StarCraft II Balance Update - November 14, 2019

Lurkers affected by Blinding Cloud will now only fire to melee range.

On November 15 2019 19:15 sneakyfox wrote:
There already is a thread for this topic: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/551651-blizz-proposed-changes-for-post-blizzcon-patch-2019

On November 15 2019 19:20 Cyro wrote:


Thanks, i couldn't find any discussion yesterday and i didn't see the new bumps (bit easier to find but still not frontpage) before i posted this morning.

On November 15 2019 19:53 Harris1st wrote:
The only thing that really bothers me right now is that the patch is a week to late. Would be awesome if it hits on the 19th so players can do some regular laddering before HSC 20

On November 16 2019 02:32 StarscreamG1 wrote:
Please don't remove the Infested Terrans, it's an historic unit.
Disclaimer: I'm a Protoss player that usually whines about Zerg.

Void Ray

New upgrade found on the Fleet Beacon: Flux Vanes
Increases the Void Ray’s movement speed from 3.5 to 4.65.
Increases the Void Ray’s acceleration from 2.8 to 3.76.

On November 16 2019 03:37 Charoisaur wrote:

agreed, new ability looks super situational and gimmicky.
Infested terran was a beautifully designed ability that led to many exciting moments. It was just a little overtuned on the recent patch. Disappointed they go for the nuke option.

On November 16 2019 04:42 Harris1st wrote:


Well the spells effect is that you only attack at melee range, so it's consistent. And making exceptions based on "lore" is making it harder to balance

On November 16 2019 04:33 FFW_Rude wrote:


Have you seen Zerg lately ?

On November 16 2019 08:24 batatm wrote:

that's why i said BALANCE ASIDE, this is about the feeling of freshmess the patch brings to the game.
terran and protoss meet this criteria with several changes that opens up several new possible comps/build orders,
but for zerg it's hardly the case when all they got are nerfs and 2 hive upgrades.

to put it in other words, the changes to protoss and terran are exciting to test and play around with,
but there's not much to tinker with for zerg.

On November 16 2019 10:21 JJH777 wrote:


Pretty much every Zerg unit already had a clear place in the game and was used frequently. The only Zerg unit you could really argue was under utilized was the lurker and that got buffed. Change purely for the sake of change is pointless and bad for the game. Zerg already had by far the most variety in terms of compositions and gameplay styles.

On November 16 2019 03:37 Charoisaur wrote:

agreed, new ability looks super situational and gimmicky.
Infested terran was a beautifully designed ability that led to many exciting moments. It was just a little overtuned on the recent patch. Disappointed they go for the nuke option.

On November 16 2019 12:15 Wombat_NI wrote:

Well it’s not purely for the sake of change, it’s for a reason.

Lurkers are good units, getting a bit of a buff while other things are nerfed. They’re not used much in non ZvZ not because they’re bad units but because Zerg have way better options.

BL/Infestor is shit, hell Infestors as potent and catch-all as they are currently is shit, basically everyone hates it. If Zerg plays as strong but differently basically the entire community is down with that.

On November 16 2019 08:16 Miralem Ibrahim wrote:
Am I the only one who is disappointed by those changes? Like...

terran's change for most of them look like more like "quality of life" changes than actual real changes that change the gameplay of the race? We will see but it really look like it

Majority of Zerg changes are just straight up nerfs with the exception of infested terran (witch is big I admit it) but for the rest ....

Protoss changes really look like change but why did they keep the Observer change?

I don't know but this patch doesn't make me excited for next year personally.

On November 16 2019 03:37 Charoisaur wrote:

agreed, new ability looks super situational and gimmicky.
Infested terran was a beautifully designed ability that led to many exciting moments. It was just a little overtuned on the recent patch. Disappointed they go for the nuke option.

On November 16 2019 04:42 Harris1st wrote:


Well the spells effect is that you only attack at melee range, so it's consistent. And making exceptions based on "lore" is making it harder to balance

The thor effectively got a dps increase since it will be significantly less deeply and spend a lot less time trying to determine what to shoot at.

On November 16 2019 14:53 91matt wrote:


Lurkers are kind of a bad unit tho, they are niche af

On November 16 2019 21:58 BisuDagger wrote:
Can someone explain the reason behind the observer speed changes? Is this considered a nerf or is it because too many people lose their observers due to poor control during an a-move?

On November 16 2019 16:36 washikie wrote:


Some of these things for Terran are more important then they look. I’m really interested to see how the faster but weeker lib range pans out. Having an upgrade moved off the tech lab for a reactored unit is a really big deal for Terran. I’m also interested to see how impactful the blue flame change is, now that it’s cheaper it will make mech and specifically battle mech better since you can now afford a weapon upgrade 2 factories and battle mech units where before you had to cut and the cut that was made was almost always blue flame since it scales really poorly compared to other options. The zealot change can also be considered a change for Terran because of impactful it is for mech and also mech heavy bio. The thor effectively got a dps increase since it will be significantly less deeply and spend a lot less time trying to determine what to shoot at. Also depending on how late game shakes out tvz might evolve to the point that Terran can use reactionary deffensive gameplans because lategame is winnable.

