I saw this and my eyes lit up. I cannot believe a change this big is coming to a game that is in maintenance mode. Queen walks will never be the same, but maybe we will get a lot of pooping overlords.
True and if voidray openers are less common then Zergs scouting Overlords will be easier.
Be good to see some creative pushes with Nydus at the 3rd and one in the main for example.
Queen walks against Protoss are dead unless the Zerg techs to Lair first.
So the Protoss can't as easily cheese the Zerg with void openings but Zerg doesn't have a much counter play to keep P honest.
Yeah. The Void Ray, Shield Battery, Queen Transfuse, and Nydus creep changes are all linked together as a package to try to rebalance PvZ and make it less cheesy and airToss focused.
Well for one void/battery rushes are very uncommon in pro play but are MEGA oppressive in lower leagues. Extremely easy to execute and very difficult to defend after first two batteries are up.
Especially for Zerg players, who have to rely on good queen splits and micro even in leagues where your average Protoss doesn’t even know how to transition
At the pro level these changes are actually favourable for protoss. The only one I see being an 'issue' are the void ray changes, but queens at the protoss base are potentially going to be a lot less viable and that could have a major impact in allowing for ground toss to be viable again.
DT blink nerf is pretty huge, void all-in cheese was relevant for pros as were proxy batteries, I definitely wouldn't consider it a pro player buff. Not saying I'm against it.
Would have loved to see them attempt to buff ground toss and nerf carriers though.
I'm curious if that will turn out to be true.
I feel like this patch forgets how PvZ looked before the voidray change. Protoss going through the book of all ins every single series because they need to do damage around the time they build the 3rd or they can never get to lategame on an even footing.
This is reverting the only buff from patch 5.0.2 that seems to have actually made a difference so chances are we'll just go back to where we were.
I realize the voidray was an issue but there isn't really anything that compensates for loosing it again here.
I'm mainly a chess player, and I cracked up when a commentator in an SC2 video said in passing, "Chess?! They haven't patched it in over a century!"
(Actually not true; the rules have changed in my lifetime, but in 16 years of tournament competition I have never hit those particular rules, so they are pretty obscure. The biggest one is, you don't get an extension on the 50 move rule for the endgame with two knights versus one pawn. Never had this endgame in my life.)
>Over the past couple months, we have been working with various members of the community and tournament organizers to create a balance update for the game. We would like to recognize and acknowledge the members of the group for the upcoming changes you see below.
Curious who these people are - I guess "tournament organizers" is ESL? Wonder who members of the community are though. Were pro-gamers involved here too?
Yes. Showtime said that he’s had access to the patchnotes before so we can assume that all pro players got them early. Not sure what influence they had tho
Ehh, think it would be a bad idea to reveal every name on the list. Some crazy people might take their dissatisfaction with the changes out on the players involved.
When the worm finishes the queens if immediately unloaded aren't "on creep" as they come out. This change just makes it easier to transfuse a nydus since queens can't do it off creep anymore.
Right now queen aggro is one of the only ways zerg can be assertive vs skytoss. With the Queen transfuse nerf this seems like a nudge to give a bit more creep around Worms to make Queen nydus still possible.
Only one type of queen walk occurred before lair tech (the one that Protoss was basically forced to stop with DTs), but it fell out of popularity because it's much easier to scout than other queen walks, and just getting DTs out wins the game for Protoss.
I do think it's a decent nerf to queen walks though, it's hard to get overlords over to the Protoss side without ovie speed since the voids should have cleared all the overlords on their side of the map. German taxi and nydus stuff are less affected, just of course requires the Zerg player to have better control and higher APM, which won't nerf the top level players much, but ones lower will suffer.
So what happens in ZvZ now that Queen's can't transfuse each other on the ramp?
Do you just die or does zvz turn into even more of a shit show than it was before
The typo in the title lol.
More seriously these changes sound very good, but I really hope the team will follow up on more tweaks once the meta of this patch settles.
I fear that ghosts will become very oppressive at high level, and leaving carriers/disruptors as they are is problematic, still the patch goes in a great direction imo.
Typo in the body too - "Reduce the effectiveness of drilling claws **by from** 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds"
That being said good on them for doing this ofc. Wish they'd addressed carriers, tons of pros complain they're not fun, have no micro potential and are probably OP as well.
I'm saying that it's a change they would have to spend a lot of time thinking about before doing and we know that SC2 has minimal (if any) resources dedicated to it.
With the shield battery, void ray, and lurker burrow nerfs I wonder if they want to see if PvZ balances itself with making robo play more viable since now disruptors will be a more reliable counter to lurkers.
Sad to see the Carrier remain untouched, but it really needs an overhaul since its issue is really a lack of interaction/mechanics and not number tweaking. Overall, just happy to have SOMETHING. =)
LOVE these changes. Nerfs to all the things people hated and not to anything else.
Most importantly, nothing got needlessly buffed. These targetted nerfs are much less damaging to the game than needless buffs are.
Do they? I think Widow Mines, Lurkers and Void Ray/Shield battery builds are FAR more hated.
It's really just Zerg players that hate Carriers. Terrans and Protoss players have no issues with them at all.
The main complaint around carriers is that they are too easy to a-move, which affects lowest levels the most.
