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Hey everyone. Most of this week’s update concerns the upcoming Balance Test Map, however we’d also like to briefly discuss feedback in Korea and our recent discussions about Siege Tanks.
KR Feedback on Protoss
Recently, we’ve definitely seen the feedback on Protoss strength both from Korean Pros and our Korean community as a major point of discussion, especially after some comments made by professional Protoss players. In response to this very notion, we’ve been preparing to test changes for Protoss and have been glad to see that you guys agree with the direction we’ve been considering over the past few weeks. We also noticed numerous people in the Korean community pointing out how Protoss may not be as OP as others have made it out to be due to statistics. While this may or may not be true, we definitely appreciate that there are people trying hard to see it from the big picture instead of just jumping on the band wagon. We normally don’t focus a feedback to a specific region like this, but because of how big the consensus was in this area last week in Korea, we wanted to address this concern.
With that said, we will be looking to make changes to Protoss very soon on the two fronts we’ve been discussing over the past few weeks. We believe these nerfs to the Adept and Photon Overcharge will improve both Protoss non-mirror matchups, but have the greatest impact in TvP, where Protoss is currently more problematic. Please keep in mind that even after the balance update goes live, we’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on the state of the game in case further changes are needed.
Also, we have noticed that information regarding balance or the dev team's thoughts aren't getting spread around as well in Korea compared to other regions, and we will definitely be discussing ways to improve this.
Next Balance Update Schedule
We are aiming to get the Balance Test Map released today, and hope to aggressively test out the changes for a potential balance patch to the live game next week on January 28th (PST). This date aims to allow enough time to aggressively test, while also avoiding interrupting DreamHack and next week’s matches in Korea. On that note, we heard your feedback regarding letting players know better when a Balance Test Map testing is going on. The best feedback we heard on this front was to possibly have the StarCraft 2 landing screen have a background with details about the Balance Test Map. It could also include details of a chat channel for players to join to organize games depending on race and skill level, and we’re looking to add something like this to help facilitate testing.
The plan is to test these changes and then make a call on which specific ones will be good for the game:
Photon Overcharge:
Energy cost increased from 25 to 50
Duration increased from 15 to 20 sec
Weapon period decreased from 1.25 to 1
Adept
Damage decreased from 10 (+13 light) to 10 (+12 light)
Viper
Parasitic bomb damage decreased from 90 to 60
Spore Crawler
Damage decreased from 15 (+15 bio) to 15 (+5 bio)
Let’s keep the discussions and playtesting focused on these specific changes so that we can together make a call on which changes can go into the game. Let’s go more into each of the topics so that we can keep the discussions more focused.
Photon Overcharge
Due to the overall strength of Protoss recently, we feel that this is a solid change. Other races will be able to go on the offense more against Protoss, meaning we can tackle the main issue we see of Protoss just leaving 1 Mothership Core on defense while safely going on the offense with units such as Adepts or Warp Prisms in the earlier stages of the game. We’ve discussed this one many times over the last few weeks, so we probably don’t need to go too much more into detail, but please note that the nerf to this ability is quite big and we would love to hear your thoughts on the specific numbers after you have played on the Balance Test Map.
Adept Damage
We agree with majority of you that TvP is the most problematic matchup by far right now, so we believe this extra nerf on top of the Overcharge nerf is needed. It’s a big change against Terran due to the relationship changes with Marines and SCVs. Let’s focus on testing this change in mind with the big changes to Photon Overcharge to make sure that it’s in fact good to do both changes at the same time.
Viper Parasitic Bomb
The biggest issue as we’ve discussed before with this ability is that it prevents many of the air based compositions from coming into play. We just need to make sure that this nerf is not too big to the point that we see overwhelming numbers of air units all of a sudden. Let’s focus the playtesting and discussions around making sure that this doesn’t happen.
Spore Crawler Damage
This is probably the safest change of the bunch since it only affects the ZvZ mirror matchup. Still, we’ve heard your feedback that this could bring back a Mutalisk dominated metagame, but we wonder if the Parasitic Bomb changes will make enough of a difference to strike a balance between the two different tech paths. Also, keep in mind that this change is pretty easy to tune even after the patch goes out, so if we need to make another adjustment after next week, we can easily do that as well.
Siege Tank
Thank you for the productive discussions over the past week about Siege Tanks. Here are our thoughts:
If TvZ is in an even state, we completely agree that Siege Tank should be buffed if they lose the ability to be picked up by Medivacs.
At the same time, we are getting some feedback from high level players in Korea that Zerg is struggling vs. Terran in the matchup. This may mean that we would want to test changes to the Siege Tank one at a time.
Overall, we don’t feel that both TvZ and TvT are at a point where we need to patch something ASAP.
Because we are sticking to the most needed changes only for the balance update that’s coming very soon, we can continue discussing this topic going forward, but don’t need to focus on it this week.
Overall, let’s try to first examine the exact state of TvT and ZvT before we make a call on what changes needs to be tested for the Siege Tank. We believe this is the main reason why opinions were so split on this area.
Thanks for your continued feedback. Please login and play the Balance Test Map as we’d love to hear your feedback on the changes after you’ve played a few games to try things out. Thanks!
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spore nerf makes 0 sense... you can already still go muta into transition in zvz on larger maps...
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I want apologize to Thouhastmail for making this thread and stealing the spotlight from him when made it in the previous week thread. 
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oh boy blizzard gonna kill zvz
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I don't understand the spore nerf. I also don't get what they mean by
Still, we’ve heard your feedback that this could bring back a Mutalisk dominated metagame, but we wonder if the Parasitic Bomb changes will make enough of a difference to strike a balance between the two different tech paths. Like, if you nerf the other response to mutas that's somehow gonna help make the meta not muta dominated?
