Or they could buff the viking’s aerial speed by exactly the same amount, and thus preserve the interaction.
The thing is, they want to incite the protoss to use VRs to clear creep and overlords. But at one hand overlords are extremely slow targets ; and at another hand the deterrents to VRs as creep cleaner would be :
- Queens (3.5 speed on creep) in early game
- hydras (3.15 → 3.93 off creep ; 4.09 → 5.11 speed on creep (damned, they made them so much faster than they used to be… @_@)
- Mutalisks (5.6 speed) in midgame
- Corruptors (4.7 speed) in lategame.
Current VR speed is 3.5 → 4.65 with flux vanes. Coming from there :
- VRs would need to be only slightly faster than 3.5 to outspeed queens in early.
- In midgame, slight speed buffs would not suffice anymore, but flux vanes would be enough to save them from hydras as long as they don’t venture too far on the creep. Corruptors do slightly outspeed them even with fluxvanes. No way to avoid mutalisks but that’s the way it should be.
With proposed buff (3.5 > 3.85 / 4.65 → 5.11), what changes is that the VR would now be able to avoid both queens, corruptors and offcreep hydras. However that would break the interaction with vikings early game, and cyclones once flux vanes are out.
Alternatively, I think they could go :
- for an intermediate +0,175 speed buff, which would lead to 3.67 / 4.82, implying they would still be able to avoid queens/corruptors and offcreep hydras, but without breaking too much the kiting possibilities of the early game viking. Cyclones and stimmed marines would have a tougher time catching them though…
- or go for their +0.35 speed buff, but increase vikings’ speed from a similar amount. That would still break the lategame interaction with the cyclone though, but also with stimmed marines (4.72). Not to mention having a 5.11 speed unit with the VR’s DPS against buildings could be a nightmare to play against due to the tradebase potential (since VR aren’t stopped by static), and that for both protoss and terrans (zerg would fare better with infestors, queens vipers and mutas).
Or… just incite the protoss to make more oracles and to clean the creep with them, by just reducing oracle pulsar beam activation cost from 25 to 10 or 15 :
- Faster than queens
- Faster than speed hydras even on creep
- Same speed than mutas
- No interaction breaking with vikings, cyclones nor stimmed marines, and less cancer base-trade potential
- Aligns perfectly with your harass SG openers
All well considered, I think they are trying to give the VR a role that isn’t his. Lowering corruptors’ speed to be the same than speedrays to improve his PvZ air assault role, and slightly buffing the oracles’ pulsar beam activation cost would give an SG creep cleaning alternative that would break much less interactions in other MUs. 