Beta Patch 13!

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So there's apparently a new patch about to hit Battle.net in the coming days and it includes a huge improvement in features. Most exciting is the unlocking of 3v3 and 4v4 multiplayer matches, making it possible for mass awesomeness to arrive on Battle.net. I'm sure it'll be nuts but we're itching to try it!

We're also a little concerned with some of the balance changes in this patch including the tranferring of the Spawn Infested Terran ability to the Overseer which essentially allows for free units to be dropped in an enemy base. Also, an ability for the Infestor that replaces the Spawn Terran is called "Frenzy" which grants 25% additional damage to one targeted biological unit and allows it to ignore all effects against it (including Marauder slow or 250mm cannon stun).

Sounds too much like Rage. What is this, WarCraft in space? And does this nerf on Terran abilities mean that the Thor will get its 250mm Cannon ability back without research?

If you're looking for Blizzard's thoughts on the patch, check out their Situation Report: Patch 13.


Among other changes, the new Facebook integration and map publishing UI will also launch with this patch, and player muting will also be live. Thank goodness. Here's the full patch notes.

StarCraft II Beta -- Patch 13 (version 0.15.0.15449)

Balance Changes

• PROTOSS
  • Sentry
    • Force Fields can now be destroyed by Massive ground units walking over them.
  • Void Ray
    • Range decreased from 7 to 6.
  • Warp Gate
    • Subgroup selection priority changed from 2 to 3 so that it takes priority over Gateways when selected.
• TERRAN
  • Marine
    • Stimpack research cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100.
    • Combat Shield research cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100.
• ZERG
  • Infestor
    • Infested Terran spell removed.
    • Frenzy spell added:
      • Costs 25 energy.
      • Targets a single biological unit which deals 25% more damage and is immune to snare, stuns, and mind control for 30 seconds.
  • Overseer
    • Contaminate spell added:
      • Costs 75 energy.
      • Targets a single enemy structure which cannot train units or research upgrades for 30 seconds.
    • Infested Terran spell added:
      • Costs 125 energy.
      • Infested Terrans have the same stats as those previously created by the Infestor and are placed directly under the Overseer when spawned.
  • Ultralisk
    • Life decreased from 600 to 450.
    • Damage changed from 25 to 15 (+25 Armored).
    • Damage versus structures increased from 60 to 75.

Source: Battle.net

 

jon I beat you

Ultras are interesting now but will this help them in the long run do to the health of the ultras getting dropped 150 points and I still think they need to take away the armored subgroup, that would help wonders and make it so BA.

overseers are awsome im glad they have energy dance now and reason to make more then one so much clapage on this one although infested terrans need to last a little longer or take less time to morph

Im not a big fan of the Percent things and like jon said this really isent warcraft in space and not really a big fan of the corrupters ability or really this one but we will see

bio buff is also interesting

the situation room

There have been many new additions to Patch 13 including the map publishing feature, but as with previous Situation Reports, we wanted to take some time to go into some of the balance changes in particular and explain a bit more about them.

In this patch we are looking to address several balance issues that the community has discovered over the last few weeks. We are also addressing some of the zerg units and abilities that don’t see a lot of use in competitive games. These changes are big enough that we think it’s likely there will be further balance changes to these units as we learn more about how they are playing in the game.

Sentry Force Fields - Force Fields can now be destroyed by Massive ground units walking over them.

We are seeing a lot of great games that rely on Force Field as a key part of protoss strategy. The ability is fun, but we do want to create some more options for enemy players to deal with Force Fields to create some additional gameplay choices in a fight against the protoss. Now Massive units (Thor, Colossus, Ultralisk) will smash a Force Field if they are told to move through them. Ultralisks can use this ability to lead a Zerg charge onto a protoss position while protoss players can use their Colossus in an emergency to allow their army to attack or retreat.

Ultralisk - Life decreased from 600 to 450. Damage changed from 25 to 15 (+25 Armored). Damage versus structures increased from 60 to 75.

We have put in a large number of buffs to the Ultralisk to allow him to close the gap on his enemies. The Ultralisk can now ignore Force Fields and with the Infestor’s Frenzy ability he can ignore all of the ways that the enemy could slow or disable him. With all of these buffs the Ultralisk needed to be rebalanced. We are focusing him more as an anti-armored unit since zerg players already have a few ways to deal with mass light units (Banelings and Fungal Growth). This Ultralisk should be able to deal with both mass Marauders and mass Roaches which are a common threat to zerg players in some end game scenarios.

