many people play sc2 not just pros, there not many pros players so try again.
carriers are ez to counter unless they have storm, disutors
spilt units? still get kiled.
play like maru? dont talk because everyone has their own play style
There is actually an extension mod - Wardiii uses it for hosting his tournaments. I just donāt know what itās called 
Edit: the current balance test mod at this point (December 26 2022) is called 5.0.11 BalanceTest, for anyone who doesnāt want to download the PTR.
Edit 2: Thereās actually some additional changes in the Balance test mod as well. See the patch notes for details.
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I think you totally missed the message I responded to. I responded to āTerran prosā havenāt work on the patch, which is wrong.
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Thatās useful to know - thanks. I tried looking at the Balance Test Mod yesterday, but it was last updated in 2020 and the fact that the Raven cost 100m 200g clued me to the fact that it was out of date!
3 Likes
I think the cyclone change is more of a nerf then a buff because they will still suck against unarmored swarm units even with with the +10 upgrade, meanwhile they will be weaker against just about everything else that people were already building against them. Weaker against warp prism, oracle, structures and just about every other staple protoss unit. Against zerg it looks like it will even easier to overrun with mass roaches.
4 Likes
To me it infers from when the mag field accelerator was actually used :
- TvP, it was mainly against proxy batteries with voidrays (armored) or tempest (armored). Cyclone as a counter already became weaker due to the last voidray speedbuff, but hopefully the cost and build time buffs having been reversed, the proxy became less popular. Against those, this change would be (another) nerf.
- TvZ. Cyclones were once used in battlemech instances against roach ravagers corruptors and BL. They revealed not having the necessary punch to deal with BL though, while the upgrade was a lategame occurence, and thus shifted out of meta in favor of Thors BC hellbat ghosts. Roachs, corruptors and BL being armored, it would be a nerf anyway.
- TvT. Cyclones are a staple of the early game here, to counter banshees ravens, BCs, and hellion reapers ; but those happen at a stage where mag fields doesnāt kick in. Mag field sees occasional mid to late mech use, against BCs, vikings, ravens, occasionnally tanks and PFs. Against those it would be a nerf.
So in other words
- For most of current magfield instances (which are 90% of their current use), overall the proposed change is a nerf.
- for those that would fancy chasing phoenixes, mutas, and speed banshees with cyclones itās a buff, but there would be better options even with propose change.
- Proposed change might increase the use against previously unusual unarmored targets (zealots, marines, hydras, lings, ghosts) but should be mostly useful against moderate to high HP ones (zealots, ghosts, hydras ?).
So overall itās a nerf, unless we see more use of the cyclone as a lategame staple, which it isnāt designed to be. 
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HeRoMaRinE tests battle mech in ESL/ wardi with balance mod.
and you must not forget that hydra also became more interesting, through speed buff. cyclone are also stronger against hydra then
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The thing about Battle-mech (all mech really) is that the Cyclones are backed up by Hellions/Hellbats, which are more than capable of fighting Hydralisks. The Hellions/Hellbats counter light ground and serve as a buffer for the heavier mech units, the Cyclones counter armored ground and air units. This change makes Cyclones worse against all armored units, which includes the majority of their use cases.
The change has the largest benefit against ground units with neither armored/light tags or against air units without an armor tag, but it is questionable whether those niche cases will be enough to compensate for the nerf.
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Well against Zerg cyclone is huge buff because offensive micro against roach by have greater range.
Plus on defensive side siege tank line that melt roaches and once roaches turn ravagers itās major buff that can easily save sieg lines.
Before this mass mutas was best answer for mass cyclones but now which is roaches but roaches gets hit hard against siege tanks.
This change explicitly nerfs Cyclones against Roaches. There are other cases where the change buffs Cyclones, but fighting Roaches definitely isnāt one of them.
