Situation Report: Patch 1.3 (Starcraft)

David Kim, Starcraft game balance designer.

The new 1.3 patch for Starcraft implemented a good deal of balance changes to the game and, as always, caused some heated discussion among players. In a recent post by David Kim they relayed their reasoning behind the changes to the community. I'll pick out the parts I found most interesting to discuss. The entire post can be found here.

Firstly Blizzard killed the archon toilet, which I explained how to do in an earlier blog post, calling it a bug fix rather than a balance change; vortex was meant to be a lockdown and not a wipe out their entire force move. Units leaving the vortex are now immune to all damage and untargetable for 1.5 seconds.

Next, the Khaydarin Amulet upgrade for High Templar was removed; this means that Templar can no longer cast psi-storm immediately after being warped in. The biggest reason they did this was because they felt that Protoss AoE was a bit overpowered. Instead of nerfing collosi they decided to adjust Templar.

Blizzard apparently also thinks that Terran rush capabilities were overpowered. Bunker build time was increased to make offensive bunkering (bunker rushes) more difficult. Also, stim pack research time was increased by 30 seconds to give opponents more time to scout and prepare for early stim pushes.

Ghost EMP was also nerfed to only drain 100 energy instead of all energy which is a very good change for protoss. EMP was just too strong against sentries, infestors, and high templar which I agree with.

Perhaps my favorite change (at least the most fun change) is that Battlecruisers got a movement speed buff! Blizzard thought cruisers were underused so they buffed their weakest point. I love Battlecruisers so I may start trying to incorporate them into builds more.

Battlecruisers are now coming for you! At a slightly faster pace...