Wooooow, I really like this patch.

I love the new changes ULTRA ULTRAAA ULTRAAAAAAA!!!!!!!(that reminds me killer instinct LOL)

WHOA WHOA WHOA!

First, let's look at Frenzy. Supposedly, it's meant to help the Ultralisk, but let's forget about that for a minute. At 25 energy, you can just cast this on eight Hydralisks and run away, or at 30 seconds, you can just prep your units for battle beforehand so your Infestor is totally safe. This won't just make the Ultralisk better, this will make everything better. Think about Mutalisks with better bounce damage, or Brood Lords that do even more damage than they do now. A Frenzied Hydralisk alone will have a DPS of around 18. I expect to see a LOT more Infestor use...

Now let's look at the Ultralisk. For some reason, now it's an anti-armor unit, but what was the reason behind this? Mass Marauders? Might be useful if the Ultralisk is burrowed, but otherwise, it will just die before it reaches its target, especially with its nerfed health. Sure, Frenzy gives it the best DPS in the game, and protects it from being hindered, not to mention Massive units can now crush Force Fields... But that doesn't solve its survivability issues.

I like what they did with the Overseer, but I wish Contaminate could shut down static defenses like Corruption did. I don't see myself using it much. Infested Terrans seem like great harassment tools when used by a flying unit, but I sure hope they cost 25 energy, and that "125 energy" is a typo.

As for the other races, we'll see how the Void Ray nerf pans out, but it seems like it's not enough, just looking at it. Makes Void Rays significantly more vulnerable to static defenses, though. Oh, and I'm livid that they insist on buffing Terran bio.

As for the non-balance changes, YAY FOR PUBLISHING MAPS FROM THE EDITOR! Oh, and I like that they removed Copper league and replaced it with a "better-than-Platinum" league. Plus, 3v3 and 4v4 is cool, I guess.

Again they factor into balancing Ultralisks their use in ZvZ? /facepalm

Too many things to complain about. My fault for getting my hopes up.

frenzy is kinda gay tbh. why not just call it bloodlust and be done with it.

the rest of the changes are cool though. except maybe the ultra stuff, i guess we'll see how that one plays out.

copyrightdna wrote:frenzy is kinda gay tbh. why not just call it bloodlust and be done with it.

I don't get this phobia some SC people have of anything being like WC3 stuff. I think WC3 is really good, although I know that the universes are different enough that plenty of stuff should be kept separate.
While they do have their similarities, they really are quite different. Bloodlust (40 mana, autocast) increases a friendly unit's attack rate by 40% and movement speed by 25% for 60 seconds. Frenzy (25 energy, as far as I know not autocast) increases damage by 25% and makes the target immune to most debilitating abilities for 30 seconds.

And there's Facebook integration...! Hah.

Tiger0211 wrote:

copyrightdna wrote:frenzy is kinda gay tbh. why not just call it bloodlust and be done with it.

I don't get this phobia some SC people have of anything being like WC3 stuff. I think WC3 is really good, although I know that the universes are different enough that plenty of stuff should be kept separate.
While they do have their similarities, they really are quite different. Bloodlust (40 mana, autocast) increases a friendly unit's attack rate by 40% and movement speed by 25% for 60 seconds. Frenzy (25 energy, as far as I know not autocast) increases damage by 25% and makes the target immune to most debilitating abilities for 30 seconds.

it's just the fact that you're casting this single use buff spell on a single unit, and it's zerg. i don't mind sc2 leaning more in the warcraft direction than scbw did just because it's obviously going to, the only rts blizzard has made in the meantime has been wc3 so it makes sense (plus i have a feeling wc4 is a pipe dream which would give sc2 a monopoly on blizzard rts)... i dunno. this one just feels weird for some reason. like it doesn't quite make sense in the starcraft context somehow. i guess if it makes the gameplay more dynamic then it's worth it, so we'll see.

