StarCraft II 5.0.11 PTR Patch Notes

General Discussion
21

Ultralisk

  • Reduced size by 12.5%.
  • Increase range slop from 1 to 1.4 (range target can move before miss).

This is a fairly decent buff to ultras. Less derpy dealing with pathing and makes them harder to kite.

Hydralisk

  • Muscular Augments move speed bonus increased from 0.79 to 1.05.
  • Damage point reduced from 0.15 to 0.1

Hydras are already fast this just makes them faster (why?). It does make them more microable though. Buffing hydras when they’re already meta woth hydra ling bane into Lurkers seems a little strange but I can understand the damage point buff to make micro being easier.

Brood Lord

  • Move speed increased from 1.97 to 2.3.

This is a wild, left field buff that will rock the lategame in tandem with the other buffs and nerfs. Already strong Zerg lategame just gets stronger I guess.

Broodling

  • Duration reduced from 5.71 to 3.57.

Offsets the broodlord buff very slightly, but not by much.

Ravager

  • Build time increased from 12 to 17 seconds.

This is a pretty big nerf to early zerg roach/ravager pressure but outside of that has little consequence I think. It will make killing wounded roaches that are morphing easier, and will delay the timings a little as well. Outside of that, not much else here.

Overall with the changes that we have seen I’d argue that most of them are a net buff to Zerg, rather than being even or a net nerf. The creep changes (not mentioned in my post) are not particularly significant in the long run, but will mean spread is just a little slower.

Zerg lategame gets a drastic increase in strength, particularly with other nerfs in this patch.

Shield Battery

  • Battery Overcharge recharge rate reduced from 200% to 150%

Can’t say I’m complaining, it was really overtuned early game in TvP, but I feel like groundtoss is going to struggle vs Zerg with this change, especially since Shield overcharge wasn’t that strong vs Zerg and this only makes it weaker.

Observer

  • Move speed increased from 2.63 to 2.82.
  • Model size increased by 17.5%.

Makes it faster but easier to spot with the model being bigger. Fair trade, I will wait to pass jusgement here.

Archon
Can now fit between single-gap walls. (Collision size with other units unaffected).

This is a good change. Should have happened years ago.

High Templar
Move speed increased from 2.63 to 2.82.

I’m… not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand it brings the templar more in line with other spell casters, namely ghost and infestor. On the other hand the templar already leans towards being deathbally, and this only further enables that and reduces (not removes) the need for skill expression with prism templar micro.

Disruptor
Purifier Orb radius reduced from 1.5 to 1.35.

As a Terran, I’m happy about this because the Disruptor is extremely oppressive in TvP lategame. However this also significantly reduces the ability to deal with Lurkers, and makes PvZ way harder for Protoss, which is a little concerning.

Carrier

  • Interceptor shields reduced from 40 to 30.
  • Interceptor attack target priority reduced from 20 to 19.
  • Interceptor flying radius around target increased.

I… really don’t know what to make of this, mostly because I am unaware of how the targeting priority is in relation to other units protoss has. 19 is obviously less than 20, but I cant say how that effects targeting in general. I will say the nerf to interceptor health does mean its easier to DPS them down though.

Sentry

  • Build time reduced from 26.4 to 22.9 seconds.

This is a nice little change that makes holding all ins easier. I don’t hate this change.

Forge
Level 1 upgrades research time reduced by 7 seconds.
Level 2 upgrades research time reduced by 9 seconds.
Level 3 upgrades research time reduced by 11 seconds.

I do hate this change though. Protoss already have arguably the fastest upgrades in the fame when you take into account chronoboost.

At current speed, level 1 ground weapons (129 seconds) with consistent chronoboost it takes 85 seconds to finish researching +1. For comparison, infantry weapons takes 114 seconds, which is al.ost a full 30 seconds slower than toss ground weapons.

With the buff, this brings you down to 122 seconds, or 80 seconds of research time with chrono for +1 ground. Which is absurdly quick. And its not like protoss upgrades are cheaper. +3 ground weapons is 200/200 compared to 250/250 for infantry.

So I can’t understand this change at all.

Ghost

  • Enhanced Shockwaves upgrade removed.
  • Base EMP radius increased from 1.5 to 1.75.
  • Steady Targeting is canceled if the target moves more than 13.5 range away from the ghost while casting (Cast range is 10).

Enhaced shockwave nerf I can understand. 1.75 is a middle ground I can agree to. However the Steady targeting nerf effectively guts Terran’s lategame vs Zerg, since literally everything thats not an off creep queen or a slow overlord will be able to move that 3.5 range needed to escape ST’s range before it goes off.

I get that people feel ST needs a nerf, but this is questionable at best and at worst will uterly gut the unit in TvZ.

Banshee

  • Hyperflight Rotors upgrade time reduced from 121 to 100 seconds.
  • Hyperflight Rotors cost reduced from 150/150 to 125/125.

A nice little change but I dont really think it fixes the issues banshees have. Still, maybe we will see banshee hitsquads again. Who knows? I doubt it though.

Cyclone

  • Mag-Field Accelerator damage bonus changed from +20 vs armored to +10 vs all.

