for its footprint and projectiles would not produce flesh squibs.
  • Fixed an issue where Ravagers would glide along the ground if told to move command after issuing a corrosive bile.
  • Fixed an issue where no target impact animation was present for corrosive bile.
  • Updated SFX for Micobial Shroud.
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My own opinions on most of these are wait and see, but I will go into some opinions below. To be blunt, I expected the next patch to have a longer list of changes.

This could be a big problem:

  • The damage reduction takes place BEFORE armor, so the actual effect on most ranged units will be well over 50%. In some cases, the actual damage reduction is over 90%. Microbial Shroud’s damage reduction might have to be nerfed heavily over this.
  • Almost all Terran damage is ranged, so this could potentially be a big problem in TvZ. I want to know if it affects ranged splash damage like Siege Tanks, Hellions, Hellbats, Colossus, Archons, and Lurkers.

They probably could have tested 75 first, but I suspect the balance team will land on the right number after testing.

If I am doing the math right, the DPS is being cut in half, but the total damage is being increased to 120. This is a huge nerf against mobile compositions like Bio and Zergling/Baneling, but it is also a buff against slow or immobile units.

I’m not a fan of this one.

Cool. Blinding Cloud is already a fairly strong counter, so it is not like this removes the Viper’s ability to counter Tanks.

I don’t think Vikings need this. It is more than a little weird to reduce a flying unit to the cost of a Stalker, even if it does have to land to attack ground.

This is a revert of patch 5.0.9, but Widow Mines have also a number of nerfs since then that may make it alright:

  • Reduced splash radius.
  • Invisibility requires the Drilling Claws upgrade.
  • Widow Mines are more visible and provide alerts.

I think that both of these changes are fine. My honest opinion is that both cooldowns and both upgrades were balanced (i.e. within the ranges where the Cyclone could be balanced).

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Zerg tweaks seem okay to me as a GLH, but the Protoss nerfs are absurd. High Templar become more popular due to Energy Recharge, so it’s time to massively nerf that ability AND the High Templar all at once. Psi Storm sounds useless now, the squishy units you’d want to cast it on are speedy enough to move out of it and the slow units who’d get caught in it longer are tanky enough to shrug it off.

Terran tweaks seem fine, save for the Viking buff. Who, anywhere in the world, at any point, thought to themselves “Terrans aren’t massing Vikings enough”? There’s no logic to that, unless you’re trying to make them more viable as ground units in a roundabout way, which is lol.

4 Likes
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These are all first initial thoughts and not well-formed rational opinions like my usual preference. I’ve spent under 30 minutes and very few of the changes are things I can directly compare to.

Ah, so nerfed Dark Swarm. There was a reason Blizzard didn’t bring that back originally.
So basically my thought comes down to “nononono. Bad bad bad bad badbad bad.”

I’m completely neutral on the sticky / lingering aspect of the behavior, but I do not think reducing all incoming ranged damage that much for eleven seconds is a game-stability viable ability effect unless you are willing to significantly retool multiple Terran and Zerg units, which would inevitably require also overhauling interactions versus Protoss.

For these, my reaction was and remains in the vein of ‘nonononono’.

For energy overcharge; just because my experience with the button has been that 100 isn’t oppressive enough to warrant going to 50.

This proposed Psionic Storm is not, in any way, a bad button. However, it is redundant, as it turns towards area denial more heavily, which the Disruptor is already king at for high levels, and the Colossus is just not that good at actually deleting the targets in too many circumstances that I have seen.

At this DPS, Marines, Hydralisks, and possibly Banelings could just run through it and significantly harm your units anyway, which makes the High Templar have the same type of flaw as the Colossus did - deadly, but needs so much of buffer or to be unable to move out of the storm to get value. The increased damage total means it’ll hurt your Zealots more, and microing two casters to pen with force fields is a lot. The decreased damage per second makes the button terrible against fliers, and Protoss doesn’t have an answer to Muta+Ling+X because its gas gets tied up fast.

While I’m always happy about DPS going down or kill times going up, it’s incompatible to pull one unit’s DPS down when everything else is still so delete-happy.