IMO, Frenzy is the best balance change to come out of this patch. Ultralisks still suck(?), Void Rays still pwn(?), whereas Frenzy is an actual and huge change to Zerg mechanics. It's the perfect spell to spam, and just cements the Infestor as the game's best spellcaster.

well it's better than infested terran at least, and no worse than corruption, so i guess i can't really complain. my complaint is more about style than usefulness anyway, cos obviously it'll be useful.

i'm actually a little more excited for the overseer to have more abilities. even though one of them is infested terran, lol.

I may agree with you that Frenzy is lacking in "style", but we still haven't seen it in action, and it seems awesome gameplay-wise... Wait, can it stack? I hope so for Zerg's sake, I hope not for the other races' sakes.

As for the Overseer, yes, I love how it looks now. Even Infested Terrans look pretty good in the hands (er, tentacles?) of a flying unit... Wait, can Contaminate stack? LOL.

yeah maybe frenzy has a cool animation or something. i wish they'd put the patch up already so i can play around with this stuff.

Yeah, I wish the patch was up too... Maybe that will un-confuse us, as far as the Ultralisk goes. It seems like it was nerfed more than anything. Now it does less damage to a lot of units most of the time, it has 25% less HP for all of the time, while getting 25% more damage ONLY when coupled with another unit. I would have thought Blizzard had the sense to, if they had to add Ultralisk incentive with a spell, make it a DEFENSIVE spell rather than an offensive one. The Ultralisk's problem was never about damage output, IMO.

The only light ground unit that I can recall of and that matter are Marines, Zealots and Zerglings. Againt those units the Ultra has received a nerf. Against everythin else he has a 60% increase in damage dealt.

I don't see how thins could be a nerf.

And I don't think Blizzard is looking at this at the right angle. Why would anyone go for Ultras if they can go for Brood Lords? I can't fanthom why would anyone do that.

Of course at this time I must say that I don't play Zerg so my line of thinking may be wrong but I can't see how could it be anything else.

Ipsar wrote:The only light ground unit that I can recall of and that matter are Marines, Zealots and Zerglings. Againt those units the Ultra has received a nerf. Against everythin else he has a 60% increase in damage dealt.

yeah and banelings do just fine against light units

Quote:I don't think Blizzard is looking at this at the right angle. Why would anyone go for Ultras if they can go for Brood Lords? I can't fanthom why would anyone do that.

umm, if you haven't invested in spire tech? like any combination of hydra/roach/ling/baneling, and then ultra will benefit from all ground upgrades gotten so far.

it's still a good question though, just cos brood lords rape so much face. maybe against mech? cos i think thors can reach brood lords (correct me if i'm wrong) and lately vikings have been accompanying mech.

basically this is gonna make pure mech at tier 3 a really bad idea.

Brood Lords have an awesome range of 9,5. Evein if Vikings are there they are going to have to go through Corruptors which a Zerg player will have since they need them for Brood lords. Not saying it is perfect but is a whole lot better than Ultras that have to reach their targets via ground and BL ignore ground obstacles.

fathom*

yeah but seiged tanks don't do much damage to ultras relatively speaking, they'd have to be unseiged to get the bonus but then they lose their edge against the rest of the zerg army. does thor do bonus against armored? anyway, ultras had the same problem in scbw - they drew all the fire. that was kind of the point. like 4 ultras at the front of the army to soak up the mech damage while the rest closes in. i guess we'll have to try it out to see if the ultras can actually close in to do that massive bonus damage to the mech ball. i dunno if this health nerf is ideal but i think they're headed in the right direction with making the ultra anti-armored at least.

oh and think about what this does to colossi + stalkers for protection. stalkers are armored and colossi don't melt through ultras the way they do smaller units. and it's way more expensive to mass immortals than marauders.

edit: i see what you're saying though. a wall of broodlings soaks up plenty of damage too. i just really want there to be a use for the ultra. somehow i think the choice has something to do with the fact that A) brood lords require spire tech investment and B) one brood lord isn't as useful as a lot of brood lords.

copyrightdna wrote:i wish they'd put the patch up already so i can play around with this stuff.

