EPTUPDATE: Added the newest infestor change!
Greetings esteemed TL members.
As many may have noticed by now, the patch 1.4.0 PTR notes are out:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1213111662
I present here a small breakdown of the changes and their possible reasonings and what implications they might have. I wish to open a discussion on these, and hopefully get as many thoughts down on text as possible. Disclaimer: I am a Zerg player primarily, so I might understand many of the balance changes from a zerg point of view. I will try to see past this but I am only human.
Specifically, the Balance changes.
General
Unit vision up ramps has been reduced by 1.
Implications and reasoning: I am not entirely sure why this change is being made. It will make it even harder to gain any scouting information in the early game by poking up the ramp with a cheap unit, and the early stages of the game are already by far the most fragile where scouting info is oh so important. In addition, agressive pushes up the ramp of a defender will be severly weakened by this, as e.g. a stalker will now be able to shoot a hydralisk standing on the low ground without the hydralisk being able to shoot back via a ramp spotter; only an air unit can provide the vision now.
Edit; In addition, blinking and warping in past forcefields will be hindered now, allowing the PvP match to continue its evolution.
PROTOSS
Immortal: Attack range increased from 5 to 6.
Implications and reasoning: In my opinion a change that will make the immortal more useful in a protoss army mix. As it is, the immortal is a powerunit - yet in order to be in range of the enemy, it needs to stand in front of the stalkers to even be in proper range, making it easier to target down. This small range increase should help.
Edited; Combined with all the other changes, the PvP matchup could evolve beyond pure blinkstalker agression.
Mothership: Acceleration increased from 0.3 to 1.375.
Implications and reasoning: Special tactics! Motherships are rarely seen, this will make the unit slightly more used without nessecarily making it super overpowered. The road to a dedicated air build is still paved with difficulties for a protoss, so I think this will reward this just a little bit more.
The Mothership’s Cloaking Field no longer cloaks all units instantaneously, but rather adds units to the cloak field over time (maximum of 25 per second). This should alleviate “Mothership Lag” issue when a Mothership comes online.
Implications and reasoning: This one is fairly selfexplanatory.
Stalker: Blink research time increased from 110 to 140.
Implications and reasoning: Recently, we have seen many protosses decimate especially zerg armies with blink stalker micro. While of course good micro should be rewarded, I have seen blinkstalkers be microed in stalker vs roach battles where the stalkers killed an equal amount of roaches without sustaining any casualties at all. This change will not make blinkstalkers any weaker, but it will give the zerg those additional 20 seconds (or 30 seconds w/o chronoboost) to scout and react the twilight council research.
Edit; In PvP the implications are obviously stronger than in other matchups, as the current metagame often features blink contains while expanding. Such a contain will be vulnerable to a counterattack now, and in addition the vision range on ramps will make it harder to blink into a main base.
Warp Prism: Shields increased from 40 to 100.
Implications and reasoning: Good change to encourage more drop play by protoss. I have often been surprised at how fast a queen takes out a warp prism.
TERRAN
Barracks: Build time increased from 60 to 65.
Implications and reasoning: Again a change I am slightly puzzled by. I guess the primary implications here are; +5 seconds to orbital command being up. +5 seconds for enemies to keep their worker alive inside the terran base. 2 x +5 seconds added to 2 barracks pressure vs zergs. Personally I have seen far too many proxy 11/11 2-rax pull 7-8 SCV's and put up bunkers all over the place, and on those short maps its so frustratingly hard to stop. I welcome the additional 5 seconds to prep defenses.
Hellion: Infernal Pre-Igniter damage upgrade decreased from 10 to 5.
Implications and reasoning: I want to really throw my hat into the air and sing on this one (again, my zerg bias arises here, and I apologise). BFH is an upgrade that almost cannot NOT pay for itself, if you understand me. Zergs relinquish map control for at least the time until mutalisks come out, and for the very scouting dependant and reactive race this is so crucial. BFH completely hard-hardcounters zerglings, and while they will still be a counter to zerglings after this it will not completely nullify zerglingbased armies the way they do it at the moment.
In addition, I feel there has been too much onesided focus on upgrading blue flame and then dropping them into the main along with some marines. I have experienced games where I saw it coming from miles away, had roaches ready as well as speedzerglings, hade spine crawlers in place, and STILL the terran carried on with the attack and even managed to do significant drone damage simply because hellions are faster than anything except zerglings, and those they completely roast. The hellion will still be a great harassing unit, but hopefully the whole "whoops 2 hellions just cleaned out your mineral line at your 4th base" will stop now. I would've welcomed a reduce in the splash ratio more than this direct damage nerf though, because once hellions are in a mineral line, damage will still happen since you simply cannot retreat your workers...