Similarly but not quite the same way, these to me miss the point of the buttons working the way they do.

Shadow Stride having the attack lock-out is to give you that extra time to react and to reduce its ninja-strike problem potential. Lowering the delay to a third of its previous value makes it so small that the Dark Templar will basically no longer experience it because of how common it is for the Dark Templar to not actually teleport in melee range of your desired target.

Observers decloaking in Surveillance Mode misses that part of why Surveillance Mode is important is to support F2 use. In many situations I would rather have a cloaked spy than a wide-sight one, and while I don’t use All-Army this change makes it more difficult in a bad way because part of the point of All-Army is to make it easier to manage your units! Observers being cloaked is part of their identity - sure, seeing farther is great, but being revealed means I can’t actually trust them to not just get snapped out of the sky randomly.

I have a complaint about any time we buff the interaction set that affects Widow Mine vs Workers, but that’s laden with context not worth discussion. I think the Widow Mine at this point needs help versus army units, and because I think its worker interactions are generally problematic I think they need to be significantly changed.

I don’t get these. They’re not objectionable, I just don’t feel like I Get them. They feel sort of like changes for the purpose of changing something.

This will basically not affect the Banshee, and you know what would? Lowering its cost.
Nobody builds mass Banshee despite it being a cool unit with a weakness and strength.
Liberators are better at harass because of the siege stupidity, and at ground denial for their raw damage. Aaagghh.

Vikings are massed because haha 9 range. Getting to field 20% more Vikings is a lot considering how Vikings are… very good? The thing that the Viking wants is for its ground form to suck less, because it’s such a non-button except in TvT or weird TvP harass (which, again, gets outdone by Liberators).

3 Likes
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Why not remove storm and make Protoss earn their victory like Zerg and Terrans ???
Make them work in a hardcore way, its time for a big change, they need to L2P .

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I think the raw number of changes (~12 ability or unit changes) is plenty myself. I frankly think fewer could be fine, if they’re well-targeted.

I just think most of these are not well formed changes.

This is a much more nuanced and good concern. Lowering the damage reduction percentage would hurt majorly and I can’t imagine it being a good feeling pick.

I don’t think it really is, because the amount of damage is not that much of a threat to most slower units anyway? And it’s not like Storm has a massive area size, this is only a meaningful buff against the Siege Tank - not even Lurkers because they can skedaddle so fast.

But it comes down to that half DPS for 200% longer is not an equitable change because of how not-at-all the extra time will be relevant. Delaying a fight 4 seconds is strong, but consider that the Sentry’s Force Field lets you delay a fight for 11, costs less energy, is on a lower tier and cheaper unit? Like… are we serious?

Thank you for coming up with a better phrasing of these words that I was struggling to find.

I’ve certainly thought “people don’t land vikings enough” a lot.
Which is because they just suck as ground to ground units. You don’t want to lose your anti-air unit for a mediocre trade in against ground units.

If you removed Storm, Disruptors, EMP, Widow Mines, Fungal, and Banelings, sure. You may notice that’s most of the game’s AoE and realise that now deathballs are unstoppable, which is a big oops.

But summarily the basis of your argument is flawed. Protoss already has to earn their victories, because sure - for example, the Zealot run-by has a disproportionately reasonable performance due to not costing gas; Psionic Storm is extremely good at killing multiple kinds of armies; Disruptors are good at killing the rest; but please notice:

Those are casters? And Protoss needs to build an army that is basically entirely gas heavy units? Adepts and Stalkers suck, Phoenixes and Immortals are contextual. These are just not true for Terran and Zerg to anywhere near the same degree: If it were not for Storm and Banelings, having 70 supply of Marines would be a semi-viable army composition at ~100 supply. 50 supply of Zerglings is something you’re always happy to use to give your opponent the run-around and that can pick up great value, and that can be supplemented with tons of different units to create viable compositions.

