First balance patch officially announced + balance details

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Comadevil
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First balance patch officially announced + balance details

Post by Comadevil »

Balance Changes

We have several balance changes in store. One general change we're making is that friendly units will no longer provide vision after being killed. Enemy units previously revealed will no longer be targetable. Now let's break down the additional balance changes we're implementing.

Maps

We're going to be adding destructible rocks to the Desert Oasis map to make natural expansions easier to protect. In addition, the center map watchtower area is being narrowed.

Protoss

We have two key changes in mind for the zealot: the build time is being increased from 33 to 38 seconds, and the warpgate cooldown is being increased from 23 to 28 seconds. Zealot rushes are currently too powerful at various skill levels, particularly those that rely on rapidly assaulting an enemy base from nearby "proxy" gateways. We feel the window players have to scout for and fend off this rush is too small. We also want to address the problem of protoss being able to dump minerals a bit too quickly with the combination of warpgates and Chrono Boost.

Terran

There are several changes in the works for terrans. Reapers against zerg are stronger than expected. Due to the zealot build time increase, reapers would be a bit problematic in combination with proxy barracks, bunkers, and/or marauders against protoss. Therefore, we have decided to increase the build time of reapers as well from 40 to 45 seconds. Fast reaper + bunker, or fast marine + bunker rushes are problematic against zerg. Although this rush would never outright destroy the zerg player, we feel zerg suffers too much of a disadvantage from either having to cancel the fast expansion, or getting trapped inside the main base for too long, so we are also increasing the bunker build time from 30 to 35 seconds.

Siege tanks in large numbers are performing too well in all matchups. In the mid- to late-game, siege tanks are too dominant against all ground units. We want a small set of light and unarmored ground units to perform better against siege tanks. With this in mind, we're changing the Siege Mode damage of the siege tank from 50 to 35, +15 vs. armored; to correspond with this, damage upgrades will be changed from +5 to +3, +2 vs. armored. This change reduces the base damage of the siege tank against light and unarmored units, as well as the splash damage.

Battlecruisers currently lack good counters from the ground and still perform very well against a wide array of unit types. We're aware that it is not easy to get battlecruisers out for the cost, but at the same time, it is possible in both 1v1s and team games to create stalemate situations to bring them out. Overall, we feel that battlecruisers are too strong for their cost, and the terran-forced stalemate situations are causing less interesting gameplay. We will be lowering their damage against ground units from 10 to 8.

Zerg

Ultralisk damage is being decreased from 15, +25 vs. armored to 15, +20 vs. armored. This reduction is comparable to the changes being made to the battlecruiser and siege tank. Like the battlecruiser, ultralisks are simply too powerful for the cost, even though they are difficult to muster. Also, in combination with other units, ultralisks are difficult to counter from the ground. The ultralisk building attack (Ram) is being removed because the damage rate is too similar to its normal attack, which will be used against buildings instead. When ultralisks target tightly packed smaller buildings such as supply depots, the Ram attack is actually outputting considerably less overall damage than its normal attack, as Ram only hits a single target.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/692221
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by etrips888 »

Dang, beat me to it. Interesting notes, expected nerfs to T's bio mass but I can't really complain.

I really liked the fact that they just didn't list the changes they were talking about doing, but also explained the reasoning behind each change. I feel back with ES patches, it would just be a long list of numbers and figures.
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by Jero12345 »

I think its a good start i like the nerf for the siege tanks
They atleast now what they doing
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by DutchNvG »

Aahh nice, in my opinion, the nerves for the most units are great. If you would ask me, the Battle Cruisers are fine now, I don't think they need a nerf. Altough, I think the Void Ray's need a small nerf, the time between charging should become a bit bigger. I'm happy with this nerves :)
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by Aaryn_GenD »

they know what they are doing^^ i kinda figured they would do thes kind of changes, thought mmm needs a slight nerf too
though i tihnk the zealot nerf is a bit overdone, decrease it 2 seconds again and i'm happy :-P

also this seems interesting:
We have mid- to long-term plans to further evolve the Custom Game experience, and soon, enhance our social features with the addition of chat channels. We will be sharing more specific information in the
Patch 1.1 will contain a number of improvements including additional mod features, Editor improvements and bug fixes, some custom game improvements, support for NVIDIA’s 3D Vision, and more
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by LaZy »