Cyclones and Siege Tanks do not work particularly well together. Cyclones rely on kiting, Siege Tanks rely on heavy ranged firepower and a particularly durable buffer to prevent the opponent from reaching them. Sometimes Cyclones can make use of a Hellbat buffer for lock-on, but in a pitched battle with Siege Tanks, it is nearly always better to have more Tanks, Vikings, or Thors
Even when a Terran player makes both units, the Cyclone is best used separately as a more mobile force for harassment or map control. It is very rarely useful to keep Cyclones near a slow Tank army.
3 Likes
In offensive attacks itās cyclone favor in defensive itās not.
Siege tanks would be used to aid cyclones in defense posture.
The real change was fact that they did poor against unit that they should been god against.
I guess they didnāt want Thor unit where they buff itās AA didnāt nerf itās high dps ground
So unfortunately I havenāt managed to successfully open it yet because it depends on Observer Plus v1.11, but the only version I can find is v1.10 and trying to open it in the editor leaves a lot of missing information. Iām missing a step somewhere.
Just as a minor noteā¦ Iāve noticed that there has been a recent update to it where Broodlings that spawn from dead Zerg buildings have their original timed life again, rather than the shortened life when launched from Brood Lords. Thought people might like that one.
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according to this logic, bio tank would also be bad.
i have seen one game where HeRoMaRinE played battle mech and he also had tanks as follow. but heromarine was also favored in that game.
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Yeah, unfortunately I canāt open 5.0.11 BalanceTest or make an extension mod that depends on it because it canāt find āObserverPlus_1_11.SC2Modā. I can only assume itās a version that hasnāt been published publicly yet, or is only available on the Korean server (which I donāt have an account for yet).
(For the developers of Observer Plus, EU is behind at 1.9, while NA has 1.10)
As an alternative I can make a regular mod to showcase my Raven suggestions, but will be built on the live patch rather than the balance test.
I should actually have specified that Cyclones & Tanks donāt work well together āin a single engagement/battleā as I will elaborate on lower down this response.
Sorry, this post is going to get fairly long.
Bio-Tank is bad in a lot of situations.
Specifically, Bio-Tank is bad when the opponent has units that can regularly get onto the Bio (forcing friendly-fire, which is particularly deadly to the bio units), and it hemorrhages Tanks whenever the opponent has an army that can force Bio to kite or retreat long distances.
In TvZ, that basically puts Bio-Tank on a timer until Hive tech:
- Brood Lords turn Tanks into a straight up liability for Bio.
- Vipers can abduct and disable Tanks, rendering them useless. In order to keep Siege Tanks āusefulā after that point, the Terran player needs a lot of long ranged units (Vikings, Thors, Ghosts) to ward off or punish/kill the Vipers, and a screen of either Hellbats or Widow Mines to keep the Tanks alive long enough to shoot if they get hit by Blinding Cloud.
- Fully upgraded Ultralisks are faster than Bio, tough to take down, and relatively efficient at killing Bio units with their splash damage. There may be a critical mass where Tanks just kill most Ultralisks before they can reach a Bio force, but otherwise this can easily fall into the friendly-fire or abandon the Tanks scenario.
In TvP the main friendly-fire threat is Chargelots, but Protoss will often need a lot of chargelots and maybe splash support to make that work.
In TvT, the Siege Tank is decent against all ground units, and it can be particularly difficult to make friendly-fire a significant issue for the opponent.
Pure mech/sky (a Hellbat line buffering for Tanks, Thors, Vikings, etc) doesnāt have quite the same problems that plague Bio-Tank. Hellbats have the durability to absorb a lot of damage (with no +armor bonus), and they have a fairly powerful burst to kill anything that tries to get on top of them or the units they are defending. Both attributes make Hellbats significantly less susceptible to friendly-fire than Bio units. The extra durability also buys Siege Tanks and other heavy mech/sky units more time to shoot and dish out damage; whereas Bio would normally be forced to retreat or take heavy losses. Mech is basically stronger than Bio in direct engagements.
To loop this back to Cyclones:
Cyclones are designed around kiting, and often have the same need/urge to retreat as Bio. They also need time to refresh their lock-on, and if they fight with their auto-attack they are likely to be near enough to the enemy that some enemy ranged units can directly target them over Hellions/Hellbats, bringing down the Terran playerās firepower at a faster rate. The Terran player would have better performance in a direct battle if most of their army could kite or if they had more Siege Tanks, Thors, Vikings, Liberators, etc which donāt share the Cycloneās downtime.
