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Hey everyone,
Over the past month, we featured two sets of possible changes on the testing tab. After digesting all the discussion and feedback, we’re ready to announce the final set of changes in the upcoming balance update. These changes will be updated to the balance test mod later today, and the final set of changes will go live on the ladder on August 20th, the start date of season 3.
Before we reveal the final list of changes, we’d like to go over some of the changes we decided not to move forward with:
Warp Prisms no longer start with the Warp Conduit passive ability and warp-ins will take 11 seconds when not near a Warp Gate or Nexus, up from 4. The Gravitic Drive upgrade now has the added functionality of granting Warp Prisms the Warp Conduit passive ability, reducing warp-in time from 11 to 4.
We saw a lot constructive discussion surrounding this proposal, and we believe a change along these lines could have a lot of interesting consequences. However, we felt the impact of the change using the numbers proposed would be too great, especially for a mid-year patch.
Zealot Charge additional impact damage decreased from 8 to 0. After researching Charge, Zealots will still retain the ability to always hit a fleeting target at least once.
This change was originally proposed to address multiple concerns, such as the potency of all-ins in PvZ, the frontal pushing power of the Protoss army, especially in PvT, and the overall potential for harassment when used with Warp Prisms. However, after further consideration, we now believe the totality of the remaining changes proposed are sufficient to address these concerns for now.
New Change
Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon cooldown increased from 0.95 to 1.14.
In the last community update, we proposed fixing a bug, which allowed Infested Rockets to ignore armor. This was in lieu of a different proposal from a previous update to decrease Infested Rockets attack damage from 14 to 12. Though these two changes are comparable, the bugfix is a much greater hit to the Infested Rocket’s effectiveness against naturally high-armored air units.
Following this last update, we received additional feedback that even with the bugfix, Infested Terrans would be still too powerful against Protoss late-game armies. While we considered going forward with both the bugfix and the damage decrease, we thought the combination would synergize too much at weakening their damage output against high-armored air units. And while this is desirable to some extent, our primary intention was to temper the Infested Terran’s strength against Interceptors. Thus, we’d instead like to go with an approximate 20% weapon cooldown increase, which would more evenly reduce the Infested Terran’s effectiveness against all air units. This brings us to our final list of changes:
Final Changes
Terran
Stimpack upgrade research duration decreased from 121 seconds to 100 seconds.
New upgrade: Enhanced Shockwaves: Increases the radius of the Ghost’s EMP Round from 1.5 to 2. Cost: 150/150. Research time: 79 seconds.
Zerg
Overlord/Overseer Pneumatized Carapace upgrade research cost decreased from 100/100 to 75/75.
Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon cooldown increased from 0.95 to 1.14.
Bugfix: Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon will no longer ignore armor.
Protoss
Warp Prism cost increased from 200 minerals to 250 minerals.
Warp Prism pick up range decreased from 6 to 5.
Carrier Interceptor build time decreased from 11 seconds to 9 seconds.
Nexus Strategic Recall cooldown increased from 85 to 130 seconds.
The remaining changes proposed over the last month have generally been well received, and we’re confident in moving forward with this finalized list. As always, we thank you for your valuable continued feedback. We’ll see you on the ladder!
–StarCraft II Team
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Interesting, happy about the terran changes, hope the protoss nerfs aren't too much and feels kinda iffy cheapening zergs already poweful scouting tool. Worried overlord speed and perfects scouts will take over the meta.
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Russian Federation10 Posts
TvP still broken. Its looks like only one guy works in balance team and he playing as protoss, and he very bad at playing. Good job Activision 
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the remaining changes look reasonable except the adjustment of infested terrans. this results in a whopping 45% damage decrease against battlecrusiers
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So playing TvP will still feel like a preview of hell.
The charge nerf was needed, Zealots are much to good for their cost and the lack of micro required.
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Thank you Blizzard for being reasonable with this update by not nerfing Protoss into a 30% PvX winrate.
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That's good changes, hopefully the steam buff won't be too much.
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Real men stim pack without a medivac.  Its going to be fun inventing new stim pack timing pushes with these changes.
I'm glad they kept the Zealot strong. The way Blizzard discusses this I think Zealot drops combined with a round of Zealot warp-ins is considered extremely powerful. I'm glad they nerfed this by modifying the Warp Prism rather than weakening the Zealot. I hope the Zealot remains as strong as possible.
Disclaimer: I play 60% as Random and 40% as Terran.
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They should've deployed the bug fix first. It is a bug ffs.
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Thank you Blizzard. As of now, there is only one Korean Terran (Maru) out of 8 Korean players in contention to qualify for the Blizzcon finals. And there are only 2 Zerg in Korea in the top 8: https://wcs.starcraft2.com/en-us/standings/
And yet there are 5 Protoss players that are in contention to qualify for Blizzcon. 5 Protoss players out of 8 total in Korea for Blizzcon, This is the state of the game in 2019.
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Not doing the warp prism warp prism change was good, but the charge change should've went though.
