EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
Hey everyone – we’re back with another community feedback update. We’ve got a number of different units to discuss this week, as well as some recent considerations around Automated Tournaments.
Lurker timing
We agree this is an issue in PvZ, and are currently looking at increasing the build time on the Lurker Den. However, we don’t want to go too heavy with this nerf because our upcoming Adept buff naturally means that Zerg teching will be slowed down a bit as well. We are aiming to get a change in for this for tomorrow’s balance update.
Liberator
Like many of you pointed out, the Liberator comes out fairly early, and its large range can be a bit problematic on certain maps. We wonder if there’s some potential fun we can have with Liberators early on that don’t have such a high range. We’ve been playtesting a version of the Liberator where the cast range of the ability is very short, but a research isn’t required to be able to transform. In addition, we’ve added a range upgrade to this ability with a Fusion Core requirement so that the high range only comes into play in the late game.
The general idea here is that Liberators could immediately have a lot of interaction, but also be counterable due to the much lower range. Opponents playing against Liberators will need to react and scout accordingly to Terran players that upgrade into the long range once they have a Fusion Core.
Carrier
We agree with your feedback in that even after the build time reduction, Carriers with the Release Interceptor ability are most likely too strong for cost in head-on engagements. We’ve been trying various changes, and we wonder if just a straight up Carrier health nerf is a decent way to go. This allows Carriers to retain the powerful moments with their new ability, but also allows the counters to Carriers to be stronger as well.
The goal for the Carrier is to not nerf the unit too much, as we would like them to be much stronger units in LotV than they were in HotS. But if further nerfs are needed in addition to what we’re doing in tomorrow’s balance update, we can definitely tune it down more in the future.
Siege Tank Medivac drop
As we often point out, it’s not as helpful for us when you give extreme feedback such as “this will never work no matter what, and it has to be completely removed from the game.” I’m sure many of you out there have seen plenty of times throughout this beta process that issues are rarely this extreme.
It’s pretty easy to just do a complete removal of this interaction, and we definitely can if we know for certain that it can’t ever work. Until that point, we want to fully explore various numbers before deciding to give up on a change especially if the potential for it looks good. We’re not saying we disagree with the feedback that it can’t ever work as we definitely saw some examples where the interaction felt like too much (especially in TvT games), but we want to fully explore the idea and make sure we’re not losing something that can be awesome just because of overreacting too quickly.
With that said, we’d like to continue testing the pick-up and drop micro of Siege Tanks in Siege mode. As a last resort we definitely have the option of doing either a complete removal or using the suggestion of picking-up to save Siege Mode tanks, but we want to test out tuning changes before making this call. Currently we’re looking at longer delay values when a Siege Tank in Siege mode is dropped before they can attack.
Adept
Like we talked about last week, we are looking to give +10 shields back to the Adept. We believe going with this nerf and the Warp-in nerfs at the same time was too much of a nerf overall, not because the Adept isn’t a useful unit right now, but mostly because we’d like to push the strength of new units for the release of LotV in order to see new strategies and interactions come up with the new game. We’d like to test out reverting this nerf and see where the Adept stands in strength, now that the Adept Warp-ins aren’t as difficult to deal with due to the Warp-in changes.
Photon Overcharge
We agree with your feedback in that Photon Overcharge may be a bit too spammable right now. Currently however, we’re adjusting multiple things that affect Protoss such as the Lurker timing issue and the early game Adept strength issue. What we’re currently thinking is - if after tomorrow’s patch, both of these things are in a better spot, we can potentially explore increasing Photon Overcharge to 50 energy so that the ability has to be used more strategically and with good positioning. Please give us your thoughts in this area so that we can explore all options before making the right call.
The goal of Photon Overcharge is to allow Protoss players to control specific locations in a powerful, defensive way so that Protoss can keep up with expansions. We believe this is important because of the resource changes, but we do agree that its current raw strength and spammable nature might be an issue.
Nydus Worm
We hear your feedback that the Nydus Worm all-ins can seem nearly unstoppable. At the same time, we haven’t actually seen this strategy in used often enough to make conclusive decisions. We’re not saying we disagree with your feedback, but rather that we want to be careful with nerfs that could be premature overreactions. Our current plan for the Nydus Worm is to watch closely, and if they to turn out to be too strong, we can tune the delay before the units can unload after a Nydus Worm finishes constructing so that players can counter the strategy when they have enough units in position . We believe this sort of change is better than doing a full revert to HotS. Before LoTV, all it really took is pulling workers to kill the Nydus Worm before they can finish constructing. As compared to with the proposed change, depending on how we tune the numbers, having enough units to quickly focus fire down the Nydus will create more interesting moments.
Automated Tournament schedule
We heard your feedback and saw your suggestions regarding automated tournament schedules. The solutions to a majority of your feedback can be answered with the quality of match making. The reason tournaments are currently held every 3 hours in the beta, and the reason why we don’t just start a tournament when the first 8 or 16 players sign up, is because we want automated tournaments to be a competitive experience no matter what skill level you are playing at. For example, if we were to go with the somewhat popular suggestion of having tournaments up all the time, and we just initiate tournaments every time we have enough players, the skill of players in that tournament will potentially range from Bronze to Grand Master.
Also, due to the low population of the beta, we’re clearly seeing that the match making quality per tournament is not good right now. Of course the match making quality will be better at the launch of LotV, but we do want to start off more conservative, since making tournaments more frequent in the future is much easier than reducing the frequency. We are also exploring ways to have more frequent tournaments at specific times, such as when we expect influxes of players to automated tournaments at the beginning of a new ladder season.
We don’t have set plans on where we’ll land regarding the amount and frequency of tournaments in LotV, so we wanted to relay our current thoughts to you guys so that you can understand our position and also share your thoughts.
Thank you for continuing to iterate your ideas and suggestions throughout the beta, and we hope you enjoy the upcoming changes!
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