PTR 5.0.15 Patch notes:

General Discussion
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You could though? You storm (-75), energy recharge (+25), storm (-50) storm (-125).
Now you can storm (-75), energy recharge (-25), storm (-100), storm (-175).

I did only see this happen naturally once but it was pretty funky to see ~10 Mutalisks get zoned so hard by 150/150 resources.

I do not agree simply because the collection of Nexi do run out of energy. It isn’t common but it does happen sometimes, and this change increases the energy drain on them.

I agree that it’s not majorly damning, but from my perspective Energy Overcharge is not All That A Big Deal in terms of how bad it is to have around.

a bit ranty and not very relevant

yeah sure, each Nexus starts with 50, enough for one ability; just like the Orbital Command and the Queen do. Naturally there are oddities as the Nexus not needing an upgrade / hanger-on makes the comparison not straight, but I don’t think this is a particularly fair criticism? Like it feels the same to me as the argument that Terran always has energy for scans. Terran specifically builds extra Orbitals for that gain and Protoss doesn’t get those extras.
If you reduced the Nexus’ starting energy, it’s equally fair to remove the starting 50 energy from the Orbital and the 25 from the Queen. You don’t need me to tell you how dramatically behind that would put Terran or Zerg - Protoss does not have so much stabler of an economy that that would be fair to them. Even if you only removed it from the initial Nexus or built Nexi, it would still be a rather significant economic drawback that does not seem to me to make any sense.
I will happily agree that, due to not needing an upgrade or unit, the Nexus is awkwardly strong as a town hall, but the Nexus also would otherwise be the weakest by leaps and bounds - Hatchery cheapness letting them go down early matters a lot, Command Centers flying from high ground safety is pivotal to letting multiple shades of economic builds not die to low-investment pressure.

I was agreeing with that point, that the issue the unit actually has is in being used is it takes up supply not that it costs resources ^^;; sorry

What I meant was that unlike the Corruptor, Vikings get rather easily beaten back by enemy upgrades, which makes it even weaker and lame-r because the Viking has such an equivalent role / function to the Corruptor (best at anti-capital air superiority).

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Just play like alphastar.

PTR 5.0.15 Patch notes

Good to see the adults are back in charge. TLDR of the patch is that they want more 2 factor siege tank and liberator play aka they are making mech stronger (abduct nerf) and bio weaker (microbial reduces projectile damage). This also nerfs carriers, fixing a problem with mass carrier storm being insanely broken vs zerg. The energy recharge is a middle-ground nerf. Psi storm change isn’t a nerf, it’s a role change. Infestor rework is to mimic broodwar, probably trying to close the gap between the two. Obs change is for PvT to help with speed banshees and such.

Thinking about it a bit, this probably buffs carrier play because psi storm will prevent hydra charge from engaging carriers directly. But then again the toss will be doing less damage in general due to microbial so who knows. It could go either way.

IMO the biggest “balance changes” are the ones that affect baneling play in PvZ. The baneling is being buffed and storms is being reworked so where does it land? No clue. Can banelings walk through storms now? No clue. Everything else seems to be more of a design change.

Protoss will be a bit weaker to allins with energy recharge not giving as much energy to the oracle.

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if you want to be pedantic, you can argue that you could “have” 4 storms currently on one templar - 150 energy gives you 2 storms on instant cast, so having 200 energy max, instant cast down to 50 energy and energy overcharge for another 2 storms.

However, the reality is that this generally isn’t what happens because 90% of the time engagements happen away from the nexus, or energy overcharge is used on a fresh warp in storm, so you’re only ever getting 2 storms per cast in its current iteration.

Realistically, this does very little to change that though. You recharge and get 50 energy instead of 100, so you’re only getting 1 warp in storm, but that is honestly more than enough in most cases… or it would be if storm wasn’t neutered in the PTR patch.

From full Energy, that means 3 storms instead of 4.

Side note, after testing it in PTR, it looks like storm actually does 140 damage, rather than 120 - I’m not sure if this is a bug or if my math was wrong on what the numbers should have been, however it still means you’re doing basically no damage to most things. It’s not a good change.

