StarCraft II Beta - Patch 3

[Reo]

StarCraft II Beta - Patch 3 (version 0.5.0.14219B)

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StarCraft II Beta - Patch 3 (version 0.5.0.14219B)

Balance Changes


TERRAN
Engineering Bay
Infantry Armor: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Infantry Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Armory
Vehicle Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Vehicle Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Ship Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Ship Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.


PROTOSS
Zealot
The maximum shield capacity of this unit has been decreased from 60 to 50.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where the Infestor's Neural Parasite ability could cause Reapers to lose the ability to move.
Fixed an issue that could use an incorrect HDR format on some ATI cards.
Fixed a crash that could happen on some ATI cards.




Zealot nerfs you say !!

[Elarain]

They might as well just remove the zealot shields all together, not like they last thru an EMP anyway.

[Darthjiggles]

Yay, more nerfs! Early game protoss was way too op...

[Rrowland]

.................................................. .................................

[Comtrav]

Zealot nerf? Seriously?

Are people still losing to Zealot rush after the nerfs to gateway/crono boost?

And no Stalker buff?

It also makes me sad, I was pretty happy that the Zealot (and Zergling) were statwise almost the same as their BW counterpart. It's a little surprising that they would nerf Zealots without buffing stalkers.

And why are Terran upgrades being reduced in time? Why not everyone's? I can understand them making an across-the-board change to have upgrades play a larger role, and as a Terran player who tries to get upgrades I'm thrilled, but it seems a little weird.

Also, no Roach changes, no Marauder changes. (Even if you think they're basically fine--I do--given the amount of posts about these units, it's a little surprising.)

[Rrowland]

You get decent feedback on a million different things, none of which include any feedback regarding terran upgrade times being too long, and THIS is what you change? After a week?

Come on...

[Manoluck]

Rofl
zealot - 150 hp melee 2 attacks 8 damage each
roach - 145 hp ranged 16 damage.


ok.... w/e

[Darkness]

More terran buffs :D

[Kiwikaki]

worst patch ever

[Bibdy]

I thi-...you ju-...I mean s-...

What the !**@, dude?

[Darkness]

worst patch ever

:D

[Oxus]

Do they even read feedback?

[Seaturtle]

Patches can't be too big or else it'd be difficult for them to find out what the balance problems are. They are slowly tweaking the game instead of making sweeping changes to everything.

[Rilgon]

Rofl
zealot - 150 hp melee 2 attacks 8 damage each
roach - 145 hp ranged 16 damage.


ok.... w/eDon't forget that Roaches are 1 food, and Zealots are 2.

And that 2 roaches is only 150/50/2, whereas one zealot is 100/0/2

lol

[Silver]

Originally posted by Gilgamesh.gilgamesh

seing as how Protoss could prevent a zerg FE, yes.

Anyone who scouts Zerg should be able to stop a fast expand. It's a risky strategy.

[Kiwikaki]

no its not a risky strategy for god sake its #%%@in standard for zerg

[Endureth]

As beta testers, you shouldn't be crying nerf... They are testing. Testing these changes. Then they'll test more changes after these. Then some more. You should expect this.

Let's see how the game plays now and keep making suggestions.

[Kat]

damn... guess i'd better start playing terran or zerg...

i hope blizzard know what they are doing. lol...

As beta testers, you shouldn't be crying nerf... They are testing. Testing these changes. Then they'll test more changes after these. Then some more. You should expect this.

Let's see how the game plays now and keep making suggestions.

Imbalance + Imbalance = Balance?

I don't think so... People are annoyed because these seem like changes in the wrong direction. No change to mutas or stalkers or hellions or thors or phoenix or roaches, etc. Seems like not a whole not of alterations after 2 weeks of beta.

[Mjolnir]

Agreed. I've been trying zerg FE and my main problem is not having more than 6 lings by the time I get 6 zealots up my bum. Not much can be done to prevent FE scouting, eh?

[Silver]

Originally posted by Kiwikaki.real

no its not a risky strategy for god sake its #%%@in standard for zerg\

Wrong. Go watch some high-level Zerg gameplay, then come back. It is one of the viable strategies for Zerg.

[Archerofaiur]

Blame warpgate cooldowns. Combined with Chronoboost the Protoss have as much unit production as the lesser races which means their individual unit power has to go down. And racial diversity suffers.



This is why I advocated for a Protoss resource macro mechanic. Because Protoss are about few but stronger units. Not many weaker ones.

[Zaq]

With the announcement confirming how crappy bnet 2.0 is and patches like this, I'm starting to worry about this game and Blizz in general.

Activistion and WoW have destroyed it.

[Entropia]

I don't think either of those changes were necessary. ;0

[Oxus]

They're making unnecessary changes, and ignoring some big imbalances which us testers keep pointing out.

