Call to Action: Balance Testing
We’ve recently published a custom version of Antiga Shipyard, called "Antiga Shipyard 1.5.0 Balance v1.0," in which we’re testing a few small balance changes to StarCraft II. Our plan is to bring the changes to the game in a week or so. Here’s the situation:
- Globally, matchups outside the professional level are balanced, and we see no significant issues.
- As always, we are watching matchup balance in order to react as best as possible when issues do arise.
- At the very highest levels of eSports competition, we feel that terran players are at a slight disadvantage against zerg. Many terran players, specifically those just below the very highest skill level, are underperforming in this matchup.
- We’re dealing with this issue very carefully, because at the highest end of the pro level, terran players look about equal against protoss.
- We’re making the smallest changes that we believe will address this.
Here’s what we’re testing:
Creep tumor build radius, vision radius, and creep spread radius decreased from 10 to 8.
This is a relatively minor change, but one that we feel will positively impact game balance at the highest levels of competition. After carefully watching as the pro game has shifted since zerg players started spreading creep more often, we noticed the increase in creep spread was only having a significant impact on TvZ. These are our goals with this change:
- Keep the early game queen defenses and creep spreading viable, while at the same time making it slightly more difficult for the zerg pro to quickly spread creep across the whole map.
- With tactics where a single creep tumor is being used, there is practically no change. Creep doesn’t spread fast enough for this change to make a difference at most levels of play.
Raven movement acceleration increased from 2 to 2.25.
Raven movement speed increased from 2.25 to 2.5.
After seeing pro players using the raven, we made these changes considering these two lines of reasoning:
- Even the best micro players in the world were struggling to use the raven due to the slower acceleration and movement speed of the unit. Seeker missile cost or cast range appear to be secondary factors.
- Because ravens are difficult to use, we don’t expect this buff will have more than a small impact on high-level play or any significant impact on balance at most skill levels.
As always, these changes are not final. Please log on, try out the changes for yourself, and then join our feedback thread. We’re looking forward to testing these changes with you, and will do our best to address the feedback we receive.
Comments (149)
stalker/immortal
I don't believe there are any balance issues anymore as terrans AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF PLAY, have figured out how to do it. They're also getting much better at removing creep, and against certain styles of terran my creep almost never gets out on the map really. This nerf would only make me stop spreading the creep as it is already getting harder to even get it out on the map. The cases seen in PREVIOUS tournaments have shown otherwise, but again, terran have changed it up very recently and I believe the nerf is unecessary.
24 Zerg wins, 3 terran wins, 8 toss wins in tournaments. Game is balanced.
I feel like comparing fully upgraded Raven to other units, especially it's counterparts HT and infestor, it's a little bit silly this upgrade is still in-game. I would suggest just removing it and let Raven's have it automatically.
It would also fit to the category "Because ravens are difficult to use, we don’t expect a buff like this will have more than a small impact on high-level play or any significant impact on balance at other skill levels."
Nah lets nerf the creep. The fact that the queen buff had such an impact on play was that now terrrans and tosses actually must start to fight zerg not just cripple his eco early on.
And then you nerf zerg?. Please explain this logic :)
You mad bro? Terran is still imba as !@#$ and even at Platinum, doom drops are too powerful and 'Stim and Run' is the way to go to beat everything.
I've noticed that Blizzard does not like to reconsider their decisions. If they go overboard with a nerf (and they oftentimes do such as the snipe nerf), in the following patch they do not make the nerf less severe but try to buff the race in some other aspect. I'm not sure if this is to avoid Blizzard admitting that they have indeed gone overboard with something, which could prove to be an awkward topic of its own, but I do feel that people in charge of balance should consider mitigating previous nerfs or buffs as the situation necessitates rather than countering the mistake in a different department.
In this case, nerfing queen range to 4 (bringing back the melee attack animation to actually use the very nice model the unit has) could prove to be useful as it'd allow hellions to gain some elusiveness. Alternatively, to reintroduce hellions blocking creep spread (something we don't see these days) they could reduce queen ground range to 3 and increase damage to 2x5 or something similar.
Either way, I hope they are not too bent on bringing such balance changes so quickly onto the ladder. Not only is 1 week too short a time frame, but Antiga Shipyard is already vetoed for a lot of Zerg players - hence, the win ratio for Terran would increase not merely because of this balance change, but also because of why the map is vetoed (exceptionally hard to defend 4th bases, etc.).
The idea of introducing balance changes in this way is nice, but it as well as the severity of changes needs finetuning.
The whole thing about buffing Terrans late game seems silly to me, Terran is already being super cost efficient with low cost units (with upgrades) being some of the strongest units in the game in large numbers. Zerg vs terran needs to have a fairly high number of broodlords which is zergs most expensive unit and even get to the broodlords upgrades is expensive as you will need 2 spires. Zerg need a handfull of broodlords a handfull of infesters (expensive gas also) and loads of zergling/banelings to match a M&M&M late army. Terran got cheap units which pay for themself so easily and that is their thing. Zerg is least cost efficient except maybe broodlords and infesters (why you see them being used so often) Protoss do keyunits and loads of key abilities where Zerg relie on their numbers.
I can see you might want other options from Terran as I see it as really one sided when you join the mid game but buffing their endgame potential will make the game unbalanced.
Terran is the strongest race out there IMO.
They just need to turn it up and get better, prenerf terran was just so strong that terran rly had to do so little effort to win, they just need to step it up. Taeja wins turnaments and make it look easy.
I think the game is balanced as it is. and the real balance begins when Heart of the swarm comes out, trying balance the game to perfection right now is silly.
"Against protoss, many playing just below the very highest-level terran players aren’t performing as well as the other two races."
Ok then they say they are going to deal with this issue very carefully but then they make buffs to the raven which effect TvP in absolutely no way at all? Is that how you deal with TvP carefully, by dealing with TvZ?
Also I don't understand how they can say globally matchups are balanced. When things were balanced on TLPD blizzard said things are balanced and now when things have been bad for Terran for 3 months in a row blizzard still say it's balanced, how is that possible? I suspect Blizzard are simply telling us what they think we should hear to avoid a lot of upset.