The downloader is launched when I try to start SC2, but it's not downloading yet. It just says "Preparing to download new patch...". They're probably in the release process right now. Edit: downloading now.

@Copyright: That's exactly why I want the patch to be up, I want to see things like New Ultralisk vs. Stalker + Colossus in action. About soaking Siege Tank damage, also remember that Siege Tanks can't do splash when they're targeting Ultralisks. That's kinda cool. And no, Thors don't do bonus to armored units, but they DO outrange Brood Lords by 1 range (Brood Lords have 9 range, Thors have 10 anti-air range).

@Ipsar: This is a bit of a nerf, but mostly because of the health decrease. I agree that more units are armored than not, but the Ultralisk will die a bit faster now. I think if they made the Ultralisk itself something OTHER than armored, it would be better protected. Why do Massive units need a third attribute anyway?

(downloading the new patch now)
I wish they let us have more than 10 days with all these new changes before they shut it down.

i wish this game would come out so i don't have to re-freaking-ladder all the time.

copyrightdna wrote:i wish this game would come out so i don't have to re-freaking-ladder all the time.

Haha, amen to that! I think this'll be the...fourth(?) time I've re-qualified.
Edit: I got the patch, but B.net is down at the moment, so I'll check out the new data in the editor... They added the Credits, Play as Guest, and Play Offline buttons to the UI, although they're all disabled because it's still the beta.

Yes, but perhaps you'll get into DIAMOND LEAGUE this time.

It'll be a long time before I get over that name, LOL.

Whoa, the editor is different! The Data window, at least, has been majorly changed. Instead of just a big table of all the data about the unit (or whatever) you're looking at, it's arranged into tabs with an overall more-graphical feel to it. You can click a button to switch back and forth between the old and new, but I think I'd prefer to just get used to the new layout for most things...

If I get into the Diamond League, it'll only be out of sheer luck, or a really lousy matchmaking system. And then I'll leave it within 10 games unless I'm REALLY lucky, or there's a REALLY lousy matchmaking system.

Quick questions regarding the new patch, aimed at anyone who currently has access to it:

1. What are the ranges for Frenzy and Contaminate?
2. Can Frenzy and/or Contaminate stack on a single unit/building?
3. If you Contaminate a building with a Tech Lab, will only the building be affected, or will the Tech Lab be affected as well? (I totally don't know how Corruption handled this, sorry.)
4. Do Infested Terrans really cost 125 energy a piece?

Tay--Tay wrote:1. What are the ranges for Frenzy and Contaminate?

9 and 3, respectively. I added these ranges to their wiki articles a while ago.

Tay--Tay wrote:2. Can Frenzy and/or Contaminate stack on a single unit/building?

In a way. Like other similar things, casting it again will only refresh the duration. But you can't cast Frenzy four times for double damage on a single unit.

Tay--Tay wrote:3. If you Contaminate a building with a Tech Lab, will only the building be affected, or will the Tech Lab be affected as well? (I totally don't know how Corruption handled this, sorry.)

Only the building.

Tay--Tay wrote:4. Do Infested Terrans really cost 125 energy a piece?

Yes. Quite high, yes. Maybe they were worried about Overseers being able to pop out two per whenever wanted. But then they were only 25 on the Infestor. A huge difference, larger than it should be IMO.

OK, thanks for clearing that up.

First of all, I totally expect them to change the energy cost for the Overseer's Infested Terrans. And second of all, I want you to check out the new splash gradient for the Ultralisk. If you find yourself thinking "What? There's no splash change in the patch notes!", ignore this thought, and just check it out.

EDIT: What is the new Neural Parasite icon depicting?

Tay--Tay wrote:OK, thanks for clearing that up.