Overall it’s an interesting set of changes that shakes things up for every race while not wrocking the boat to hard.

On November 16 2019 22:26 BisuDagger wrote:

I wish there was a new way for Tanks to defend themselves better against Zerg. They get swallowed up by zerglings and banelings so easily sometimes. As you said with lurkers, they will be another counter to tanks because tanks get occupied by zerglings leading the charge. A way to create a barricade or a bump ability to shove melee units away is one way to fix this. Maybe the non-damaging bump occurs when switching tank modes. But instead of adding anything, I'd love to see map designers take a stab at helping slow moving mech or robo armies.

On November 16 2019 18:54 Lucasmus wrote:
Then you could also argue, maybe hellions and hellbats don't care about hitting friendly units?

On November 17 2019 00:00 Haukinger wrote:


Now that's nice. Maybe Hellions and Hellbats continue to ignore blinding cloud, but make them deal friendly fire. Same for widow mines, why should they be unable to hit other mines (or themselves, that is)?

On November 17 2019 00:42 Slydie wrote:


Please, not this again. My tanks and mines have killed plenty of my own units already.

Storm and banelings justayin',

On November 17 2019 00:49 Z3nith wrote:


You realise storm has friendly fire right?

On November 17 2019 01:10 Hvvacha wrote:
even top terrans said observer is too fast, heromarine said he saw in one of special's game at gsl he wasted 4-5 scans and failed to kill 1 observer lol, artosis made it look like some low leaguers requested it and it got patched...

On November 17 2019 00:42 Slydie wrote:


Please, not this again. My tanks and mines have killed plenty of my own units already.

Storm and banelings justayin',

On November 17 2019 02:23 Haukinger wrote:


Banelings, too, of course. In fact, I'd make _all_ splash make indiscriminately friendly firing.

On November 17 2019 03:40 Kitai wrote:


That sounds like one of the worst ideas ever lol. Can you imagine your opponent killing your baneling in a pack of like 20, setting off a chain reaction that instantly explodes your entire army?

On November 17 2019 01:10 Hvvacha wrote:
even top terrans said observer is too fast, heromarine said he saw in one of special's game at gsl he wasted 4-5 scans and failed to kill 1 observer lol, artosis made it look like some low leaguers requested it and it got patched...

On November 17 2019 06:31 BabelFish1 wrote:


If you're dropping 5 scans on 1 Observer, you dun goofed up. That aint a balance issue.

On November 17 2019 06:41 brickrd wrote:

but terran is the MICRO race! surely terrans can't be miscalculating their marine micro!!

On November 17 2019 06:31 BabelFish1 wrote:


If you're dropping 5 scans on 1 Observer, you dun goofed up. That aint a balance issue.

On November 17 2019 07:32 Hvvacha wrote:


artosis's reasoning behind why it shouldn't be nerfed was: "observers die to 8 range queens all the time"
what is yours?
it's not like toss is having troubles scouting especially after halluc energy buff.

On November 17 2019 07:37 BabelFish1 wrote:


Observers need to be fast for speed banshees and the new crackivacs in the balance patch. They are also gas expensive, can only be produced 1 at a time and serve 3 very specific roles; scouting, detection and spotting for blinking up the high ground.

The queen part is also a valid concern, especially when 10 range Lurkers hit the field once the patch goes through. The Oracle's revelation, while useful, isn't consistent enough to make up for the Observer nerf because it's energy based and has down time.

It aint about the scouting, it's about the detection.

On November 17 2019 07:52 Hvvacha wrote:


speed banshees still faster than observers even with their speed upgrade, against banshees you just siege your obs near mineral line for detection, current observers with speed upgrade are faster than new medivac will be, would be too easy to have constant vision on them don't you think, maybe it's one of the reasons behind obs speed nerf.

On November 17 2019 10:36 General_Winter wrote:
Yeah. I will say that medivavac boost has been a lot more frustrating to my life than observers.

On November 17 2019 10:48 BabelFish1 wrote:


And yet Medivacs are getting buffed. As far as I can tell, the Observer nerf was pure bias.

On November 17 2019 16:32 Cyro wrote:


Have to agree with that. There's a disturbing anti-P bias in much of the community that seems to be influencing Blizzard over hard numbers.

On November 17 2019 18:57 Slydie wrote:


I am convinced top players will find creative ways to abuse both the new chargelots and adepts. I think having to be a bit more careful where you move with your observer is a good thing.