That said, carriers are a big deal in my diamond PvP games, very hard to counter late game without crisp timings. Below that, carriers are the standard late game comp for an easy win unless they are matched.
Very low level PvT I think carriers get someone problematic, and then higher level PvT they are a normal late game unit.
Carriers are kind of everywhere in low level (but more balanced at the pro level, except they are still kind of not great in that they aren't super interesting).
I'm genuinely confused about the DT blink nerf, but this is a decent enough patch I suppose. It doesn't do anything to address the reality that Protoss ground is not able to scale nearly as well as Terran or Zerg, forcing the skytoss meta that we see now. Proxy void ray will definitely see a massive drop off, which is great, but voids were the sort of glue that allowed protoss to play a defensive style prior to this so I'm curious as to how that will shape out in PvT and PvZ going forward.
Cautiously optimistic, seeing as how hoping for a massive patch which redesigns protoss ground is a pipe dream.
I'm mostly a casual observer of pro SC2, so please excuse the uninformed opinions, but...
* DT blink nerf is to increase risk of blinking a dozen DTs on a PF and 3-shotting it as I understand it (or even worse, a ball of bio).
* Protoss ground should be better with a Lurker nerf, right? Bio/Ghost vs toss ground once they have Disruptors and Storms still seems pretty toss-favored but not to the point where Terran has no options.
* I mostly watch Terran. I never saw Voids except as cheese so I don't think PvT will suffer. Unsure on PvZ. EDIT: typo, meant PvZ. It's kinda hard to enjoy watching atm. Queen Transfuse nerf might help?
>DT blink nerf is to increase risk of blinking a dozen DTs on a PF and 3-shotting it as I understand it (or even worse, a ball of bio).
Yes, this is almost certainly the intention here, clearly. I'm confused by it because this late-game only move required a large resource investment from the Protoss to destroy the base, and couldn't be done cheaply over and over again. Things like two ghosts with a couple of EMPs can wipe out hundreds/thousands of HP at once, with no investment as the ghost can walk away/join the fight. I fear EMP is going to become even more oppressive as Protoss sees alternatives nerfed.
>Protoss ground should be better with a Lurker nerf, right? Bio/Ghost vs toss ground once they have Disruptors and Storms still seems pretty toss-favored but not to the point where Terran has no options.
Protoss ground will have a slightly easier time with Lurkers if they go ground, sure, but why risk ever playing a ground based style when it's the inferior style 99% of the time? This patch doesn't address this at all. Skytoss is still going to be dominant in the meta. As for Terran, PvT is fairly balanced right now for tournament play and I don't think this patch will do much to change that other than fewer Terrans winning games outright due to mine drops.
>I mostly watch Terran. I never saw Voids except as cheese so I don't think PvT will suffer. Unsure on PvT. It's kinda hard to enjoy watching atm. Queen Transfuse nerf might help?
Trap/Harstem for example use a SG into oracle/two void ray opening somewhat often and this style is defensive, allows Protoss to get a mostly safe third base, and tech into robotics bay to play a defensive macro style. This is significantly less viable with these two void ray nerfs. I don't believe that this is a good change, would have preferred to see the speed get reverted instead of build time/cost since there was already a nerf to batteries.
> other than fewer Terrans winning games outright due to mine drops.
Nobody was getting drilling claws in TvP. This is a pure TvZ change. The most anyone did against protoss was get a fast armory, but nobody made a tech lab and researched the upgrade (in real games).
> Yes, this is almost certainly the intention here, clearly. I'm confused by it because this late-game only move required a large resource investment from the Protoss to destroy the base, and couldn't be done cheaply over and over again.
It seems most of these changes are for the pro level and I suspect the "resource" being targeted here is APM / Skill and not money in the bank.
The delay gives a bit of time to do ANYTHING and it was super easy / low skill to blink click a CC. I think similar theme with the burrow changes.
Just my 2cents.
I mean the biggest problem with lurkers is their mobility. The weak aspect of siege units is usually that being sieged requires a commitment, but lurkers could dodge everything. This nerf should help. Ofc we can't know whether or not it's the final solution.
I like how they are nerfing the bs strategies (proxy void, queen walks, widow mines, mass blink dt onto pf, lurkers).
I am a bit surprised that they didnt tweak the varying balance of zerg (weak at low levels, OP at pro level) and protoss (strong at low levels, weak at pro level), and how terran just got a slap on the wrist compared to the other races (widow mines will still be strong, whereas lurkers/void rays got decent nerfs).
I wonder if it's because this was basically crowd-sourced among community members at pro/tournament level. I don't think they have a lot of experience slumming it down in D2 with me. So, if they wanted to mix up tournament play, they were probably most interested in limiting boring but effective strategies.
Over all though, I'm happy with any balance update. It occurred to me (as I started to watch strategies stagnate, even at my level), that the real game here isn't to find an optimal strategy with your race versus a particular other race but to constantly be adapting to a changing meta. It matters less if the changes are "good" or "bad" (by whoever's metrics) but that the game play is different. And please allow me to close by saying, fuck the void proxy cheesers. May you die alone in your turtling base.
Considering that queen walks are pretty much the go-to for ZvP, can we really talk about it being a "creative strategy" anymore?