No problem.

Tay--Tay wrote:First of all, I totally expect them to change the energy cost for the Overseer's Infested Terrans. And second of all, I want you to check out the new splash gradient for the Ultralisk. If you find yourself thinking "What? There's no splash change in the patch notes!", ignore this thought, and just check it out.

I don't know what it was before, (Edit: exactly the same, but 100% damage) but now it's 0.33 times (33%, or almost exactly 1/3, meaning 5 vs Light and 13.3 vs Armored, going up by 1 per upgrade) damage in a 180 degree arc with a range of 2. Thanks for pointing that out, I've added that to Kaiser Blades.

Tay--Tay wrote:EDIT: What is the new Neural Parasite icon depicting?

I think it's a bunch of Zerg tentacles sticking out of a brain.

By the way, Contaminate doesn't actually stop research. Just training. Since the tooltip says it does, I suppose this is just a bug. But all it really does is this:
It took me a while to find this in the editor. You have to click the "Show Advanced Values" button for this list to appear!

Which means that Ultralisks not only got a 25% health nerf, but they got a HUGE nerf to their splash damage! Worse, Blizzard chose to HIDE it from us! This REALLY sucks, why not just remove the Ultralisk!? >:( /mild rage

BTW, I believe the splash had a 1.5 radius with 100% damage before, but that means this is still a stealthy nerf.

Tay--Tay wrote:Which means that Ultralisks not only got a 25% health nerf, but they got a HUGE nerf to their splash damage! Worse, Blizzard chose to HIDE it from us! This REALLY sucks, why not just remove the Ultralisk!? >:( /mild rage

Yeah, I think they've overnerfing its base stats in anticipation of the buffs of outside changes (Force Field and Frenzy).

Tay--Tay wrote:BTW, I believe the splash had a 1.5 radius with 100% damage before, but that means this is still a stealthy nerf.

Nope, it was 2. Here's some data from patch 12:
And patch 13:
So the radius didn't change, just the damage fraction and damage


In other news, B.net is still in the process of coming back up. It lets me enter my login data, but doesn't progress from there.

Tiger0211 wrote:In other news, B.net is still in the process of coming back up. It lets me enter my login data, but doesn't progress from there.

It's finally up. My name is Tiger.
Some more big changes I noticed is a yet-again-vastly-changed B.net interface, and the addition of a Practice League. This lets you get acquainted with the game before you do any placement matches. You can choose to just skip it (I did), and go straight to your placement matches, but you can't decide to go back to it.

Errr... the practice league was in like 3 patches ago. XD I was still in it.

Anyway, my name is Kulthran. But, you can't add people via names anymore, you need their email.

Aegis Runestone wrote:But, you can't add people via names anymore, you need their email.

After all that work I put into keying in everyone's name into my friends list! I wonder why the removal of the identifier name...

wow. i wish blizzard would stop overnerfing stuff and actually wait to see if something is imbalanced first. the ultra is going to NEED to be kind of OP if there's gonna be incentive to get it over the brood lord. i mean, protoss gets the goddamn void ray at tier 2 flat. and terran gets... well, everything, cos terran is fucking invincible. blizzard really wants zerg to lose.

in other news, blizzard dropped me in my last placement match so they could update the front page with information on how to get the beta crusher achievement. thanks, blizzard, i really wanted that spectre icon. more than i didn't want to be bronze 50

(i don't actually hate blizzard, i'm just in a bad mood tonight and not feeling charitable)

Aegis Runestone wrote:Errr... the practice league was in like 3 patches ago. XD I was still in it.

it's different now though isn't it? like, practice league is voluntary now, you can opt to leave it and play your placement matches, and then the lowest you can get is low bronze if you lose them all.

i prefer this system, cos even though i don't mind being stuck in the lowest league, i'd really hate to have to 'practice' on those novice maps. seems like it'd be more hurtful than helpful if you have even the slightest clue what you're doing.

