[TACeeSerps]

Heart of the Swarm Balance Changes 20/09/2012:

Battle Hellion is now a BIO unit. Can be healed by medivacs when in Battle mode.
Source: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6606902604

Hello everyone -

We will be bringing the beta service down around 2 PM PDT to make the following balance changes:

Protoss

Mothership Core
The cost of Purify is now 100.
The duration of Purify has been lowered to 25 seconds.
The damage of Purify has been increased from 25 to 45.

Oracle
Entomb’s duration has increased to 30 seconds.
The health of Entombed nodes has increased from 100 to 130.
The duration of Revelation has increased from 30 to 45 seconds.
We fixed a bug where the oracle was not correctly classified as a Psionic unit.


Terran

Battle Hellion
While in Battle mode, the hellion is now classified as a Biological unit.

Widow Mine
Splash damage has increased from 35 to 60.


Zerg

Viper
We fixed a bug where the viper was not correctly classified as a Psionic unit.


Thank you, again, for your continued feedback.

[Dingobloo]

The battle hellion being able to be healed is simply stupid, the unit was already too close to being a bio unit that comes out of the factory, it does not need synergy with the medivac even more then it already does.

[inFeZa]

HOLY ****

iaguz wasn't trolling when he said they were gonna test it to be able to be healed by medivacs!

GOOD GAME HELLION DROPS.


Also i like the purify changes, more damage quicker time is better.

[nirvAnA]

looks like they brought back firebats that now come out of factories

[inFeZa]

Firebats had cooler attack animations and voices : (

[jayaiwhy]

Battle mode hellions between mineral patches

Yeah okay

[nirvAnA]

I really dislike the purify change. This is what i posted in the private HoTS beta forums before the latest two patches about my ideas on the mothership core.

I feel the mothership core can be tweaked into something more integral to our race and end up becoming kinda like what the queen is to zerg. It should be the first thing every protoss player wants to make when gets his cyber up.

1. Hotkey priority selection

The mofo core spell is kinda a one off thing. You use either purify once or energize once and then you're done with it for the next 5 minutes. Often times when selecting units in your base during a defense, the mofo core is usually parked at the entrance and gets caught in the selection and ends up delaying forcefields or makes the user have to TAB through his other spell casters to get to it.

Also, say I wanna do an attack but want to have the mofo core in my hotkey selection so i can recall my army should things go bad. I don't want it in another hotkey, nor do I want to have to press TAB first before i cast FFs every single time when selecting my main army group.

Basically I feel it should be moved to the last in terms of priority in spell casting units because of the relative infrequent usage of the spells.

2. Movement speed within base

The mofo core is incredibly slow. That is good. When its being "offensive". However, when used as a defense, good players know never to engage, they either wait out the purify charge or they "kite" by walking 1 square out of its range each time and avoid it completely. If its supposed to be a defensive unit at times, it needs to be able to defend more competently! Perhaps if its within a pylon radius it is "powered" by pylons and moves at a slightly faster speed, maybe that of the tempest? The concept would be similar to queens moving faster on creep and being able to provide that added defenders advantage. I don't see why we can't have this for protoss as well.

It would also introduce a few more dynamics in the game like the importance of pylon placement or chaining pylons in a row. This way it becomes unit people pay more attention to that could move "quicker" between your three bases for defending rather that it just staying in one position during the whole assault with people not bothering to move it cause it will never get there in time. Its "off-pylon" speed is good and should remain the same as it is now.

3. Mothership morphing speed

This is a tricky one. I do not like that you cannot chorno the build time and as a result the loss of it is much more severe compared to WoL. If you mofo ship dies, gl for the next 5 mins. And at the same time starting with full energy makes it almost OP so perhaps a better balance between the energy and morphing time could be reached.

Maybe during the transition into the mofo ship, a tripod extends itself out of its !@# and plants itself to the ground, effectively making it a building during the transition. There is also proper animation so it looks more realistic with it slowly increasing in size during the morph, and will give opponents an idea when the mofo ship is about to pop out based on the animation. Right now its like whoa where did that come from! Surprise! It was in my pocket all along! And this also means since its a building during that period it gets added armor and that way it can be chronoed too, making logical sense.

