Balance Update - 3rd March; Corruptor, Mine, Hydra and Rea…

On March 03 2017 19:15 Elentos wrote:
I'm bewildered they're actually going to go through with the mine change so soon after the liberator nerf.

On March 03 2017 19:16 PharaphobiaSC wrote:


Well a lot of ppl complained that they are being slow with small changes so here you go

On March 03 2017 20:13 ParksonVN wrote:
After watching Terran players got destroyed at GSL post liberator nerf, i'm quite surprised that Blizzard still proceed to this wm nerf. Even the very top Terrans couldn't stop adept+phoenix lately, how are we supposed to deal with that combo after wm nerf ?

On March 03 2017 20:11 avilo wrote:
Making mech worse and worse patch after patch

On March 03 2017 20:54 insitelol wrote:
So, assuming PvZ (on the Ground) was pretty much equal in HOTS, we ended up with the following in LoTV (compared to HotS):

Protoss.
Colossi - nerfed to the ground, not worth its price and plain unusable.
Sentry and Stalker - indirectly nerfed by introducing a ravager and lurker.
Zealot - regardless of a mediocre buff, hardcountered by baneling.
Adept - a unit that can't be used outside of allins/initial harass and is pretty much a protoss version of hellion for pvz. Nerfed numerous times after the release. Tbh the only unit that prevents zerg from having a 95% winrate in the MU.
Disruptor - don't even mention that piece of trash.

Meanwhile, zerg:
Ravager - a tier 1 unit that competely shuts down ANY protoss allin, opens a huge variety of allins for zerg, can be used on any stage of the game, vs any unit composition (even vs air), allows zerg to steamroll protoss tier 3 ground armies in the mix with banelings.
Banleing - got an HP buff, and with colosi completely gone makes zealots/adepts completely worthless starting from midgame.
Hydra - got an HP buff, and with colosi completely gone makes all other protoss ground units completely worthless on any stage of the game.
Lurker - Not as threatening but allows a whole new playstyle for a zerg.
SH - unit that stays in the game for the unknown reason and which true potential i believe is yet to be fully discovered, costs like a roach, moves like a speedling, evaporates nexuses in a blink of an eye.

So, In HotS, protoss relied on eaither colosi or sentry stalker play. And zerg somehow managed to have a 50% rate vs that. In LotV both these styles are extinct due to ravager/colosi nerf. So protoss is left with severely nerfed ground army vs newly introduced zerg units and old zerg units significantly buffed. How does that make any fcking sense is mystery to me.

Now, you can whine about Carriers.

On March 03 2017 22:04 TT1 wrote:
theyre still buffing hydras?

On March 03 2017 22:12 The_Red_Viper wrote:

Yeah this is the "redesign" zerg players got teased with. Hurray!

On March 03 2017 22:57 Iksf wrote:
What a lazy patch. Maybe ok for winrates but the gameplay is going to be yet further degraded. I mean this corruptor change, that's going to move Zv bio T towards Dark's corruptor style for sure, which is ok but not the ling bane muta vs bio games we all love to see. Hydra change isn't going to address the hard counters to hydras in the game, so whats weak against hydras will be even weaker being the only real change. ZvP is already so hard countery. Yet more adderall required to keep up with the yet further increased pace of the game.

This makes me so sad.

On March 04 2017 00:37 Ransomstarcraft wrote:
I'm a 7 year Terran player, and I'm fine with the reaper nerf. I'm not fine with nerfing liberator, widow mines, and reapers within a couple of weeks and buffing corruptor at the same time. Terran just lost the only 1 base aggression option they have and late game is pretty brutal in TvZ when you don't have 300 apm to spread around. The problem TvZ vs. corruptor is that zerg can have 0 corruptors one minute and 12 or 15 the next. I'm not exactly going to be able to produce 16 vikings to catch up with that, and if I make them early to stay ahead then he just makes hydras instead and they're worthless. I'm hoping there's something else coming down the pipeline to help Terran, because this stuff is disheartening.

A part of the problem with this is that the design team seems to have spent considerably more time on making zerg cohesive, flexible, and powerful as a race prior to Legacy of the Void. Burrow move infestors, invincible nydus, hatchery ravagers, and single overlord drops are not imba in and of themselves but the entire race comes together for so many options. Meanwhile they make moves like this that drop the already limited terran options, especially in terms of early aggression, to nil. I do not want every TvZ to be terrans trying to keep zerg from taking that 4th base.