3 Likes
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Initial Thoughts

Firstly, it’s nice to finally see something from Blizzard/Balance council. The dead silence from them hasn’t exactly been good for moral given the current state of things. That said, I do feel like whoever looked at the game and thought that the changes below were not only okay, but what the game needed, might need to re-evaluate a few things, because these changes honestly completely miss the mark. There’s no communication as to what their goals were here either, and frankly, it seems pretty haphazard, mostly thrown together with little to no thought on the actual impact on the game. So lets go through these changes one-by-one.

I’ll do another thread detailing thoughts and changes on what I would do as well.

Zerg

Spire

Placebo change that ultimately won’t do anything in the grand scheme of things.

The problem with the Spire, and Zerg air in general, isn’t the cost of the spire. Even the inordinately long build time isn’t the entire problem, though reducing the spire build time would go a long way to making it more viable. The biggest problem is that they frankly come out to late to really do anything. But outside of that, the Muta especially needs… a lot. Partially because of how quickly it can snowball due to Rapid Regen, but also because of the sheer expense of the unit too, making even slight changes on them potentially extremely.

Banelings

Actual good change, though I do have a minor concern in that we’re increasing bane HP without reverting the cost. Definitely need to keep this change though.

However, I don’t think that this will be enough in the long term, especially given part of the reason PvZ became even more toss favoured was because Banes lost the + light damage scaling on their upgrades. This is something that still hasn’t been addressed, and frankly needs to come back.

Infestor

Both of these changes are frankly absolutely atrocious changes, and it’s going to become a huge, huge issue.

Firstly, this is basically a nerfed version of Dark Swarm. Which in the grand scheme of things basically means that tank-based playstyles are dead. Actually, outside of the Ghost and the Widow Mine, this basically destroys any ability for Terran to take engagements once infestors are out.

It’s a change that’s clearly intended to be used in tandem with the Siege Tank buff (more on this later), but you already have the Viper which is the intended counter to the unit anyway, which, for some reason, the balance council/Blizzard seem intent on making unusable.

Edit: This is actually stronger than it seems. After some testing and use in games, This actually applies before armour upgrades apply, so the damage reduction is even more than 50% when you factor in upgrades and base armour on units. That said, this makes sense because this the same way Microbial shroud worked before the change.

Zerg thoughts:

Outside of the Bane change, they’ve really missed the mark here.

No reversion for the queen/hatch combo cost, which was a massive and completely unnecessary nerf. No Broodlord buffs, which were desperately needed. Microbial Shroud change takes it from being something to help vs air units, to pivoting and completely missing the mark for what it was originally implemented for. What was even the point here?

Protoss

Energy Overcharge

This is going to sound silly, but this is, at best, a placebo change, and at worst, basically a buff because you can cast it significantly more frequently. More importantly, this doesn’t actually change any important break-points for Protoss when it comes to Energy recharge, outside of only being able to warp in one storm instead of two.

Energy regenerates at 0.78 energy a second (roughly)

Hallucinations cost 75 energy, which means they can’t cast right off the bat since they start with 50 energy… however with this new Energy Recharge, they get 100 energy off the bat.

Hallucination lasts 43 seconds. Hallucinating a phoenix is almost a guaranteed scout due to its speed and general HP, even with the additional damage they take.

100 energy down to 25 energy. over 43 seconds, you get an additional 33 energy, bringing it up to 58 energy, meaning you need exactly 2 seconds to cast ER a second time, giving you effectively 0 downtime.

Oracle Revelation costs 25 energy. As before, energy regenerates at 0.78 energy a second. It lasts for 20 seconds, which means you have around 12 seconds of down time on Revelation. This makes an already incredible spell for keeping an eye on army movement extremely strong due to the limited downtime it already has, and it basically starts with 3 off the bat since the oracle starts with 50 energy, and you regenerate about 31 energy over the course of those first two revelations - enough for a 3rd. That’s already a full 60 seconds of scouting without ER.

With EO however, this becomes effectively Infinite. you get an extra 50 energy every 45 seconds on Cooldown, and you generate enough energy passively that you can literally make up for any instance in which that cool-down is occurring. EO gives you enough energy for an additional 2 revelations instantly, plus at least two more off energy regeneration, which is more than enough for EO to be used again - it’s actually enough that you could use EO on something else and still have full vision for the duration of that second cool-down to use again.

