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StarCraft II - HotS: Balance Update #11
Jan 10 2013, 12:18 am
By: Ahli  

Jan 10 2013, 12:18 am Ahli Post #1

I do stuff and thingies... Try widening and reducing the number of small nooks and crannies to correct the problem.


STARCRAFT II: HotS - Balance Update #11
--- HOTS beta balance ---


Quote from Blizzard Entertainment
We will be bringing the beta down at 3:00 p.m. PST this afternoon to make the balance changes listed below. Thanks again for all the great feedback you've provided while testing Heart of the Swarm. We hope to see you testing these changes and sharing your input soon!

Terran
  • Barracks
    • Train Reaper no longer requires a Tech Lab Addon.

    Hellbat
    • Attack speed changed from 1.9 to 2.
    • The Infernal Pre-Igniter upgrade no longer increases Hellbat weapon damage.
    • Napalm Spray weapon damage increased from 10 +9 vs. light to 18 +12 vs. light.
    • Splash damage radius decreased from 110 to 45.

    Medivac
    • Caduceus Reactor
      • No longer improves the healing rate of Medivacs.
      • Upgrade cost decreased from 150/150 and 110 seconds to 100/100 and 80 seconds.
    • Emergency Thrusters ability renamed Ignite Afterburners.

    Raven
    • Seeker missile
      • Energy cost decreased from 125 to 75.
      • Primary target damage reverted from 300 to 100.
      • Seeker Missile once again deals splash damage.
      • The delay time prior to firing has been increased from 3 to 5 seconds.

    Reaper
    • The Battlefield Awareness passive ability has been removed from the game.
    • Movement speed increased from 3.38 to 3.75.
    • The Nitro Packs upgrade has been removed from the game.
    • P-45 Gauss Pistol weapon damage decreased from 4 +5 vs. Light to 4.

    Siege Tank
    • Siege Tanks no longer require an upgrade in order to enter Siege Mode.


Protoss
  • Mothership
    • The Vortex ability has been removed from the game.

    Mothership Core
    • The Envision ability has been moved to Oracle.

    Oracle
    • The Time Warp ability has been moved to the Mothership Core and the Mothership.


Zerg
  • Infestor
    • Fungal Growth damage decreased from 30 +10 vs. Armored to 30.

  • Mutalisk
    • Mutalisk Regeneration passive ability renamed Tissue Regeneration and its tooltip has been updated to improve clarity.

Source

Quote from David Kim, Blizzard Entertainment
Here's a breakdown of our reasoning behind recent changes to gameplay in the Heart of the Swarm beta.


Hellbat/Medivac

The Medivac heal beam upgrade didn't go as intended. We want players to use Hellbats as meat shields, but instead, players were just using Marines and Marauders.

The Hellbat changes in this patch should allow players to more easily combo Hellbats, no matter what army composition they’re creating in their games.


Siege Tank

This change should mainly affect TvP, so that teching to mech is easier.


Seeker Missile

We felt that the splash damage version of Seeker Missiles were much more useful than the single target variety. At the same time, the new method for firing the missile made more sense, as shooting the missiles at a point blank range doesn’t hit with a 100% chance.

On top of that, we’d like to test out a cheaper, more difficult-to-hit-with version of the Seeker Missile so that we can hopefully see some "dodging vs. hitting" gameplay with this ability.


Reaper

We feel the biggest issue with Reapers is that burst damage happens way too fast. Especially in TvT, if players aren’t spot-on defensively, the game can easily end right there, due to how fast Reapers are killing light units.

The changes in this patch are aimed at keeping Reapers as very dangerous units, but by getting rid of the burst damage and adding an extremely fast movement speed (along with no tech requirement), we’re hoping Reapers will be primarily effective when health regeneration is utilized. Additionally, we feel that scouting is much more important in Heart of the Swarm and want the Reaper to be easily be mixed into armies at any point of the game, in order to scout better.