I’m not sure how I feel about this change. On the one hand it does make it better vs light units, but most light units dont have the HP to have this matter. On the other hand, it also makes them significantly worse against the things they were supposed to counter. Ultras, BCs, thors, etc. Dealing with proxy void becomes more cancer as does dealing with BC rushes and the like. About the only thing this really improves is dealing with mutas and phoenix. Maybe. Im content to wait and see, but I’m not sure I like it.

Sensor Tower
Radar range reduced from 30 to 27.

…Why? This is a pretty big nerf, particularly for the slower mech play style, but I guess overall doesn’t effect much else.

Raven (rework)

  • Gas cost reduced from 200 to 150.
  • Build time reduced from 43 to 30 seconds.
  • Starting Energy increased from 50 to 75.
  • Interference Matrix duration reduced from 11 to 8 seconds.
  • Anti-Armor Missile armor reduction reduced from 3 to 2.
  • Corvid Reactor upgrade removed.
  • Auto Turret energy cost increased from 50 to 75.

Gas cost reduction, starting energy increase, nice. The rest of this is absolute garbage and frankly only hurts the raven more than helps it IMO. It neuters auto turrets which already were very mediocre while also makes Ravens worse at its supporting role in every sense and still doesn’t solve the issue of why players don’t use ravens often outside of TvT. Combined with Colossus no longer walking forward when hit by IM it straight up removes the already rare Raven timing TvP had, because the limiting factor was primarily how long stim took to research. Still, I gusss you may have an extra raven now? Or maybe an extra medivac with the push? I dunno, I don’t see this doing anything that is good short of essentially removing the raven from play.

There’s a bunch of bugfixes and QoL changes as well but most of them don’t affect anything else.

The only other thing of note:

Stasis Ward

  • Attack target priority increased from 10 to 20.
  • Units affected by Stasis can be issued any non-build commands instead of only move commands, to be acted upon stasis expiring.

I cannot fault this change really.

2 Likes
22

That depends on the unit. For something thats higher damage its a nerf. For units like the marine or the hydra which want to dps down the interceptors…? Debatable.

23

Hydralisks and Marines only want to target the Interceptors if they cannot get to the Carriers or any other important units. Hold position will do in those situations.

I’m also not convinced Hydralisks can handle Carriers by focus-firing down the Interceptors unless they have a fairly good supply advantage or Microbial Shroud. Hydralisks have projectiles and lower DPS per cost/supply than stimmed Marines, so they won’t get the Interceptors down as quickly or effectively.

1 Like
24

Watch Scarletts stream right now on twitch vs Nina. She is doing a showcase on the test realm. Carriers are still extremely overpowered.

25

Probably to match speed with Roaches in Roach/Hydra compositions. Both units have the same speed before upgrades, and this change synchronizes their speed post-upgrade.

Almost all units in the game have the same target priority (20). There are only a few very specific exceptions, such as unburrowed Widow mines which are specifically 19.

You should expect units to attack the target with higher priority whenever they have the choice.

1 Like
26

Just please… please.

1 Like
27

Ironic: Ghost got nuked.

Nerfs for protoss were needed, according to tournament hard numbers. I’m not sure I agree with the combination of both huge buffs for zerg and huge nerfs for terran though. We’ll see how it plays, but I think this unbalances things worse than the current protoss era.

1 Like
28

From what I’ve seen on twitch, the Zerg “Buffs” aren’t buffs at all. Ultras still can’t reach their targets. Hydras still die extremely easily, cant kite units, and have poor dps for their cost. Broodlords are now pointless because the Broodlings time out before they can do damage and they’re not nearly mobile enough to counter the 50% damage time decrease. At least Carriers lost 10 shields? Thats nice I guess…Certainly won’t stop every late game army of Protoss/Terran to consist of Mech Thor amove or Sky-Toss a-move storm for everyone that isn’t a Pro player.

29

Shout out to ravens getting gutted because of TvT for the N’th time in a row.

30

Massive zerg buffs:
-Vipers won’t be an effective counter to protoss that know what HT are. Good luck responding to disruptors reactively when vipers won’t be able to cancel the nova with abducts. Vipers will now officially be suicide units.

31

Zerg gets massive buffs. Toss and Terr gets nerfs. Surprising no one - forum Zergs get an early head start on whining, without even playing it yet.

1 Like
32

First, that’s already how it was. They’d bind feedback to rapid fire and just wiggle their mouse over your vipers. The reason pro players are upset over the viper is because Serral’s level of control is just out of this universe and that won’t change in this patch.

Second, Zerg won’t need vipers to deal with disruptors thanks to the nerfed disruptor splash. You can probably just trade with splits. The disruptor was so insanely powerful that you couldn’t split even on creep to an adequate degree. Do you remember some of Dark’s games this past year where he dodges 1,000 disruptor shots before winning? Yeah that’s going to be a million times easier and he already did it just fine.

Third, the hydralisk is being buffed in a way that makes it better at split micro, and the brood is being buffed. By far the biggest issue with broods in ZvP is that he can just run around with stalkers and the broods are totally useless because they are always in the wrong position. Adding in broods to counter stalker disruptor will be much more viable.

