5.0.14 Patch Goes Live (Nov 25)

We have heard major concerns from multiple professional Terran players about the Ghost nerf, and there wasn't full alignment among Balance Council members regarding this change.

On November 26 2024 11:13 luxon wrote:
even as the game's pro circuit is over, (foreigner) terrans refuse to budge an inch to let protoss players win the 200 bucks left in the circuit. lol. my king clement refusing to let anyone else pocket rotti's $100

On November 26 2024 12:25 BlackEyed wrote:
Now I'm really afraid for Starcraft. The future of the game has been entrusted not just to untalented people, but to untalented people who can't even agree among themselves. Untalented people who push their personal desires. And in the end, instead of solving problems, they look for some kind of compromises between each other. It's better to leave the game alone and not touch it at all, if there is no way to deal with it adequately and impartially.
Blizzard, come to your senses.

On November 26 2024 13:57 Antithesis wrote:
I just placed a 16 hatch 2 seconds before the probe arrived. Feelsgoodman.


Terrans, perhaps, but not Clem. There was a recent translation of Oliveira's feedback on the patch according to which Clem was one of the few terrans who didn't mind the ghost nerf because he can still outplay zergs like no one else. Also, Clem deserves credit for being one of the few terrans admitting the ghost's op'ness.

On November 26 2024 23:07 DarkGamer wrote:
Edit: and now a zvz final on the new patch in a 1000 dollar tournament. balance cant be that bad
-> https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/OlimoLeague/2024/November

On November 26 2024 22:40 Moonerz wrote:
Would have liked a more targeted TvP ghost nerf. Like emps can't effect the same unit twice within a certain period or whatever.

Zergs crying about their t3 units getting countered by ghost. Sorry it's not a free win when you get your t3 units.

What else in the t army matches up well against late game zerg units? It's just a consequence of making that one unit so critical to terran. Siege tanks/libs owned by vipers.

Community Council Comment: We have heard major concerns from multiple professional Terran players about the Ghost nerf, and there wasn't full alignment among Balance Council members regarding this change. However, we also believe that proceeding with this change was desired by the community, so we would like to move forward with the Ghost supply nerf for 5.0.14 while continuing to carefully monitor its effects in both the Terran versus Zerg and Terran versus Protoss matchups.

Community Council Comment: With the Mothership no longer being abductable and the overall late-game Protoss army being stronger after the Tempest change, we are concerned about the potential state of the Zerg versus Protoss late game across different levels of play. We received suggestions for some experimental changes to address this matchup, but they would require extensive testing, which would significantly delay the release of the patch. Therefore, we will not proceed with any experimental changes for now and will carefully monitor the state of this matchup going forward.

On November 27 2024 00:33 Mizenhauer wrote:
It's beyond amazing that after 8 years no one has any idea what the cylcone is supposed to do. The lock on concept sucks, the auto shooting version sucks, and all the tinkering hasn't made it a more interesting unit. The unit is awful design wise and there is no way to make them interesting while being playable (not op and not awful). The game would just be better off without it.

On November 26 2024 13:07 Blitzball04 wrote:
Wombat patch goes live. Let see how it does now

On November 27 2024 00:33 Mizenhauer wrote:
It's beyond amazing that after 8 years no one has any idea what the cylcone is supposed to do. The lock on concept sucks, the auto shooting version sucks, and all the tinkering hasn't made it a more interesting unit. The unit is awful design wise and there is no way to make them interesting while being playable (not op and not awful). The game would just be better off without it.

On November 27 2024 03:58 WombaT wrote:

I’ve said it forever, it’s ostensibly to fill out mech holes. But it excels when it’s kiting back from enemies. Tanks excel when they’re stationary and zoning.

At a fundamental design level the two don’t synergise at all well, and no matter what tweaks they have tried they don’t solve that core issue. They bounce between too powerful and obnoxious, or pretty bad without much of a niche

On November 27 2024 05:03 Moonerz wrote:
I agree with miz. Even in the best use case of cyclones in battle mech, the interaction was pretty trash. Lock on and run away use hellions to kill anything faster than the cyclone.

Cyclones can't be too tanky and they also can't do too much damage. So you're left with this busted unit that excels in certain situations but in others requires too much micro for the value you're getting. Goliaths still fit better than cyclones lol but I understand the overlap between goliaths and thors

On November 27 2024 04:19 Mizenhauer wrote:


Units that run away when fighting are awful and should not exist. You want units that force interactions, not ones that disincentive engaging in larger scale conflicts.