And this is without even considering Stasis ward, of which you get 1 stasis ward every cast if you don’t use a different spell. It lasts 2:50 minutes currently (which, by the way, is absurd) and gives a ton of vision in itself.

Theoretically speaking, there is never a single situation in which a Protoss shouldn’t know what’s coming in either matchup without them being frankly stupid and throwing their scouting tools in the bin.

Mothership

Again, missing the mark here.

The problem isn’t that it has to much HP, the problem is that the unit can’t be abducted . Which means that Zerg can’t actually engage the mothership without diving on the protoss army and dealing with both storm and Archons; the latter of which do bonus vs Bio.

Psi-Storm

More damage over a longer duration. This is a nerf in some ways, but a buff in other ways; it completely alters what Psi Storm was designed for and changes it to an area denial spell.

Nobody asked for this. Nobody wants this.

On the one hand, Bio can heal through this damage with medivacs. On the other hand, You’re effectively giving Protoss a 120 damage storm against the already slow and immobile mech, and you can now deny significant areas for a significant length of time. Dropping storms on mineral lines means that those mineral lines can’t be mined from for the next 9 seconds or so. Or longer, depending on how quickly you return your workers. That’s actually a significant chunk of time to lose mining from.

It also means you’re able to utilize storm to effectively be another forcefield except it damages you if you pass through it, and it can’t be destroyed. Pairing it with forcefield also means that you actually do MORE damage than it did previously if you can trap units inside (which is, admittedly, a big if).

Just remove this change. Please.

Edit: After testing this out in game and in the unit tester, Storm is now REALLY good for denying mineral lines specifically, but outside of that, it’s pretty garbage. Also, it seems to do 140 damage, instead of 120 damage, which was a surprise. But it still remains pretty useless outside of its usage on mineral lines specifically. It’s almost exclusively a nerf, and a frankly unwarranted one at that. Storm itself was fine. The problem always pertained to Energy Recharge (which is still a big issue).

DT

Why? Why do we want DTs to be able to snipe Planetaries with no counter-play again? Absolutely terrible change. This really didn’t need to happen.

Observer

Again, why? This just seems like an arbitrary change made out of nowhere that nobody asked for.

Protoss Thoughts

The big thing that actually needed changing arguably got better
(Energy Recharge), while the rest of the changes missed the mark. We also completely ignored the fact that that Protoss has an incredible econ that doesn’t get touched, because they start with 50 energy on each nexus for some reason when they never used to prior to the Mothership Core.

Also why are we making Storm better vs Mech, when Protoss is already incredible vs mech as it is?

Terran

Siege Tank

Why are we making it so the Viper has even less utility in the matchup? The Viper’s entire job is to displace key units, and manipulate the battlefield in order to shift it to the Zerg’s advantage. By changing the Siege Tank to no longer be abductable, you’re severely negating the Viper’s utility in this matchup, for no other reason than “just because” - it’s completely unnecessary and totally uncalled for and unwanted.

Viking

I guess? This honestly isn’t as big as most people seem to think it is. Better vs Broodlords and maybe Colossus, I guess, but it doesn’t really change anything vs Protoss. Ironically, this does nothing to help it counter the units it’s actually supposed to counter, that can actually fight back. Carriers, for example, still absolutely obliterate Vikings, because they’re slow, and super squishy. And this doesn’t change anything at all here, which is where it really matters.

Widow Mine

Okay, you’re still missing the problem! DC wasn’t the problem. The problem was the fact that we absolutely gutted the mine’s effectiveness vs Protoss by gutting the radius of damage in the previous patch.

Banshee

This is… quaint, I guess. Hyperflight rotors really didn’t need a buff, and it’s such a niche thing, on a flimsy, fragile unit that you rarely make more than a handful of them in any game.

Terran Thoughts

Unironically, the only thing that needed to be touched here was the Widow mine and you still missed the mark , because there’s no understanding of what the widow mine’s purpose actually was. The rest of the changes are, frankly, either pointless, or absurdly stupid to the point of insanity.