Edit; However, it will take 3 shots now for a hellion to kill a worker, effectively adding +50% to your reaction time.
Raven: Seeker missile movement speed increased from 2.5 to 2.953.
Implications and reasoning: Now this one is interesting. HSM is the most underused spell out of the raven, but I cant help feel like the raven spells serve the same purpose. Turret; do damage. PDD: avoid damage. Seeker: do splash damage. Tanks already serve as splash on the ground, and thors as splash in the air. I am not sure if HSM will see more use after this, to be honest - its a very large investment for a spell that you might have included in your army by other means, anyway.
ZERG
Infestor: Fungal Growth damage changed from 36 (+30% armored) to 30 (40 vs Armored).
Implications and reasoning: I think we had all seen this coming. I was thinking that infestors might get a "HT nerf", by removing pathogen glands. Infestors are so strong because they spawn and can imidiately fungal, so creating 6+ infestors at once is not really a danger. The damage nerf will make big army balls just slightly more durable, and make roach/infestor battles depend just slightly more on the roach upgrades and armycontrol. I think this is good for the zerg playstyle, and infestors are still very powerful for sure.
Update:
Infestor: Infestor’s Neural Parasite can no longer target Massive units.
Implications and reasoning: Okay. Neural parasite was strong. And yes, I am going to be zerg biased now, but this change will literally leave zerg with no answer to massive mech play by terrans (no NP on thors), and standard deathballs of colossi will once again be incredibly scary - as will chargelot/archon mixes that already do very well against our shortrage bionic armies. I am not sure what blizzard has been eating, but I sincerely hope something will be given to zerg to compensate for this, as NP is literally the only answer I can think of to mass zealot/archon/HT armies, just to give an example. In addition a big blow to ling/infestor style - forcefield + colossi will simply be the go-to build vs zerg again now. Terran and especially protoss should clap their hands seeing this.
Overseer: Morph cost decreased from 50/100 to 50/50.
Implications and reasoning: Yay! 1: Detection is cheaper. I have seen SO many protoss try out new styles as of late, one of the more popular being blinkstalker/DT, where the stalkers only job is to snipe the overseer. 2: For zergs to get a fast scout, they must first morph lair, and THEN morph overlord speed. Now, there is the option of delaying ovie speed slightly and morph a nearby overlord to an overseer for a cheaper cost and a faster scout.
Contaminate energy cost increased from 75 to 125.
Implications and reasoning: Contaminate is so strong especially in ZvZ. I think this is completely justified.
Ultralisk: Build time decreased from 70 to 55.
Implications and reasoning: Hooray! Ultralisks are more easily accesable now. The brood lord is so much better in terms of accesability and army compatibility at the current metagame that I actually see terrans start to add vikings blindly past the 16-17 minutes in the ZvT's I play - simply because they know it will be brood lords. Now by making ultralisks a bit more appealing, we might see terrans be more reluctant to do this. What still worries me, however, is that ghosts are fairly strong vs both brood lords and ultralisks alike.
Edit:
Other changes of note:
Neural Parasited units will now retain their weapons upgrades. This will make NP'ed colossi and tanks / thors alot more powerful, and should cause protoss to think twice before upgrading to +3 attack before even starting armor level 1. (Actually saw this in the patch, just completely forgot to include it - cheers for pointing this out).
Edit number 2: But since massive units such as colossi are now going to be immune to neural parasite, this change is all but inconsequential.
Edit number 3: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=265770
Massive unit change reverted, but range nerfed from 9 to 7. The discussion is more or less covered in this thread, in my opinion, and I am sorry but I simply do not have the time to write a good sum-up of it right now.
Guardian Shield change:
I redirect you to This Post, which seems to sum this up way better than I could
Overall thoughts:
I think this patch looks very promising. Some of the core "imbalances" currently in the game will be adressed: the brute dominance of infestors in zerg armies, the total insanity that is blue flame hellions, and finally blink research time vs 'blink-defense-research-time' is adressed which I like especially in relation to ZvP.
In addition, all 3 races gain easier access to some of the tech that is not seen as often; motherships, raven/HSM and ultralisks. It will provide more interesting games on the daily ladders, and it will surely improve the quality of pro games. Especially terran play seems very rigid to me: once the "fotm" strategy comes up everybody plays it and sticks to that and that alone.
What do the rest of you guys think?
Just tossing a link to a reply I quite enjoyed, its further into the thread.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=258846¤tpage=9#177