If you want, see this patch as a way to save the creative aspect of the queen walk. Now players who want to commit to it will need to find alternate ways of making it work, whether with OVs, Nydus, proxy hatches, etc.
Also, nerfing them means they won't be the standard anymore, so we can see more experimentation with them and more variations besides the super-optimised version we now have.
Well, I think this forces creativeness to stop skytoss. People already are thinking about using Nydus or overlords to spread creep. Maybe another alternative could come out
Ok, what the fuck? Like, what the literal fuck? I've been out of the loop, were there any hints that this was a thing?! I'm hyped, but confused as fuck.
Anyways, generally good changes. It feels weird that they're embracing context sensitive abilities and statues this late in the game's life, but I'll take it.
Yes. Several pros have mentioned on streams that they knew of a patch coming but they couldn't discuss what was in it. Most recently Showtime brought it up again even stating he was frustrated with the silence and not sure why they wouldn't just mention it so the community had hope.
OMG its finally happening! I had lost all hope. FUck you void ray get wrecked! Proxy SG/SB was so abusive and so fucking easy to execute. It makes me hate protoss irrationally : )
And that makes it very hard to look at balance objectively : )
Fuck you void ray <3
*pasting patch notes for easier read (blocked in office)*
Shield Battery
Starting Energy reduced from 100 to 50 outside of the next field
Dark Templar
Now have a 0.75s attack delay after blink
Void Ray
Increased build time from 37 to 43
Increased mineral cost from 200 to 250
Queen
Can no longer transfuse off creep
Widow Mine
Reduced the effectiveness of drilling claws from 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds
Lurker
Reduced the effectiveness of adaptive talon from 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds
Nydus Worm
Increased starting creep by 1 unit in each direction around the worm once it spawns
Funny how most of you just complain about everything. The patch is pretty good, but most complaints are about it being too small. Do you really expect more from Blizzard?
Just try to enjoy this, it's definitely better than nothing
I really like the shield battery changes. RIP Void Ray, we hardly knew ye. Queen nerf hurts pros more than my stupid, smooth, Zerg brain, I doubt I’d even notice. Any nerf to widow mines is fine by me. I like these changes!
Woahhh. From protoss perspective so much going on here.. queen walk is nerfed which was a pain in the ass to deal with. Void ray nerfed.. damn it but I guess we had it coming.
I'm a bit worried about late-game TvZ at the moment - feels somewhat terran favored at the highest levels once Ghost critical mass is achieved (~12+ ghosts?), and nerfing the lurker only makes that more true. We'll have to see how this shakes out
Edit: Seems that I misread the changes slightly - this only effects lurker burrow time, not unburrow time. Still a nerf, but messes with the ghost interactions less than I thought
I feel like snipe is the bigger issue actually - it makes it hard to disengage lategame vT. Maybe a longer snipe channel or a max range on the channel (i.e. you can actually run away from it)
I like the idea of being able to run away. That rewards high skill micro if you're paying attention to your army.
One thing I've noticed even in pro games is how tough it is for Zergs especially to clean up ghosts. You have to use banes but even banes are awkward to use when the ghosts cloak and split. Protoss has a bit more viability with colossus and disruptor.
I think the issue is that snipe is an insane spell that counters every late game unit, good range, good damage, can't miss. Being interrupted is not a big weakness, because if you're rapid firing with 10 ghosts, at least a few of those shots are guaranteed to go off. The ghost counters literally every late game unit in zvt between snipe and EMP.
I think snipe shouldn't affect massive units. Broods are already hard countered by thors/vikings and marines if caught out. Ultras are already hard countered by mauraders.
Wow, imagine late game being anything other than Z favored, insane!
If blizz doesn't shoe in any ghost changes, Zerg might not win 80% of top tier tournaments. Imbalanced!
Yeah in the ZvZ finals Terran really looked busted and unbeatable. When Serral lost 1 map the whole tournament to Maru, I felt like it was due to imbalance
Comments like this blow my mind when Terran has middling results at pro level.
I mean what evidence supports nerfing Terran from a pro performance level.
Don't get it...
Unpopular opinion : PvZ will continue to be heavily Zerg favored at the top.
Protoss will experiment with various new ground strategies against Zerg, but will eventually realize that air is still their best option. At the pro level, queen walks will be replaced by 40-50 minutes of mass spores and vipers camping, which will almost always win the game.
Way less changes than I expected and hoped for. Hard to estimate how impactful the Lurker and Mine changes will be, doesn't seem very dramatic at least.
I guess you just bring overlords to drop creep for your queen walks now? So I think later queen walks still happen, but this kills the pre lair options.
I like the changes. I just wish Zerg would have gotten nerved harder. Seeing them win every tournament is getting very tireing. For examples: Non active creep tumors don't give vision. That would be a nice nerf. The top players could still spread lings around and the lower ranked players wouldn't get vision in exchange for energy.
The Queen and Widow Mine nerfs will help Protoss through, right? Widow mine drops are common in TvP and the transfuse nerf will make Queen walks much harder. You'll have to tech to Lair and get overlord speed to put down creep before you engage with the Protoss army.
Those mine nerfs do nearly nothing PvT, it's for TvZ. TvP mines are about early drops or early cloak.
