HotS Balance Thoughts - April 17

Thank you everyone for your feedback.

Due to your feedback, we decided to not go ahead with the faster Balance Test map, and we'll wait until we know if there is a balance issue before we make a move in this area.

However, we will be exploring tweaks to the Swarm Host in the Void beta, so depending on how that works out, bringing that over to HotS can also be a future option for us.

Thank you again, and we'll continue to keep a close eye on the state of the game.

Analyzing the effects of the last Swarm Host patch is one of our top priorities for Heart of the Swarm right now, so we wanted to share some more thoughts in this area to get more input from you.

Currently we’re not seeing much new Swarm Host usage. We see two potential reasons for this: The Swarm Host isn’t effective enough in its current state or players haven’t figured out the best use cases with them yet. The answer is probably a mix of both factors, and we’re hoping to see more Zerg games in all matchups in order to drill down on the correct course of action here.

Our main focus point in the immediate future will be on the state of ZvP and ZvT after these changes. The main thing we’d like to watch out for first is that the two matchups are working well and are balanced. In order to get there, we have two options that we’d like to discuss with everyone.


Option 1

Take our normal approach of waiting until we can locate what the specific issues are and then act accordingly. The up side of this is that we can make the correct decisions and give players enough time to really drill down to the details of what the last patch has changed about the game. The down side is that it’ll take time.


Option 2

Act a bit quicker as an exception this time, because we made such drastic changes at a point when the balance was looking very solid. From the initial feedback and games that we’ve seen, Zerg seem slightly weaker than before. While we don’t have enough examples or the time to make this conclusion, we wonder if acting a bit sooner in this specific case might be better for the game. To be clear, this doesn’t mean we’ll just go in and patch right away. We’ll still go through the standard procedures of discussing potential changes, testing the changes on balance test maps, and iterating on them until we find good changes. The main difference is that we would be going into the first balance test map much sooner than we normally would have after a balance patch.

If we go with option 1, we’ll first need to figure out how the changes affected the matchups, so we don’t have any proposed potential changes yet. If we go with option 2, our main goal would be to work on a change that would help Zerg slightly vs. Protoss and vs. Mech play. Going more into the specifics:


Roach burrow move speed increase

We know Roaches serve a critical role in both vs. Protoss and Mech, so this might be a good area to buff. We’ve also tested a faster burrow-move speed version of the Roach in the past, and saw some good results. In terms of testing time, and being able to gauge the effectiveness of this change, it should be much quicker since it’ll be the second time testing this out. This could be a very simple change that will help Zerg out in the two main areas that we’re potentially looking to improve.


Swarm Host changes

We believe that the cost investment both in terms of gas and supply are quite high. And it’s like that for a reason: we don’t want mass Swarm Hosts to be viable. But we wonder if we can make some tweaks to make the harassment case less of a commitment while also making sure the mass Swarm Host case isn’t viable. While we don’t have specifics here, we’re initially thinking:

- Buff the Swarm Host effectiveness
- Reduce the supply cost/take another look at the cost of the unit itself
- Increase the cooldown of the Spawn Locust ability even more

These changes will support the small group harassment role of the unit much better, while nerfing the mass Swarm Host case even more.

To reiterate, we’re not saying that there’s a clear problem that we see right now. We don’t know with 100% certainty on the state of things since the last patch, but we’re mainly just wondering if there’s value in starting a balance test map sooner than later this time.

Thank you so much, and we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic.