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First, we'd like to thank everyone for the great discussions over the weekend. After seeing your feedback, we reconsidered some of our changes as there were many great points which you all presented.
Hydralisk (and Colossus)
We agree that upgrading the Colossi might not be the best idea, since the issue we're trying to solve is specifically with Hydralisk strength. Therefore, we agree with potentially reverting the Hydralisk range back to 6, and exploring a different option such as increasing the health of Hydralisks or decreasing their cost. So the direction here would be to first revert the range change, see how Hydralisks function, then discuss a buff where needed.
Quantity of Protoss Abilities
We also agree with the feedback regarding the number of abilities on the Protoss side, and we'd like to take steps improve it. The goal here isn't to solve everything at once, but to go in steps.
We're thinking of two changes for this first step.
First, we could remove the Tempest's ability since it's not working out well. To compensate, we'd increase the AG range to 10 and also increase the AG damage so that the interaction with Tempests trying to kill ground units vs. ground units getting shots off on the Tempest is more interesting than it was in HotS.
Second, we'd target a small change with the Immortal. We believe an active ability is definitely not needed on the Immortal. The change would remove the manual-cast from Barrier, turning it into a passive ability. This would make it so that the micro is focused more on positioning your units so the shield soaks up as much as possible and vulnerable immortals are rescued. We can reduce the cooldown of this ability to compensate and so that Protoss players can play more strategically with the Immortal.
Mech and Blinding Cloud
We'd also like to first start with a reduction in Blinding Cloud duration to help out the Mech case in TvZ. We have gotten some feedback in this area and agree that because mobile units are mostly able to move out of Blinding Clouds asap anyways, this sort of a change will mostly only affect immobile units such as the Siege Tank.
Patching Updates
So what does this mean for this week's balance patch? We definitely can't release the patch tomorrow like we've planned, because we still want to take the time to double check these new changes with all of you, and also to test these changes further internally. We'll focus heavily on our end to gather feedback and to playtest today and tomorrow, and aim to patch later this week if both sides go smoothly.
Let's get discussions going fast on these few topics today! Thank you!
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ZigguratOfUr
Iraq16955 Posts
A hydra nerf is very welcome.
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wow cool stuff You are going in right direction to make mech viable 
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Thank god, no colossus buff. I wonder what the follow up regarding protoss changes will be?
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Sounds like good changes, though the speed buff still impacts speed banshees alot, maybe the upgrade could be 100/100? 200/200 is very steep for something that does very little
also how are you meant to deal with underground fungals, maybe only neural parasyte and infested terran for underground cast?
fungal feels really powerful and most of the time you are not able to react, constantly keeping infinite scans on zerg is not feasible for terran
bane buff i think is fine, just have to add more mines
Ravager i think is a bit strong maybe move to lair tech? proxy hatch then roach ravager seems extremely hard to hold?
In terms of the viper i think maybe just remove the blinding cloud? since it really only affects tanks and static defenses and give it another ability, the ability that you were going to give the tempest freezes units in the aoe?
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Overall the best CFU since february 18th.
- Hydra is the right call. 7 range is just too strong of a buff. Maybe giving them a +10 HP buff with the speed upgrade would be nice.
- Protoss abilities : YES. Yes for tempest (finally a unit that TRADES instead of either killing for free, either being useless). Yes for immortal (position, yay). However kinda sad they talk about that without talking about the overcharge, the mother of all badly designed abilities still in the game.
- On a grimmer note, blinding cloud isn't what's causing problems in MechvZ. It's the abduct. The blinding cloud is fine. Just make the abduct unable to target groud massive, which would allow for thors to cover other units by shooing away vipers.
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Would be good if you aimed for a tempest vs cyclone/thor interaction here and not purely tempest vs air units because air vs air isnt really fun.
Zerg works different is a good thing, not sure what to interact for them but would be horrendously boring if they are forced to mass air just because of it.
Cant speak much of the hydra, but would be great if it stays strong(i have no idea of the balance of it atm).
Off topic but if the new ground unit for protoss with its shade got redesigned here, couple of suggestions:
1. Make the shade last 3sec, with a 3sec cooldown, with a nerfed movementspeed. To encourage way more micro with its shade ability(soudns fun in my eyes).
To make them differnet in micro while also try and make them have way better interaction with all sorts of ground units.
There are more suggestions taht could be made here but hopefully this brings some enlightment to it.
If you overtime(within 6months perhaps) would try and move away from viper/raven or just make them purely support units somehow.