Protoss still has all the aoe options to melt bio armies, but with the emp upgrade it comes down to positioning and who lands their stuff better, which is good imo.

Homestory cup will give us a nice preview of what is to come, but the full effect of the patch will not be clear until later, when new builds and strategies have been refined.

Why the TvP focus? It's near balance for a long time now and nowhere near as big a problem as the zerg matchups which have stomped back to back top level tournaments somewhat unfairly.

So... Zerg is getting multiple big nerfs to the mentioned lategame

Sorry, I don't follow.

TvP was eavily P favored over the last 2 years.

On November 18 2019 02:25 Cyro wrote:


Source?

On November 18 2019 04:55 BabelFish1 wrote:


They don't have one, it's more fringe Terran whinging.

On November 18 2019 14:54 ThunderJunk wrote:
I just don't want Flux Vanes. Why the hell are they bringing back Flux Vanes.

On November 18 2019 14:50 Sabu113 wrote:
Terrans have whined about sc2 from the start despite benefitting from several severe imbalances in their favor from design. The blizzard balance team just isn’t that good at their jobs.

On November 19 2019 08:34 BisuDagger wrote:
Voidray's should have increased speed inside pylon or warp prism power. Imagine going WP void ray and entering warp in state to not only add ground units but increase the offensive micro potential of voidrays. No upgrade needed and I would welcome the synergy between robots and stargate. I also like how defensively it would be impactful too.

On November 19 2019 09:50 BisuDagger wrote:

Yeah. That's one way to look at it.


As a side question, how come photon cannons dont scale with upgrades? They could be great in the late game for defense if they did scale.

On November 19 2019 10:22 BisuDagger wrote:

Yeah, maybe it should match the armor upgrades instead.

On November 19 2019 08:34 BisuDagger wrote:
Voidray's should have increased speed inside pylon or warp prism power. Imagine going WP void ray and entering warp in state to not only add ground units but increase the offensive micro potential of voidrays. No upgrade needed and I would welcome the synergy between robots and stargate. I also like how defensively it would be impactful too.

So like a shitty version of creep?

Yeah. That's one way to look at it.

On November 19 2019 10:22 BisuDagger wrote:

Yeah, maybe it should match the armor upgrades instead.

On November 19 2019 20:03 Harris1st wrote:


I thought the late game upgrade for cannons are 2 shield batteries beside it? ^_^

On November 19 2019 08:34 BisuDagger wrote:
Voidray's should have increased speed inside pylon or warp prism power. Imagine going WP void ray and entering warp in state to not only add ground units but increase the offensive micro potential of voidrays. No upgrade needed and I would welcome the synergy between robots and stargate. I also like how defensively it would be impactful too.

On November 19 2019 20:51 BisuDagger wrote:

You're missing the beta version where you can warp cannons to other pylon locations.

On November 17 2019 06:16 DSh1 wrote:


That would be funny :D

On November 17 2019 09:54 Ben... wrote:
I thought the observer speed buff was reasonable because the previous speed was from a time when maps were tiny compared to how they are today. It made sense that observers be a bit faster because it would otherwise take them much longer to get across the map or move between bases.

It's somewhat akin to how they boosted the speed of overlords once maps started to get bigger. When the game first came out, overlords were incredibly slow, but as maps got bigger overlords could be less and less relied upon for scouting because it took forever for them to cross the map, which put zerg at a scouting disadvantage.

And yes, I agree with everyone saying their stated reason for reverting the observer change is bad. There's tons of cases in the game where someone just barely misses something, and it's no different with observers. By that logic they should nerf DT speed too because sometimes terrans don't get them with one scan or remove medivac boost because they often get away with one shot of health left when being defended. It's silly.

On November 20 2019 09:36 Pentarp wrote:


So, are we making scans bigger too since the maps are getting bigger?

The Protoss QQ in this thread is delicious. The same reaction when EMP buff was introduced. Cry me a river.

On November 20 2019 09:53 Wombat_NI wrote:

EMP buff is pretty big. Plus the charge nerf is pretty big.

Might work out in a better and more dynamic matchup, stilll pretty sizeable nerfs.

If you want to characterise the least whiny race of the 3 in the game by as whiners by all means go ahead though, don’t think I’ll be alone in thinking you’re talking shit

On November 20 2019 09:36 Pentarp wrote:


So, are we making scans bigger too since the maps are getting bigger?

The Protoss QQ in this thread is delicious. The same reaction when EMP buff was introduced. Cry me a river.

On November 20 2019 11:15 Ben... wrote:

I wasn't whining at all. I was just pointing out why I thought the initial change made sense since it followed similar logic to past scouting-based changes, and how their reasoning for walking back the change was bad because it seemed subjective in a way they usually aren't.