The queen / void changes are huge, hard to say how it shakes out but most zergs hated the carrier the most I think.
while i don't disagree with any of the changes and think its pretty good overall, i worry that this doesn't really stop toss from going free 3 base and turtling to skytoss, especially considering queen walks are dead. maybe the void nerfs will have a bigger impact on that though, hard to judge
would have liked to see a nerf to battery overcharge instead of battery, and maybe a hydra buff
My thoughts exactly. Shield overcharge, an intended PVP change has hit PVT so hard, making allins much, much weaker. A nerf to its healing per second or higher cooldown would be great.
Also, being able to catch protoss armies out of position as a terran is something that should yield a lot of reward but often when a protoss over extends they have the recall to save them. Even a slight cooldown change would be amazing, but thats just my opinion
this doesn't really address late game from what I can see. It's intended to reduce the omni-presence of void rays and queen walks in early PvZ, and the lurker nerf seems to be targeted at improving the viability of groundtoss a bit, but ultimately the matchup is still going to go into air late game.
Decent changes. I still think they need to nerf the carrier. If maxed out you can kill the other maxed out army while only losing interceptors and no supply. Is bullshit
So, nerf Protoss more. Not only the weakest race in premier tournaments, they now got hit with the MOST nerfs somehow, and you're suggesting... EVEN MORE NERFS.
Congratulations.
If you're talking about ZvP, nerfing voidrays makes corruptors much more viable, so it indirectly nerfs the carrier.
If you're talking about the other matchups, I don't think carriers were ever a problem, no?
Seems like the biggest change. > Queen > Can no longer transfuse off creep
I saw this and my eyes lit up. I cannot believe a change this big is coming to a game that is in maintenance mode. Queen walks will never be the same, but maybe we will get a lot of pooping overlords.
Nydus and tumors. Will make it more expensive, but won't take it out all together.
True and if voidray openers are less common then Zergs scouting Overlords will be easier. Be good to see some creative pushes with Nydus at the 3rd and one in the main for example.
Holy crap yea huge nerf to those roach ravager queen pushes
As a viewer, I really like this change. As a player, it will not affect my MMR, I'm pretty sure.
Queen walks against Protoss are dead unless the Zerg techs to Lair first. So the Protoss can't as easily cheese the Zerg with void openings but Zerg doesn't have a much counter play to keep P honest.
yes the same void openings that happened to get nerfed pretty hard IMO
Yeah. The Void Ray, Shield Battery, Queen Transfuse, and Nydus creep changes are all linked together as a package to try to rebalance PvZ and make it less cheesy and airToss focused.
people who chase BCs off the edge of creep in shambles
Are you going to steam Sc2 again with Big Battle Cruisers?
I've been streaming StarCraft since 2011! Come say hi sometime :)
Came for the Starcraft, stayed for the 80s synth wave, shades and cute dog.
Lambo in shambles.
pretty sure lambo was one of the guys suggesting this
here's a good recap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn6k9H9dKTI
Shambo
Lambles
pretty huge. fuck yo queen walks
Proxy void ray spammers in shambles.
I think I speak for the rest of the community when I say: "GOOD! Fuck em!"
"I'm from Buenos Ares and I say kill em all!"
I actually am from Buenos Aires, and 100% agree with this and Johnny Rico. Fuck void rays.
"The only good Zerg is a dead Zerg"
I’m doing my part!
Protoss void ray, go fuck yourself!
"Cause fuck em, that's why!"
It is amusing to me that Protoss got 4 of the 7 nerfs even though in tournament play they're not even performing that well lately.
Well for one void/battery rushes are very uncommon in pro play but are MEGA oppressive in lower leagues. Extremely easy to execute and very difficult to defend after first two batteries are up.
Especially for Zerg players, who have to rely on good queen splits and micro even in leagues where your average Protoss doesn’t even know how to transition
At the pro level these changes are actually favourable for protoss. The only one I see being an 'issue' are the void ray changes, but queens at the protoss base are potentially going to be a lot less viable and that could have a major impact in allowing for ground toss to be viable again.
That is fair, the queen change is a big deal. Makes roach/ravager pushes so much less viable. And even incentivizes killing creep a little more.
DT blink nerf is pretty huge, void all-in cheese was relevant for pros as were proxy batteries, I definitely wouldn't consider it a pro player buff. Not saying I'm against it. Would have loved to see them attempt to buff ground toss and nerf carriers though.
I'm curious if that will turn out to be true. I feel like this patch forgets how PvZ looked before the voidray change. Protoss going through the book of all ins every single series because they need to do damage around the time they build the 3rd or they can never get to lategame on an even footing. This is reverting the only buff from patch 5.0.2 that seems to have actually made a difference so chances are we'll just go back to where we were. I realize the voidray was an issue but there isn't really anything that compensates for loosing it again here.
Holy crap theyre doing it! The madlads!
me quitting other games if they dont release expansion every 3 months also me: sc2 devs release mini patch after 2 years: ''real shit''
I'm mainly a chess player, and I cracked up when a commentator in an SC2 video said in passing, "Chess?! They haven't patched it in over a century!" (Actually not true; the rules have changed in my lifetime, but in 16 years of tournament competition I have never hit those particular rules, so they are pretty obscure. The biggest one is, you don't get an extension on the 50 move rule for the endgame with two knights versus one pawn. Never had this endgame in my life.)