Developer Comment: The Mag-Field Accelerator damage change attempts to make the unit slightly more well rounded, as many of Terran's Factory units are too specialized into certain roles. The Lock On prioritizing air units will help when engaging armies such as Mutalisks and Zerglings, preventing all the Lock Ons from being wasted on Zerglings and the mech army being overwhelmed in the air.

On November 26 2024 11:13 luxon wrote:

even as the game's pro circuit is over, (foreigner) terrans refuse to budge an inch to let protoss players win the 200 bucks left in the circuit. lol. my king clement refusing to let anyone else pocket rotti's $100 ❤️

On November 27 2024 10:59 JJH777 wrote:


The ghost nerf doesn't even help Toss. It's a TvZ nerf that Zergs are using PvT to justify.

On November 27 2024 15:19 Waxangel wrote:


Eh, having watched a lot of the PTR tourneys, the patch didn't actually change much a the mid-high pro level. In fact, I'd say the game became slightly more interesting for viewers cause energy overcharge allows Protoss a bit more diversity of strategy (I didn't see any signs that removing battery overcharge was making certain all-ins OP).

The good players will remain good, and Serral or Clem will prolly win HSC

On November 27 2024 17:12 Waxangel wrote:


I mean, he was talking about HSC, so I was just addressing that particular point and saying the patch doesn't seem to break anything at the pro level (for 2-ish weeks of PTR play anyway).

It's pretty obvious from some of the past changes that they are considering non-pro players, but I couldn't tell you how they're weighting the needs of the various skill levels.

On November 27 2024 19:34 Vision_ wrote:


Considering community would be pretty happy if Infested terran could be back, (with some tweaks), it s a bit selfish but i count only three community wishes : IT, abduct massive half on distance, force field / biles interaction, (3 or 4 if you count also hydras T1 maybe). Some faithful readers of this forum since beta could enlight me if they have another idea (shared by most of members of TL)

Please could you list what you consider as consensus tweaks mainly adressed to casual or battle hardened players ? thks

On November 28 2024 03:37 Vision_ wrote:
whatever... my english is in progress

On November 27 2024 16:43 Vision_ wrote:


Are you saying patch are mainly done for pros ? because it could be a good timing for developping a community version. community version doesn t mean not revelant for pros, it just takes care about wishes of all kind of players

On November 28 2024 21:16 InfCereal wrote:
Can't believe there's a mech player in here unironically arguing that a +25% damage buff to the cyclone is good for the game



It shoots faster. It's not just doing more damage, its doing its damage faster.


So instead of 28DPS, it's doing 35DPS.

For a real world perspective, a cyclone will kill a roach 2 seconds faster

On November 28 2024 06:25 Agh wrote:


Unless it's a blanket QoL improvement change then it's fine. Unit balance/stats should never be altered due to lower levels of play. If it really is an issue then custom maps are there to scratch that itch. The game is too far along for segmented and diluted matchmaking.


There are still a ton of features that can and should be implemented to bridge the barrier to entry.
Some of these for example:
I'm still against the general notion of the select all army hotkey, but when it was added there should have been an option to set control groups to be omitted.

A streamlined and obvious way to convey and assign rapid fire spells and units.

On November 26 2024 23:24 Cactus66 wrote:



You're not alone, but this is such a terrible Zerg v ghost take.

It counters every zerg t3 unit. No zerg unit counters it. There is not another example of this in the game.

It wasn't balanced AND it's terrible game design.

On November 28 2024 08:27 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
There's a lot of problems and weaknesses with mass Cyclone comps, and I'm glad this bug / accidental buff made it in so that we can explore what would happen if Cyclone had a real buff instead of that "let's change +20 vs Armor to +10 vs all because so that it's weaker vs the things it was good against".

Maybe there would be some strong timings and pushes, but it won't be OP. You can flank them, overwhelm them, cancel the Lock-on, outscale them past the early-mid game. The Cyclone pokes and is annoying if you let it zone for free, but if you're committed and interact and make actual plays and moves, then you can get a surround or flank or good engagement.

As someone mentioned, Cyclone in macro games will only fulfill a niche role, because usually you'd just rather get a Tank or a Thor if you need some heavy duty AA. That said, there ARE quite a few good situations to build Cyclones in when playing Mech (other than just battle mech comp ofc). If you're going traditional tank based mech and traded in a fight, it's a good option to pump out some Cyclones instead of tanks because Cyclones do well in smaller numbers and you then switch to a tempo based pressure game to try to gain some value, and then get time to rebuild your tank count behind it.