Keep in mind that Battle-mech and mech can easily swap and reuse the Hellions/Hellbats, the vehicle upgrades, and the production between them. It isnāt particularly difficult to swap between one or the other, or to use them as separate forces.
Cyclones and Tanks donāt fit particularly well together in a single battle/engagement, but there is nothing stopping a player from using Cyclones for harassment, Tanks (along with Vikings, Liberators, Thors, and/or Battlecruisers) for defense & main-army, and moving the Hellions/Hellbats around as needed. That is actually how I usually play, with a harassment force of about 3-6 Cyclones along with some of the Hellions.
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I got it to work! I ended up just copying the raw XML data into my own extension mod and going from there.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/sc2/t/suggestion-ptr-extension-mod-raven-rework/
2 Likes
Special thanks to Ketroc to drawing my attention to some recent changes. They can be found here:
http(colon)(slash)(slash)rentry(dot)co(slash)uz75f
Notably, this is how the PTR currently stands:
Worker Units
- No longer need to wait for full deceleration before beginning to attack
ZERG
Creep Tumor
- Cooldown increased from 10.71 to 13.57 seconds
- Sight range reduced from 11 to 10
Hatchery, Lair, Hive
- Creep spread interval decreased from 0.3 to 0.25 accelerating the spread
- Sight range increased from 10,11,12 to 12
Viper
- After Abduct the Viper can not move or use abilities for 0.71 seconds
Ultralisk
- Reduced size by 12.5%
- Increased extra range before an ongoing attack cancels from 1 to 1.25 (This affects how far the attack target can move away before the Ultraliskās ongoing attack is canceled. The range to begin an attack is unchanged)
Hydralisk
- Muscular Augments move speed bonus off Creep increased from 0.79 to 1.05.
- The speed on Creep remains unchanged at 5.12
- Damage point reduced from 0.15 to 0.1 (This is the time between the attack begun and the attackās effect starts. Reducing it allows more time for movement in between attacks)
Brood Lord
- Move speed increased from 1.97 to 2.24
- Duration of spawned Broodlings reduced from 5.71 to 3.57
Ravager
- Build time increased from 8.57 to 12.14 seconds and removed the random delay of up to 0.36 seconds
PROTOSS
Shield Battery
- Battery Overcharge shield recharge rate bonus reduced from 100% to 50%.
- This reduces the total shields recharged from 1440 to 1080
Observer
- Move speed increased from 2.63 to 2.82
- Gravitic Boosters move speed bonus raised to remain a 50% increase
- Model size increased by 10%. This only affects its visual size
Archon
- Reduced collision radius with structures from 0.75 to 0.56 to allow traversal of 1 tile wide gaps between buildings
High Templar
- Move speed increased from 2.63 to 2.82
Disruptor
- Purification Novaās radius reduced from 1.5 to 1.35
Carrier
- Interceptor attack target priority reduced from 20 to 19.
- Attackers now prioritize other units over Interceptors
Sentry
- Build time reduced from 26.4 to 22.9 seconds
- Move speed increased from 3.15 to 3.5
Forge
- Level 1 upgrades research time reduced by 7.1 seconds to 121.4
- Level 2 upgrades research time reduced by 8.9 seconds to 144.6
- Level 3 upgrades research time reduced by 10.7 seconds to 167.9
TERRAN
Viking (Fighter Mode)
- Damage point reduced from 0.12 to 0.04
Liberator
- Cost reduced from 150/150 to 150/125
Ghost
- Enhanced Shockwaves upgrade removed
- 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.