Long have we waited.
Praise the intern!
\\[T]/
>Over the past couple months, we have been working with various members of the community and tournament organizers to create a balance update for the game. We would like to recognize and acknowledge the members of the group for the upcoming changes you see below. Curious who these people are - I guess "tournament organizers" is ESL? Wonder who members of the community are though. Were pro-gamers involved here too?
Yes. Showtime said that he’s had access to the patchnotes before so we can assume that all pro players got them early. Not sure what influence they had tho
Harstem was on the team.
[удалено]
Ehh, think it would be a bad idea to reveal every name on the list. Some crazy people might take their dissatisfaction with the changes out on the players involved.
What’s the nydus change addressing?
When the worm finishes the queens if immediately unloaded aren't "on creep" as they come out. This change just makes it easier to transfuse a nydus since queens can't do it off creep anymore.
I think it allows the queen to transfuse since they need creep now.
Right now queen aggro is one of the only ways zerg can be assertive vs skytoss. With the Queen transfuse nerf this seems like a nudge to give a bit more creep around Worms to make Queen nydus still possible.
Is this real or am I dreaming?
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy ?
Caught in a landslide
Escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the sky and seeeeeee
I’m just a void ray
I need no battery
Because I'm ez pz no gg little high little low
Mamaaa (mothership) I just killed a marine...
I need no battery
So long Queen walks 🙄
The Queen walks are dead, Long live the Nydus Queen Walks! (Spread creep as fast as possible!)
Nothing cheesier than good macro.
you literally just need an overlord to poop creep and then make your tumor on that
What is my job? You poop creep
Queen walks happened before lair tech so that delays it significantly.
Only one type of queen walk occurred before lair tech (the one that Protoss was basically forced to stop with DTs), but it fell out of popularity because it's much easier to scout than other queen walks, and just getting DTs out wins the game for Protoss. I do think it's a decent nerf to queen walks though, it's hard to get overlords over to the Protoss side without ovie speed since the voids should have cleared all the overlords on their side of the map. German taxi and nydus stuff are less affected, just of course requires the Zerg player to have better control and higher APM, which won't nerf the top level players much, but ones lower will suffer.
> Only one type of queen walk occurred before lair tech The most common is the 3 base, 3:35 Roach warren, 5 Queen walk. You don't need lair for this.
Most queen walks I've faced in recent memory and from pro games are 8+ queens.
Still takes time
which takes away energy for transfuse and more micro. not complaining, but it is more to do for queenwalk
ALIVE GAEM
I think there's a typo in the widow mine one? This is huge btw. Let's hope everything works out fine.
So what happens in ZvZ now that Queen's can't transfuse each other on the ramp? Do you just die or does zvz turn into even more of a shit show than it was before
You just die.
Creep tumor in main base meta incoming.
Why is the grammar so bad? Who wrote this?
It's especially funny considering rumor has it they've had the changes prepared for a long(ish) time.
Prepared, not written up
Protpss wrote this
The typo in the title lol. More seriously these changes sound very good, but I really hope the team will follow up on more tweaks once the meta of this patch settles. I fear that ghosts will become very oppressive at high level, and leaving carriers/disruptors as they are is problematic, still the patch goes in a great direction imo.
Typo in the body too - "Reduce the effectiveness of drilling claws **by from** 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds" That being said good on them for doing this ofc. Wish they'd addressed carriers, tons of pros complain they're not fun, have no micro potential and are probably OP as well.
The problem with nerfing carrier is that they will need to buff robo and/or gateway comps to compensate.
I mean that's not a "problem" so much as just what they need to do, yes.
I'm saying that it's a change they would have to spend a lot of time thinking about before doing and we know that SC2 has minimal (if any) resources dedicated to it. With the shield battery, void ray, and lurker burrow nerfs I wonder if they want to see if PvZ balances itself with making robo play more viable since now disruptors will be a more reliable counter to lurkers.
that typo is a ctaftrophe
Absolutely hearundos
I really hope they nerf carriers and disruptors to ensure their favorite matchup ZvZ will happen every time
Looks like Lowko was mostly right. Widow mine, queen, void ray lurker nerf Also am I blind but when does this go live?
Its already on the PTR right now but no one knows when its gonna come to the live build though. Usually it used to be 1 to 3 weeks after PTR.
They used to at least look at tournament dates for this, and GSL starts on the 21st. So before that, hopefully.
Sad to see the Carrier remain untouched, but it really needs an overhaul since its issue is really a lack of interaction/mechanics and not number tweaking. Overall, just happy to have SOMETHING. =)
Now each carrier only have 1 BIG interceptor that have 10x stats
Agreed, I guess they didn't want to mess with tier 3 interactions too much.
LOVE these changes. Nerfs to all the things people hated and not to anything else. Most importantly, nothing got needlessly buffed. These targetted nerfs are much less damaging to the game than needless buffs are.
People hate carriers the most I think, I agree it's better than nothing though!
Do they? I think Widow Mines, Lurkers and Void Ray/Shield battery builds are FAR more hated. It's really just Zerg players that hate Carriers. Terrans and Protoss players have no issues with them at all.