However, in TvP while the Mag-Field change to +10 vs All helps it deal even better vs Chargelots (since after a trade, they're going to be mostly warping in gateway units before more tech heavy stuff rebuilds), it was already good enough before with Hellion support. So personally i would have preferred the +20 Armor vs most core units like Stalker/Immortal and most air units.

Ofc, +20 Armor also made it more useful vs Corruptors (to defend your BCs after a BC opening), super early roach rushes (or roach into ravager rushes since they'd morph them at your front), and Fact+TL openings where you pressure Protoss's natural while they're trying to get up their 1st Immortal or whatever. And +20 Armor also made it better at sniping static defense and expansions.

The change to +10 vs All was intended to be a buff, but it really isn't clearly a buff if at all, many mech players prefer +20 vs Armor. Let's change it to something like +10 (+10 vs Armor), or heck as I've been advocating to just be super fair and conservative +10 (+5 vs Armor) or +5 (+10 vs Armor). The main thing +10 vs All helped with is using it in TvZ, where Mech has already been decently viable throughout LotV or fringe viable at worst. It feels like an overall nerf in TvP where Mech needed help, and maybe even TvT as again you already have Tanks+Hellions to deal with marines, whereas about every other core unit (Marauder, Tank, support units like vikings, libs, BCs, etc.) are all Armored.

As Vision said, Mech was designed and finds strength in specialized units, same as Protoss. The balance team saying that it's Mech's weakness, and making it do overall less damage vs most units just feels so disappointing.

Perhaps without Battery Overcharge, Cyclone first openings can actually be a decently viable build vs Protoss. The window to put pressure before Protoss got a 2nd Immortal up or blink was really short. Without the 10 sec buffer Battery Overcharge gave, it might actually make a significant difference.

On November 29 2024 10:54 Pentarp wrote:


Zerg is doing fine right-now. Stop whining.

Look at all the highlight games. Most of them are Terran games. This indicates good game design since Terran games are found to be engaging and exciting by the community.

There are imperfections, of course. But you cannot overcorrect them by killing the only viable strategy that Terrans have in late-game TvZ. Might as well go back to Broodlord/Infestor era then. Enjoy watching those games.

On November 30 2024 03:59 Balnazza wrote:


You know, I almost get the feeling you don't particularly like this patch or this game. But I'm not entirely sure, you haven't been really clear about it.

On December 01 2024 13:48 Balnazza wrote:


Has played his last official match two weeks ago, taking a map off of Showtime, so I assume he is still somewhat in practice.
As a friendly advice, that I sometimes tend to need aswell: If the game is so not-fun and rage-inducing to you, maybe just don't engage in it, including this forum? Because I really don't get the impulse of "I hate all of this, so naturally I have to go to a place where people enjoy this and tell them I hate it - repeatedly."

On December 01 2024 15:18 Balnazza wrote:


Whiiiich you clearly hated, bringing me back to my point...?

On December 01 2024 23:15 Vision_ wrote:
Cyclones is really fast while he can do a ton of damage. His speed is actually the same than marines or marauders when they stimed, which is good. Unfortunetly, a lot of units can be denied too easily in the start of the game even if TvT can looks good. A small tweak should be done to reduce his speed while lock on is activated

On December 02 2024 21:13 Creager wrote:


No thanks, I'd rather see the Cyclone removed entirely as it does way more than simply being a role unit as it initially was supposed to be. If they can tweak it so you can get 1-2 for very specific purposes like repelling Oracle harass in TvP without straight-up nullifying it altogether, that'd be somewhat fine, I guess, but repeated changes/tweaks have shown that it's apparently very hard to make the unit fit just right into Terran's arsenal.

Watching Cyclones dominating the battlefield regardless of matchup was simply dumb to watch, and I say this as a mech Terran.

On December 03 2024 00:53 Vision_ wrote:


The problem is Terran isn t designed for being played with versatile units while zerg are.

In that regards and it s my opinion, if you want to keep the mind of terran, units must fit a role, that s how terran unit works with a really good synergy while zerg could assume to push with two different types of units for example.

I haven t been accurate on the amount of speed reduction but i think your comments is pretty accurate since cyclone looks to please a majority of players even if i dislike the fact that thors looks less interesting, i would have prefered a mix between thors and cyclone. Then if a 3D professionnal is free at this moment i would be happy if he can design the transformation between thor to cyclone

On December 03 2024 00:53 Vision_ wrote:


The problem is Terran isn t designed for being played with versatile units while zerg are.