The only person with a hostile tone right now in this thread is you. There's no need for that.

On November 20 2019 09:53 Wombat_NI wrote:
If you want to characterise the least whiny race of the 3 in the game by as whiners by all means go ahead though, don’t think I’ll be alone in thinking you’re talking shit

On November 20 2019 18:04 Harris1st wrote:
Well, if there was a ladder for whining, Terran surely is miles ahead of the other two.

Observers are mainly to detect invisible units and drops/ attacks and scouting (specially in the early to midgame) has to be done with either oracles or sentrys so that doesn't change

On November 20 2019 11:28 Pentarp wrote:




Are you sure?

On November 20 2019 22:02 Wombat_NI wrote:

It is somewhat bizarre that Protoss have the only unit that is designed purely for scouting and info and it’s not great in that capacity anymore. Even pre speed nerf if that goes through, tech paths in Legacy are set quicker and it takes ages to traverse some maps.

Luckily Protoss has other decent options, but still. Really don’t understand this nerf to speed, especially with the Raven getting a speed boost.

On November 20 2019 23:37 MockHamill wrote:
Are observers the only unit Blizzard intentionally made more F2 friendly?

Normally Blizzard tries to balance for pro level, but Blizzard made observers more F2 friendly which is balancing for gold level. Has anything like that happened before? Blizzard intentionally trying to balance the game for low level gameplay?

Blizzard intentionally trying to balance the game for low level gameplay?

On November 16 2019 04:40 SC-Shield wrote:


I know balance patches aren't for team games, but this will make team games even less enjoyable. Games will be full of noobs who mass void rays and run away with super fast void rays. Also, "team games don't matter" is bad attitude because most people play casual StarCraft (custom games and team games), so if you demotivate these people, there will be even less people playing. So I thought the goal wasn't to have less players than games of competitors.

Even for 1vs1, this change doesn't make much sense. Most protoss players at high level rarely make void rays, especially after fleet beacon. And when it's that late in game, it's likely they'll use recall to escape instead. It will be unlikely such people would have mass void ray army, but instead they'll also have tempests and carriers which can't fly away as fast as this void ray upgrade. Totally useless idea both for 1vs1 and team games if you ask me.

On November 16 2019 16:36 hiroshOne wrote:
But the alternative they propose to Zerg means this race will be raped in lategame. +1 Lurkers won't cut it without proper lategame antiair. Especially hiw Protoss air has been buffed with VoidRays. Corruptors will do shit, and this new spell from Infestor is just a gimick. Destroying balance in other way is not fixing anything.

On November 20 2019 23:49 Cyro wrote:


F2 friendly? Are you referring to the deploy mode that they put on obs and overseers? That deploy is used plenty by pros without having anything to do with the select all units command.

Even for 1vs1, this change doesn't make much sense. Most protoss players at high level rarely make void rays, especially after fleet beacon. And when it's that late in game, it's likely they'll use recall to escape instead. It will be unlikely such people would have mass void ray army, but instead they'll also have tempests and carriers which can't fly away as fast as this void ray upgrade. Totally useless idea both for 1vs1 and team games if you ask me.

On November 20 2019 23:54 MockHamill wrote:


Yeah it is used by pro players but the reason for making the change was to help F2 players not moving their observers

Observer

New ability "Surveillance Mode."
Increases vision by 25% and immobilizes the observer.

Overseer

New ability "Oversight"
Increases vision by 25% and immobilizes the Overseer.

It so strange compared to the rest of the balance history. Blizzard always tries to balance for pro level, this is the only time I think where Blizzard made changes in order to help gold levels, which also had some impact on pro level.

On November 16 2019 21:27 Liquid`Ret wrote:
Considering this is an end of the year big patch the changes are really underwhelming. I get that zerg needed nerfs, but none of the gameplay changes are going to make the game more fun from what I can imagine.

When serral won blizzcon in 2018 I thought the game was really good to be honest. Balance wise as well as fun to play. The changes for 2019 were bad, and it really had it's impact on the whole year for tournaments for SC.

At this point I'd rather just go back to the 2018 patch than all these weird changes we have now.

On November 21 2019 00:10 LSN wrote:


Considering the fact that new generations don't grow up that much with computers anymore but instead with smartphones and probably still consoles, making the game more fun, which is as well something concerning me, means to make it more fun for an aging target group.

For this target group it will get less and less fun to have click speed (or pure mechanics) be translated into skill but instead things like decision making.

And that in the end means to take away the speed of the game at several different points. People are eager to find the old RTS gameplay of Age of Empires back, where matches could last hours upon hours. Ok, lets not ovedo it, but as well broodwar was a way less fast paced game than SC2 is too in reaching late games as in fights itself, which took way longer and gave more time to micro and make a difference than SC2 stim storm splash done, where pre fight setup (positioning) have a bigger impact than it probably should.