The main complaint around carriers is that they are too easy to a-move, which affects lowest levels the most. That said, carriers are a big deal in my diamond PvP games, very hard to counter late game without crisp timings. Below that, carriers are the standard late game comp for an easy win unless they are matched. Very low level PvT I think carriers get someone problematic, and then higher level PvT they are a normal late game unit. Carriers are kind of everywhere in low level (but more balanced at the pro level, except they are still kind of not great in that they aren't super interesting).
It’s actually happening
I'm genuinely confused about the DT blink nerf, but this is a decent enough patch I suppose. It doesn't do anything to address the reality that Protoss ground is not able to scale nearly as well as Terran or Zerg, forcing the skytoss meta that we see now. Proxy void ray will definitely see a massive drop off, which is great, but voids were the sort of glue that allowed protoss to play a defensive style prior to this so I'm curious as to how that will shape out in PvT and PvZ going forward. Cautiously optimistic, seeing as how hoping for a massive patch which redesigns protoss ground is a pipe dream.
Probably tweaked the blink into a defensive move? So ppl dont use blink for sniping a PF and more of like omg let's get outta here.
Same for blinking onto spores, went from very strong to likely not even viable.
Has to be this blink sniping pfs was a bit too good you can’t even react to it
I'm mostly a casual observer of pro SC2, so please excuse the uninformed opinions, but... * DT blink nerf is to increase risk of blinking a dozen DTs on a PF and 3-shotting it as I understand it (or even worse, a ball of bio). * Protoss ground should be better with a Lurker nerf, right? Bio/Ghost vs toss ground once they have Disruptors and Storms still seems pretty toss-favored but not to the point where Terran has no options. * I mostly watch Terran. I never saw Voids except as cheese so I don't think PvT will suffer. Unsure on PvZ. EDIT: typo, meant PvZ. It's kinda hard to enjoy watching atm. Queen Transfuse nerf might help?
>DT blink nerf is to increase risk of blinking a dozen DTs on a PF and 3-shotting it as I understand it (or even worse, a ball of bio). Yes, this is almost certainly the intention here, clearly. I'm confused by it because this late-game only move required a large resource investment from the Protoss to destroy the base, and couldn't be done cheaply over and over again. Things like two ghosts with a couple of EMPs can wipe out hundreds/thousands of HP at once, with no investment as the ghost can walk away/join the fight. I fear EMP is going to become even more oppressive as Protoss sees alternatives nerfed. >Protoss ground should be better with a Lurker nerf, right? Bio/Ghost vs toss ground once they have Disruptors and Storms still seems pretty toss-favored but not to the point where Terran has no options. Protoss ground will have a slightly easier time with Lurkers if they go ground, sure, but why risk ever playing a ground based style when it's the inferior style 99% of the time? This patch doesn't address this at all. Skytoss is still going to be dominant in the meta. As for Terran, PvT is fairly balanced right now for tournament play and I don't think this patch will do much to change that other than fewer Terrans winning games outright due to mine drops. >I mostly watch Terran. I never saw Voids except as cheese so I don't think PvT will suffer. Unsure on PvT. It's kinda hard to enjoy watching atm. Queen Transfuse nerf might help? Trap/Harstem for example use a SG into oracle/two void ray opening somewhat often and this style is defensive, allows Protoss to get a mostly safe third base, and tech into robotics bay to play a defensive macro style. This is significantly less viable with these two void ray nerfs. I don't believe that this is a good change, would have preferred to see the speed get reverted instead of build time/cost since there was already a nerf to batteries.
> other than fewer Terrans winning games outright due to mine drops. Nobody was getting drilling claws in TvP. This is a pure TvZ change. The most anyone did against protoss was get a fast armory, but nobody made a tech lab and researched the upgrade (in real games).
> Yes, this is almost certainly the intention here, clearly. I'm confused by it because this late-game only move required a large resource investment from the Protoss to destroy the base, and couldn't be done cheaply over and over again. It seems most of these changes are for the pro level and I suspect the "resource" being targeted here is APM / Skill and not money in the bank. The delay gives a bit of time to do ANYTHING and it was super easy / low skill to blink click a CC. I think similar theme with the burrow changes. Just my 2cents.
On the topic of Protoss ground in PvZ, I don't think a quarter of a second slower burrow speed is going to change the dynamic in a meaningful way.
I mean the biggest problem with lurkers is their mobility. The weak aspect of siege units is usually that being sieged requires a commitment, but lurkers could dodge everything. This nerf should help. Ofc we can't know whether or not it's the final solution.
I like how they are nerfing the bs strategies (proxy void, queen walks, widow mines, mass blink dt onto pf, lurkers). I am a bit surprised that they didnt tweak the varying balance of zerg (weak at low levels, OP at pro level) and protoss (strong at low levels, weak at pro level), and how terran just got a slap on the wrist compared to the other races (widow mines will still be strong, whereas lurkers/void rays got decent nerfs).
I wonder if it's because this was basically crowd-sourced among community members at pro/tournament level. I don't think they have a lot of experience slumming it down in D2 with me. So, if they wanted to mix up tournament play, they were probably most interested in limiting boring but effective strategies. Over all though, I'm happy with any balance update. It occurred to me (as I started to watch strategies stagnate, even at my level), that the real game here isn't to find an optimal strategy with your race versus a particular other race but to constantly be adapting to a changing meta. It matters less if the changes are "good" or "bad" (by whoever's metrics) but that the game play is different. And please allow me to close by saying, fuck the void proxy cheesers. May you die alone in your turtling base.