We anticipate that this could be the most impactful change in this patch, so please give it extra attention, and test thoroughly before giving us your feedback.


Time Warp/Envision

Envision has been simply giving Protoss mobile detection for free from the beginning of the game, and using many Time Warps in one battle turned out to be too much vs. Terran bio-based play. Therefore, we decided to switch out these two spells. Envision is now more of a choice, and Time Warp is limited per battle.

We removed Vortex and added Time Warp to the Mothership because we feel that Time Warp is a lesser version of Vortex - which we thought went too far in Wings of Liberty - and the new Vortex was just not interesting enough.


Fungal Growth

We've been seeing Fungal Growth become less effective in Heart of the Swarm. However, we've wanted to push this ability out a bit further for reasons stated in previous situation reports.

We feel that the most necessary, core use of this ability is: fighting against Mutalisks. So we're trying a general downgrade against all Armored units to see how that goes.
Source





Jan 10 2013, 12:22 am Roy Post #2

An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death

Quote from Ahli
Train Reaper no longer requires a Tech Lab Addon.
Well, that certainly makes an opening Reaper harass easier.

Quote from Ahli
  • Mothership
    • The Vortex ability has been removed from the game.
It was only a matter of time. They made it pretty much useless when they changed it to hit only one unit for an instant kill.




Jan 10 2013, 12:24 am Dem0n Post #3

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Quote from Roy
Quote from Ahli
Train Reaper no longer requires a Tech Lab Addon.
Well, that certainly makes an opening Reaper harass easier.
Didn't Blizzard make Supply Depots necessary to build Barracks to counteract early Reaper harass? :|




Jan 10 2013, 3:31 am Taintedwisp Post #4



Quote from Dem0n
Quote from Roy
Quote from Ahli
Train Reaper no longer requires a Tech Lab Addon.
Well, that certainly makes an opening Reaper harass easier.
Didn't Blizzard make Supply Depots necessary to build Barracks to counteract early Reaper harass? :|
yeah, but it didnt counteract too much, hence why the upgrade was made to require factory, now it no longer requires Tech Reactor, there is no upgrade since the speed buff which auto upgrades it, and HELLBATS, got a major buff, so expect Early Reaper to Hellbat/Tank as the new strong strat for terran.



None.

Jan 10 2013, 5:51 am ClansAreForGays Post #5



Every T will open with a reaper. My overlord will be safer at least. Went from an iffy harass, to a solid scouter.

Hellbats are already stupid and OP, so I have no idea why they got this incredible buff. Anyone that still goes bio is a fucking moron.




Jan 10 2013, 7:18 am TF- Post #6

🤙ðŸ¾

Rest of the list is the usual dumb shit so no comment but Seekers look to have been fixed, only took 3 years!



🤙ðŸ¾

Jan 11 2013, 2:18 pm Raygoza Post #7



Do anyone find that they've gone to far from what the races are actually identified as?
I mean playing SC1 you get a good picture on how the races should be, that changed a bit in WoL multiplayer but here they are really changing a ton of stuff without reusing some old concept, units and such which is sad.
In the zergs case there is no reason to develop a new unit to take the role of the older one with the difference being small only to avoid reusing older units such as the Lurker, even applies when it comes to spells, no SC1 spell that was removed in SC2 has ever made a comeback, the cloud of the Viper could become Dark swarm.
Other spells being Plague and Spawn Broodlings which also are out of SC2 and would be effective, Think of a Thor being Broodlinged.

The Protoss loosing a number of spells and units such as Dragoon (has a reason, no more production of them because of infested Aiur), Reaver (replaced by Colossus, still strange that two were sealed beneath Aiur, would have been helpful defending the warpgate to Shakuras, besides suddenly existing in SC2), Dark Archon (don't see why it was removed), Arbiter (replaced by Mothership and in Hots there's also a Mothership core, although when Arbiters were available you could have several ones which was effective, use Arbiter spells several times, cloaking larger armies and so on, unlike when you now are limited to one Mothership as it removes the effectiveness of having several Arbiters able to recall on several places at the same time).
For Spells we lost the Disruptor Web which makes everything under it unable to attack including bunkered units, Maelstorm, Mind Control and Stasis field.