Quick Comments

FsDronesInJail:

the mofo core haha

[inFeZa]

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

Perhaps if its within a pylon radius it is "powered" by pylons and moves at a slightly faster speed

This is a good idea. it definitely is way too slow in your base.

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

This is a tricky one. I do not like that you cannot chorno the build time and as a result the loss of it is much more severe compared to WoL

yeah hate this change, sometimes i'd just rather keep it as a mothership core instead of spending so much time and resources to get something that loses 2 spells and gains 1, AND it loses the energy for the recall.

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

There is also proper animation so it looks more realistic with it slowly increasing in size during the morph, and will give opponents an idea when the mofo ship is about to pop out based on the animation. Right now its like whoa where did that come from! Surprise!

This will probably come with time if they keep the idea of the mothership core.

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

You use either purify once or energize once and then you're done with it for the next 5 minutes

same deal with the oracle. - why these units suck. use them once, then forget about them till they have energy again.
bad idea.

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

Basically I feel it should be moved to the last in terms of priority in spell casting units because of the relative infrequent usage of the spells.

use a totally different hot key


Overall - i hate the design of units that have energy and no attack but isn't worth it to use. Right now entomb is just annoying rather than really harassing your opponent. and the core just feels so bulky and not fitting into the core of the protoss. no pun intended.

[Dingobloo]

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

I really dislike the purify change. This is what i posted in the private HoTS beta forums before the latest two patches about my ideas on the mothership core.
...

I think the first point is a given and I have no doubt that it will likely be changed, but the other I'm not so sure they would consider.

For 2 it's a repeated mechanic and they don't like homogenizing, they're much more likely to give it back it's "teleport to nexus" function that it had when it was a nexus addon. They could also just enjoy the fact that it requires forethought and positioning to use it so that it's less effective as drop defense.

As for the 3rd issue, they're much more likely to look at the problem rather than your given solution because it's more art work that sn't that necessary for a timing issue. They might even just reduce the build time by the full chrono boosted amount if they feel that's a real problem, or they might keep it and put less emphasis on vortex for defeating broodlord infestor making losing the mothership a big deal.

Quick Comments

nirvAnA:

I think bringing back the mothership recall will be awesome, and it should only work on cores

[AssyrianKing]

Yay Terran buff lol

[inFeZa]

Originally Posted by Dingobloo

or they might keep it and put less emphasis on vortex for defeating broodlord infestor making losing the mothership a big deal.

it's way too expensive and time consuming and waaaaaay to easy for it to die for this. and you cant even ******* control it because its so slow to save it.

[Dox]

The fact that the Moco can now 1-shot Marines is retarded. Protoss are untouchable in the early game. Biological FireBat Hellions are also retarded. I rarely disagree with patch changes, but these are just nonsense. These changes most definitely won't be final.

[NvPinder]

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

2. Movement speed within base
The mofo core is incredibly slow. That is good. When its being "offensive". However, when used as a defense, good players know never to engage, they either wait out the purify charge or they "kite" by walking 1 square out of its range each time and avoid it completely. If its supposed to be a defensive unit at times, it needs to be able to defend more competently! Perhaps if its within a pylon radius it is "powered" by pylons and moves at a slightly faster speed, maybe that of the tempest? The concept would be similar to queens moving faster on creep and being able to provide that added defenders advantage. I don't see why we can't have this for protoss as well.

This to me is pretty ridiculous suggestion, as IMO the MoCo is one of, if not the most broken thing in the HotS beta right now.

The way its currently designed, protoss has absolutely 0 reason to worry about ANY 1-basing terran build as long as a MoCo is out. The thing right now 1-shots un-upgraded marines with 10 range, meaning as long as its sitting above your natural ramp and you dont activate purify untill marines are basically within 5 range of it (marine attacking range), you have absolutely 0 problem holding ANY 2/3 rax variant, absolutely none (for instance, BEFORE this patch, if 5 marines started shooting the MoCo BEFORE you activated purify, the MoCo still won the battle, this was 2-shotting as opposed to now 1-shotting marines), those kind of barracks early pressures are already borderline strats to begin with only to make protoss not going ultra-greedy mode. Now that you can basically nullify ANY pressure a terran can do to you for 50/50 and 30 seconds of probe building time (of which most early expand builds have a slight probe cut anyway), they're 100% pointless and protoss have 0 fears for the first 10 minutes of the game vs terran.

