[Dox]

PROTOSS

Archons

• Now a massive unit.
• Range increased from 2 to 3.

After receiving and reviewing a lot of solid feedback about the archon from the StarCraft II community, we came to the agreement that having archons break Force Fields would increase strategic variety in protoss-vs.-protoss matchups. We were slightly worried that strategies such as mass Charge zealots plus archons would be too difficult to stop with only ground units, but in testing this on the PTR, we found that the relationship between the zealot- and archon-based strategies vs. the more standard robo-tech builds were proving to be fun.

Archons have generally been a slightly weak unit for their cost. This was a conscious design decision that we made since we wanted Morph to Archon to be a "recycle" ability. However, due to the size of the archon, we felt an increase in attack range was necessary so that the unit can get attacks in more easily, especially on the defensive.

Cybernetics Core

• Research Warp Gate time increased from 140 to 160.

Gateway

• Sentry train time decreased from 42 to 37.
• Warp Gate unit train times remain unchanged.

Pylon

• Pylon power radius has been decreased from 7.5 to 6.5.

These three changes were made specifically to address the 4-gateway issue. The slight increase in Warp Gate research time should only really affect early-game strategies such as the 4-gate all-in. It was a challenge to find a research time high enough to achieve this goal without affecting other, non-early game strategies, but we eventually settled on 160. Regarding the sentry, it's the only tier-1 unit that's rarely used on the offensive in PvP 4-gate all-ins. However, they're almost always used on the defensive, so buffing this unit was the way to go in order to make defending easier.

The pylon power radius reduction will help the defending player take them out easier from above ramps, as well as make it so there are limited spots below cliffs where the opponent can build them in order to offensively warp in above. On the flip side, because protoss bases generally have plenty of pylon power, we’re not too worried about this affecting the defensive side too much -- though players might need to pay more attention to their base layouts.

On top of these changes, we're also looking into slightly changing how vision works on ramps so that if you use Force Field on your ramp just right, the opposing protoss player will not be able to spawn above your ramp or Blink stalkers up past a perfectly positioned Force Field. We will continue to monitor how the changes we made in 1.3.3 are working out before making the final call.

We hope these changes will resolve the 4-gate issue in PvP.

Continue reading Blizzard's explanation for the Terran and Zerg changes here:
http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/140933