Conclusion

I don’t know what the intentions were with this patch - though I can guess - but whatever they were, it’s frankly mind boggling that anyone would look at these changes and go “Yes, these solve the problems that we’re experiencing right now”. Because they don’t. Almost every single change here is either a bad change, an unwanted change, an unnecessary change or a combination of the three.

The single exception to this is the Bane change, which is, frankly, the only good change here.

TLDR: Keep the Baneling change, go back to the drawing board with literally everything else.

4 Likes
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The unfortunate reality is that they just aren’t good units in general. The range is the only thing they have going for them, and frankly they can’t kite anything due to being so slow in the first place, and the only things they can kite, they can’t do so due to having less range - with the exception of the BC.

The big problem Vikings have is that they’re incredibly fragile units with almost no HP. Their lack of any armour despite being an armoured unit means that the units that they should counter that have any form of ability to fight back actually beat them in 99% of cases anyway. The cost reduction does nothing to address that issue at all.

Honestly I think you underestimate the potential damage output against mech in particular here; an extra 40 damage isn’t anything to be scoffed at, though I do share your concern.

2 Likes
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Eh, storm will be completely ineffective vs banes with this low of DPS. Banes will be able to cover a distance of about 12 in the time it’d take storm to kill them, and aside from archons, other Protoss units aren’t very good at killing banes either (which is why they got that damage nerf vs non-light several years ago).

It’s probably a similar case with bio: just run through and keep fighting, or pull back and wait it out, since you heal quickly and the Protoss doesn’t, and it still cost the protoss significant energy.

Even siege tanks will be able to unsiege and move out without taking more damage than a full storm dealt before, not to mention they just have more range and can click down the templar before they could drop it on them in the first place. Storm was already mediocre at best vs Mech (and Protoss) because it didn’t have the DPS to be good enough with the high HP of the slow mech (and Protoss) units - the duration buff is a non-factor when even Thors can move out of it and take less damage than old storm. There’s no world in which this is actually a buff.

And vs Zerg, it guts storm vs lings/banes, and results in it dealing less DPS with half the radius when compared to P-bomb, so it’ll probably no longer be effective enough vs Corruptors either.

It’s kind of hard to understate the importance of Storm for Protoss, and while a small nerf may be appropriate due to energy overcharge causing it to sort of dominate the meta by making it viable much earlier in the game and giving Protoss warp-in storms again (the thing that got Khaydarin amulet removed way back in early WoL…). This is way overkill - maybe 8 damage per tick with a duration of 5-6 (in editor time, AKA: 10-12 ticks, or ~3.57s - 4.29s in ‘faster’/real time), would be fine.

Storm had been practically gone from the meta vs Terran for the rest of LoTV, and generally wasn’t rushed vs Zerg; it clearly isn’t too strong on its own. The problem is how energy overcharge interacts with it.
Frankly, energy overcharge might have just been a bad idea with serious unforeseen problems in hindsight, and maybe they should get rid of these “overcharge” abilities entirely and give shield batteries a buff to energy efficiency or make units in empowered pylon fields get a small bonus or something. These overcharge abilities are meant to give Protoss a bit of help with defense to have a more stable early-mid game, and clearly have had issues doing it without either just feeling bad/gimmicky or having unforeseen consequences of much more aggressive use cases.

This DPS is probably low enough that it’s completely ineffective as a real zoning tool. Before, that worked, because the damage was high enough that units didn’t want to run through it, even banelings, which are suicide units. Now, the damage may not be high enough to deter those units.

The main concern is what it does in tandem with the storm change. If Protoss is losing storm as a viable opener vs Terran, and Vikings are getting buffed, when Colossus openers were fairly balanced as it was, then things are tipped more in favor of terran. Keep in mind that vikings can fight head-on with gateway units and come out ahead if numbers are equal. This pushes them to also being cost efficient at it. It unironically might be enough to make mass vikings a viable strategy vs Protoss.

