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Source
Hello everyone, let's get right into this week's update!
Beta in general
The game seems to be at a decent place now in terms of balance across all the skill levels currently within the beta. Our internal data is looking to be nearing 50% in all matchups of all skill levels, and looking at the feedback coming in both from the community side and the pro level side, the number of potential issues that we need to balance patch has greatly reduced as well.
It’s pretty clear that we’re slowing down on number of issues that come up in the beta, and we feel that having less and less things to tweak in game from week to week is definitely a good thing since we’re around 1 month away from release. We also reached out to various pro players regarding the small list of changes, and the general consensus we heard back was that the state of the game is pretty good right now + the small number of things we’re looking at for the next balance update looks to be in a good direction.
However, we’d like to point out once more that there will be a high chance that balance isn’t quite there yet at the pro level. Highest level pros generally don’t play in the beta as we’ve seen in both LotV and HotS betas, and we’ll just need to react accordingly post ship as potential issues come up. Although the balance at skill levels outside of the pro level is looking very good right now, we wanted to iterate that we’ll be paying very close attention to the pro level right after the game releases as professional gamers start playing the game for real.
Cyclone
The Cyclone isn’t quite there yet even after the last patch, so we’ve been exploring various potential changes. Where we are at currently that we want to roll out to beta is higher damage on lock on and lower health on Cyclone themselves. Instead of having Cyclones as all round units, we’re having a lot more success with them as intense micro units that can potentially have big wins when lock on and the fast movement speed are used effectively. Please let us know your thoughts on these changes once the changes go to beta tomorrow.
Infestor
We heard your feedback on wanting to hear thoughts on where we think Neural Parasite stands. Like you guys pointed out, we have discussed/explored replacing this ability, but due to the fantasy of having a mind control ability like this being such a cool factor, we were unable to locate an ability that feels just as powerful. Our current thought is that having changed the range back to 9 should have helped it see more play.
Theoretically, the ability should be a lot more powerful now since only siege ranged units can reach the Infestor, but because players haven’t really given the ability a serious try yet during the beta, we don’t quite know exactly where it stands. For example, if it’s the case that players just haven’t tried the unit (which looks to be the case right now), we don’t want to overbuff it. On the flip side, if it had been fully tested, and needs further buffs, we can make according changes.
A balance change such as this one, existing unit/existing ability numbers tuning, doesn’t necessarily have to be completely figured out during beta, and your call of focusing on more critical things such as new units, new abilities, new econ system, macro mechanics etc. does feel like it was the correct thing to do. We don’t think getting the numbers just right for this ability is one of the most critically important things we needed to solve during the beta, and we can work on this going forward even in the live game as well.
The other spells we belive are in a good place. Fungal Growth is situationally extremely powerful right now especially in combination with other abilities/units such as Blinding Cloud, the new Viper AoE damage ability, Banelings, Ultralisks, etc.
The main goal for the Infestor is not to have the unit see play in every single game of every matchup, but we want this caster to be powerful in specific strategies or scenarios.
Carrier
We definitely hear your feedback on the new ability making Carriers very powerful in the late game, especially from the higher level players currently in the beta as well as from the KR community. While we do agree that Carriers do look powerful, we’d like to see if we can push this type of late game strength on Protoss a little bit without overreacting with heavy nerfs. Like you guys point out, we believe the new strength of Carriers come from 3 areas: being able to not lose the DPS as each Carrier falls due to the launch Interceptor ability, faster build time of Carriers in LotV that allows players to have a smaller window of weakness before Carriers are massed, and interceptor leashing changes.
We believe the first is the biggest contributing factor, since full DPS of all Carriers remain in combat for a long duration. And the third is arguably a buff and a nerf depending on what the Carrier is trying to do. Therefore, we’d like to revert the build time reduction change we did to Carriers for now, so that Carriers remain nearly as powerful as they are, but it is more of a risk to mass Carriers for Protoss players.
Disruptor issues
We’d like to fix the bugs that allow the Disruptors to be moved while the damaging shot is active asap, because it could get in the way of beta testing this unit properly.
Adept
This unit is another area that we’re keeping close tabs on, but we don’t have immediate balance changes for in tomorrow’s balance update. It’s initially looking like nerfing their health a second time in combination with the warp in nerfs may not have been necessary. We’ll be looking to tune up the stats on the Adept a bit if need be, so please give us your feedback and thoughts on the Adept as well.
The current plan is to release another balance update tomorrow even though we only have a few changes because there aren’t as many issues as before, we don’t have a lot of time remaining with the beta, and we’d like to really focus down on fine tuning the game as best as we can before release. Thank you for your help as always, and please continue to play as many games of beta as possible so that we can work together towards a great release of LotV.
Source: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/19288409725
ATTENTION: LEAKED UPDATE FROM DK POSTED ON REDDIT
Another thing we'd like to mention is these are the areas we're currently looking at for next weeks' balance update:
1. PvZ lurker timing
2. Carrier strength after the build time nerfs
3. Siege tank drops in TvT
4. Potential revert to 10 shield nerf on Adept
5. Liberator anti ground range
Source for Reddit update: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/3ovsty/community_feedback_update_october_15/cw0vmd3
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No talk about 8 armor ultralisk and Parasitic bomb seriously ?
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Our internal data is looking to be nearing 50% in all matchups of all skill levels
Is this the same internal data that said the game was balanced during the blink all-in era?
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51493 Posts
The patch in the next few days will be interesting, seems like that will be the "last" before release (which makes sense i guess as it will hit like 19/20th october)
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
On October 16 2015 02:55 SC2Angora wrote:
No talk about 8 armor ultralisk and Parasitic bomb seriously ?