Overall, what I want to say is, making SC2 a more fun game wont probably be possible in the tight corset of a 10 to 15 minute gameplay, which it now is on average.

On November 21 2019 00:54 Slydie wrote:


I actually think they got that part right, even a 15 min game is long these days, it is 3-4 times as much as the average phone game takes. Even older people spend seconds scanning though stuff on the internet, often missing out on important details.

I don't think building workers and buildings is that fun and they did an effort to make sure race race has some early game scermish options.

Every WOL vod starting up with casters trying to talked about something interesting outside of the game got old pretty fast...

Every WOL vod starting up with casters trying to talked about something interesting outside of the game got old pretty fast...

On November 21 2019 04:41 BonitiilloO wrote:
So. After couple of days with this patch waht is the consensus? Are match more even or something got broken? How are matchups working out now?

On November 21 2019 04:47 Ben... wrote:

The patch isn't live yet. That will happen next Tuesday. Homestory Cup will be held on it this weekend so we'll see then.

On November 21 2019 00:54 Slydie wrote:


I actually think they got that part right, even a 15 min game is long these days, it is 3-4 times as much as the average phone game takes. Even older people spend seconds scanning though stuff on the internet, often missing out on important details.

I don't think building workers and buildings is that fun and they did an effort to make sure race race has some early game scermish options.

Every WOL vod starting up with casters trying to talked about something interesting outside of the game got old pretty fast...

On November 21 2019 05:06 BabelFish1 wrote:


I'm convinced it's going to be massively Terran favored. TvZ might be balanced but TvP is looking like it's going to be hilariously broken in favor of Terran. Chargelots were needed to hold allins from the Terran. Without them and with 11 second Interference Matrix and with a massive buff to ranged Liberator production...I don't see what Protoss is going to do other than cheese every game or lose to Terran 2 base allins.

HSC will show for sure.

On November 21 2019 06:00 deacon.frost wrote:

And today that's not happening. Wait, it is! So what did we really achieve? Shorter games and?


IMO HSC is too early after the patch, so it won't tell that much, late December or January would tell more.

On November 21 2019 05:06 BabelFish1 wrote:


I'm convinced it's going to be massively Terran favored. TvZ might be balanced but TvP is looking like it's going to be hilariously broken in favor of Terran. Chargelots were needed to hold allins from the Terran. Without them and with 11 second Interference Matrix and with a massive buff to ranged Liberator production...I don't see what Protoss is going to do other than cheese every game or lose to Terran 2 base allins.

HSC will show for sure.

On November 21 2019 07:38 Wombat_NI wrote:

HSC will IMO merely showcase what trying to play old styles in PvT will look like on the new patch, which IMO sees Protoss getting pounded.

I think we need some time for Protoss to adjust before we can make judgements. As it stands Terrans can basically play like they do now when the patch hits, but that will be outright better vs Protoss players playing like they are now.

I really do not see the current standard macro flow of Protoss powering hardcore with an early 3rd being nearly as hard to punish as it is now, and Protoss have played like that for a long time. It’ll always take longer for a race to completely adjust stylistically to a patch than their opponents who will be able to have the same basic game plans only ‘better’

So I think HSC will be interesting to observe for sure but too soon after the patch to really be conclusive about how PvT looks in the longer term

On November 21 2019 07:55 BabelFish1 wrote:


My main concern is that with Terran's 2 base allins getting buffed, their raven timings being buffed and with charge being nerfed...how is Protoss supposed to even take a 3rd? You can;t build it in your main and float it, you can't open with a Nexi or even go gate expand without severe risk, unlike zerg who can go expand pool, pool expand or pool double expand with no issues of being allin'd as a result.

Charge was the lynch pin and with an 11 second IM, Protoss aren't allowed to use other lynch pins.

Annnd then there's the Adept and Observer nerfs...

On November 21 2019 08:14 JJH777 wrote:
I don't see how the Raven change is a buff to TvP timings. It is a 3 second increase in exchange for 25 more energy. That is a nerf. Terran is only going to have 1 interference matrix per Raven when attacking now.

On November 21 2019 08:20 Wombat_NI wrote:

It’s a buff I think.

Raven timings are almost always specifically anti-collosus timings, you’re not trying to hit one when the Protoss has 3-4 of them, so in that scenario it’s more beneficial to have them disabled for longer than being able to disable units that don’t exist.

Protoss: Please don't forget that you need a fusion core to get liberator range now.

On November 21 2019 10:46 Cyro wrote:


Fusion Core has been a requirement to research Liberator range for years.