4 Likes
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I havent played 1v1 in a long time, so I didn’t want to chime in cause I figured my concerns were off base. But everyone seems to have the same basic reactions here:

  1. Storm has been fundamentally changed from area dps to area denial with a moderate penalty for walking through it. Toss already had disruptors and force fields for this. Psi storm has worked the same way for 27 years, and nobody seems to agree with this change yet. Are you still going to go through with it? Storm would have essentially no viability at all vs fast air units. I predict mutas every pvz, especially when coupled with the observer change that makes it harder to keep tabs on mutas, and the cheaper spire. Against ground units, I expect it will mostly recreate the disruptors scenario, where armies just bounce off each other and run away without fighting over and over again. Until the templars are out of energy and have done basically no damage, because you can’t force a competent player to sit under a storm for more than one second or so.

  2. Speaking of the observer change: why? Observer mode is a QoL change to ease the penalty of using select all army. Why are we mixing balance changes with QoL changes? It feels like spite

  3. Dark Swarm 2.0. This could be a potentially earthshaking change. What merited this level of disruption to a game that can only survive in a very narrow margin of balance?

  4. Vikings: my personal take is that vikings BEAT a stalker on the ground even though stalkers have bonus damage against them, and they can fly. It seems weird that they would cost the same. Especially when vikings are already very effective anti-air, and the storm nerf essentially eliminates the primary counter to massed vikings (which means that the storm nerf combined with a viking buff ALSO heavily nerfs colossi in TvP, leaving only disruptors for AOE)

  5. People already favored widow mine drops pretty heavily, what was the indication that they needed a buff? It’s a survivable change, but I don’t think anyone really considered widow mine drops to be a weak strategy

  6. Energy recharge change is mainly targeted at oracles in pvz? I can understand that. It won’t affect your sentry scouting in any meaningful way, and high templar won’t be worth using it on if the storm change goes through. I guess the final relevant situation would be using it on shield batteries, which I have no feelings for or against

4 Likes
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I can understand your point here. I’m not entirely certain I agree, but I understand it nonetheless - Against mech specifically. Outside of the fact that mech is already generally terrible vs protoss anyway.

Versus Bio I agree though.

Notably however, this has a significant impact for Storm Dropping mineral lines because the area denial is quite significant in this instance.

This wasn’t a fault of Storm not being strong, because it absolutely was. Frankly there was little reason not to use storm in tandem with warp prisms

I can see your point, though again I’m not entirely sure I’d agree. Terran already has a hard enough time getting to this point in the first place with the myriad of build options for Protoss.

2 Likes
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Because in a 1v1 A-move confrontation, MMM wins against literally anything Protoss that doesn’t have splash damage.

Protoss has to climb the tech ladder to compete against Terran. Terran gets the hands down, undeniably best Tier 1 unit that’s only minerals, never loses relevancy and only gets better as the game goes on.

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Having now actually gone and looked at some game shots over my initial reaction, I think it’s very wash-y.

Less energy, but over more units, which is really good for most casters. The lower efficiency hurts, and the lower per-cast impact means it bails you less - you need a full energy templar to get 3 storms in one engagement instead of 125 for the easy example, but I think that’s also kind of the only truly meaningful one.

And hammering the battery down again is good, but it is still a meaningful nerf when it comes up.

I agree with this but I also think that the mothership being abductable is too close to being instant-kill-able and therefore dead weight?

So I have no idea where you’d put the middle ground to make it reasonable.

At +1, which is the most dramatic change, four Banelings bring the Zealots to 8 HP (instead of killing them). Any number of spare Zerglings will have no trouble dealing with that, so I don’t see the exact problem?

Yes breakpoints, but also there’s never zero zerglings. Even the post-armor 4 damage is plenty to mop the whole lot.

Does a +1 attack timing versus particularly Zealots actually matter that much? - To be clear, this is a genuine question. Every time I’ve seen this interaction look problematic there’s been clear skill disparity.

nums

For sake of making math easy let’s pretend the shields always break on the second Baneling. The only unit that’s not true for is the DT (120).

Before any upgrades the Banelings deal 35-69-103-137-171 damage.