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Nerfing both spores and para bomb might make it muta only or blind counter again.
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Is it me or they obviously deliberately ignored TvP match up regarding the Siege Tank update?
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So... Adept is nerfed or not, because I am very, very (extremely?) confused. What kind of change is that? Is it at all? Damn Blizz...
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On January 23 2016 03:32 brickrd wrote:
spore nerf makes 0 sense... you can already still go muta into transition in zvz on larger maps...
Even 60dmg Parabomb is good enough to justify the nerf for the spore.
The Protoss nerf will help terran and Protoss will again go for late games. Good to see that back and see, how it works out. When late terran is really stronger (what I think it is) then Protoss (who does not skip upgrades for a prism adept attack), I could see a buff to templar (Storm cast range +1?). I dont think Blizzard wants to make the coloss viable ever again and never wants to see viking coloss fights. Even the amulet could have its comeback, when they see that Protoss has Problems of fighting and defending in later stages.
On January 23 2016 03:38 Asturas wrote:
So... Adept is nerfed or not, because I am very, very (extremely?) confused. What kind of change is that? Is it at all? Damn Blizz...
Adept now does 22 damage against light units per shot. That means, you need instead of 2 shots, 3 shots to kill SCVs and Marines. Thats quite a nerf. The problem is still the prism.
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On January 23 2016 03:38 Asturas wrote:
So... Adept is nerfed or not, because I am very, very (extremely?) confused. What kind of change is that? Is it at all? Damn Blizz...
Yes. They no longer 2-shot workers, instead it takes 3. This means they're weaker on the harrassment side of things.
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On January 23 2016 03:39 KeksX wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2016 03:38 Asturas wrote:
So... Adept is nerfed or not, because I am very, very (extremely?) confused. What kind of change is that? Is it at all? Damn Blizz... Yes. They no longer 2-shot workers, instead it takes 3. This means they're weaker on the harrassment side of things.
Well, they still 2-shot the workers of 2 races. They also don't 2-shot marines anymore.
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Opinions are not split. Most Terran players hate tankvac for TvT and only accept it because it feels needed in TvZ.
Drop the tankvac and buff the fucking tank dmg already. Jesus Christ, you are worst then Browder.
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This adept nerf will do nothing against zerg? Adepts are really stupid and strong against Z also :/
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On January 23 2016 03:41 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Opinions are not split. Most Terran players hate tankvac for TvT
I wonder if that's true and there isn't a silent majority not hating tankivacs.
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Ya know what we need so bad, is for Photon Overcharge to be removed from the game. So badly. I play Protoss and I hate it, I despise, have since HOTS. It just drains the skill out of the early game.
It used to take real skill to hold early attacks, used to have to build units and position them properly to defend drops. It used to be fun to defend early timings. Now, no one can attack Protoss save some gimmicky aggression via early Overlord Drops, Oracles and Adepts or Widow Mines and Liberators.
PO and the MSC just need to go. And then the gimmicky aggression can be removed too! We can get Widow Mine drops out of the game too.
We just need to talk about that more, much more, maybe Blizzard will listen.
Maybe I'm just dreaming...
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Well this is logical and well thought out.
Can't wait to see what happens to Protoss winrates if they roll this out as is. I wonder if they'll go below 0%?
PB still stacks and they're still just in the thinking and planning stage of removing sieged pickups. I guess they've been loving what they see in TvT?
On January 23 2016 03:44 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2016 03:41 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Opinions are not split. Most Terran players hate tankvac for TvT I wonder if that's true and there isn't a silent majority not hating tankivacs.
It's doom drop madness everyone game and no mech. Does it even matter what the majority think? The majority is stupid anyway. Nearly half the people in my country think that the earth is under 6000 years old. Probably more than half think that America entered WW2 in part to stop the holocaust (the truth of the holocaust came out after the war ended during the Nuremberg trials) and the 'we' won the war for the rest of the world.
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On January 23 2016 03:37 WrathSCII wrote:
Is it me or they obviously deliberately ignored TvP match up regarding the Siege Tank update?
Flying tanks have the least amount of impact on that matchup IMO.
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On January 23 2016 03:41 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Opinions are not split. Most Terran players hate tankvac for TvT and only accept it because it feels needed in TvZ.
Drop the tankvac and buff the fucking tank dmg already. Jesus Christ, you are worst then Browder.
Corrosive bile is the problem. Even with slightly stronger Tanks the unarmored Ravagers can still go into Tank range, fire off their weapon, and 100% kill a tank.
Nerf CB's range or make them Armored and Tanks will be effective against Ravagers.
Then you can talk about getting rid of Tankivacs.
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Disregarding balance, adepts are just not fun to play against. Way too many adepts even in the later stages of the game. Zealots need some love. Current tankivacs are arguably not fun to play against, either.
Buff sieged tanks damage. If necessary, nerf by increasing attack cooldown.
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On January 23 2016 03:48 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2016 03:41 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Opinions are not split. Most Terran players hate tankvac for TvT and only accept it because it feels needed in TvZ.
Drop the tankvac and buff the fucking tank dmg already. Jesus Christ, you are worst then Browder. Corrosive bile is the problem. Even with slightly stronger Tanks the unarmored Ravagers can still go into Tank range, fire off their weapon, and 100% kill a tank. Nerf CB's range or make them Armored and Tanks will be effective against Ravagers. Then you can talk about getting rid of Tankivacs.
Making tanks counter ravagers could be problematic if LBM really won´t be viable tactic against terran.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