This puts the research on a building that was formerly sitting there idle rather than forcing your starport onto a tech lab, so it's removing a formerly necessary production bottleneck.

Medivac upgrade is also being moved to there and buffed so we're likely to see a lot more of it (fusion core double dip for lib+medivac upgrades is a lot more attractive than techlabbing your starport for ages and building a fusion core anyway..)

On November 22 2019 00:49 MockHamill wrote:
ZvP will still be Zerg favored, but less so than now.

On November 23 2019 17:30 Tyrhanius wrote:

How you come to this conclusion ? In HSC the winrate of Zerg in ZvP is 34.3%...And I haven't seen all the match, but from what i've seen soO and Serral weren't able to beat skytoss.

On November 23 2019 18:45 SC3:UED Returns wrote:
Blizzard done got @utism? It's called add reavers to the gaem. Also, Robotics needs a unit that hits air. Chr1st, it's not that hard. No one likes being forced to build stalkers. Dragoons did more damage and also were 100/80 (more durable).

Stalkers are not worth it spamming at 50 gas cost with so many other things needed. Oh, but only stalkers hit air so. Any true fan of SC knows the amount of upgrades Fleet Beacon had to choose from. Not to mention the wealth of upgrades available at Templar Archives.

No one likes tempests. Yet all they do is keep changing it. Carrier had 4 base armor in BW. Someone is very uncreative on the SC2 team at Blizzard. Really; it's a shame what they have done to protoss in this game.

On November 23 2019 17:30 Tyrhanius wrote:

How you come to this conclusion ? In HSC the winrate of Zerg in ZvP is 34.3%...And I haven't seen all the match, but from what i've seen soO and Serral weren't able to beat skytoss.

On November 23 2019 20:17 MockHamill wrote:
We will see though, no pro player have really adapted to the new patch yet, give it a couple of months first.

On November 23 2019 21:35 Tyrhanius wrote:


Skytoss is OP since 9 years period. If they remove any counter, Zerg won't find a solution for a problem that exists since WOL.

IT nerf ? Fine, do the same to carriers ! In HOTS, it was alike = SH vs skytoss. They killed SH, they don't nerf skytoss = skytoss was invincible.

So no we don't need months to figure out, actually this change shouldn't have been done because it's silly... But yeah if you're Protoss i guess you want to enjoy free wins for months, but it's not how balance should work, not "make my race OP" because i play it, but make the game balanced for all race.

Not to mention mass carrier is also horrible design, casters mention how boring were the games with skytoss.

Expect to see 3+ midgame Nydus worms. Now that zerg has a timer aka before Uber-skytoss, zergs will be desperate to end games sooner. When every toss gets 5 pronged attacks with siege lurkers. I predict the issues of before will reemerge

On November 23 2019 21:52 Tyrhanius wrote:

Let's be honest the only interesting part of SC2 is mid game, early is just droning/soft harass, lategame is just deathball.

Lategame has never been balanced because you can win in midgame at pro level, but the majority of the players have to play lategame.

And lategame is terrible to play on SC2, in TvZ Terran is camping under turett/PF/liberator/ghost, Zerg is camping under spores/broodlords/infestor/viper, Protoss is camping under photon/shield skytoss/archons/HT.

These composition should be nerfed, and we should have a never ending midgame where after constant actions and fights and one of the two players ends up to take the advantage and wins.

But what is happening, is the one who wins, is the one who manages to get his deathball, even if he stayed passive the whole game and achieved nothing. What changed from patch to patch is just who has the strongest deathball in lategame...

On November 24 2019 03:57 SC3:UED Returns wrote:
And please, return the 60 shield zealot. Instead they would rather endlessly change charge. Or blink research time.

Giving the viking mechanical damage is madness. And what happened to the robotics classification? Let robotic units be classified as robotic. As it was in SC1. Why can't protoss repair? Shields supposedly. At least let them keep their unique robotics class.

On November 23 2019 21:35 Tyrhanius wrote:


Skytoss is OP since 9 years period. If they remove any counter, Zerg won't find a solution for a problem that exists since WOL.

IT nerf ? Fine, do the same to carriers ! In HOTS, it was alike = SH vs skytoss. They killed SH, they don't nerf skytoss = skytoss was invincible.

So no we don't need months to figure out, actually this change shouldn't have been done because it's silly... But yeah if you're Protoss i guess you want to enjoy free wins for months, but it's not how balance should work, not "make my race OP" because i play it, but make the game balanced for all race.

Not to mention mass carrier is also horrible design, casters mention how boring were the games with skytoss.

On November 24 2019 08:07 JJH777 wrote:


They did nerf skytoss. Carriers are way worse than they were last time mass carrier with HTs was good... Did everyone forget about the carrier nerfs 1 year ago? DPS is way lower and interceptors are produced a lot slower. Even with the recent buff to interceptor build time it's still slower than it was before.