At +1 attack versus +1 armor, the Banelings currently deal 37-72-107-142-177.
With the old numbers, +1 attack versus +1 armor got you 39-77-115-153,

Similar to current +2 attack vs +2 armor, which is 39-75-111-147.
Old +2 got you 43-83-123-163, so that’s still changed, but again, it leaves the Zealot with sub-4 Health, basically a nonfactor?

Current +3 is 41-78-115-152,
and old +3 attack / +3 armor was 47-90-133-176.

I have watched - though only rarely personally experienced - hundreds of times where this does not play out that way.

Assuming the problem is in the things I have seen, though, every single instance I have seen it’s not like Terran struggles to afford the Vikings but to have the room for them (and the everything else they want to be doing with their supply). They’re also weirdly upgrade-helped for a counter unit?

I agree that it’s a meaningful amount of extra damage. But since it takes three times as long to happen, everything except the Siege Tank is trivially able to walk out of the effect and have taken less damage than the 80 damage over 2.86 seconds storm.

Asamu’s post summarizes this, but I already wrote some Numbers so

Numbeeers

For sake of simplifying math, let’s say you have to walk the diameter of the storm (3 units) and that it actually does 15 DPS (in reality it deals 15 damage per 1.07 seconds).

Hellbats have a speed of 3.15, so let’s say they’re kiting back and end up taking 3 seconds of damage since they want to stop to shoot again.

Um, cool, they’d take 40-45 damage. If they had booked it through the storm, they would take probably 15 damage. If it was live Storm, they would take 30-40 damage when not stopping and 70-80 damage if they do.

Battlecruisers have a speed of 2.62, taking 1.15 seconds. That’s going to be 25-30 damage? On a unit with 550 life. That doesn’t have to choose between moving and shooting!

Thors also have 2.62 speed but they take a while to actually attack, so they’re actually likely to be stuck in the Storm for over 3 seconds. Which means they’ll… take like, 60-70 damage. Wow. That’s still less damage.

Vikings have 3.85 speed, so they’ll only take 0.78 seconds. So they’re taking, what, 20-25 damage when running through the storm, instead of probably 40.

That’s where I was coming from with it. If you don’t leave the units in the storm, they will actually be taking less damage, and the only unit that cannot just walk out is the tank.

I did not believe this. So I went and tested, and while my thought was right (Vikings suck against Zealots so having some will let the gateway army do good), the margin of it is so minimal that it’s definitely a problem to remember.

ie. 6 Stalkers vs 5 Vikings, there’s 1 Viking left around full HP
ie. 3 Zealots + 3 Stalkers vs 5 Vikings, there’s 1.5 Stalkers left
ie. 6 Zealots + 6 Stalkers vs 8 Vikings, there’s commonly 9 units left most commonly 3 Zealots and 6 Stalkers left, two Zealots around half life?

just overall cripes sfsfksfff.

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Wait a second. Doesn’t that overlap with blinding cloud ? So now zerg has 2 spells which basically do the same ?

If you want to see vikings in late TvZ - then nerf or redesign para bomb which is HARD counter to vikings. No amount of cost reduction will bring vikings back to TvZ as long as para bomb deletes them in seconds.

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Average joe take on these balance changes

Observer mode visible while on surveilance mode YES THIS IS A BIG CHANGE specifically in my bracket when they dont get punished for F2 A MOVE and basically engagement on a defensive position has slightly better vision.

Storm change seems like a BW Storm . Hope this change takes us to ultra late game every TVP that would be good. I dont understand protoss trying to kill baneling with STORM arent you supposed to split your units against them? Biggest question probably does Storm damage stack.!

Probably see more vikings in this patch which is nice. They are basically should have been cheaper in a sense because their tactical movement and shooting basically doesnt even benefit from micro unless your opponent is bad at the game. Hope this helps me kill NOOBS just making CARRIERS and turtles basically start of the game which is hate to play against.

Tanks cannot be abducted is GOOD IMO VERY GOOD

I think muta aint a thing because of maps but honestly on my mmr its still good.