- The cast range remains at 10
- Steady Targeting can now be manually canceled
Banshee
- Hyperflight Rotors research time reduced from 121.4 to 100 seconds
- Hyperflight Rotors cost reduced from 150/150 to 125/125
Cyclone
- Mag-Field Accelerator damage bonus changed from +20 vs armored to +10 vs all
- Lock on will now prioritize Air Units if they have an anti-ground attack
Sensor Tower
- Radar range reduced from 30 to 27
Raven
- Gas cost reduced from 200 to 150
- Build time reduced from 42.9 to 30 seconds
- Corvid Reactor upgrade removed
- Anti-Armor Missile armor reduction reduced from 3 to 2
- Anti-Armor Missileās tint color is now brighter (from 255,100,0 to 255,153,85)
- Auto Turret duration reduced from 10.0 to 7.8 seconds
- Auto Turret health reduced from 150 to 100
- Auto Turret armor reduced from 1 to 0
- Auto Turret is no longer affected by Neosteel Armor
MISC BUG FIXES / QOL CHANGES
All Units
- Follow acquire range reduced from 5 to 2 (While following an allied unit through a move or right click command, the following unit will switch from moving to attacking nearby enemies when within this range. This is changed as moving is the expected behavior)
Banshee
- First missile is no longer delayed by 0.11 seconds after attack completes (Previously the Banshee could even start moving away before the first missile was launched. The second missile will also be 0.11 seconds faster, as there remains a 0.11 second gap between the 2 missiles)
Dark Templar
- Shadow Stride attack delay reduced from 0.75 to 0.71 seconds
Factory
- Increase maximum spawn radius by 1
Widow Mine
- Reduced random unburrow/burrow delay from 0.36 seconds to 0.18 seconds.
- The average time remains the same
- No longer targets Zerg Cocoons without a manual order
- No longer targets units affected by Neural Parasite without a manual order.
- This behavior is now consistent with other units
Cyclone
- Fixed an issue where Lock On could enter cooldown while the Cyclone is loaded into a Medivac
- Lock On no longer targets Zerg Cocoons without a manual order
Shield Battery
- Fixed an issue where repeatedly issuing a Stop command could increase Restoreās shield regeneration rate
- Fixed an issue where animation models created snapshots in fog
- Fixed tooltip not scaling values to the game speed
Adept
- Fixed an issue where Adepts could not be ordered to cancel the Shade ability when selected with Adepts who are warping in
- Can now be ordered to load into a Warp Prism while shading, automatically cancelling the Shade
Queen
- Fixed an issue where initial Creep Tumors could be canceled.
- No longer unable to receive certain orders for 0.6 seconds after spawning
Lurker
- Reduced random unburrow delay from 0.36 seconds to 0.18 seconds.
- The average time remains the same
- Attacks will no longer be blocked by certain low ground terrain features
- Fixed an issue where units loaded into transports could be damaged
Hydralisk
- Now has the same attack cooldown and attack animation speed with attacks at melee and range (Previously melee attacks had a longer animation and shorter cooldown)
- Fixed an issue where Morph to Lurker would be canceled with a Smart command issued immediately after the Morph command
- Removed Morph to Lurker random delay and added average delay to base build time
Stasis Ward
- Attack target priority increased from 10 to 20.