[Kat]

With the announcement confirming how crappy bnet 2.0 is and patches like this, I'm starting to worry about this game and Blizz in general.

Activistion and WoW have destroyed it.

Personally i dont think bnet2.0 is crappy...

Half the people i knew couldn't even host games in broodwar bnet without having the latency issues and having to do the trick to get it to work. Major pain in the ass.

Only thing missing is chat channel and built in clan support.

[Terradrius]

They're making unnecessary changes, and ignoring some big imbalances which us testers keep pointing out.

Or, they're changing things that are easy to change without affecting too many things (According to another thread, terran upgrades are actually still 20 seconds slower than the other races' after the buff, so I can see why it was changed), and working internally on just how to handle the bigger problems well and not just toss out some slapdash buffs/nerfs to units. (For example, how to nerf roaches but still make zerg competitive, and hopefully more interesting as well.)

Have a little faith in Blizzard. I'm not saying that they're perfect, but I think saying that they're "ignoring some big imbalances" when your only source for that statement is a few small patches (mostly this one) early in a long beta is a bit premature - especially when it's entirely possible that we simply haven't figured out some good strategies/counter-strategies yet.

[Silver]

Originally posted by Oxus.ins

They're making unnecessary changes, and ignoring some big imbalances which us testers keep pointing out.

I don't know what they're thinking, honestly.

Zealots were the last unit I was expecting to see nerfed. They are strong stat-wise, sure, but they're the most expensive and slow tier 1 unit, making them unable to catch/kill even scouting workers or ranged units until they have Charge upgraded. I've seen high-end Protoss players tech straight to Stalkers/Immortals with Sentry backup and skip Zealots altogether since M&M and roaches just wreck them.

Roaches are currently better than Zealots in just about every way. Their only downside is that they cost gas, but they cost such a low amount that it's easily manageable even with one base.

Roach
75 M / 25 G / 1 S
145 HP, 2 ARM, 16 DMG, 3 RNG
Decent speed.

Zealot
100 M / 0 G / 2 S
100 HP, 50 SP, 1 ARM, 8 (x2) DMG, Melee
Slow as hell.

What's wrong with this picture?

[Mindless]

YAY Terran keeps getting better as Protoss keeps getting weaker! Its gonna be SC1 all over again.

[Exocorsair]

Why hasn't Blizzard just gotten rid of Protoss yet? Geez.

[Zentech]

Really? More Protoss nerfs?

[Oxus]

Starcraft 2 Patch 4

Protoss:

-Has been removed from the game.

[Mjolnir]

Zealot rushes are brutally effective and buy you good time to tech charge/stalkers or whatever else you want. 10 less shield means 2 less zergling attacks to nuke a 0 zealot, which could mean the difference between a kill or not. In PvP, it's moot and I dunno how much it affects ZvT.

Anyway, zealots are bloody amazing right now. The nerf was justified, and there will be buffs in the future. It's like watching people complain about Shaman. For those who don't play WoW, that's the traditionally ignored/nerfed class, despite being a quite awesome one.

[Mindless]

Protoss needed the nerf.

Protoss is the best race hands down right now.

Not to say zerg or Terran are bad but IMO and apparently in Blizzard opinion, Protoss was a bit stronger then the others and I agree.

I don't no I think Zerg and Terran are better then protoss. When I played protoss it felt more like SC1 and was simple. But terran and zerg are a bit different feel to them and involve new play style that people have not realized yet. Like you know how convienet it is to have a free scout by building bunkers then salvaging them once they done there job to scout the enemy coming, Getteing all minerals back. And if you can micro roaches its game over. Or get mass hydras vs protoss.

[Azkit]

Back in Alpha, Zealots had 50 shields. The Zealot nerf from 60 -> 50 shields is reverting a previous buff that they gave to Zealots.

[Darkness]

Back in Alpha, Zealots had 50 shields. The Zealot nerf from 60 -> 50 shields is reverting a previous buff that they gave to Zealots.

Do you happen to have these alpha patch notes?

[Lazz]

I agree with this patch, and think you all don't understand the role that Zealots have in the game, as compared with Roaches.

Many of the imbalances people are talking about, like with Stalkers not being strong enough, are completely absurd. Stalkers need to be micro'd to fully use. I've been thinking about making a thread about it, and you all are making me think I have to: people need to learn the game more deeply before claiming that their preferred strategy not working is due to imbalance.

[Zasz]

I agree with this patch, and think you all don't understand the role that Zealots have in the game, as compared with Roaches.

Many of the imbalances people are talking about, like with Stalkers not being strong enough, are completely absurd. Stalkers need to be micro'd to fully use. I've been thinking about making a thread about it, and you all are making me think I have to: people need to learn the game more deeply before claiming that their preferred strategy not working is due to imbalance.