If the microbial shroud changes the meta with Viper spam in the late game probably better in my mmr its not fun dying all your MEDIVAC to VIPER . Almost all terran unit are range WTF man. The idea basically on engagement i think TANKS will kill infestor and tanks die to attacking units and bio micro and game moves on.

Cyclone honestly if lockon was OP in a sense and fixed imagine if Terrans against Z or P win rate was only affected because of this you probably regret fixing it .

Whats the point of buffing the baneling again its the most broken and boring unit that significally change win rates in all MMR BRACKETS either its ZVP or ZVT you can basically change other units but why this.

A bit sad no raven change .

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Given the already powerful nature of Zealots as it is, yes, it actually does matter, but what’s more problematic, and the sole reason that it was changed in the first place, was that banes no longer 1 shot probes at +2 upgrades, which meant that for Zerg, dealing with a Protoss who’s ability to scale rapidly out of control is significantly neutered.

Previously, this was a huge factor in mitigating and slowing down a Protoss enough that Zerg had a reasonable chance to win in PvZ outside of Serral being Serral. Without it, Protoss economy scales as fast as Zerg’s does, but with none of the downsides in that their units are significantly more powerful than a Zerg player’s.

Half distance abduct so it requires two abducts to get the full range. This way you also have the ability to feedback vipers to make it harder to get those double-abducts off.

You never had 3 storms per engagement anyway because storm is 75 energy, meaning you always had, at max, 2 storms per templar.

More pertinently, the lower efficiency is nearly irrelevant anyway because every nexus starts with 50 energy the moment it’s warped in, so any choice to be made in whether to overcharge or chronoboost isn’t a choice, because you always have enough energy to do so either way, and Protoss expands fast enough that you will never be low on energy for it to matter.

I suppose that’s true; this is probably the one instance in which it might matter because batteries now don’t get a full charge when you recharge them in the middle of a fight, so they drain much faster.

Cost isn’t really the issue with the viking, though when you’re significantly down on bases to a Protoss who’s economy is constantly scaling wildly out of control (seriously we’re regularly seeing 7+ base protoss vs 3-4 base terrans if the terran survives long enough to actually get to a macro game, or doesn’t all in/die trying), it definitely helps; but colossus haven’t been an issue in the first place, so altering the cost is kind of just… pointless?

Not sure what you mean by this.

Looking at your numbers, this is a fair point.

They do very well against stalkers specifically, and sentries. Outside of those two, they’re pretty terrible on the ground.

Not in their effect, no. Blinding cloud reduces the vision range inside that cloud to melee range, but doesn’t actually reduce damage output. But effectively, yes, it’s another thing to deal with mech.

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from what ive seen from the youtubers covering it, the balance council had no part in this one and it was all blizzard. So maybe after the last 3 bad patchs they did and all the background drama that seemed to be going on, seems blizzard might of fired them all.

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Balance council was originally working with ESL, who no longer works on sc2. That said, they were a group of casters and pro players who were the ones to communicate with ESL. I don’t know if they’re still around or not, I only mention them because I wasn’t sure.

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you dont need to tell me who they were, we all know they were a group of casters and pros. the patchs they made were terrible and from what i gathered from various twitter post, streamers and youtubers who covered them along with a few of the balace council members who quit, they were always fighting about the changes and more often then not things never got done cause of it. So im not suprised if they did actually fire them.

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They function differently. The similarity is that both create an area where enemy ranged units cannot reasonably fight back, but they differ in whether they do this by disabling the opponent or protecting your own units.

I agree with this. Reducing the radius might help.

Not quite. BW Storm lasted about as long as the current 80-damage Storm, and it dealt more damage in that time. In terms of DPS, the current storm is closer to BW than the proposed Storm.

The “net” damage of the proposed Storm is closer to the BW Storm, but the lower DPS will functionally change it.

Storm damage explicitly does not stack.

In general, SC2 spells do not stack unless they do some type of instant damage (Steady-Targeting, Yamato, etc). Stacking spells (like 60 damage Parasitic Bomb, Seeker Missiles, WOL alpha Storm, etc) were tried, and most such spells were either changed so that they wouldn’t stack or they were outright replaced later because they couldn’t be balanced.

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