Or liberator
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Yea David isn't massively out of touch with the state of the game or anything right? Lol what a total disappointment.
1. The Cyclone is just retarded plain and simple, it's not even OP it's just retarded design, theres a dude on here that started a Fix the Cyclone thread and he had a way better idea then what is presented here.
2. I would really like to see how Infestors are "situationally extremely powerful" because at this point it's a vulnerable high gas target with 3 low damage snares and unviable spells. There is never a moment in the beta where I would have rather had Infestors then all of the other good gas sinks that Zerg has to use, DK is either lazy or fearful to work on spell casters because they always either get shafted with nerfs and forgotten or just swept under the rug entirely. The Infestor was supposed to be reworked from the get go and then nothing? Wow lol, very impressive.
3. No talk still about the Liberators holding ground better then the Siege Tank whilst being able to effectively combat air units? Coming from the guy that touted "We removed/won't implement this unit in the game because it overlaps severely with other units" that is just a joke.
4. We're actually waiting until the Koreans abuse invincible Nydus before we patch it out? Okay..
5. Parasitic Bomb is pretty OP with 3/3 SkyZerg not sure why theres not even a discussion on it at least SkyZerg is hella powerful.
6. Swarm Host seeing absolutely zero usage is not a problem? Just remove the unit, Infestation Pit might as well be only to unlock Hive at this point, Infestor still sucks, Swarm Host probably unviable.
I know there are many more balance patches to come after the beta but these last couple of updates are just a flat out disappointment. Might as well just say we're done patching until the Koreans come in and deal with it and call it a day, at least SkyToss will get a nerf I guess.
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Hmmm, not gonna look at lurkers or liberators? Is DK really thinking that we are going to have to go mass carrier always vs zerg? What about phoenix wars in pvp, disruptor wars in pvp... And this is only for protoss, I wonder if you add zerg and terran complaints im sure that this game is far from where it should be... Dont understand how Mr.Kim does nothing about Liberators and Lurkers after so much time and so many complaints...
Once again community feedback updates become a half façade of Blizzard saying "screw you, community", this is so disappointing, but after all, their team is directed by the man who had no idea about Infestor/BLord being a thing when everybody was crying out loud about it...
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On October 16 2015 02:59 Solar424 wrote:Show nested quote +Our internal data is looking to be nearing 50% in all matchups of all skill levels Is this the same internal data that said the game was balanced during the blink all-in era?
I think you're miss interpretating their words and wanting something else. It litterally just means, near 50% win ratios in all matchups.
They don't focus on about how that balance is achieved, or how fun/diverse/engaging the game is. As long as win ratios are around 50%, than it's balance.
What you want is something else. Something better than just balance.
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next update will be "We decided to revert the game back to HOTS, enjoy"
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Wait they are talking about BUFFING adepts? What the actual fuck? Warp prism + adept is still incredibly broken vs Terran and they havent even talked about warpprism...
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Invincinble nydus really need a reverse change that so many abuse and freewin on ladder with this shit...
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But but but... we've already had two whole games of "Carriers are strong but nobody can build them safely" ;_; I really hope we don't end up with "Carriers are even stronger! But still nobody can build them safely". We don't even have old-chronoboost anymore.
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On October 16 2015 03:04 Clear World wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2015 02:59 Solar424 wrote:Our internal data is looking to be nearing 50% in all matchups of all skill levels Is this the same internal data that said the game was balanced during the blink all-in era? I think you're miss interpretating their words and wanting something else. It litterally just means, near 50% win ratios in all matchups. They don't focus on about how that balance is achieved, or how fun/diverse/engaging the game is. As long as win ratios are around 50%, than it's balance.
Exactly.
So for example Protoss wins 100% with Adept cheese and loses 100% of macro games but the "balance" number is 50%. Like that.
Oh, and FUCK THE CARRIER CHANGE.
Seriously, with the chrono nerf they now take EVEN LONGER to make than they used to! What the fuck is this balancing team even doing??
Ugh I hate LotV so much so far. HotS had its flaws but it was fun and consistent. You could scout your opponent. There were proper counters to things....
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
On October 16 2015 03:07 Aquila- wrote:
Wait they are talking about BUFFING adepts? What the actual fuck? Warp prism + adept is still incredibly broken vs Terran and they havent even talked about warpprism...
Adepts are hilariously weak at the moment. They're bad in the early game and useless in the later stages of the game - everyone is using stalkers and zealots instead and we all know how well they work against stimmed bio without tech unit support.
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On October 16 2015 03:07 Aquila- wrote:
Wait they are talking about BUFFING adepts? What the actual fuck? Warp prism + adept is still incredibly broken vs Terran and they havent even talked about warpprism...
lol yeah believe or not, adepts are not very good atm, except to snipe some workers
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Neural parasite is worthless . Range very small and very short time control. Useless.
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Ah... Thanks to whomever hijacked my thread and helped in the formatting I guess...
And by the way, I guess you did not see that I included the source right after the centered image so you added it again at the bottom of the page.
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Why don't they just make Neural parasite permanent as long as the Infestor is alive?
Like Yuri from C&C.
FUCK THEY SHOULD KNOW THEIR WHOLE DEV TEAM IS C&C AT THIS POINT.
Give it 11 range. Make it OP and people will use it, Blizzard. Then you can nerf it.
You do this with everything else. Why not Neural?
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Reverting the carrier build time is 10/10 change. With this nerf those silly three base carrier builds are dead.
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On October 16 2015 03:07 Aquila- wrote:
Wait they are talking about BUFFING adepts? What the actual fuck? Warp prism + adept is still incredibly broken vs Terran and they havent even talked about warpprism...
Are you crazy? I'm rushing the adept upgrade and not even so the adept is good as a core unit against PvT.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