1-1-1 is also now next to useless as a 10 range unit that deals 45 damage is enough to just absolutely pound a 1-1-1, If they siege up, they dont have a choice of running away unless they unsiege (in which you're going to lose a tank in the mean-time and get overrun the second you unseige), if they don't they're going to lose a retarded amount to it. One option would be to 'mix in vikings' to the 1-1-1, but with better range than a viking and being able to 3-shot one, vikings wouldn't even remotely help against it.

The MoCo is also WAAAAY to good in the exact same fashion against roach all-ins/bane busts PvZ, it 1-shots everything with 10 range the whole 'just pull back for 25 seconds' thing isnt really applicable since that's more than enough time to make you absolutely 100% safe against anything they can throw your way by the time purify is over... And again, if you're just patient and wait untill the units are basically under the MoCo, you're going to lose a SHITLOAD regardless of if you pull back straight away or not, there's no real 'baiting' of the activating of purify since protoss has no reason to not have the thing sitting directly above or even infront of the wall PvZ (no anti-air units for zerg till tier 2), and no reason to activate it untill the units are directly under it.

Even more retarded is the fact that not only does this give protoss the ability to defend unimaginably well against any sort of pressures/all-ins that the other races can throw (which btw is the one thing that slows down protoss from getting that critical death ball that annihilates everything the other races have), it allows for some pretty insane aggressive cheeses as well, think 4-gate blink-obs PvT, but with a MoCo floated around from as soon as it spawns to land and play the observer dynamic in that rush.... Only this observer has better sight range meaning it can stay outside of 5-range behind the cliff (the range of a marine), but attack at 10 range (enough to hit marines if they're attacking your stalkers as they're cliff-hugging) AND save you building a robo+obs for the rush.


TL;DR: MoCo is probably the most broken unit in the game and I cannot fathom why the **** they would buff its damage to go from 2-shotting to 1-shotting marines. With it in the game early pressure is absolutely no existent vs macro builds of protoss, allowing protoss to play turtle style WAY more efficiently than they can in WoL, which is already the cause of most of the other races tears regarding protoss.

PS: I don't have access to the "pro player" beta feed-back thread, but if someone who does wants to copy + paste this there quoting me, I'd be very happy xD - NVM it's been done.

[Dox]

P.S. Last week I went 1 gate moco+sentry expo in a PvP and held a 4 gate, followed by a 4-gate robo. I lost nothing. Patch 3 makes it even better lol.

[TABjornbrandr]

Originally Posted by Dox

The fact that the Moco can now 1-shot Marines is retarded. Protoss are untouchable in the early game. Biological FireBat Hellions are also retarded. I rarely disagree with patch changes, but these are just nonsense. These changes most definitely won't be final.

I got a funny feeling when I read about the hellion changes - it wasn't the good kind of funny feeling, either.
The beta certainly looks like it's going to be a longer and longer process every time a new patch hits because they really are trying somewhat large changes (which is to be expected - not complaining about that).

Once my key actually works I'd like to test some of this stuff - it's retarded judging balance on face value.

[Dingobloo]

The other problem with the Mothership core in my opinion is that it's equally good on wide chokes and small chokes.

I don't think anyone can deny that protoss has a huge problem on wide natural choke maps in WoL, I would argue it's the main reason (on top of hellion run byes vs zerg) that any map where you can't FFE against zerg has been removed from the map pool over time and I think that's where the mothership core was meant to fit in by giving protoss a defensive option when opening gateway, but the fact that it already boosts defense on things like 1 gate expands is definitely problematic.

I would almost be happy if they cut purify all together and made energize work a little better combined with sentries, though I think they're a bit worried about the offensive swing back that sentries can provide.

[inFeZa]

tbh i never liked the mothership core - even if it does do useful things and keeps me invincible. Its just boring. T_T

[AssyrianKing]

I am slowly getting more and more pissed off at Blizzard, is it just me or is that other people as well?

Quick Comments

TACeeSerps:

Just you

[VB_Rhuubarb]

What upgrades do battle hellions use? (eng bay or armory)

Also are they mechanical-biological-light (like SCVs) or just biological-light?

I've heard that they now can go in bunkers, which I like. Otherwise it's a pretty weird patch.