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[Gfire]

The sixth Starcraft II Beta Patch has been released. Read all about it here.

They've added some nice new battle.net features. Battle.net 2.0 is going to be a lot easier to use. Other general changes, such as making units more visible on Creep, will be very nice as well.


On to the balance changes. It's been quite a while since the last patch, and they have made a lot of balance changes.

We see a lot of changes to Terran unit and structure prices. The Ghost and Viking now cost less gas but more minerals, whereas the Factory and Tech Lab Addon now just cost less altogether.

The build time for the reactor has been doubled. This means, it will be a tougher choice, in some situations, to decide whether or not to build one. You'll have to build a certain number of units with the reactor before the time is made up, and now that number of units will be double. Also, notice the Marine built time has been increased, so this may also have an effect on Barracks with Reactors.

The bunker build time has been decreased, so perhaps we will see more bunker rushes.

The EMP radius has been decreased from 3 to 2. So we could see a lot more psi-storms against Terrans, which are very powerful against the common Marine armies. The EMP does take out 100 of protoss shields, as well as all energy (mostly used on the high templar) so this makes the Terrans a fair bit weaker against protoss. Perhaps we will see new strategies for taking out high templar, considering they are now classified as a light unit.

The Colossus's damage has been lowered a bit, from 23 to 20. I expect it was a tad overpowered before, this seems like a good choice. It will still do a lot of damage to grouped up units. Also, pathing has been adjusted somewhat for the sake of blocking chokes and ramps, and this could have an effect on how many units a unit like colossus can hit.

The Observer costs a little more now and take longer to build. Perhaps we won't see quite as many of them in games now. This could help balance out the Zerg's lesser detection (since they now have to morph an overlord to an overseer to detect.)

The Stalker now does less bonus damage to armored, but the same total. This means it now does 10 damage to regular units and 14 to armored, instead of 8 to normal units and 14 to armored. So, this is a buff against unarmored units (for instance, the Mutalisk, which I don't believe is an armored unit, will be countered more easily by protoss, who's anti-air has been lacking.) However, the weapon upgrade damage has been decreased from +1 (+1 Armored) to +1 (+0 Armored). This means when upgraded they will do 1 more damage to everything, whereas before they did +2 damage to armored and +1 damage to unarmored. So, the Stalker is more balanced and strong against a wider variety of units, a little weaker against armored but stronger against unarmored.

Dark Templar and High Templar now are a Light type unit, as well as their Original Biological and Psionic classifications. So now units that do bonuses to light units will do more damage to them. This seems logical. I don't know how it will effect strategies for countering these units.

The Dark Shrine now takes longer to build and is more expensive. This means you can't get Dark Templar quite as early, and gives your opponents longer to get detection. There have been a lot of Dark Templar used against bases with no detection in the beta so far, and this will help to make that less overpowered. This might make up for the longer Observer Build Time in a PvP game.

The Baneling's damage has been altered to do more damage. It has been increased from 15 (+20 Light) to 20 (+15 Light). So it will do +5 damage to most units, but the same to light units.

Here's a big one: The Roaches Burrowed Regeneration has been cut in half. Originally it was 10, but is now a mere 5. The upgrade for bonus burrowed regeneration originally added 20 to this number, but is now only ten. So Roaches now regenerate 5, and 15 with upgrade, instead of 10, and 30 with upgrade. A lot of people have been complaining about the Roach being overpowered, and this is an interesting nerf that may take care of that. Instead of going straight for the Roach's high HP or armor, Blizzard has nerfed it's regeneration. Very interesting, I can't wait to see how this plays out, and I hope it means we'll see fewer Roaches and more of other Zerg units.

And of course, some bugs have been fixed.

Patch Notes