Cool i cant even play this awesome patch and do crazy 4v4s with audie because its saying error messages that i cant get the service update. Rage!

noooooooooooooooOOOOOoOooo

zerg worker rally unit is not G instead of R

you know, i got used to W

then i got used to R....slowly


NOW ANOTHER LOLWTF

that change didn't effect me at all cos i don't even know production building hotkeys LOL



i've tried using the overseer's new abilities a few times and i gotta say, they're not a very big deal. to do anything significant i would've had to spend a lot more gas and i was having a hard enough time keeping up with my muta harass.

Force field nerf seems... interesting. (even though I'm a protoss player)

They also changed how bonus damage appears in-game. Instead of something like:
Damage: 10
Bonus: +10 vs Armored
It's now:
Damage: 10
vs Armored: 20

I'll change the wiki to match some time...

Yeah, I noticed that too... I guess it saves people the trouble of adding.

Although for someone who's used to adding the two, I had quite a shock when I hovered over my stalker's damage. (Holy %^&! Look at that bonus to armored! oh wait... where'd that plus sign go to?)

Sorta goes back to the worker rally point hotkey thing... small change, but it can mess with you if you're not expecting it...

Duskreaper wrote:Yeah, I noticed that too... I guess it saves people the trouble of adding.

Although for someone who's used to adding the two, I had quite a shock when I hovered over my stalker's damage. (Holy %^&! Look at that bonus to armored! oh wait... where'd that plus sign go to?)

Sorta goes back to the worker rally point hotkey thing... small change, but it can mess with you if you're not expecting it...

Haha, yep for sure. I'm still working on the Burrow hotkey change from W to R (I don't Burrow too much, and old habits die hard).

is it just me, or is anyone else getting ridiculously outclassed all the sudden? like i know i'm pretty bad but in the 'old' bronze league it was about 1:1 win loss ratio for me. now i'm just getting stomped on. did i just land myself in a better fucking division or something?

Divisions arent a measure of skill, sure one could have better players than another, but its still the same league.


and well, ill play more later but i stopped on my second placement game after being dropped twice

yeah i figured, maybe it's cos i got into the beta so late. anyway it's kinda good cos i'll have to stretch myself to catch up but kinda lame cos i want my hydra icon back.

copyrightdna wrote:is it just me, or is anyone else getting ridiculously outclassed all the sudden? like i know i'm pretty bad but in the 'old' bronze league it was about 1:1 win loss ratio for me. now i'm just getting stomped on. did i just land myself in a better fucking division or something?

Assuming you were put in what you'd consider to be a good league for you, perhaps the problem isn't you, but everyone else. Since a reset just happened, people might not quite be settled into the leagues they're in (before, it was well after the last reset, so the majority were likely placed roughly in their proper league). Also I've heard of a lot of problems with dropping, which could very well be the reason that more people than normal are severely misranked (especially towards the lower end of the pool, meaning when they get a game where they don't drop, they tend to own people like you).

ah, yeah. kind of a perfect storm. looks like battlenet is freaking out too, not just dropping but flat out freezing mid game. weird stuff. i hope they get all this fixed soon, i'd really like to enjoy the last week of the beta.

Tiger0211 wrote:They also changed how bonus damage appears in-game. Instead of something like:
Damage: 10
Bonus: +10 vs Armored
It's now:
Damage: 10
vs Armored: 20

I'll change the wiki to match some time...

Hm, I just made the change to the template, but now we need to figure out (yet again, what an annoying thing, I think I can see why Blizz doesn't say at all what the attack/armor upgrades do!) how to display the upgrades so it'll make sense with the current system. e.g. the Hellion's Infernal Flame Thrower (I updated the 'bonus' field to be 14 as it should be, and haven't modified the upgrades displays), a great example for the most complex that stuff is. Any suggestions?
Edit: I just went through and changed all the +x to y so it all looks right, except for the question of the upgrades.