Now, rather than just complaining, here are some units that I think could use some help.

1. Ghost - perhaps add some kind of "building detonator" ability so that ghosts could sneak in a base and plant a bomb on a structure that does like 800 damage or something. Another option is to give it back lockdown or some kind of detection (aside from emp) ability, since terran has few consistent detection options.

2. Hellion/Hellbat - I think a hit point buff for hellions might be in order, maybe just make it to where the hellion has the same hit points as a hellbat. It certainly doesn't make sense to transform and have different hit points. If not this, maybe the hellbat could plant in the ground and gain armor like one of swann's fire turrets.

3. Thor - For Pete's sake, if you're going to require Thors for mech then make them cheaper, weaker, and faster to produce, or streamline the aoe air attack so that it's 4 missiles or something that always actually damage 4 targets. This unit has been terrible for literally 7 years and has gotten very little attention. At the very least that delay on its attack has got to go.

On March 04 2017 00:47 jedi1982 wrote:
...Terrans will never catch a break

Far to many negative nerfs to Terran recently

On March 04 2017 04:54 Shield wrote:


I thought this change was enough:

-Splash damage +shield bonus reduced from +40 to +25.

Then again, I don't remember widow mine's non-bonus damage. It's stupid if probes are still one shot.

On March 04 2017 05:19 MockHamill wrote:
I do not understand why Blizzard hate mech so much.

Mech is already almost unplayable in all matchups against an opponent who knows how to play against mech.

Add stronger Hydras and weaker widow mines to that and what do you get?

What is the point of making an entire playstyle extinct? If being a Korean with wrist problems is the only way to play Terran then count me out.

On March 04 2017 03:45 ejozl wrote:
This topic have become dull, since it's been the same forever and nothing ever gets into the game. When will this go live or are we still at the discussing phase?

On March 04 2017 05:30 Solar424 wrote:

Maybe because mech is a playstyle that encourages players to turtle on three bases until they build an unbeatable army, something they have been trying to eliminate with the LotV economy model.

On March 03 2017 19:51 Topdoller wrote:
Far to many negative nerfs to Terran recently, and making units even faster has always proved to be a bad thing, just look at Medivacs, Mutas and Oracles .

God these balance teams sucks so much, they are simply devoid of ideas on good gameplay

On March 04 2017 05:49 PinoKotsBeer wrote:

Yes thats why we see players like Gumiho and Ryung doing tvz mech at IEM, because they are just sitting there to collect a "free win". Yes some mech players just turtle hardcore, but many of them dont want to play like that. With the upcoming patch it will force the mech player to turtle more instead of being active. TVZ mech: old cyclone hellions were great combination and was nice interactions for both sides. Current cyclone hellion? you a-move and hope for the best, because if you get caught offguard you lose them anyway and there is nothing you can do. The old cyclone was even useful vs broodlords. Now the meta is more speed banshees. With this patch it will be even harder to do anything vs zerg or being active at all. Hellions should be the counter to hydra's, but they have become so good that hellions arent the counter anymore but just a unit. SH just kills mech straight up, just like we have seen in the mech games with Snute. Did his opponent turtle? no they were active non stop.
Blizzard made protoss a lot more active in lotv by giving it the adept and disruptor, mech is "protoss hots" in Lotv, it has to stay as 1 big ball or its often too weak to do something.

But the general idea is: mech = turtle, so l2p bio.
I guess people love to play only vs bio playstyle, dont want to scout , dont want to see diversity because that pulls them out of their comfort zone and you cant do simply a mindless buildorder but have to adept and maybe think out of the box to get a win.

On March 04 2017 06:30 Solar424 wrote:

Yes, bu the mech people want to be viable is the "turtle to victory" sort. It's the main reason why tanks got buffed, which didn't help mech, it just made TvP horribly broken.

On March 04 2017 07:19 Justinian wrote:
Does this mean a widow mine no longer one shots an Oracle? Isn't that quite a big deal? I haven't seen it mentioned.

I actually voted for the mine buff in the TL poll, but this didn't occur to me at the time.