While I agree that most players don't use Stalkers to their full benefit (Blink), I think the issue here isn't with the Stalker unit itself, but with Protoss' general lack of anti-air. Most players seem to think an improvement to the Stalker would be the best place for their go to anti-air unit (think Dragoons).

If they brought back Overcharge Protoss wouldn't have to worry about Mutas anymore though ;).

[Kiwikaki]

oups

[Rushock]

It appears that us beta testers are not being considered a valid source of game tweaking information. This last patch had nothing to do with what needed done!

Let's blame Activision...lol.

[Shinosai]

You have to remember that blizzard patches are usually several weeks behind internal builds (at least in WoW). Have some patience while waiting for major changes. I am sure Blizzard is taking your feedback into account.

[Rilgon]

Awesome. Even more susceptible to fast Zerglings as 'Toss. Bad enough that a Zealot gets out-ran by a !@#%ing DRONE...

[Refraxion]

Awesome. Even more susceptible to fast Zerglings as 'Toss. Bad enough that a Zealot gets out-ran by a !@#%ing DRONE...

Ah well.. there's still a few months.

[Essentia]

Time to switch to terran. GG toss

[Ignorance]

They'll probably just release another patch tomorrow or on Monday. Don't get your knickers in a twist.

[Elarain]

I agree with this patch, and think you all don't understand the role that Zealots have in the game, as compared with Roaches.

Many of the imbalances people are talking about, like with Stalkers not being strong enough, are completely absurd. Stalkers need to be micro'd to fully use. I've been thinking about making a thread about it, and you all are making me think I have to: people need to learn the game more deeply before claiming that their preferred strategy not working is due to imbalance.

I disagree with stalkers on 2 levels. First is that they are supposed to be our counter to armored, and our only real GtA unit. But they are generally horrible against air, and their base damage is so low that they only coming out doing "about what they should" to armored. They don't really counter roaches, we're forced to hole up and T2 to do that with immortals.

I also don't think we should have to deal with a sub-standard T1 unit just because it becomes a little better then average after you get blink and micro with it. That still leaves it as sub-standard until then.

And no I don't think zerg should be the "free FE" race. If you get scouted FEing you SHOULD be a little vulnerable. The early game is so much faster in SC2 that saying something was viable in SC1 so it should be standard in SC2 as well is ludicrous.

[Lagorathia]

these patches aren't meant to rebalance the game on their own individually, they'll address one thing at a time. something's wrong in one situation, and even if it's going to throw game balance completely, they're not going to wait. you have to remember this is beta... let them do their magic. it's one thing to say m&m&m is op right now, it's another to cry that blizz doesn't know what they're doing.

[Omegaman]

Bump

[Wingless]

Originally posted by Elarain.limelight

I disagree with stalkers on 2 levels. First is that they are supposed to be our counter to armored, and our only real GtA unit. But they are generally horrible against air, and their base damage is so low that they only coming out doing "about what they should" to armored. They don't really counter roaches, we're forced to hole up and T2 to do that with immortals.

I also don't think we should have to deal with a sub-standard T1 unit just because it becomes a little better then average after you get blink and micro with it. That still leaves it as sub-standard until then.

And no I don't think zerg should be the "free FE" race. If you get scouted FEing you SHOULD be a little vulnerable. The early game is so much faster in SC2 that saying something was viable in SC1 so it should be standard in SC2 as well is ludicrous.

Stalkers arent your best counter to armored get an immortal..... or three. Stalkers are good against air you just cant be outnumbered. I just played 2 games against toss and my mutas were held back and stopped untill i double expanded and simply out macrod the toss. once Ive got 30 mutaslisks to your 12 stalkers yes then they fall.

[Frozen]

Zealot nerf? Seriously?

Are people still losing to Zealot rush after the nerfs to gateway/crono boost?

And no Stalker buff?

It also makes me sad, I was pretty happy that the Zealot (and Zergling) were statwise almost the same as their BW counterpart. It's a little surprising that they would nerf Zealots without buffing stalkers.

And why are Terran upgrades being reduced in time? Why not everyone's? I can understand them making an across-the-board change to have upgrades play a larger role, and as a Terran player who tries to get upgrades I'm thrilled, but it seems a little weird.

Also, no Roach changes, no Marauder changes. (Even if you think they're basically fine--I do--given the amount of posts about these units, it's a little surprising.)

Zerg have 5 Upgrades for two sets of units (air ground), Protoss have 5 for two sets(air ground), Terran have 6(Infantry, Mech, Air).