On November 23 2019 21:24 Wombat_NI wrote:

The patch isn’t even live yet, it’s early. I didn’t see a huge amount of games just yet, I haven’t seen much lurker play or the ‘not dark swarm’ ability yet, which are at least meant to fill those gaps.

Plus in groups there are some real real mismatches too.

I don’t think Zerg beats skytoss playing the old way though for sure.

Stats is a long term strategic genius. Wasn’t alone in watching many games going ‘why are you playing for the late game, you’ll will lose’ and he did a lot, but he’s got a hell of a lot of practice almost making it work so now he’s got a lot of practice in a patch where it’s going to be much more viable.

On November 24 2019 17:02 Geo.Rion wrote:

I dont think we'll see a serious strategy designed around the new infestor ability. Someone might get it for the meme value, but the very early consensus seems to be it's less than viable.

I still kinda think Zerg needs to double down on the old way, if it wants to go toe-to-toe in lategame, or just sidestep and try to end it in midgame/ get an insurmountable lead. I think it needs even more spores, less infestors, but some for chain fungals, vipers, some lurkers to bolster the spores and the rest just corruptors.
I dont see any "new way" of dealing with the improved Skytoss, like hydra-infestor or anything along those lines.
Obviously im no pro, it's still very early to call but that's how i see it.

Stats did very poorly for the past 4-5 months, not sure what's up, but he seems to be struggling past his ASUS win. Earlier this year he threw the IEM finals hardcore, by going for that super-weird, super-bad 3 stalker+warprism opening 4 times in a row, for reasons unknown.

On November 21 2019 05:06 BabelFish1 wrote:


I'm convinced it's going to be massively Terran favored. TvZ might be balanced but TvP is looking like it's going to be hilariously broken in favor of Terran. Chargelots were needed to hold allins from the Terran. Without them and with 11 second Interference Matrix and with a massive buff to ranged Liberator production...I don't see what Protoss is going to do other than cheese every game or lose to Terran 2 base allins.

HSC will show for sure.

On November 24 2019 20:20 SC3:UED Returns wrote:
...

On November 25 2019 04:34 rasi86 wrote:
Let's see what the patch brings when it is live for a couple of weeks. Still quite worried about Toss being too bad after the latest changes, since PvT now seems to favour Terran and Nydus/SH in PvZ is still pretty big of a threat.

But actually we need to figure out how things work, HSC ain't too much of a sample since most guys likely relied on the common builds, even though they played test mod.

On November 25 2019 05:09 xongnox wrote:
if i understand this correctly, we currently have :
- Mana is 3rd best performing foreigner at HSC, destroying way higer-ranked terans players (Special, Taeja, Heromarine, even doing 1-1 vs Innovation )
- PvT at 64% favouring protoss at HSC.
(-Z Still owning hard after a few days learning new meta ?)

But you guys already assume T > P ??? What do peoples smoke here ? (i want the same)

On November 25 2019 05:09 xongnox wrote:
if i understand this correctly, we currently have :
- Mana is 3rd best performing foreigner at HSC, destroying way higer-ranked terans players (Special, Taeja, Heromarine, even doing 1-1 vs Innovation )
- PvT at 64% favouring protoss at HSC.
(-Z Still owning hard after a few days learning new meta ?)

But you guys already assume T > P ??? What do peoples smoke here ? (i want the same)

On November 25 2019 05:09 xongnox wrote:
if i understand this correctly, we currently have :
- Mana is 3rd best performing foreigner at HSC, destroying way higer-ranked terans players (Special, Taeja, Heromarine, even doing 1-1 vs Innovation )
- PvT at 64% favouring protoss at HSC.
(-Z Still owning hard after a few days learning new meta ?)

But you guys already assume T > P ??? What do peoples smoke here ? (i want the same)

On November 25 2019 06:14 LTCM wrote:
Sure it't only one tournament, but we can say for sure that Skytoss is absolutely still UP verse Zerg. I cannot believe people are still complaining about Toss when we literally have a ZvZ going on and not one toss in the top three even though they brought their best players.

On November 25 2019 07:41 Aesto wrote:
In my eyes, LotV fundamentally tilted the PvZ matchup in favor of the Zerg (even more than HotS PvZ was inherently Protoss-favored), and no nerf to whatever happens to be the current Zerg flavor of the month will change that.