On March 04 2017 09:34 Tyrhanius wrote:

When zerg, scouts, and perfectly adapt to the mech composition, do mech players say ? " well played"

No it's just : "OMG mech so weak" and they ask to remove the counter zerg has...

Like it's easy to handle the cyclon/hellion, we've lost plenty of games trying to handle but finally we've learned to deal with.

But mech player keep spamming it and we beat them, they ask on balance discussion to nerf the counter we have in order we can't beat their style anymore...

That's why we say mech players only want a deathball, they never propose an interaction where the other has 50% chance of winning, it all about mech units having no weakness.

On March 04 2017 06:30 Solar424 wrote:

Yes, bu the mech people want to be viable is the "turtle to victory" sort. It's the main reason why tanks got buffed, which didn't help mech, it just made TvP horribly broken.

On March 04 2017 10:30 Danglars wrote:
Doubling the cooldown of reaper ability, are they looney? Yeah add three seconds or something of that nature to make multiple rax reaper openings less painful but you're just taking that unit and nerfing it into the ground unnecessarily.
Widow mine nerf is also a bad idea. Oracles 160, kill less than 8 marines, mine now 150. Unless oracles are simultaneously nerfed, this makes no sense. Future TvP failboating and reverting the change will come.

Corruptor change is fine to counter pesky move and shoot attacks.

On March 06 2017 05:56 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


herO and Zest are also top 5 Protosses.

On March 06 2017 05:25 TheKhyira wrote:


Let´s keep the lineups in mind. Terran had pretty much every top player from the race except for Maru, protoss had pretty much only stats and noone else.

On March 06 2017 23:18 bulya wrote:
As a zerg player I think the 3 rax reaper is nerfed enough with this update.
May be its because I'm confident with the 3 rax reaper even without the nerf, but it is something which require a bit of practice to defend.

Even Snute managed to win a game where Byun opened 3 rax reaper. So I don't think 3 rax reaper is a huge deal right now.
I don't underestimate Snute, but after all its Byun's 3 rax reaper he faced with.

The mine nerf was only necessary because Terran got many other aggressive tools in the early game.
I think TY demonstrated the best way of dealing with the phoenix adept combo which bothers Terrans that much. This composition expires at the late game, where TY took the games Stats played phoenix adept, and he bearly used mines as a defensive tool against it.

The initial nerf was too heavy, because mines couldn't one shoot oracles, but the way it is now seems good.

On March 07 2017 21:33 redloser wrote:


What does damage point mean?

On March 08 2017 00:22 bulya wrote:


There were only 2 games where Stats played phoenix adept. On proxima and the underwater map. Both times mines were part of the mid game, but they were not the backbone which made TY defend there. They one shoot some units (which they will do after the nerf), they killed some probes (the nerf doesn't effect that at all), at some points stats didn't want to commit because there was a singe mine or 2 mines, but its no a backbone in TY's defense.
He took both games to the very late game (playing quite defensively, with some mine drops and pokes at Stat's), and in the end game the Phoenix adept wasn't good enough. (a single EMP make the old mines and the new mines do the same amount of damage, and at this phase the damage rather be done with the bio force)

So your claim that it happened only on Proxima doesn't say anything (1 game out of 2, and the second was very similar to the proxima game).

Actually the fact that the games Stats won were those he went for early Robo tech rather then early Stargate (if we exclude the proxy stargate on Paladino), may tell something to the P players.

On March 08 2017 00:50 Elentos wrote:

I wasn't just referring to his match vs Stats in the finals. In the group stages, Stats won the 2nd game of their series with adept/phoenix because he completely circumvented the mines (TY didn't expect a frontal attack into his natural). In TY's match against Zest, on Newkirk Precinct, without widow mines TY would have never lived through the midgame. And even the fact that it just discourages the Protoss to commit sometimes is a big help. Also I was specifically talking about adept/phoenix used for midgame attacks, in the finals Stats just used the composition to get to the late game safely.

On March 08 2017 00:50 Elentos wrote:
Question regarding the hydra buff, has someone done the math to see how many unit interactions actually change with +10 HP?

On March 03 2017 19:15 Elentos wrote:
I'm bewildered they're actually going to go through with the mine change so soon after the liberator nerf.