The Terrans in this case (multiplayer), they lost the Firebat (still don't know why it actually was removed could have kept existing at least in WoL even if the Helion existed), Medic Removed (Medivac but still why, they would have been usefull in early game at least), Goliath (think about it, like cheap fast built mini Thors, got a lot more effective with the WoL upgrades, no reason to remove it, also works like a mech Marine pretty much considering it's better, Thor and Viking pretty much together replaced this unit, then Thor being replaced by the Warhound and now I don't know if it's out of HoTs), Vulture (replaced by Helions as a harass unit because they are a lot more effective at that but they don't lay mines, don't know why they wouldn't be available in multiplayer at least in WoL), Science Vessel (replaced by Raven and seems like a good choice for Battles as it's more useful, EMP is moved to Ghost, not much left for usefulness for it), Dropship (replaced by Medivac because it's a lot more effective and gives an additional role to it as a support unit as well), Wraith (Compared to SC2 air units it's pretty useless does hve cloak though but is weak against ground and decent against air, doesn't seem wrong it was removed although it would have been interesting seeing both Banshees and Wraiths together), Valkyrie (from EUD and the Viking is better than it, in WoL the Viking even had a AoE upgrade as well as a range upgrade).
Spells from SC1 that were removed are Lockdown (very handy spell though the Ghost has EMP instead of it), Optical Flare (blinding a unit, medic ability maybe the Dropship could've had it or the Raven allowing blinding Overseers think it would have been good to keep), Restoration (medic ability which removes conditions such as parasite, blind, such things that replaces the rank text to mention the condition of the unit while it's affected), Irradiate (a good spell against organic units as it kills them and organic units around it gets damaged as well, would be a good counter against mass Mutalisks and you wouldn't need the AoE Viking upgrade anyway), Defense field Matrix is now only self targeted on the BC and not something you can apply on other units, EMP is moved to Ghost.

If this comment is too inappropriate I could remove it as I did take up a lot of things.



None.

Jan 11 2013, 4:27 pm NudeRaider Post #8

We can't explain the universe, just describe it; and we don't know whether our theories are true, we just know they're not wrong. >Harald Lesch

Quote from Raygoza
Do anyone find that they've gone to far from what the races are actually identified as?
I mean playing SC1 you get a good picture on how the races should be, that changed a bit in WoL multiplayer but here they are really changing a ton of stuff.
Yeah this bugs me too. I have no idea now how to classify the strategy a race has.
In SC1 it was clear cut and they had a character:
- Zerg: Cheap masss units overwhelm the enemy. They are evil and feared for their relentlessness and neverending stream of units.
- Protoss: High cost classy units easy to maintain in mass battles - the noob race*. Proud, technologically advanced and dedicated PSI warriors.
- Terran: Flexibility is key. Make managing and strategy harder - the expert race*. Crafty race which always seems inferior, but uses inventions and tricks to stay in the game.


* Obviously only applies to low-level play or $$ maps.




Jan 14 2013, 10:06 pm NicholasBeige Post #9



Quote from name:David Kim
Siege Tanks no longer require an upgrade in order to enter Siege Mode.

Quote from name:David Kim
This change should mainly affect TvP, so that teching to mech is easier.

lols...

Might just transition to Terran so I can reaper harass into tank-drops Zerg fools...



None.

Jan 15 2013, 6:04 am ClansAreForGays Post #10



Reapers no longer have the damage to harass. I see them as only scouts now.

tanks shut down any sort of roach all in now though. My muta ling is way more effective now though; every T feels obligated to get more tanks now.




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