It only makes sense. If Terrans have to switch strategies, or combine unit types (like Mech and Infantry or Infantry and Air), they need to be able to upgrade them all without being penalized. Protoss and Zerg find they focus on one or the other.

[Newcomplex]

It appears that us beta testers are not being considered a valid source of game tweaking information. This last patch had nothing to do with what needed done!

Let's blame Activision...lol.

I'm pretty sure the Terran change came right out of a posters mouth. Bet they're still seeing how the metagame settles before more changes. sshhshshsh and l2p?

[Razquil]

Rofl
zealot - 150 hp melee 2 attacks 8 damage each
roach - 145 hp ranged 16 damage.


ok.... w/e


Oh whats worse? 2 armor 2 attacks 12 damage in the end.

[Hulkbot]

http://mortenpedersen.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/bawww.jpg

[Noisetank]

Oh whats worse? 2 armor 2 attacks 12 damage in the end.

One is melee, one is ranged.

Cmon' ya'll, do the Roach dance.

[Spinel]

Agreed. I've been trying zerg FE and my main problem is not having more than 6 lings by the time I get 6 zealots up my bum. Not much can be done to prevent FE scouting, eh?
Obviously you are a noob then

[Spinel]

Protoss needed the nerf.

Protoss is the best race hands down right now.

Not to say zerg or Terran are bad but IMO and apparently in Blizzard opinion, Protoss was a bit stronger then the others and I agree.
they may be the strongest on silver league, where noobs don't realize some abilities and units exist.

[Ilmari]

Wow,

Where's a buff/change to Phoenix? imo it could use a damage buff and or health buff. As it currently does not get the job done.

What about the Stalker? It really seems like it could use an additional buff Vs Air units as it does not seem to be able to preform any anti-air role.

Currently in a 2v2 matches it feels like Protoss is forced to go air (Void ray's / Carriers) and frankly that sucks.

It also sucks that the best anti-air for Protoss is also flying units, which again forces you to go air.

Please fix!

[Endymon]

If any of you listened to the blizzcast about the sc2 beta you'd know, they are waiting for the general skill and familiarity level with the game to ramp up a bit before starting in on the heavy balancing act. They figure 4-5 weeks before everyone is familier enough with the counter system to properly gauge whether something is actually overpowered, or whether players just aren't able to figure out the proper counter for something.

[Tormented]

Wow, most of the changes are understandable in this patch, but the zealot nerf came out of no where. I play zerg so it doesnt hurt me, it only helps me since i the race i lose the most to is toss. Those of you that keep going back to roach vs zealot need to realize the zealot (w/out charge, and even then it just helps a little) is never supposed to beat the roach if the zerg player micros the roaches in hit and run tactics. roach is T1.5 while the zealot is t1. The zealot is still the best t1 unit when compared to the marine or zergling. Your countering the roaches incorrectly, using stalkers/sentry if you dont have immortals yet. massing 1 unit type in the early game sets you up for failure.

And i agree with what others are saying about the tiny changes made in these patches. It needs to be incrementally small every time so if any real problems arise they can quickly fix the problems. I dont want to see a huge patch with 8-10 unit balancing tweaks (spread out among each race). It would really change the game and it would take longer to find out if the changes are good or not.

[Ozo]

seing as how Protoss could prevent a zerg FE, yes.

^ lol really, god forbid you had to make some zerglings and spine stalkers before roaches to fend them off

People are mad because these changes seem pointless, Yea upgrades taking less time is cool and all for terran, but what kind of fix is that?

Nerf zealots suddenly? huh?

[Naha]

I wish they'd use these threads to weed out people from the beta testing pool. Everybody in here flipping out or otherwise denouncing Blizzard should likely have their beta privileges revoked and given to someone else.

This is a beta test. The entire point of the beta test is to put the game through it's paces through numerous changes, tweaks, balances and to find any bugs/issues resulting from such. To say feedback isn't being listened to is simply ignorant to the beta process and Blizzard's behind-the-scenes work.

It's basic scientific process; you can't go and change 10 different things at once and get a good gauge of how those changes affected the overall.

Yes, I agree entirely that the early game / tier 1 units need their tweaks to come in so we can all start actually seeing/playing/testing the mid-late game. This isn't going to happen all at once however. It's pretty clear they just wanted to throw out another small set of changes to chew on over the weekend.

[Messana]

Agreed. I've been trying zerg FE and my main problem is not having more than 6 lings by the time I get 6 zealots up my bum. Not much can be done to prevent FE scouting, eh?

If they have 6 zealots by the time you have 6 lings, you are doing something SEVERELY wrong. Yes, talking about on a FE standard BO.

[Darthmidget]

So, the Zealot loses 10 pts from his shields, and suddenly the sky is falling and Toss are worthless? Come on people! Most of you won't even notice a difference.