It’s absolutely fair criticism, and the reason I bring it up is because it’s something that they get immediately on the nexus. Keep in mind, prior to the MSC’s removal, the Nexus started with 0 energy, so they actively had to wait on energy to cast chrono (in addition to spending 100/100 on the MSC which also slowed their tech down), which then also delays their economy.

Let me explain.

Since they start with 50 energy at 0 seconds, they have the next roughly minute and a half or so to gain additional energy, which is another cast of chrono/recall/ER. This energy is on the first nexus, which now has either 50 energy because you’ve used 1 chrono, or it has 100 energy if you haven’t chrono’d your probes from the start of the game, instead saving it for a different time (such as warp-gate research). Sometimes, we see that energy used on recalling a single probe trapped in a Terran’s main due to scouting, instead of something else

You then also get your natural nexus spawning with 50 energy, which now gives you the option to both overcharge and chrono simultaneously, or do one and not the other depending on your build. Alternatively, you could drop that energy on a recall for an oracle.

By the time you get a third nexus - which can be dropped anywhere between 3-5 minutes depending on the matchup and build - you stop caring about energy at that point because nexii will regenerate enough energy that even with near constant use, you’ll have near 100% uptime on any ability you might need

It’s absolutely not fair at all, because Orbitals and queens come a full minute and a half later than the first nexus does (which starts generating energy from 0 seconds into the game), while also costing additional minerals and/or worker build time. This is the entire reason Nexii used to start with 0 energy prior to the Mothership Core’s removal!

By the time the orbital/queen is finished, a nexus will have enough energy for its first chrono, making the scaling roughly even. Now however, this isn’t the case due to that additional starting energy.

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Someone has forgotten why Surveillance Mode exists. Surveillance Mode is a quality of life feature to make it easier to command an army by setting your intel units to hold position regardless of any other orders. It having no mechanical effect was fine because that’s not why it existed.

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Honestly having an Observer visible when Observer mode is more acceptable in a sense in terms of risk and game vision sense in Terran vs Protoss now its basically skill based in vision when the protoss basically spams Hallucinated phoenix to see actual army or just throw a zealot than having mass invisible observer thru the whole map then F2 A moving his units by just looking at the mini map it feels more fair now in general . Its probably best now basically all Terran shenanigans or zerg will be gutted but we have less storm against timings maybe the intended change on Hallucinated phoenix basically a thing now after this patch basically boils down to Protoss skill as a player now . If your telling me its a quality of life change seriously its freaking 2025 already and you still need quality of life change GIVE me BREAK GAME needs to fair WHAT ABOUT TERRAN HAVING QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGE like AUTO MULE TOGGLE on Orbital or ah SUPPLY DEPO goes up or DOWN if units wants to PASS THRU and GOES DOWN AUTOMATICALLY you want that?

Honestly i was looking forward to a Raven change .

Probably insta loss against nydus now with that microbial shroud . I dont really understand why nydus only needs vision to cast why it cant be balanced like how a Ghost Throws a nuke needs unit and range to cast i mean seriously just changeling or vision from any zerg unit .

Tanks siege mode being un abductable is a justifiable decision and should have been like that when they removed the flying siege tanks. And adding already the observer mode with overlord makes terran engaggement hard already but offensively they didnt consider the actual vision + viper spam abduct . Now both zerg and terran basically stalement in army positioning ,but with microbial shroud i dont know man ultralisk basically can tank everything already but with that , Imagine doing a nydus timing with that .

Was hoping for a widow mine shooting can be toggled not to shoot so it can be used like burrowed zerg unit.

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Making siege tanks unable to get abduct is arguably wrong decision. The original developers had their way and made it to be abductable and now you say they were wrong and it shouldnt be that way. You lose the original perception of the game. I dont even play terrain but still I think it’s wrong and we should respect original developer vision for the bad and for the good. :confused:

KIck the balance council it’s better without balance tweak.

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i agree. it is reasonable that viper as a tier-3 unit(hive tech) could counter well tanks as a tier-2 unit. And making it unabductable just encourage turtling which is in conflict with previous patch

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this patch wasnt done by the balance council, like the previous three. this was done by blizz themselves.

read above

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What a terrible joke this is.

Protoss is buffed yet again!!
The storm change is an absolute HUGE BUFF.
duration tripled and damage halved… so its current damage x 3/2 basically.

