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Balance changes during the off-season
In order to get more testing done, we’d like to change up how we do patches just for this off-season. Instead of putting every balance change through the balance test map process, we’ll decide on a case-by-case basis. We’ll try to push out smaller or more known changes to the live game quickly, but we’ll still test the larger or less certain changes on the test map before going live.
After going through both the community and pro feedback since the release of the patch, we’re thinking to push out these two changes rather soon:
Revert Cyclone range upgrade
Pro players have pointed out that they were dealing with the early game Cyclone all-ins toward the end of the testing phase right before this nerf went out, so we’d like to try reverting this change and go from there. We hear the concerns that early range can be problematic in TvT in particular, but because players were already finding solutions to some cases, we think this could use more testing. Defending against new threats often takes longer to learn than executing attacks, so we can come to a better conclusion in a couple weeks.
Colossus +light damage (current thinking is 12 +4 light)
We agree that with the mid/late game buffs to Zerg, Protoss looks to be struggling at those stages. This change would help against players going heavy Hydralisks. And with the Cyclone nerf being reverted, this change will help in PvT as we’ve seen bio was very strong in combination with heavy Cyclone usage before the upgrade change. We do hear concerns that this could either bring back the colossus-dominated metagame of HotS, or make bio too weak overall in PvT. We will be watchful going forward to ensure this does not become the case.
Viper
The other main thing currently on the list is Viper strength vs. mech play. We’d like to discuss a couple possibilities: nerfing the duration of Blinding Cloud vs. reducing the range of Abduct. Please give us your thoughts in this area.
Demotions on ladder this season
There was some discussion/confusion regarding demotions at the start of this season so we wanted to provide some clarification. Last season was the first time that we bootstrapped your off-races to the MMR of your main race due to the introduction of separate MMR per race. This potentially caused players to rank higher than their actual skill level on their off-races. At the start of this season, the boundaries automatically adjusted to the correct values, so many players at the higher levels of the ladder were seeing lower ranks than they did toward the end of last season. We expect player rankings to continue becoming more accurate over time.
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Reduce the range of abduct. Also, nerf Hydras.
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Uhm, why not remove the Hydra buff rather than buffing Colossi? For the Viper change, nerfing the duration of BC might be okay since it is mostly used in ZvMech unlike in HotS, but reducing the Abduct range is a no-no; otherwise you can't really fight against the skytoss without it.
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568 Posts
Reducing the range on abduct is better than reducing blinding cloud duration. The problem with abduct is that it allows the viper to trade cost effectively with the units that are meant to zone it out. You can mitigate blinding cloud by spreading your units, you can't really do anything about abduct once the zerg has a large number of vipers abducting everything.
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I feel like blinding cloud and abduct are the smallest issues with the viper in zvt. In HotS you could zone out vipers with vikings. this is not possible anymore because of parasitic bomb countering vikings. Also parasitic bomb made BL/Viper OP because terran didn't have an answer to this before the raven buff (which is OP too)
solution: nerf/remove parasitic bomb so terran can counter vipers with vikings again - revert the seeker missile buff.
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Why not just rework Blinding cloud to cut range in half instead of making the units inside it useless?
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i've said this before.. i'll say it again.
how does the tongue of a flying unit pull a Sieged Tank out of the ground while the flying Viper remains motionless and in the exact same position?
shouldn't this "abduct"/tongue-pull not be possible at all OR at least force the Viper itself to move towards the Sieged Tank at least a little bit?
I say either a Sieged Tank can't be abducted at all.. .or the Viper is pulled forward as it pulls the Sieged Tank out of the ground and towards it... Both the Viper and Sieged Tank should come together and both objects should move.
nerf the Viper in this way... make it move towards the victim of its abduct/tongue-pull OR maybe lower the range of the tongue pull OR eliminate the abduct ability from working on Tanks seiged into the ground.
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On December 03 2016 03:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
i've said this before.. i'll say it again.
how does the tongue of a flying unit pull a Sieged Tank out of the ground while the flying Viper remains motionless and in the exact same position?
shouldn't this "abduct"/tongue-pull not be possible at all OR at least force the Viper itself to move towards the Sieged Tank at least a little bit?
I say either a Sieged Tank can't be abducted at all.. .or the Viper is pulled forward as it pulls the Sieged Tank out of the ground and towards it... Both the Viper and Sieged Tank should come together and both objects should move.
It's a game where dudes with guns can take down kilometer long capital ships.A cavalier attitude to conservation of momentum is the least of our concerns.
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Then buff the range of lurkers to 13, so we can all play by massing defense? This is just ridiculous. I can't belive blizzard actualy thinks that a game of massing defense is fun. I mean, we all know the balance team is retarded, but really?