^^ this is bcos SC2 3D compatibility rating atm is merely: GOOD

AoE TAD is rated: EXCELLENT

muhahahahahaha


AoE is being is so much fun that I havent even tried SC2 in 3D.........yet

out

PS btw over 75% of my 1v1 games played and won vs Z and P were done exclusively with multi gate zealot rushes.
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by jerom »

Well not to heavy nerfs to Terran, since there have been quite some people complaining about terran, but balancing is a quite long process where you have to keep giving slightly nerfs to the strongest civ untill it is as good as the middle civ and buffing the weakest till it is as good as the others.

I´m glad it is not that extreme.
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by deadhanddan »

from what i can tell is that they dont want to nerf terran too much because protoss would be top civ

alot of people are griping over the number of units and opening strats a terran can do but what many ppl need to understand is that this game is #1 in a 3 part series with each part focusing on 1 race seperately * this 1 happens to be the terran part!!* next year Heart of the Swarm will be released adding many new zerg features and units as well as continued story mode with the following year being the protoss expansion * idk teh name of it* i know that each expansion will introduce new abilities and units for each race ( same as BroodWar ) with the majority reserved for zerg and protoss ( screw ultralisk i want brutalisk , abberation maybe , and if possible those little pygmy ultralisks in the Piercing the Shroud mission :D )

blizzard could have waited longer and implemented more stuff for zerg etc but then they wouldnt have much new content for their expansion save maybe for story mode
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by Comadevil »

The focus on one race in each part only refers to SP

They already said that they won't change the multiplayer much especially u can expect only a few new units if they come at all. But they want to add other features for MP. Let's see what that will be. But for Heart of the Swarm u have to wait till 2012.
Blizzard views each of the "StarCraft 2" games as a very separate entity, with the single-player seeing the bulk of the new content in each release. "From a single-player point of view, they're going to kind of feel like sequels. It's going to be a pretty meaningful amount of content."

And what about multiplayer? "Multiplayer is going to be more like an expansion set sort of vibe. We're not going to ship all brand new races. There will definitely be additions to multiplayer, but that's going to feel like an expansion set." Pardo went on to compare the amount of new multiplayer content to what was added for multiplayer in "StarCraft: Brood War."
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by Aaryn_GenD »

one thing you forget dan is that the great ting about sc2 is they distinguish between MP And SP.
all balance changes for MP are not ther efor SP (you can see that at arious points)
so they only concentrate on the multiplayer for it.

and i think we will see/can expect more changes than the ones listed here, here they just explained them thoroughly^^

and lazy can you tell me which 3d mode is better in mid september when this patch is out? unpatched aoe3 3D or sc2 patched 3D?
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by 36drew »

Lazy plays Sc2! I have to get on the Euro server!

That is practically reason enough to buy a second copy of the game and load it to that reason...

As for the patch. I think I like it. I really like the siege tank change. I always felt like zerg didn't have anything to counter them. Mutalisks seemed okay but if the T player had any thors/marines... then that idea goes out the window. Broodlords were a nice counter too, but since they are tier 3 and pricy, they aren't always viable.

Overall, I really like the patch.
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by KingKaramazov »

Confused as to why they are still nerfing Ultralisks when practically nobody uses them (or ever gets to a point where they could use them), but whatever.

I'm hoping the changes to Toss and Terran will help Zerg enough to off-set the lack of any real buffs.
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by Comadevil »

Ultralisk but also got a small buff because they make now Splash damage when attacking buildings. So e.g. when they attack a Planetary Fortress they will also killing repairing SCVs
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by Bart331 »

fully upgraded ultra's are OP!, and if possible i use them in every game
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Re: First balance patch officially announced + balance detai

Post by 36drew »

^Thanks for explaining that!
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