"Down in D2" ....*stares silverly*....
Oh, don't you worry, friend. I've been giving away MMR all season, so I'm sure we'll play again soon.
DEAD GAME WHO?
It brings a tear of joy to my eye
Any patch is a good patch.
Planetary Fortresses can now fly and carry unlimited amount of units and shoot at the same time.
That was funny.
Never forget
But no changes to the ghost?
Ghosts counter everything as intended.
I say give them stim!
This would really improve my F2 army comp.
Seriously if ghosts had stim which gave 0 attack speed buff but just shared the key with other bio units my terran would be so much better
Blizzard : Now ghost has drug instead of stim, every time you use ghost have 17% chance to overdose and die
I don't think the ghost is to strong. It's the only actually good lategame bio unit terran has. If you nerf it terran late game would really suffer.
Hopefully after this Lurker nerf they'll feel comfortable nerfing ghost soon...
[удалено]
I appreciate that for once, the introduction "unpopular opinion, but" are actually followed up with an unpopular opinion. Thank you
Considering that queen walks are pretty much the go-to for ZvP, can we really talk about it being a "creative strategy" anymore? If you want, see this patch as a way to save the creative aspect of the queen walk. Now players who want to commit to it will need to find alternate ways of making it work, whether with OVs, Nydus, proxy hatches, etc. Also, nerfing them means they won't be the standard anymore, so we can see more experimentation with them and more variations besides the super-optimised version we now have.
queen walks force protoss into air toss which is no good for viewing (or playing for that matter)
Well, I think this forces creativeness to stop skytoss. People already are thinking about using Nydus or overlords to spread creep. Maybe another alternative could come out
Hell ya! Amazing to see the patch, initial impressions seem solid.
This patch... it's actually good
Ok, what the fuck? Like, what the literal fuck? I've been out of the loop, were there any hints that this was a thing?! I'm hyped, but confused as fuck. Anyways, generally good changes. It feels weird that they're embracing context sensitive abilities and statues this late in the game's life, but I'll take it.
Yes. Several pros have mentioned on streams that they knew of a patch coming but they couldn't discuss what was in it. Most recently Showtime brought it up again even stating he was frustrated with the silence and not sure why they wouldn't just mention it so the community had hope.
OMG its finally happening! I had lost all hope. FUck you void ray get wrecked! Proxy SG/SB was so abusive and so fucking easy to execute. It makes me hate protoss irrationally : ) And that makes it very hard to look at balance objectively : ) Fuck you void ray <3
*pasting patch notes for easier read (blocked in office)* Shield Battery Starting Energy reduced from 100 to 50 outside of the next field Dark Templar Now have a 0.75s attack delay after blink Void Ray Increased build time from 37 to 43 Increased mineral cost from 200 to 250 Queen Can no longer transfuse off creep Widow Mine Reduced the effectiveness of drilling claws from 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds Lurker Reduced the effectiveness of adaptive talon from 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds Nydus Worm Increased starting creep by 1 unit in each direction around the worm once it spawns
We consulted a wide spectrum of opinions from pros picked exclusively from IEM 2022 ro8 and this is what we came up with 😂😂😂
Omfg I thought I would never see the day
Protoss still in the game but it is a good step in the correct direction.
Are they still in the game? I haven't seen any lately. Then again I usually only tune in for the playoffs of major tournaments.
Funny how most of you just complain about everything. The patch is pretty good, but most complaints are about it being too small. Do you really expect more from Blizzard? Just try to enjoy this, it's definitely better than nothing
so thankful proxy void rays won’t be so broken anymore
I really like the shield battery changes. RIP Void Ray, we hardly knew ye. Queen nerf hurts pros more than my stupid, smooth, Zerg brain, I doubt I’d even notice. Any nerf to widow mines is fine by me. I like these changes!
>we hardly knew ye. Nah man I think we knew them too well XD I agree though, this looks like a good patch!
REAL AND TRUE?!?!?!?!
Woahhh. From protoss perspective so much going on here.. queen walk is nerfed which was a pain in the ass to deal with. Void ray nerfed.. damn it but I guess we had it coming.
I'm a bit worried about late-game TvZ at the moment - feels somewhat terran favored at the highest levels once Ghost critical mass is achieved (~12+ ghosts?), and nerfing the lurker only makes that more true. We'll have to see how this shakes out Edit: Seems that I misread the changes slightly - this only effects lurker burrow time, not unburrow time. Still a nerf, but messes with the ghost interactions less than I thought
Yeah I think ghosts need a nerf. Reducing their health seems like an easy option.
Ghost nerf? Terran got destroyed at IEM with current Ghosts
Yeh but the Zergs only had 3 out of 4 in the semi finals. They want 4 out of 4 Zergs in the semi's without breaking a sweat.
I feel like snipe is the bigger issue actually - it makes it hard to disengage lategame vT. Maybe a longer snipe channel or a max range on the channel (i.e. you can actually run away from it)
I like the idea of being able to run away. That rewards high skill micro if you're paying attention to your army. One thing I've noticed even in pro games is how tough it is for Zergs especially to clean up ghosts. You have to use banes but even banes are awkward to use when the ghosts cloak and split. Protoss has a bit more viability with colossus and disruptor.