- Attackers will no longer prioritize other units over a Stasis Ward. Now they are prioritized equally
- Stasised Units can now queue gather orders
Raven
- Fixed an issue where units affected by Interference Matrix could not be issued Stop commands
- Fixed an issue where units affected by Interference Matrix would walk forward below their Attack range when given Attack Move commands
- Interference Matrix now pauses Immortal Barrier cooldown for the correct amount of time (5.7 ā 7.9 seconds)
Swarm Host
- Spawn Locusts no longer interrupts the current order
Hatchery, Lair, Hive
- Subgroup priority changed from Hatchery > Lair > Hive to Hive > Lair > Hatchery
General
- Fixed an issue where MULE could be cast targeting Refineries close to Command Centers
- Fixed an unintended behavior being displayed on Nydus Worms
- Fixed an issue where Mutaliskās attack launch sound would play each time the attack bounced
- Fixed an issue where Morph to Ravager would be canceled with a Smart command issued immediately after the Morph command
- Fixed an issue where Morph to Lurker would be canceled with a Smart command issued immediately after the Morph command
- Fixed an issue where Zerglings could not receive queued Morph to Baneling commands
- Fixed an issue where Zerglings and Swarm Hosts could not be given commands while unburrowing
- Fixed an issue where Liberators could not be given certain orders immediately after being ordered to unsiege
- Fixed an issue where Thor in High Impact Payload mode would not collide with Locusts
- Fixed an issue with the attack animation of the Thor when using the Tyrador skin
- Fixed a variety of incorrect Upgrade and Unit scores (How much āscoreā you get should equal the combined resource cost)
- Fixed an issue where certain flying units/buildings did not cause water ripples when flying over water. Standardized the height at which an air unit will cause water ripples
- Fixed an issue where simultaneously using Mass Recall (Mothership) and Strategic Recall (Nexus) could move the recalled units to an incorrect location
- Fixed an issue where Ravagerās Corrosive Bile animation would override Burrow animation
- Fixed Shield Battery Restore not showing its range when interacting with the UI
- Fixed an issue where changing warp in speed did not change the animationās speed
- Fixed an issue where Shield Batteryās auto-cast targeted Dark Shrine
- Fixed an issue where Reapers threw KD8 Charges with the wrong hand
- Fixed an issue where Changelings would permanently switch sides after Neural Parasite. Neural Parasite now disables the morph
- Fixed an issue where burrowed Swarm Hosts and Ravagers collided with burrowed Movers. Roaches now change their collision after researching Tunneling Claws
3 Likes
really? then terranās 111 all-in at 4:00 will be very powerful ( the first liberator could arrive at the front of protossā base earlier)
i love this strategy so please make this change realised !
Thatās what the notes say.
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Thanks for informing us about the current PTR state, Crane. 
The main changes compared to what was announced seems to be :
- The hydralisk proposed movespeed buff is lessened a bit, as it would now mostly apply offcreep.
- the interceptors nerf was dampened a lot (no more shields decrease)
- The observer buff was amplified even more (gravitic boosters are also buffed)
- slight liberator buff
- the raven nerf was modified so it would affect only two spells instead of three, but in a heavier way (no more base armor points for the auto turret, no more upgraded armor points for it neither, their health is reduced by 33%, cumulating with the anti-armor missile nerf). The interference Matrix nerf isnāt mentioned anymore, which is, I hope, a sign they renounced nerfing it too.
For my part, I agree with most Z/P changes, with the exception of the Ultraliskās leeway and the Observerās speed.
However, Iād like to mention, that there isnāt a single unit in the game that has been nerfed more violently than the Raven :
- 130 dmg stackable AoE spell ā 15 dmg ā 0 dmg ā 0 dmg is too much, proposed to nerf again.
- Damage negating abilities : 180s defense drone ā 11s single target matrix ā was proposed to nerf even more until recently.
- Harass/spawning ability : 240s auto-turret ā 10s autoturret ā proposed to nerf again.
The unit has been unchanged since November 2019, and with the exception of TvT mech players (where ravens are a powerful anti prolonged siege stalemates), I havenāt seen any complaints about it from Zerg players (who complained mainly about the snipe), nor more than occasional from Protoss players (who complained mostly about the EMP shockwaves upgrade).
It has a" free" immobile spawn spell, which is balanced out by Zerg having mainly two free mobile spawned units (locusts, broodlings Ā± changelings), and protoss having one extremely cheap mobile spawned unit (the interceptor).
Its splash spell does nothing on its own, and so is a tier below compared to assist AoE such as the Fungle, the Parasitic bomb ; not to mention first tier AoE (storm, disruption).
So if itās not a problematic unit in TvP nor TvZ, why nerf it ? If the aim is to nerf it in TvT, then even there it doesnāt makes sense to buff its cost and nerf its abilities, as that will buff its use in raven marine tank allins (where the attacking player gets 2-3 ravens to matrix all opponentās tanks), and discourage its other spells use (AAM in particular), which found more use later in the game.
Long story short, I usually understand most proposed changes regarding all races, but there I still donāt get why the raven would need to get nerfed (again). 
2 Likes