In WoL and HotS, Protoss could
1) Compete economically on fewer bases
2) Trade cost-efficiently & beat a larger army with a smaller one
3) Keep the Zerg out of the Protoss base through the wall-off
4) Prevent Zerg greed just through the POTENTIAL of Protoss bullshit

In LotV:
1) Minerals per base reduced, benefiting the Zerg's ability to expand more
2) Ravagers, Banelings, Lurkers. In HotS, Protoss could handily win engagements where they were 30 supply or more down. Now that Zerg has a way to counter Force Fields and AoE damage of their own, even fights on even supply can sometimes be Zerg-favored.
3) Swarmhost, Nydus; also Overlord drops in early LotV.
4) To the top Zergs, Protoss bullshit just isn't scary anymore. The reason PvZ was more balanced in earlier LotV is because Glaive Adepts, mass Oracles, Immortal all-ins, etc. forced the Zerg to be less greedy. Now, all of those have been nerfed or figured out. Just look at game 2 between Serral and Zest, he took no damage from unscouted DTs with no Spores. In HotS, if Zerg didn't scout Protoss bullshit before it even moved out of their base, the Zerg was dead. Now, Protoss has to take risks with tech just to be even, never mind get ahead.

HotS PvZ was Protoss favored (also just SO much more FRUSTRATING for Zerg), so Blizzard had to do something, but imo things have just swung a bit too far in the other direction. This is coming from someone who plays both races, and generally enjoys the PvZ matchup the most for both races, no matter how well I do in it.

On November 25 2019 08:47 Slydie wrote:
As expected, one would have to nerf zerg massively to keep Serral and Reynor out of finals, but it wasn't like they didn't drop any maps along the way!

On November 25 2019 10:32 xongnox wrote:


Well in fact TvZ has fundamentally the same issue : with good players, most of the time, Zerg just simply begin too good in early and early-mid game.

• Then they can either go 90+drones Tier2+ (like tier2+viper+cracklings, or lurker/viper play, etc..) and multi-prong/attack/trade ban'rolling for 10 minutes, until exhaustion of their adversaries who can not take and defend a 5th/6th base. Creep and nydus helps a lot, but are not indispensable per se. Creep here is mostly useful for vision and slowing down opponent push while doing huge back-stabs.
  
  
• Or if they have a good T3 deathball in the matchup(+map), they can rush it on a weak mid-tier army (mostly ravagers/banes, or ling/banes vT ..) + 8 queens + mass reproduction if opponent attack, playing defensive on creep with light run-bys. Creep is super usefull first for defensive advantage if opponent commit to an attack, and than for speed+vision (mobility) + spores once you get Broods.
  
  

In either case, the play is strong thanks first to the early and early-mid game putting Z ahead. More drones, less infrastructure to pay, way more vision and scouting, capacity to react thanks to larvae+scouting, etc. So if you have a 'broken' death-ball you can go for it, but as we see more and more it's not even necessary, any semi-decently T2+ trading army can do the job fine when you begin the game with such an advantage.

So yes, while nerfing a bit nydus and infestors and BL seems good, Z still is super strong because nothing at all have changed early-game. Still we got way more dynamic and fun games, that's nice !....
....but not really balanced when Z can shift-click all the game dozens of perfectly defended banes in minerals lines (until at the 14th attempt even a Korean Starcraft God make one mistake and a +2 bane kills 22 probes and win the game ), but if T/P make half an error (i.e not perfect execution on prism/medivacs/anti-banes micro) and loose all chances to win.

Still it was the good way to go. Nerf design-horrors such as imba deathballs first. Then when people play a real game with real units we can adjust balance way more easily : one could try to nerf early-game Z (queens ? creep ? spores ? queen anti-air ? roach warren requiring 50 gaz ? they are many many ways), and maybe nerf some zerg units (the baneling ? maybe the +hp buff were a bit too much for same price ?) if it is not enough.

On November 25 2019 19:24 Harris1st wrote:
Zerg is in general more reactionary, so it's no surpirse they did best on the new patch. P and T need to experiment some more with the patch and builds.
So far I am happy with the patch

Nydus got toned down and super late game ZvP seems good without IT's. Papa Thor is powerful!

On November 25 2019 19:46 darklycid wrote:

Isn't it normally the other way around and zerg does worse on new patches as they have to figure out how to react right versus the new stuff that comes?

On November 25 2019 20:36 highsis wrote:
Serral vs Zest late games left me speechless. So Zerg resource lost was like 5~8k minerals less when Zerg is the race with initiatives in more expansions, resources, replenishment, harass defense and harass. Zerg 200 should be at very least weaker than protoss and terran. It was so sad to watch.

On November 26 2019 08:10 Snakestyle11 wrote:
Broodlords cant attack air, BCS can teleport, shoot while moving, yamato. Tempests are fast and can recall, carriers can recall and attack ground and air... Ultralisks also cant attack air. Corruptors, also a super boring unit. Abduct is terrible design, neural is also impossible to balance

On November 26 2019 08:59 BisuDagger wrote:
Was there anything in the patch that actually helped Inno in his wins vs Serral?