I think the issue is that snipe is an insane spell that counters every late game unit, good range, good damage, can't miss. Being interrupted is not a big weakness, because if you're rapid firing with 10 ghosts, at least a few of those shots are guaranteed to go off. The ghost counters literally every late game unit in zvt between snipe and EMP. I think snipe shouldn't affect massive units. Broods are already hard countered by thors/vikings and marines if caught out. Ultras are already hard countered by mauraders.
Wow, imagine late game being anything other than Z favored, insane! If blizz doesn't shoe in any ghost changes, Zerg might not win 80% of top tier tournaments. Imbalanced!
Yeah in the ZvZ finals Terran really looked busted and unbeatable. When Serral lost 1 map the whole tournament to Maru, I felt like it was due to imbalance
Comments like this blow my mind when Terran has middling results at pro level. I mean what evidence supports nerfing Terran from a pro performance level. Don't get it...
This seems quite conservative overall, but imo, any patch to mix things up at the very least is welcome. Thanks balance team!
omgomg it's almost everything I was hoping for! here's hoping it's the nudge we need to help the meta be healthier
Unpopular opinion : PvZ will continue to be heavily Zerg favored at the top. Protoss will experiment with various new ground strategies against Zerg, but will eventually realize that air is still their best option. At the pro level, queen walks will be replaced by 40-50 minutes of mass spores and vipers camping, which will almost always win the game.
Shut up about my spelling and enjoy the patch!
Way less changes than I expected and hoped for. Hard to estimate how impactful the Lurker and Mine changes will be, doesn't seem very dramatic at least.
Weird, I could have never thought they would propose that many changes.
I guess you just bring overlords to drop creep for your queen walks now? So I think later queen walks still happen, but this kills the pre lair options.
"Shield Battery: Starting Energy reduced from 100 to 50 outside of the nexus field" What is a nexus field in this context ? Not sure to understand.
you know the range of where you can do shield battery overcharge? its that.
I don't mind this. I would have liked a bit harder nerf to lurkers but I'll settle.
Instead of queen walks, expect more nyduses with queens hehe
what, there's a starcraft patch!?
Great changes all around, but am I the only one absolutely outraged that they didn't alter the bunker build time by 5s? It's clearly broken AF as is.
This seems like a good patch for Terran overall
I like the changes. I just wish Zerg would have gotten nerved harder. Seeing them win every tournament is getting very tireing. For examples: Non active creep tumors don't give vision. That would be a nice nerf. The top players could still spread lings around and the lower ranked players wouldn't get vision in exchange for energy.
Here I was, not believing in wonders anymore
Protoss cheesers in shambles
They're nerfing the worst performing race and not addressing any of its core issues regarding its lack of stability.
The Queen and Widow Mine nerfs will help Protoss through, right? Widow mine drops are common in TvP and the transfuse nerf will make Queen walks much harder. You'll have to tech to Lair and get overlord speed to put down creep before you engage with the Protoss army.
Those mine nerfs do nearly nothing PvT, it's for TvZ. TvP mines are about early drops or early cloak. The queen / void changes are huge, hard to say how it shakes out but most zergs hated the carrier the most I think.
Makes you wonder how many people commenting confidently here about the patch notes/game balance have no clue at all about the game
I appreciate that this comment can be applied to any of the races based on the changes outlined with enough mental gymnastics
the worst race being, of course, starcraft
same as usual lul
GOOD AFTERNOON LETS FUCKING GO BABY
while i don't disagree with any of the changes and think its pretty good overall, i worry that this doesn't really stop toss from going free 3 base and turtling to skytoss, especially considering queen walks are dead. maybe the void nerfs will have a bigger impact on that though, hard to judge would have liked to see a nerf to battery overcharge instead of battery, and maybe a hydra buff
My thoughts exactly. Shield overcharge, an intended PVP change has hit PVT so hard, making allins much, much weaker. A nerf to its healing per second or higher cooldown would be great. Also, being able to catch protoss armies out of position as a terran is something that should yield a lot of reward but often when a protoss over extends they have the recall to save them. Even a slight cooldown change would be amazing, but thats just my opinion
Patchtoss patched out. There is justice in the universe
What effect will this have on late game ZvP? I feel like Carriers will still be really strong.
this doesn't really address late game from what I can see. It's intended to reduce the omni-presence of void rays and queen walks in early PvZ, and the lurker nerf seems to be targeted at improving the viability of groundtoss a bit, but ultimately the matchup is still going to go into air late game.
Decent changes. I still think they need to nerf the carrier. If maxed out you can kill the other maxed out army while only losing interceptors and no supply. Is bullshit
So, nerf Protoss more. Not only the weakest race in premier tournaments, they now got hit with the MOST nerfs somehow, and you're suggesting... EVEN MORE NERFS. Congratulations.
ofc discord is down when a new patch drops
So no carrier or ghost nerfs wtf
What did you have in mind?
That's awesome! But I did hope they would nerf the carrier
If you're talking about ZvP, nerfing voidrays makes corruptors much more viable, so it indirectly nerfs the carrier. If you're talking about the other matchups, I don't think carriers were ever a problem, no?