I have an even better idea. Remaster Broodwar so we can have a decent competitive RTS to play, and then leave SC2 to avilo fans. You can make it as awful and boring as you can. Don't expect the balance whine to stop until you still have anything in the game that counter siege tank lines tho.
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Btw, can't wait for protoss openning air to force hydras and then making colossi, it will be just like the old times:
http://i.imgur.com/19p9UlY.gif
User was temp banned for this post.
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I have a suggestion, Make the tank a massive unit. Before I get criticized Biotank vs Protoss would be more viable as players can use their tanks to break through forcefields (Meaning they need to un-siege a tank) As well in mech play this makes tanks un-targetable by abduct. In terms of the cyclone range why not just give it a similar upgrade to the adept glaives? where its main powerpoint is when the player decides to research the upgrade rather than have a mindless 6 range 0.1 attack speed shredder? I don't know entirely but if anyone else wants to throw in some suggestions to this id love to talk more in depth about it
(This feedback is just a bunch of random suggestions if you like it awesome! if you hate it good for you :D)
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On December 03 2016 03:41 Edowyth wrote:
Balance changes during the off-season
In order to get more testing done, we’d like to change up how we do patches just for this off-season. Instead of putting every balance change through the balance test map process, we’ll decide on a case-by-case basis. We’ll try to push out smaller or more known changes to the live game quickly, but we’ll still test the larger or less certain changes on the test map before going live.
After going through both the community and pro feedback since the release of the patch, we’re thinking to push out these two changes rather soon:
this is a good idea. its great to be more experimental while its the off-season.
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How about removing consume? Isn't the problem the fact that vipers virtually have infinite energy?
Then maybe let the viper start with 75 energy, it would allow to keep strong abilities without being able to spam them.
As for someone who don't want to see the colossus buffed in any way, i'd rather have the hydras keep that speed upgrade, but then remove the range upgrade and give them a default 6 range.
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On December 03 2016 03:58 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
A cavalier attitude to conservation of momentum is the least of our concerns.
I so wish I had written that.
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On December 03 2016 03:58 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2016 03:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
i've said this before.. i'll say it again.
how does the tongue of a flying unit pull a Sieged Tank out of the ground while the flying Viper remains motionless and in the exact same position?
shouldn't this "abduct"/tongue-pull not be possible at all OR at least force the Viper itself to move towards the Sieged Tank at least a little bit?
I say either a Sieged Tank can't be abducted at all.. .or the Viper is pulled forward as it pulls the Sieged Tank out of the ground and towards it... Both the Viper and Sieged Tank should come together and both objects should move. It's a game where dudes with guns can take down kilometer long capital ships.A cavalier attitude to conservation of momentum is the least of our concerns.
10/10
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On December 03 2016 04:06 Ryu3600 wrote:
I have a suggestion, Make the tank a massive unit. Before I get criticized Biotank vs Protoss would be more viable as players can use their tanks to break through forcefields (Meaning they need to un-siege a tank) As well in mech play this makes tanks un-targetable by abduct. In terms of the cyclone range why not just give it a similar upgrade to the adept glaives? where its main powerpoint is when the player decides to research the upgrade rather than have a mindless 6 range 0.1 attack speed shredder? I don't know entirely but if anyone else wants to throw in some suggestions to this id love to talk more in depth about it
(This feedback is just a bunch of random suggestions if you like it awesome! if you hate it good for you :D)
abduct works on massive units too
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I say instead of buffing the stupid Colossus, Nerf Hydras, Nerf cost and make them 1 supply. 
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On December 03 2016 04:14 blade55555 wrote:I say instead of buffing the stupid Colossus, Nerf Hydras, Nerf cost and make them 1 supply.
or just revert the range buff and buff their health finally
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On December 03 2016 04:10 ArtyK wrote:
How about removing consume? Isn't the problem the fact that vipers virtually have infinite energy?
Then maybe let the viper start with 75 energy, it would allow to keep strong abilities without being able to spam them.
good idea... or nerfing consume 5 fold so that it takes 5 times as much health from buildings and units as it does now.
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Colossus buff, that's exactly what people want because the unit is so fun to use and play against! And people really argue that blizzard actually wants to make the best game possible 
I already said it in the other thread talking about viper abduct but hey this is a good place as well:
Spells in sc2 are always on the edge of being too strong because you can easily spam it. Having 5+ spellcasters and getting all the spells casted in 1 second is no problem. That's the issue, not individual spells being strong. Always the same in this game, a certain strategy revolving casters is perceived as too strong and then the spell gets nerfed so it only is useful when you actually have a large amount of casters. That's not interesting and it's certainly not fun to play.
The easiest method to change that would be to remove smartcasting, if there are other options i am ok with that too but people have to realise that spamming spells is the issue, no? (in the case of the viper it's obviously also the fact that it's a flying spellcaster which makes it even easier to use)
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
