3 Months later, how do you feel the March 15 (5.0.9) balance patch has worked out? :
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TL.net130 Posts
Discussion thread for frontpage poll: "3 Months later, how do you feel the March 15 (5.0.9) balance patch has worked out?"
There was a lot of heated discussion at the time of the patch, but now we've had some time to let the meta settle and see an entire tournament cycle play out. Have your opinions on the patch changed? What were you right about? What were you wrong about? How do you feel the patch has affected the state of StarCraft II overall?
For reference, here are the patch notes:
Protoss
Shield Battery
-Starting Energy reduced from 100 to 50 outside of the nexus field
Dark Templar
-Now have a 0.75s attack delay after blink
Void Ray
-Build time increased from 37 to 43
-Mineral cost increased from 200 to 250
Zerg
Queen
-Can no longer transfuse off creep
Terran
Widow Mine
-Reduce the effectiveness of drilling claws by from 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds
Lurker
-Reducing the effectiveness of adaptive talon from 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds
Nydus Worm
-Increased starting creep by 1 unit in each direction around the worm once it spawns
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I kinda like the new balance path. PvZ looked much brighter. I just hoped that they disallowed an abduct to the Mothership and Infestor is allowed again to use Infested Terrans.
Also, make the Raven useful when fighting against Zerg in middle or late games.
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Bisutopia19229 Posts
It still doesn't feel like enough has changed. If hero didn't return to SC2 would PvZ be going as well? And Terran seem to be having a tough time all around.
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On June 16 2022 23:13 BisuDagger wrote:
It still doesn't feel like enough has changed. If hero didn't return to SC2 would PvZ be going as well? And Terran seem to be having a tough time all around.
I think agree on PvZ being heavily carried by herO's style right now, which could be because of the queen nerfs, soo maybe the change actually did alot. TvP still pretty swingy and TvZ heavily map dependend, but i wouldn't say terran is struggling. Clem just won wcs eu with heromarine coming in strong too and gsl performance so far this season is alright.
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It remains to be seen if Protoss can really compete with Zerg on even footing right now, but design-wise the patch was a full success as those Oracle into Blink styles are way more fun than Skytoss turtle
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design wise it's a success for sure. We need more time to know how things stand as far as balance goes right now.
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Shield Battery
-Starting Energy reduced from 100 to 50 outside of the nexus field
Dark Templar
-Now have a 0.75s attack delay after blink
These are still unfair changes. I don't know why the community always come to the conclusion that cheese is detrimental to the game, when all it does is keep the game fresh.
The DT nerf is also a big nerf to ground toss at a time where ground toss seizes to be viable. And you can achieve a similar effect by simply nerfing the cost of DT Blink from 100->200. The upgrade takes long, so why not have the cost also reflect that. It's a rly good upgrade, but you keep it in check by this alone. That and Terrans learning to defend vs it. Have they considered using Building Armour and Widow Mines? I don't know.
And it still feels wonky with Queen Transfuse and Shield Batteries having to be close to the Nexus.
Void Ray allins are fixed with Build time increased from 37 to 43 or nerfing the speed of the Void Ray alone. They didn't have to triple nerf Protoss. (Shield Battery, Void Ray build time and Void Ray cost.)
Ladder Zergs still get fucked by Carriers and they don't have as good a solution like before with the Queen allin. And top Zergs have an even easier time vs the top Protoss in late game, due to air Zerg not needing to respect the Void Ray.
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Have they considered using Building Armour and Widow Mines? I don't know.
Wtf is 2 extra armor going to do against a unit that does a minimum of 45 damage a hit?
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Unfortunately this is not the right time to ask this question since herO might be about to change the most questionable match-up, unlucky timing =)
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Changes to DT blink and Lurkers has had little impact in PvT and ZvT respectively but everything else seems to be working well. I'd like to see Widow Mine drops viable in TvT as well but I don't think that'll happen.