And focus more on interactions of other things which would be really fun(would make me play the game again, iam not playing atm)
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I think that although vipers are a very strong mech counter they are not the core problem, I would be much more ok with vipers if swarmhosts were not such a brutal counter to tanks, until swarmhost strength is addressed mech players cannot dream of pushing into a Zerg player. Mech will remain a turtle style or it won't be viable at higher levels of play. I'm not sure how you fix swarmhosts without making them useless though. The unit either seems like it's locusts are cost effective enough that they brutally punish any immobile Terran army, or they arnt cost effective so they are complete trash. Mabey making them like carriers would work were locusts cost small amounts of money, so that swarm hosts are more of a commitment and they cut into a Zerg players bank.
I'm also not sure how I deal about cyclone range. On one hand it's hard to describe early game tvp as fair when p has both so many gimickey allins and the ability to very greedly tech and expand behind photon overcharge. On the other Terran units just feal realy strong in the mu, especially with shade/tempest nerfs so giving Terran an equal footing with Protoss posses it's own set of problems, pre patch realize cyclone opens allowed Terran to take map control early and hold on to it, in not sure that's fair. I don't want the collosi brought back to its former power though I'm prity sure this would tip the scale to far since right now the match is balanced around the fact that libs are such a good unit they bring Terran back from the sacrifices they have to make early on to stay safe. If you give p a stronger midgame the match will realy start swinging ps way.
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Add/exchange one ability for shield restore in Oracle. Non-combat ability could be fine, yesterday I saw in the editor that they were trying to implement this for Heart of the Swarm, they left some data:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jFi6Tw9.jpg)
Personally I'd really like to see this tested. On my personal wishlist there is also ability to attach Observers to capital ships, adding small aoe damage to Photon Cannons or testing of the movable Phase Cannons, but these are just dreams so feel free to ignore those 
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On December 06 2016 05:49 JackONeill wrote:
The blinding cloud is fine. Just make the abduct unable to target groud massive, which would allow for thors to cover other units by shooing away vipers.
It would also change a lot for Colossi, no more suicide diving for them
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ffs no fucking tempest buff please...
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But are they reverting previous hydra upgrade?
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On December 06 2016 06:12 aQuaSC wrote:Add/exchange one ability for shield restore in Oracle. Non-combat ability could be fine, yesterday I saw in the editor that they were trying to implement this for Heart of the Swarm, they left some data: Personally I'd really like to see this tested. On my personal wishlist there is also ability to attach Observers to capital ships, adding small aoe damage to Photon Cannons or testing of the movable Phase Cannons, but these are just dreams so feel free to ignore those
What if instead of Photon Overcharge being a pure damage spell, it instead gave units around the affected Pylon shield regen or some other buff?
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On December 06 2016 06:52 eviltomahawk wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2016 06:12 aQuaSC wrote:Add/exchange one ability for shield restore in Oracle. Non-combat ability could be fine, yesterday I saw in the editor that they were trying to implement this for Heart of the Swarm, they left some data: Personally I'd really like to see this tested. On my personal wishlist there is also ability to attach Observers to capital ships, adding small aoe damage to Photon Cannons or testing of the movable Phase Cannons, but these are just dreams so feel free to ignore those What if instead of Photon Overcharge being a pure damage spell, it instead gave units around the affected Pylon shield regen or some other buff?
To be honest I'd love to play around with any hp restoration ability for Protoss, whatever the form could be.
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Elentos
55594 Posts
On December 06 2016 05:49 JackONeill wrote:
Yes for tempest (finally a unit that TRADES instead of either killing for free, either being useless)
10 range with stronger anti-ground damage makes it a unit that trades? Are brood lords units that trade? Or are they units that either do a ton of damage uncontested or get stomped by lower tech units because they lacked support?
No mention of infinite range seeker missiles and ridiculous auto-turrets yet, interesting.
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no word on ravens? mech play is turning into massing ravens again, nobody wants that.
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Solution: Go back to patch 3.7
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But mass carrier style is already unbeatable after 5 carriers, so now what?
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On December 06 2016 07:00 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2016 05:49 JackONeill wrote:
Yes for tempest (finally a unit that TRADES instead of either killing for free, either being useless) 10 range with stronger anti-ground damage makes it a unit that trades? Are brood lords units that trade? Or are they units that either do a ton of damage uncontested or get stomped by lower tech units because they lacked support?
Better than 8 range with a dumb and either shitty either extremely abusive ability though
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