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On August 07 2019 05:03 THERIDDLER wrote:
Not doing the warp prism warp prism change was good, but the charge change should've went though.
There was never a way they were going to nerf a core unit that much in the middle of the year. Any change to Zealots/Marines/Zerglings are HUGE because they are core units, and affect every match up. They're very likely to address the way Charge works in their end of year changes because they've obviously been looking at it for a while if they were even talking about it in July.
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Ah good to see chargelots still counter the Zerg tech tree
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On August 07 2019 03:30 BRAT_OK wrote:TvP still broken. Its looks like only one guy works in balance team and he playing as protoss, and he very bad at playing. Good job Activision
word up. just thinking about TvP makes me want to throw up
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On August 07 2019 05:12 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2019 05:03 THERIDDLER wrote:
Not doing the warp prism warp prism change was good, but the charge change should've went though. There was never a way they were going to nerf a core unit that much in the middle of the year. Any change to Zealots/Marines/Zerglings are HUGE because they are core units, and affect every match up. They're very likely to address the way Charge works in their end of year changes because they've obviously been looking at it for a while if they were even talking about it in July.
Blizzard never had any problems changing a core unit, unless its terran. Here are all the lotv changes.
Zealot: charge dmg + 8, charge research halved
Stalker: Dmg/cooldown increased
Sentry: guardian shield buffed, hallucination buffed
Zergling: adrenalin increased from 18% to 40%
Hydra: cooldown buff, speed on creep buff, hp buff
roach: burrow movement speed buff, upgrade cost reduced, health regen reduced
Marine: unchanged
Marauder: unchanged (nerfed then reverted)
Medivac: show me 2 games where ppl actually got the upgrade.
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terran buffs: check
protoss nerfs: tones down.
zerg nerfs: added.
am i missing something? was that really the intentioned goal of the upcoming balance patch?
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At full upgrades on both sides, Infested Terran currently does 17.9DPS to BC, after the patch, it will be 9.6DPS a 47% decrease, I think this will help turtle terran way to much in lower leagues, as that composition is much easier to operate than the Zerg counters. At least give us the option to order burrowed infestors to cast fungal, which would result in just that one infestor unburrowing.
Right now, infested terrans are my panic button. If I'm to disorganized, mess up control groups, have some part of army lagging, etc., I just unload bunch of infested terrans. Since they take a while to hatch and are slow, my opponents just back up and wait for their expiration, which gives me time to collect myself, now when they only do half the damage, they could just push through with their A-move composition, so it would be nice if I could at least throw a few fungles w/o exposing all my infestors so that I could run. Plus, it wouldn't hurt the high level balance, since those guys can just do this with their skill.
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On August 07 2019 06:23 batatm wrote:
terran buffs: check
protoss nerfs: tones down.
zerg nerfs: added.
am i missing something? was that really the intentioned goal of the upcoming balance patch?
Is that how you read patchnotes? The intent behind patches is e never "nerf x race and buff y race", it is a thousand times more precise. Like buff x race in a certain situation mid game, decrease the power of a specific build/timing.
Yes I do believe that balancing ZvX lategame was one intention as well as decrease the timing window in PvT for protoss to greed while having map control and harassing terran because of stim delay. WP was also intended to be toned down and it was.
All accordning to plan.
Edit:
On August 07 2019 06:36 MrFreeman wrote:
At full upgrades on both sides, Infested Terran currently does 17.9DPS to BC, after the patch, it will be 9.6DPS a 47% decrease, I think this will help turtle terran way to much in lower leagues, as that composition is much easier to operate than the Zerg counters. At least give us the option to order burrowed infestors to cast fungal, which would result in just that one infestor unburrowing.
Right now, infested terrans are my panic button. If I'm to disorganized, mess up control groups, have some part of army lagging, etc., I just unload bunch of infested terrans. Since they take a while to hatch and are slow, my opponents just back up and wait for their expiration, which gives me time to collect myself, now when they only do half the damage, they could just push through with their A-move composition, so it would be nice if I could at least throw a few fungles w/o exposing all my infestors so that I could run. Plus, it wouldn't hurt the high level balance, since those guys can just do this with their skill.
Yes, zergs do have one massable powerful unit that creates free units at the cost of energy which can be used as a panic button if anything goes wrong. That is the exact reason they are toning infested terrans down, it is too powerful. I don't like the BCs as they are either and believe they are OP as well but at least they have counters. Infestors have 0 counters.
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On August 07 2019 06:41 Shuffleblade wrote:
Yes, zergs do have one massable powerful unit that creates free units at the cost of energy which can be used as a panic button if anything goes wrong. That is the exact reason they are toning infested terrans down, it is too powerful. I don't like the BCs as they are either and believe they are OP as well but at least they have counters. Infestors have 0 counters.
Yes, that is true for Master and GM, but when I'm forced to counter A-move army with micro intensive army, it should either have clear advantage or not be as difficult. I think that if casting making it so that casting Fungal also unburrows the Infestor that is casting it would help, while not messing pro play, as player with good micro can do this already with just his/her skill.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
