[D] Patch 1.4 and its implications - Page 3

On August 25 2011 20:13 Teiwaz wrote:
Overall I like the patch notes, still I'm waiting for EMP to require research.

On August 25 2011 20:52 gejfsyd wrote:
When will this patch come?

On August 25 2011 19:37 humbre wrote:

yes BFH and unupgraded helions are basically equal in harassing



NOT

On August 25 2011 20:58 robbryjo wrote:
There a a few changes which will change the game completely.
1. The reduced sight on a ramp. No blink over forcefields.
2. In ZvZ Zerglings will need 2 Fungals instead of one to be killed. So the Matchup will change a bit.
3. A proxy rax in ZvT will be less effective now.
4.in ZvP heavy roach play will get punished hard with immortals and their new range.
5. Ultraliks will be used more.
6.Hellions useless against armored units.
7.Contaminate even more senseless then it is.
8.In ZvT fungal against marine+medivac not so effective anymore cause marines have 55 hp with upgrade and 2 fungals do 60 dmg. Medivac will heal very fast.

On August 25 2011 21:23 Micket wrote:
Immortal buff and blink nerf as well as the ramp sight thing will possibly kill blink and 4 gate openings, leaving you with robo openings. Now, PvP will be decided on who gets the earlier and greedier robo rather than micro. Ok, I may be a bit harsh, but having immortals dominate early game PvP is asking the game to be a turtle fest, and with PvP, it is the worst.

Unit vision up ramps has been reduced by 1.
[...] 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.

On August 25 2011 18:54 Thraundil wrote:
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.



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.

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.

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...

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.

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.



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?