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On June 17 2022 00:36 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +Shield Battery
-Starting Energy reduced from 100 to 50 outside of the nexus field
Dark Templar
-Now have a 0.75s attack delay after blink These are still unfair changes. I don't know why the community always come to the conclusion that cheese is detrimental to the game, when all it does is keep the game fresh. The DT nerf is also a big nerf to ground toss at a time where ground toss seizes to be viable. And you can achieve a similar effect by simply nerfing the cost of DT Blink from 100->200. The upgrade takes long, so why not have the cost also reflect that. It's a rly good upgrade, but you keep it in check by this alone. That and Terrans learning to defend vs it. Have they considered using Building Armour and Widow Mines? I don't know. And it still feels wonky with Queen Transfuse and Shield Batteries having to be close to the Nexus. Void Ray allins are fixed with or nerfing the speed of the Void Ray alone. They didn't have to triple nerf Protoss. (Shield Battery, Void Ray build time and Void Ray cost.) Ladder Zergs still get fucked by Carriers and they don't have as good a solution like before with the Queen allin. And top Zergs have an even easier time vs the top Protoss in late game, due to air Zerg not needing to respect the Void Ray.
How is ground Toss against Terran seizing to be viable??
Against Zerg Blink DTs aren't really relevant and never aggressively used where the delay would matter.
I think the nerf you're suggesting would be a way bigger nerf actually as as of now even with the delay you still usually kill the CC if it's undefended, it just gives terran a bit more reaction time if they have units nearby. Increasing the cost would deter their use much more.
Queen allin wasn't a very good solution vs Voidray into Skytoss, 2 sg void with Mass Batteries and cannons quite easily held that.
On ladder ZvP is unarguably WAY more tolerable now as you can go Muta Corruptor against it.
Whether the Voidray really needed to be double nerfed is debatable but I'd rather have this lame style to be overnerfed and compensate Protoss in other areas.
The only one I agree with is the Battery nerf, that one probably wasn't necessary
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I don t play SC2 but as it seems to lock some gameplay abuse as void ray proxy and queens walk, we can promote this type of patch. The direction of this patch seems to be understandable since WoL, it s look like a sparadrap (plaster/patch/bandage) to help players to avoid frustation of playing endlessly the same kind of defeat.
That s why i m thinking the concept of a slow-damage-mode and divide workers count by 2 isn t completely out of sense. Players can reach end game easily, less struggle in micro (because the game is a little bit slow).
Actually it would be called StarCraft 5W (5 workers) - with 8 workers max per mineral base, so you re starting with only 5 workers which can harvest 10 minerals per trip (but two times slower). They also have double HP and cost 100 minerals.
Terran economy don t get adjustement (as the reference by now)
Zerg Buildings mineral cost are decreased by 50, and now only hatchery create drones and their timing production is calculated in function of Zerg developpement (and the required numbers of buildings while game goes on)
Protoss Buildings become more expensive (because probes doesn t work out with buildings)
This concept allows two things :
new players for discovering the game with more ease,
SC2 standing as a reference in Esport.
Then your army can growth around 30. Players need now 12 workers per base, 8 for minerals and 4 for gas (rotating on 4 bases for ultra large map, and rotating on 3 bases with smaller ones).
PS : As i know i m a bit offtopic, you aren t forced to talk about this vision
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I feel like Lurkers are still to strong for what they are ( siege units). They have 200hp extremely good ms and good aoe. There burrow speed should be nerfed again. Disruptor, Siege tank, Liberator, takes ages to set up, but literally Lurker takes 1 second to obliterate your entire army with insane movespeed.
Ghosts are op as well in TvZ, but are useless in TvT. Raven is useless in both TvP and TvZ, but Op in TvT.
These casters need to be fixed/changed, i dont know how.
BC is extremely strong and promotes cheeze play with teleport, but it takes extremely time to build them. Playing against BC's is extremely triggering for every race. Unit needs to changed. Nerf teleport, Buff build time.
Banshee needs to be rebalanced, speed upgrade is to expensive, yet is useless.
Carriers is triggering to play against for every race, needs to changed.