Infestor - Infested Terrans spell removed. Frenzy spell added: Costs 25 energy - Targets a single biological unit which deals 25% more damage and is immune to snare, stuns, and mind control for 30 seconds.

We are cutting Infested Terrans since the ability rarely saw use. We have buffed this ability in internal testing and were unable to find a place in which we were happy with it on the Infestor. We are introducing a new ability called “Frenzy” that is especially useful for the short range zerg to get close up to the enemy to do some real damage. Frenzy should be especially helpful on Ultralisks who are trying to get past Thor Strike Cannons, Fungal Growth, or Neural Parasite.

Overseer - Contaminate spell added: Costs 75 energy - Targets a single enemy structure which cannot train units or research upgrades for 30 seconds. Infested Terran spell added: Costs 125 energy - Infested Terrans have the same stats as those previously created by the Infestor and are placed directly under the Overseer when spawned.

The Overseer is designed as a harassment caster. We don’t want to see hundreds of Overseers flying around, but we do like the ability for the zerg to annoy and harass the enemy with spells like Changeling. We added two abilities on the Overseer that were recently removed from other more “combat oriented” units. We expect that player’s will still build 1-2 Overseers to watch the enemy base and provide detection support for your force, but now you can also use the Overseer’s energy to disrupt enemy production and research, or to make small drops that force the enemy to spread their forces.

Void Rays - Range decreased from 7 to 6.

Void Rays are being used aggressively against terrans now, using their range and speed to trap a terran player in their base. This is pretty fun for the protoss player but at a variety of skill levels it is too difficult for the terran player to stop, even if the player sees it coming with good scouting. We think a slight range reduction will help with this match-up without doing too much damage to other matchups.

Terran Upgrades - Marine - Stimpack research cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100. Combat Shield research cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100.

We still believe that the terrans are spending too much on infrastructure and are struggling to compete at certain times in the game against the protoss. Reducing the cost of essential infantry upgrades should make the terrans a little bit more dangerous when going with an infantry heavy force.

As always, we are continuing to watch the data as we make these changes as well as are continuing to watch for constructive feedback on these changes and more.

 

I like the void ray nerf, toss needs to find a strat other than rays. The only way I've been able to counter them successfully is with mass Vikings; marines just dont have the maneuverability to fight them if the other player is really good at controlling rays. Will also make turrets better since they will outrange a void ray.

 

I sooo can't wait to try 3v3 and 4v4! I assume there will be new maps for this. Curious that they didn't mention how many.

That Void Ray nerf is bleh. Just because I use them a lot. It's also completely necessary. Oh well for me. xD

 

im not liking this frenzy thing. warcraft in space? no thnx. So when we wanna get ultras...we have to have infestor to maximise their capabilities....

 

Don't know why Blizz is still buffing up the terran infantry. I actually thought they were going to buff up the mech so we could actually see mech builds more often.

Although the Frenzy thing is war-craft-ish ( I never really played it though), it sounds great for the ultralisk to be the spearhead of an attack.

Can't wait to see BGH by the way.

 

Wow, overseer contamination? That's going to be a huge pain for protoss. Now one overseer can completely counteract the chrono boost of a really important upgrade like colossi range, psi storm, blink... yikes.

But at post above me, it's not Blizzard's fault that most terran's still think bio is the shiz. If they keep trying it against me, I'll keep smashing them with sentry-zealots until they learn the hard way.

 

Oh ffs, we're going to see a host of zerg players going mass ogre/shaman...er, I mean hydralisk/infestor ;P

Seriously though, I'm having trouble seeing the new infested terran ability being any good. At 125 energy the overseers will be able to cast it what, twice on a full energy bar? Given their short duration, time to hatch, and practically non-existent mobility this just doesn't seem like a very good ability. Something limited solely to killing a couple workers maybe.

Plus I'm not going to be able to go mass infestor in custom game 2v2s anymore. /sadface

I'm glad to see stimpack cost was lowered, I've been *****ing about that for awhile now.

Also, hurray for the forcefield has been nerfed. Now my Ultras can't be caged and ignored.

edit: anyone know off hand if morphing a hatchery into a lair is an "upgrade" in terms of the corruption ability? I wouldn't think so, but that would be pretty funny to stall someone's lair upgrade if you teched their first.

 

You guys do realize that Overseers don't take up any food cap and neither do their spawned Terrans? So essentially this leaves Zerg with an unlimited sized army. At the very least they could use it to cut off a cliff for a retreat during a 200/200 army battle.

 

Thats what iv been saying and they also cost as much as a sentry and there pretty fast.