Fourth, the infestor still has a similar ability aka neural. Granted this doesn’t work on its own vs disruptors since disruptors can hit infestors. But, countering skytoss and especially in combination with broodlings it’s a decent ability. This will be even more so with the nerfed carrier and buffed hydralisk, since microbial will combo there more effectively.

Fifth, abduct will still be useful, but it won’t be quite as broad. It will be limited to picking off stragglers, or as a defensive ability against medivacs and liberators.

Sixth, blinding cloud and parasitic bomb are better abilities than abduct. Abduct is the “whittle your opponent down slowly” ability. The other two abilities are for making big moves and winning fights. Mechanical players like the abilities that trade efficiently. Strategic players like the abilities that win fights. This is a nerf to mechanical players, and I see that as an absolute and unequivocal win. This game needs less emphasis on APM spam. For the same reason, I enjoyed the creep spread nerfs in the last patch. It meant creep was less important, and that meant less APM spam spreading creep / doing the cancel micro on the tumors.

33

You were never rich enough against Hero’s style to get to broods nor a decent hydra count, they’re always better off being lurkers. You see roach ravager bane into vipers against that comp and now that’s far less effective. With the abduct nerf you will see that when they’re able to maintain a healthy disruptor count that splitting becomes ineffective. You will need the same amount of vipers as they have disruptors to be able to chain abduct, instead of having 1 with enough energy. I don’t see why they didn’t just make disruptors 4 supply instead.

34

You’re not wrong. In the low economy games you have to ram banelings into the disruptors and this works because to cast the orb the disruptor becomes immobile. The baneling is a disposable unit anyway, so it becomes a trade. You then squeeze out a hive and go for 1 or 2 vipers.

I think this is a buff to baneling comps as well because the decreased splash range makes the disruptor weaker against all ground units. It would be interesting to see some numbers on the peak kill capacity for a single disruptor shot.

35

I wonder if 5.0.11, when it’s out of real, will apply the patches announced for 5.0.10 for coop that they actually forgot to apply to the game :laughing:
By the way, are the comments here based on actual game experience, or just reading the notes? It would be funny if like coop, they actually forgot to implement some changes announced :stuck_out_tongue:

36

Oh god, I just read that as well. Yup, Harstem catering to the low league players that send in replays for his IODIS series.

37

Who let townhall guy out of his pen?

Also why we are back to double nerfing / double buffing?

Broodlord is already buffed quite substantionally, why nerf both EMP and Snipe ON TOP OF THAT?

Not to mention that EMP range upgrade was added to indirectly nerf Zealots in TvP. So where is the Zealot nerf?

I also wonder who on Earth thinks that Broodlord-Infestor was such a good era that tries to put it back every other patch?

38

interesting changes. nice that casual also came more into focus.

emp → you get default 0.25 more radius.
meaning you do not need an upgrade. that you can not forget or have additional costs.
so Ghost is strong earlier (+0.25), but weaker later (-0.25).

Snipe → why everyone is acting like this is a brutal nerf… in engage situatinen nothing changes. even Bl/ ultra i don’t think it changes anything, because they come away too slow.
What changes is that when zerg pulls back, the faster units mutas/ hydra/ roach /lurker that are far out of range don’t still hit at a snip 15+ range.

on the other hand, a strong early-mid unit was changed again … Ravager
viper is weakened, which hits top lvl more than casual.

think then pool frist/ early roach stuff… example 3-4 roach push vs terran. the pressure is weaker because ravagers take longer.
eventually hydra will become more core unit.

39

I mean on paper thats correct but in reality protoss simply has the slowest upgrades since they start much much later. terran/zerg can go double ebay/evo on 4:30 and go hard on upgrades but protoss usually cant do that. In pro plays we almost always see protoss players lacking behind in upgrades - which is actually not that big of a deal (well ok depends on the style) because spellcasting and tech is often times much more important anyway.

Who cares about 2-2 when you can 1 shot 15 units with 1 ball?

cant confirm now but i think now carriers can get a moved because carriers will now have higher priority (20 compared to interceptor 19) than interceptors. So now whiners wont have any argument left for losing against carriers. This change will do nothing since most of the games they didnt lose because of that in the first place :smiley: So im pretty glad this change went live.

1 Like
40

No, I get -0.25 range which is a lot.
In TvP this upgrade is started immediately after Ghost Academy is finished. Its not like there is any timing that I can hit: Ghosts need time to accumulate energy anyway. Ghosts are not Vipers they don’t have Consume spell.

You need to land 4 EMPs on Archon to remove its shields so this 0.25 range adds up quickly.
Not to mention that EMP projectile is not exactly instant and when firing from maximum range at moving targets it can miss, and you can’t get close because if you do you will get Feedbacked.

Also I need to remind that EMP range got an upgrade to help Terran deal with Zealots. Were Zealots nerfed in this patch?

And we got Raven which is already garbage in TvP nerfed for TvP even more… And the Cyclone is also made even worse than it was.

Wtf is this patch?

Because it is.
Plus it makes already awkward ability even more awkward.

This change is also stuid, Ravagers are fine

1 Like