Protoss now gets to zone out and block any attacks from zerg by casting an infinite lasting storm and play that turtle game with much more ease. PPP devs at its finest.

Seriously just delete Terran and Zerg.

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you might want to go watch some vids on the new storm man, zerg can move right through it and barely takes any damage at all. Its definitly a nerf.

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Having tested it, it’s pretty much worthless against anything that isn’t a mineral line.

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It’s actually worthless against mineral lines too.

A base mines ~800 minerals per second. So 9 seconds of denied mining time is barely 100 minerals. Even pros usually only have 3-4 good psi raids per game, so you’re looking at 300-500 minerals taken out of the ~20,000-30,000 minerals mined in a game. So it costs you your primary harassment investment to eliminate ~1% of your opponent’s total minerals mined, which is an absolutely terrible investment (and psi raids don’t even become available until late midgame, when a few seconds of mining time at one base is a drop in the bucket). The warp prism and templar cost far more than the denied mining time

And they already had to pull probes off the line vs storm, so this only adds a few extra seconds to the mining delay. And for that, you basically lose the ability to kill probes, which is far, far more effective than just shooing them off for a few seconds. Plus the storms are so weak they can actually run probes back in and just shrug off the last couple seconds. It’s a net loss everywhere

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Storm might finally be useful in PvP lmao.

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doubt that seeing how it cant even kill a zergling

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PPP guys should just shut up. They are basically the left wing extremist on these forums that killed Charlie Kirk that further kills sc2.

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dude not the place for this. at all. this is sc2 not politics

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I agree with everything you’ve said and it’s a very silly state of affairs - I truly do not comprehend how it does not result in rather ridiculous Protoss economic snowballs, but simply looking at the state of things it doesn’t.
I also missed a reasonable chunk of the Mothership Core era so that does bias me a bit.
(I didn’t play ladder from some 2.1.x to 3.x.0 and reading the notes I have absolutely no idea which ones I skipped)

Terran is able to burrow Widow Mines to provide themselves with map vision that does not get pulled by using the F2 hotkey. Terran is also able to easily justify building additional orbital commands for extra scans, once again, to be able to get vision of locations without harming their ability to use the all-army button.

Zerg is able to burrow Zerglings; and is able to have their Overseers similarly ‘siege up’ so that they can, indeed, have map vision while not accidentally screwing themselves by daring to use the all-army hotkey.

The changes you propose are, yes, quality of life. But they are also not equivalent quality of life changes to the thing being adjusted here. The equivalents for toggle-mules would be the Campaign / Co-Op style Chrono Boost or coupling a Queen to a Hatchery for permanent auto-injections.

In fact, Terran is the only race who can properly use the all-army hotkey in the transition from early to mid game scenarios, being the only race that has an actual door. Due to the importance of having this shut door against some timing attacks, and not having their door be locked merely by a unit on hold position.

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Having played around a bit with the things:

Storm Sucks! I have a whole wall about just this!

New Storm: Sucks! But actually less than I expected it to. I mean, I expected it to be “nearly useless”; let’s be clear, so I was surprised to see the extra duration actually have any positive impact.

The exact underlying mechanics of the change are also kinda… weird? The Storm debuff actually stops persisting on the units in the storm every so often, which means that the damage per second is not constant. I think this is also why it deals 140 damage as Miro noted instead of the 120 that 80 x3 time / 2 dmg would yield, because it’s not actually lingering 3x the time, but looping the whole storm spawn which has the beginning delay but also the sticky behaviour.

Currently, Storm applies a behaviour that lasts for like 0.75 seconds that, every 0.357 seconds, causes the affected unit to take 10 damage. The modified storm sits and applies that behaviour for 3x the time, but deals 5 damage whenever it ticks. And the extra smoothness on Storm’s damage is actually nice, but it’s just too obviously slow - I feel like if Storm simply ticked more often it would actually help this version out, even at this current DPS -

But I also think that the DPS loss is just too severe. Despite all the glow-up I opened with, it… still kinda turns Storm into an atrocious Force Field.

Against Terran it’s a strong deterrent but it doesn’t kill fast enough to stop your army from dying, it doesn’t fare well against Zerglings unless you also storm yourself, the damage isn’t enough for Hydralisks unless you also have multiple Colossus at which point you could just have had the Colossus, and it’s now completely atrocious against air units. I can’t do anything to like 6 mutalisks if I don’t precisely have Phoenixes, which just feels awful. They sit in the storm, snipe the templar, then have time to fly away, they heal, and come in for the value.