In that regards and it s my opinion, if you want to keep the mind of terran, units must fit a role, that s how terran unit works with a really good synergy while zerg could assume to push with two different types of units only, for example.

I haven t been accurate on the amount of speed reduction but i think your comments is pretty accurate since cyclone looks to please a majority of players even if i dislike the fact that thors looks less interesting, i would have prefered a mix between thors and cyclone. Then if a 3D professionnal is free at this moment i would be happy if he can design the transformation from thor to cyclone

On December 03 2024 04:11 WombaT wrote:

Marines/marauders combined with medivacs gives you one of the most versatile and potent basic unit comps on the whole game.

Where are you getting the idea the cyclone pleases the majority of players? It’s one of the most disliked units in the game

On December 03 2024 06:17 Balnazza wrote:


Probably the same survey he did that made it clear for him that "the community" wants the infested terran back?

On December 03 2024 06:40 Vision_ wrote:


Damned my traduction of versatile is wrong, ... forget about it.



You right, i shouldn t have done a survey on infested terrans, it seems terrible how much people are disturbed about it many years ago. Can you manage to sleep at least, since i posted this thread ?

Then if u aren t able to understand that IT was fun to play and watch in a RTS game, i can consider that you are more playing for competition and violence and that s the reason and i don t care about your opinion on IT.

On December 03 2024 06:58 Balnazza wrote:


My dude, it doesn't matter what I want. People back in the day disliked the Infested Terrans as they disliked the Swarm Host/Locust. Because free units in a game that is about economy is hard to balance out. And even as someone who personally never had much grievance with the unit, I can admit that it looked silly when they just popped up, destroyed entire armies and then the Zerglings rolled in.
Free units in SC2 are not fun. And you will probably never really make them fun, because how much they stick out like a sore thumb.

On December 03 2024 08:25 Balnazza wrote:


There are a few takes you can take on free units in SC2, but it is so hard to hit the sweetspot. When they are game-defining, like Locust and ITs used to be, they suck. But if they are too situational, they are basically a gimmick no one needs.
I think the most important part is always to think about counter-play. There needs to be a good counterplay that makes it fun for the opponent aswell. Remember when Colossi "countered" Locusts, but every engagement the Locusts took out 2 Colossi? That is not fun, that is not a counter. In return, the counter can't be too strong, otherwise the unit becomes a gimmick again. I refer for that to WC3 and Summon Skeletons: For most of WC3s runtime, it was a gimmick, because each race had so easy counters for a stragety that took too much ressources to setup. But other Summons, especially the hero summons, always had great usages. At the start of the game especially, they don't have a direct counterplay, but that doesn't matter because they give Exp, which acts like a counter.

But without the Exp-factor I have yet to find a sweetspot for ITs. Swarm Hosts are fine now, because they are expensive, slow and have no other use except the Locust, so the Zerg can either use them as a comeback-mechanic that is hit or miss or use them to strengthen their already won map control. But ITs? Infestors are too good in a Zerg army to have that tool aswell. So if you wanted ITs back, you would probably need to put them on an entirely new unit...but then why would you give Zerg two units that do the same thing?

On December 03 2024 11:17 Athenau wrote:
Free units aren't fundamentally intractable, it just so happened that their implementation in SC2 has always sucked:
* With Broodlords (the worst offender) the problem is that they spawn right on top of your army, so if you don't have the dps to clear them fast enough, they body-block your army and cause your units to spazz out, which is cancerous to play against and lame to watch.
* With Swarmhosts the problem was the huge range and the fact that locusts had no downtime.
* With infested terrans the problem was that the infestors were good enough already, and ITs just tipped the balance. The fact that ITs were free units was immaterial. If ITs had been replaced by a spell with similar damage output it wouldn't have been any better

On December 03 2024 11:17 Athenau wrote:
Free units aren't fundamentally intractable, it just so happened that their implementation in SC2 has always sucked:
* With Broodlords (the worst offender) the problem is that they spawn right on top of your army, so if you don't have the dps to clear them fast enough, they body-block your army and cause your units to spazz out, which is cancerous to play against and lame to watch.
* With Swarmhosts the problem was the huge range and the fact that locusts had no downtime.
* With infested terrans the problem was that the infestors were good enough already, and ITs just tipped the balance. The fact that ITs were free units was immaterial. If ITs had been replaced by a spell with similar damage output it wouldn't have been any better

fking fix cyclone ffs. the game is unplayable

On December 04 2024 14:54 luxon wrote:

Harstem made an entire video talking about how unacceptable it was for a negligible range bug for the colossus that resulted in no difference.

