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Multiplayer Changes: https://starcraft2.com/en-us/news/23230078
Adept
Resonating Glaives upgrade effects reverted. The Resonating Glaives upgrade will now increase the attack speed of Adepts by 45%.
Infestor
Microbial Shroud radius increased from 3 to 3.5. Microbial Shroud energy cost reduced from 100 to 75. Removed the Hive research requirement from Microbial Shroud.
Community Update: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/sc2/t/community-update-december-17-2019/6602
Hey everyone,
It’s been a few weeks since the 2019 post-BlizzCon changes went live, and before the year comes to a close, we’d like to take some time to review the changes we’ve made and the resulting games we’ve seen so far. Some notable tournaments we’ve been paying attention to include Nation Wars, WESG qualifiers, and of course, HomeStory Cup XX.
One of the hot topics of 2019 was the Nydus Worm, and based on the games we’ve seen so far, we feel pretty good about its level of use and its effectiveness when used. Nydus and Nydus/Swarm Host usage has generally decreased in ZvP, which we believe is caused by both changes to the Nydus Worm and the map pool. And when Nydus Worms are used in the matchup, we feel a lot better about the new level of difficulty by which Protoss has to fight them. Meanwhile, while we’re seeing less direct Nydus aggression in ZvT, we do see increased Nydus/Swarm Host usage, which we attribute to a spike in the popularity of mech play.
Another popular topic of discussion in 2019 was the strength of Infestor/Brood Lord and the resulting passive endgames it caused. With the changes made to both these units in the post-BlizCon patch, we believe the late-games that we see are a lot more dynamic, and small decisions in the late-game feel more impactful to the end result of the game.
In general, when it comes to balance, especially late-game balance, we believe it’ll take quite a bit more time before we can come to any definitive conclusions. Not only are sample sizes small, the styles players are using are more divergent from each other than usual, reflective of a meta after a big patch. For now, our focus is on the end-game dynamics of each matchup with special focus on units that we changed recently including the Liberator, Thor, Lurker, and Infestor. With that said, we’d like to make two design-motivated adjustments.
Adept
- Resonating Glaives upgrade effects reverted. The Resonating Glaives upgrade will now increase the attack speed of Adepts by 45%.
We tried a new version of the Resonated Glaives upgrade with the goals of moving it away from the front-line pusher and emphasizing the coolness of the Shade Projection ability. However, it ran into some oddities in practice. For example, in the heat of battle, it took away from the interesting mind-game of whether the Shade would be canceled, because the Adept user is so highly incentivized to finish their Shade. It also created awkward scenarios where Adept users are encouraged to Shade onto themselves in the middle of a fight. For these reasons, we’d like to revert this change to the Adept.
Infestor
- Microbial Shroud radius increased from 3 to 3.5
- Microbial Shroud energy cost reduced from 100 to 75.
- Removed the Hive research requirement from Microbial Shroud.
As a general rule, we try to tune new skills and abilities to be on the strong side when we initially introduce them to promote experimentation. With Microbial Shroud, we probably didn’t go far enough, leading to its low use in tournament games. The changes introduced here are geared towards increasing accessibility and moderating the effectiveness of enemy area-of-effect abilities against Shrouds.
Both changes should go live with an upcoming update on Tuesday, December 17, PST. Let us know what you think on any community site, thanks for your feedback, and happy holidays!
-StarCraft II Team
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To quote my good friend Alarak: "Oh dear ... I had expected so much more".
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Adept revert is surprisingly fast, but not unexpected and definitely called for. I'm sure the Shroud buff will please Penev.
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It's about time they gave zerg something to use in lategame
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Thats actually a Zerg nerf and might trick zerg into wasting energy on shroud.
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Canada8988 Posts
Jesus I can't beleive they are buffing shroud, I have literaly never seen a single zerg lose a game once they start using it.
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I would love to see zerg get the ability to permanently mind control a worker, like in BW. It was always very entertaining when it happened, so I don't know why the dev team decided to leave that out of SC2. Please incorporate to SC2. It probably won't get used much at all in tournaments, but crowds would literally stain their pants if they ever see Serral control zerg armies with terran units sprinkled in.
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Canada8988 Posts
On December 18 2019 12:38 tigon_ridge wrote: I would love to see zerg get the ability to permanently mind control a worker, like in BW. It was always very entertaining when it happened, so I don't know why the dev team decided to leave that out of SC2. Please incorporate to SC2. It probably won't get used much at all in tournaments, but crowds would literally stain their pants if they ever see Serral control zerg armies with terran units sprinkled in.
You can neural a worker and build a town hall tho, dosen't really work vs Terran since a cc take longer to build that the neural so you need to chain neural but vs P you can do it
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I'm glad they're reverting the adept change. I'm a bit surprised they did it so quickly, but it was blatantly obvious that adepts were significantly worse with the glaives change. They were useless defensively, and only basically only useful for coin flip all-ins where you hoped the opponent would be caught off guard by them. At least now they will have some of their utility in early-midgame PvZ back.
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We're going to regret the Shroud buff.
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On December 18 2019 12:25 Nakajin wrote: Jesus I can't beleive they are buffing shroud, I have literaly never seen a single zerg lose a game once they start using it.
Triggered. 
On December 18 2019 11:44 Snakestyle11 wrote: Thats actually a Zerg nerf and might trick zerg into wasting energy on shroud.
Damnit man lmao
Whats logic behind the adept revert though, cause it was useless if they canceled shade? I thought that was the point. A canceled shade shouldnt be just as strong as a finished shade, theres' gotta be SOME drawback.
Oh wait, no there doesnt. This is Protoss we're talking here.

User was warned for this post.
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On December 18 2019 13:30 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2019 12:38 tigon_ridge wrote: I would love to see zerg get the ability to permanently mind control a worker, like in BW. It was always very entertaining when it happened, so I don't know why the dev team decided to leave that out of SC2. Please incorporate to SC2. It probably won't get used much at all in tournaments, but crowds would literally stain their pants if they ever see Serral control zerg armies with terran units sprinkled in. You can neural a worker and build a town hall tho, dosen't really work vs Terran since a cc take longer to build that the neural so you need to chain neural but vs P you can do it
In BW you get separate supply which is pretty big. Though even then you only saw it in pro games once in a blue moon.
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On December 18 2019 12:25 Nakajin wrote: Jesus I can't beleive they are buffing shroud, I have literaly never seen a single zerg lose a game once they start using it.
Can't tell if you are serious or not ^^ I have never seen shroud used in a pro game, ever
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Russian Federation377 Posts
Finally zerg winrate will get to 100%, much needed buff :D
To be honest, something should be nerfed in order to match the buff.
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On December 18 2019 17:51 RandomPlayer wrote:To be honest, something should be nerfed in order to match the buff.
...why? That spell is hardly used yet and I'm not sure why it's locked behind an upgrade to begin with. Comparing shroud with infested terran it's a straight up nerf.
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Canada8988 Posts
On December 18 2019 17:23 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2019 12:25 Nakajin wrote: Jesus I can't beleive they are buffing shroud, I have literaly never seen a single zerg lose a game once they start using it. Can't tell if you are serious or not ^^ I have never seen shroud used in a pro game, ever
Well I never said I had seen a zerg win a game after using it
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It's fine to Buff The Shroud to see how it works in top games, but still... they are actually buffing zerg casters here, which seems crazy considering their current level of power.
That said, there can still be many changes and they are not saying this is the final update.
For now, our focus is on the end-game dynamics of each matchup with special focus on units that we changed recently including the Liberator, Thor, Lurker, and Infestor.
I really think they should add the Viper to that list.
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