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On June 17 2022 00:36 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +Shield Battery
-Starting Energy reduced from 100 to 50 outside of the nexus field
Dark Templar
-Now have a 0.75s attack delay after blink These are still unfair changes. I don't know why the community always come to the conclusion that cheese is detrimental to the game, when all it does is keep the game fresh.
It's not all cheese.
Just ridiculously overtuned cheese that is way, way, way harder to hold than execute. Nothing fresh about dying to immortal robo / stargate units every time you face protoss (which already had more bullshit than the other races for ladder).
Voidray battery proxy TvP was one of the most broken things the game has ever had in terms of execution vs defence. The protoss has tanky, flying voidrays that nearly instaheal to full shields if you move them in the right spot. The terran has a bunch of frail units (many of which are armored) - and all the good ones will die if you look away from them for a bloody second (seriously the speed at which a charged void kills a cyclone is astounding). And that was if the terran scouts in time and was playing a build decently capable of holding. Immortal prism battery PvZ was maybe not quite as one-sided, but it was still pretty bad in this regard.
The proxy battery change was one of the best changes for ladder level play that the game has seen.
DT blink change doesn't seem to have actually mattered.
EDIT:
Agree overall with Kitai's assessment below.
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I think the patch was overall a step in the right direction. I feel like the DT blink nerf wound up not accomplishing anything and the adaptive talons nerf was less punishing than the drilling claws nerf.
My understanding of the blink DT nerf was that it was supposed to give terran planetaries more of a fighting chance against them, but so far I have not seen a single planetary saved by this nerf. There were occasional wonky blink DT cheeses whose purpose was to blink on and immediately annihilate smaller early-midgame armies, but those builds sort of died out before the blink nerf even came through.
The adaptive talons nerf was less consequential than the drilling claws nerf. It lowered their potential to jump on armies before the opponent can pull back out of range, but it didn't change their survivability much. The mine nerf not only lowered their offensive potential, but made them much more susceptible to getting destroyed before burrow completion due to their lower HP and closer range.
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My opinion remains 100% the same: On an individual basis, the changes they made make sense. Taken as a whole, not so much. Protoss and Terran did not need to get nerfed (well, proxy voids needed a nerf but not four different nerfs), and reworking Zerg to put more of an emphasis on the Nydus worm while trying really hard not to actually nerf Zerg was a garbage idea.
I feel like thanks to herO's return, there's some hope that PvZ will improve, but the patch wasn't really responsible for that. The patch just meant that Protoss died in a wider variety of ways to Zerg.
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On June 17 2022 05:40 QOGQOG wrote:
I feel like thanks to herO's return, there's some hope that PvZ will improve, but the patch wasn't really responsible for that. The patch just meant that Protoss died in a wider variety of ways to Zerg.
herO's style would have been much worse on the last patch. A large reason why he can keep the roach army away with just stalkers and oracles is that queens can't follow the roaches and transfuse off creep.
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we were told that this patch was conservative because there would be a follow-up patch.... well where is it??
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On June 17 2022 07:24 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2022 05:40 QOGQOG wrote:
I feel like thanks to herO's return, there's some hope that PvZ will improve, but the patch wasn't really responsible for that. The patch just meant that Protoss died in a wider variety of ways to Zerg. herO's style would have been much worse on the last patch. A large reason why he can keep the roach army away with just stalkers and oracles is that queens can't follow the roaches and transfuse off creep.
I mean, I might be being a little harsh on the patch, but I'm not really convinced that it's really having that large of an impact. Not in a positive way, at least. The main use for Queens against herO's style would seem to be AA, not transfuse. Not that transfusing a few Ravagers would hurt, obviously.
Given that no other Protoss players seem to be trying herO's style so we haven't seen it beyond the day of GSL he brought it out, I do want to emphasize that it's promising, not that it's been proven viable yet. Dealing with Zerg massing Queens for AA or just a-moving a bunch of Banes are, I think, the main challenges it'll have to show resilience against.
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I see any problems of removing speed bonus for Lurkers off creep. Actually it doesn t solve problems of doing a ton of Lurkers in a second but it could be a first step.
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