I think it’d be better if the storm sat for like 5.71 seconds (still +100% duration), but did 4 damage per 0.179 seconds instead of 5 per 0.357 - that would be net ~120 damage (barring whatever weirdness is with the looping storm)

The Surveillance mode change sucks and there are no two ways around it. 15 sight range is not enough additional sight compared to patrol-moving it to really justify ever using the transformation without its cloak, which means it fails the fact that a significant part of its purpose is enabling all-army key usage.

Energy Recharge is definitely a nerf, but it felt way more good to be able to not be super afraid of ie. triple force fields and I was able to actually hide stuff from hallucinations; while as Protoss it didn’t actually feel anywhere near as crippling as I earlier expressed concerns towards. It still felt useful.

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Microbial Shroud is insane and stupid and completely invalidates too much TvZ. I do think it’s interesting in ZvP, especially with the long storms. I don’t like it but it feels interesting and not just novel. But when I can ling-bane a ball of marine-marauder-hellbat that has tanks in the back and win something is just fundamentally wrong.

The complete absence of cling duration makes it feel buggy though, I kept having units get instantly snap killed when they felt inside the zone. Not sure if that’s just because I’m expecting the cling, because I was using Zerglings, or the feeling is true.

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Banshee speed coming faster felt nicer than expected but it also feels like the sort of thing where it only worked out because people don’t get the difference. It’s neat but it it’s just surprise! get got which zzzz.

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Maybe it’s a buff or maybe not. The damage output makes it so that high health units can probably walk through it. Also, it doesn’t limit movement when retreating – only when advancing. Really the scenario where it hurts the most would be slow hydras off of creep, or vs thors. Thors will get absolutely wrecked by this.

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Single storms are weaker when zerg is advancing, staggered storms are stronger. Storms are stronger at limiting movement through chokes. Storms are stronger when zerg is not watching, or when he can’t move (forcefields, bodyblock, cornered). Storms are stronger against static targets like tanks, mines, lurkers. Storms are now stronger at buying time. Storms are now stronger at harassing mineral lines. Storms are now stronger at zone control.

Storms are weaker against fast moving units, units small enough to skirt the edges of the storm, high health units, or high regen units. Storms are weaker against retreating opponents with the exception of cornering (defending a base that can’t be lost) in which case it’s giga buffed.

Storms are weaker against high multitasking opponents who won’t let their units sit inside a storm and stronger against low multitasking opponents. This will especially be the case with storm drops vs mineral lines.

It’s a design change to mix up the meta. APM spammers in the pro scene will think it’s a flat nerf because they are thinking of “How do I defend my third with my usual build order?” rather than “I can now create new build orders to leverage the new strengths”. They have the strategical ability of a doormat, so we have to be patient with them and that means listening to endless whining as they re-optimize a single build order for each matchup. That probably means we have to wait for one big tournament where a top protoss shows them what build order they need to optimize, but after that they will hyper optimize it. We should send them teddy bears for emotional support in the meantime.

Oh, one last thing. This version of storm means vs carrier storm you have no choice except to trade vs the intereptors, which is fine because they are buffing microbial. Basically you won’t be able to burst under the carriers because the protoss can storm the hydras after the burst and it is carnage for zerg. But, retreating bursts / stutter step away from the carriers is buffed because you take less damage to the initial storm hit. As long as zerg can give up terrain, this version of storm favors zerg. If he can’t, it favors protoss. It’s a tempo play in other words.

I am feeling pretty confident that the person running things at blizzard is actually quite intelligent as this is a pretty well designed patch. The numbers might need tweaking but I think it’s a good start. The one thing I worry about is that mech still won’t be good vs protoss. It is drastically over-countered. Speed banshee openers will be used to supplement bio play. I would like to see a very small buff like +2 damage to shields for hellions with blueflame, or something along those lines. When mech was good vs Protoss, it was usually tank medivac hellbat and what they’d do is boost the medivacs onto the protoss and carpet bomb the his army while sieging the tanks and those strats aren’t terribly viable because hellbats just do no damage and are super fragile to everything protoss.

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