StarCraft II Patch Announced

31/8/2010

Due for the middle of September, Blizzard has announced the first patch for StarCraft 2. A few changes are to be made to the cost and time of build for units and buildings to address the balance of gameplay. Blizzard have stated that while minor changes will happen to the balance of race throughout the patches they will not be drastic as patterns in gameplay will always change as new strategies are devised.

The patch isn't all about a balance update however. One major overall change to the gameplay aspect is in the field of vision for killed units. Before the patch a unit recently killed in battle would provide vision on the map for a short few seconds allowing you to retarget the enemy or an area and send in some support. Now once your unit has ceased to exist, the field of vision will disappear immediately unless you have other units near by. This change makes a big difference as you can't now send a lone unit to scout around with more units on standby if the scout is ambushed.

The Desert oasis map has a small change, destructible rocks have been placed in the map and the centre watchtower area has been narrowed.

So on to the balance changes for the races.

Protoss

It was felt that the early Protoss Zealot rush was too powerful, because of this the Zealot built time has been increased from 33 to 38 seconds, slowing down the rate a zealot rush party can be built. The WarpGate cool down has also been increased from 23 to 28 seconds

Terran

The Terran have had the most changes, partly due to changes that are required because of some units power and some items have had to be changed to be inline with changes made to the other races.

Firstly, the Siege tanks have been noted as being to dominant on the ground against all targets. With this in mind Blizzard has tried to allow a few ground units to stand more of a chance against the siege tanks. With this in mind the siege tanks damage has been from 50 to 35 +15 armoured, This change keeps the siege tanks power at 50 against armoured units but allows the faster un-armoured units to only take 35 points of damage, cutting the dominance of a group of siege tanks.

The reapers build time has been increased inline with the Zealot build time, they have been increased from 40 to 45 seconds. bunker build time has also been increased from 30 to 35 seconds.

The last change has come to the battlecruiser, the flagship unit for the Terran is an all-round behemoth, it has been decided that although getting a battlecruiser is difficult because of the cost, the overall power is still a little too high. Therefore the power of the battlecruiser against ground units has been lowered from 10 to 8.

Zerg

To match the decreases on the siege tank and the battlecruiser the Zerg Ultralisk's damage has changed from 15 +25 armoured, to 15 +20 armoured. The Ultralisk's RAM attack is being removed from the game because its now too similar to its normal attack.

Blizzard is committed to improving StarCraft 2 and urge players to make comments in the forums as the read them regularly for gain info on problems and bugs.

Full info from Blizzard on battlenet.

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