Blizzard is always tweaking and tuning the mechanics of their games. As a longtime player in World of Warcraft, I can attest to how their “tweaking” affects my Arms Warrior or Shadow Priest. This time, however, Blizzard has turned its critical eye on StarCraft II.
According to a Blizzard blog post, a big rebalancing will be arriving for the game in November. As usual, they will lean on the community base for suggestions, tweaking, and other feedback. They chose November because it is the end of the latest competitive season.
The bulk of the changes seem to involve Legacy of the Void matchups and counters. Here is an excerpt from their blog post:
“For Terran, our primary focus is on improving the viability of Factory unit armies—popularly known as ‘Mech’ compositions. While the resource changes in Legacy of the Void have been working great overall, they did have a unique effect on the effectiveness of Mech play. Outside of very specific maps (such as Dusk Towers) it has been challenging for players to go Mech due to the difficulty in securing additional expansions. Because the resource changes have had such positive effects outside of Mech play, we wanted to make some changes to Mech to improve it across the different types of StarCraft II maps.”
Terran Cyclones are being redesigned in the rebalancing. Their Siege tanks will deal more damage, but Medivacs will no longer be able to carry them around. Liberators will worsen at anti-air, but Thors will improve at anti-air. Finally, Battlecruisers will have their abilities switched from costing energy to having fixed cooldowns.
Protoss will potentially see even more benefits past that Legacy of the Void provided:
“For one, we’re aiming to make the race’s interactions with Terran Mech more interesting. We’d also like to increase the power of the Zealot in certain areas compared to Adepts or Stalkers, and also make some generally cool unit improvements.”
Protoss Tempests look to be getting AOE DOTs to punish units out of position. Carriers will also sport cheaper interceptors. The final change involves the Dark Templars, who will have an ability to blink away if detected. That last one is not a certainty, but it will be tried.
Here are Blizzard’s thoughts on the Zerg:
“We want to take this opportunity to experiment with a heavy rebalance of the Swarm Host, a redesign on the Infestor and its abilities, and a rebalancing of the strength of different Zerg tech paths. This means there are changes to units in different tech options, as well as an adjustment to the Ravager that feels necessary, especially given the changes that we intend to make to the Siege Tank.”
For the Zerg, Hydralisks will be buffed in order to make them more of a core unit. Swarm Hosts will be cheaper. Banelings will see a 25% health boosts. Finally, Infestors will be able to tunnel to any visible spot on the map.
Give Blizzard’s blog post about StarCraft II‘s rebalancing a look for more details.