Now theres an insane damage bug resulting in an unprecedented playoff race composition in any HSC or any premier tournament in recent memory and of course, crickets.

On December 04 2024 16:54 Reevou wrote:


HSC was played on a mod that had Cyclone damage and some other bugs fixed. Same mod has been used in weekly tournament. You would have had knowledge of that if you would have watched HSC on final day.

On December 05 2024 04:20 Vindicare605 wrote:
All of the headaches surrounding this patch including all of the bugs it has caused are all reasons why we need to rethink how we do game balance in this game.

We shouldn't be trying to solve everything with balance patches. First of all because we are NEVER going to fix what is wrong with Protoss with a balance patch, I've ranted about this dozens of times so I won't bring up the same old points.

But secondly, because every single time we patch the game we have the potential to cause more problems than we solve.

SC2 should learn from Brood War's example and embrace game balance via the map pool. I'm not saying we should NEVER patch the game ever again, if for no other reason we should patch it to revert the badly thought out changes of the balance council. But we should make patching the game a much more uncommon thing and we should make updating the map pool more common.

We just saw how much impact a map pool that favors Terran has on the game at the pro level. Why can't we make a concerted effort to give Protoss a more favorable map pool?

I just know that our current approach isn't working. The state of the game isn't getting any better, and the balance whining is getting MUCH worse because the community now knows that the game balancers are willing to make changes just to appease the masses on reddit even if they aren't good for the game in the long run.

On December 05 2024 04:20 Vindicare605 wrote:
All of the headaches surrounding this patch including all of the bugs it has caused are all reasons why we need to rethink how we do game balance in this game.

We shouldn't be trying to solve everything with balance patches. First of all because we are NEVER going to fix what is wrong with Protoss with a balance patch, I've ranted about this dozens of times so I won't bring up the same old points.

But secondly, because every single time we patch the game we have the potential to cause more problems than we solve.

SC2 should learn from Brood War's example and embrace game balance via the map pool. I'm not saying we should NEVER patch the game ever again, if for no other reason we should patch it to revert the badly thought out changes of the balance council. But we should make patching the game a much more uncommon thing and we should make updating the map pool more common.

We just saw how much impact a map pool that favors Terran has on the game at the pro level. Why can't we make a concerted effort to give Protoss a more favorable map pool?

I just know that our current approach isn't working. The state of the game isn't getting any better, and the balance whining is getting MUCH worse because the community now knows that the game balancers are willing to make changes just to appease the masses on reddit even if they aren't good for the game in the long run.

On December 06 2024 17:23 ejozl wrote:
I also think the best thing from these horrendous patches has been the discussion around it. Casters will often trick themselves into thinking the game is perfectly balanced and that it is always the most exciting time right now, because their job is to be excited and non-biased. If a caster thinks something is wrong with the game, it would convince some ppl that mb it's not the greatest thing ever, which would, I guess "harm" the game?

It's always funny to hear casters talking about how shit previous metas were, while when they were in it, they didn't say anything against it at all.
It's not to trash them, but not speaking out has consequences, and tricking yourself is even worse. Though, to blindly listen to casters is the even bigger mistake.

The serral vs. maru era was an exciting time and we were happy to see sc2 finally get bonjwa level of players, but this was honestly only possible because protoss in the same year got gimped. If you only have to practice 2x matchups for real, it makes it waaay easier to stay consistent. And sadly it's been the same since, barring on the void ray patch, and the one after it.

We tricked ourselves into thinking that maru and serral were so much ahead of the curve that the game should be balanced with serral and maru winning as part of it. With it followed a slew of other Terran and zerg champions, because guess what, they aren't so ahead of the curve as we thought.

On December 03 2024 22:28 DeeJae_ wrote:
fking fix cyclone ffs. the game is unplayable

On December 07 2024 06:16 Vindicare605 wrote:


Simply put they are bugged and dealing a lot more damage than they should be right now.

On November 27 2024 03:22 Nebuchad wrote:
Fairly certain that protoss is the best race now, especially in combination with the new maps that are less terran favored. Maybe Maxpax wins the next ESL thingy, how about that.

On December 10 2024 23:16 Nebuchad wrote:


Did I nail this, I think I nailed this.