 

I hadn't thought of that Jon. This well may ruin BGH as Zerg will be completely unlimited. Yay, I got sick of BGH 8 years ago.

So the big ultra buff was to let them (and all massive units) get through force fields? That's great, but aside from that one situation...yeaaaah, they sound really useless now. They are only useful against other massive units and got nerfed pretty hard on HP? Aren't all other massive units ranged too?

Blizz isn't stupid, but the sit rep doesn't make the changes sound at all appealing to Zerg players. What am I missing?

 

BloodHawk the buff is to armoured damage not massive damage this plus fury plus the forcefield trample was a huge buff to ultras even though they lost alot of health.

I'm not a big fan of fury though...seems to be a bit unbalanced if you can get apm up high enough to buff all your forces with a couple of infestors. I'd prefer if the energy was 50 or something...but i guess i'll need to play alot of games to confirm this

 

This is not Warcraft in space. It's much more sophisticated. I know It's not 3D.

Quote Artanis much?

 

^ nice relevant post.

I remember reading predictions on how the Warcraft team gaining influence (or taking over?) will ruin the SC feel to the game. And how spot on they were. There are the icons, now this frenzy, and the list could go on I guess... this is truly ridiculous. I sincerely hope that the release gets delayed and Blizzard gets their thoughts and priorities together. Then again, I've been hoping for this to happen for months.

 

I am not at all happy with these changes as a average Zerg player. Yes, it is great for High APM and/or platinum players but most of us are not. Seriously these changes are not helping Zerg players at all. Especially since the MMM ball will be even faster coming now with these upgrades being able to be done faster.

Ultras were more or less useless anyways, I cannot see how this really helps. Zerg needs a good counter to storm and MMM, not late game force shields. 25% to damage means **** when you got couple of storms killing your hydras or roaches. In sc1 hydra was tier 1 and really dangerous, and could win the Zerg a real advantage in the field and let Zerg get more bases. Storm was needed to kill them there. Here they are pathetic and with Storm useless.
Reduce Hydra cost to 100/25 and infestor to gas to 125 and we can talk.
Perfectly would be to put hydra back to tier 1 so we can actually be able to swarm our enemies with actually dangerous units. Roaches are countered by Toss and Terran so easily if they know what they are doing it is not even funny. Any by the time you got a meaningful number of hydras Storm and colossi are on the field, not to mention stimpacked Marauders beat hydras (and cost less and can be gotten earlier )

 

if you made Hydras tier one you'd have to make another unit tier 2 to balance things. And probably the roach would be moved back into tier 2 to compensate. And the whole point if tier one in my opinion os acountering ground units. As there is no flying attacking units that are tier one in any race. So having an hyrda that can attack air is good as tier 2. As tier 2 is when the airborne units appear in the game.

 

If you haven't noticed Hydra is the main damage dealer for Zerg. both air and land. They are not just to counter air. If we go by that logic then why are marines and stalkers tier 1?

 

Are stalkers considered tier 1 since they need the Core to be made? I would've considered them 1.5.

IMO, hydra seems fine where it is now since the roach is the zerg's early ranged unit and can be made about the same time as toss can get stalkers, with hydras only taking a few min longer to get out into the field in-mass. Zerg can usually get out enough in time for any air unit thrown at them.

Marines have been AA since the beginning and the stalker simply replaces the Dragoon from SC1, so in these cases there hasn't really been any gameplay differences.

Also, wouldn't the queen be considered the zerg's tier 1 AA? It only costs the same as 6 lings and only needs the pool.

 

IMO ultralisks are now for crushing FF, then dying immediately after that lol, frenzy is for the hydras for high apm people (not one of them), the koreans must be freakin' happy right now because of frenzy

 

If stalkers are 1.5 then hydra is 2.5.

But roach is not good enough. And going mass roach leaves Zerg very vulnerable to air, a problem that other two sides do not have. Zerg is about going mass. Not to mention that Roaches are easily countered by Marauders and by sentries with their force field and stalkers that have better range and better move speed. Roaches with range 3, being armored and not AA are not good enough. I want Hydras back at tier 1 (with any necessary changes like lower damage). If they decided to keep the Hydra from SC1 they should not have made these changes, Hydra was perfectly OK the way it was in SC1.
And let me repeat again, Hydra is not just an AA unit, it is a main damage unit for Zerg. It outdamages and outranges Roaches and zerglings.

And you say how Marines are like that from sc1 and stalkers are basically dragoons but then again ignore that the Hydra is not same like from sc1, by being moved to tier 2 it is worse.

I would rather see a whole new unit then these kind of stupidity.