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Another Call to Action has been issued, this time to test an important change to the Tempest. The new test map is called “Deadwing LE (2.1.8 Balance v1.2)”, and includes the following update:
Balance Test Map: “Deadwing LE (2.1.8 Balance v1.2)”
This is an update. For a complete list of changes please also reference our post regarding Balance v1.0 and Balance v1.1
Protoss
- Tempest
- Deal +14 massive damage to air units.
A note that the balance testing extension mod has also been updated with this change, in case players want to try out a map other than Deadwing.
David Kim's reasoning for this Tempest alteration is that they were too weak against Colossi, but also needed to be inefficient against Brood Lords. He explains this in a small forum post:
We felt that by removing damage to massive, Tempests simply became too weak versus Colossi. We wanted to make a damage change to Tempests that would severely change how they interact versus Brood Lords, while less-severely affecting their relationship against Colossi. Changing their massive bonus to +14 felt like a good number because it doubles the number of shots Tempests take to kill Brood Lords, while changing the relationship vs. Colossi by about 67%.
To see the full post from David Kim, click here. For the announcement post for the Call to Action, click here.
Sources:
Battle.net - Call to Action: March 26 Balance Testing
Battle.net - Balance Test Map Update - March 19
The latest patch is out, bringing over the Warcraft assets that had been introduced to the PTR.
StarCraft II 2.1.9 Patch Notes
General
- Warcraft III Assets
- We’ve introduced over three thousand new assets from the Warcraft III Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne.
- To gain access to these assets, launch the StarCraft II Editor and add the following dependency:
- Warcraft III (Data Mod)
- File > Dependencies
- Click ‘Add Other’
- Select the ‘Battle.net’ tab
- Click ‘Log In’ and enter your Battle.net account information
- Double click on Warcraft III (Data Mod)
- Arcade and Custom Game Lobby Changes
- Hosts will be able to remove players who have a pending invite.
- If a player fails to accept an invite, additional invites from that player will be delayed.
- The duration of a pending invite has been dramatically reduced.
- WCS Observer Interface
- We’ve made several improvements to the WCS Observer Interface
- Minerals, Gas, army count, and worker count can now be displayed simultaneously.
- Unit wireframes are now displayed for single or group selection.
- Information is displayed more consistently, making it easier for tournament organizers to display auxiliary information.
- Hot keys have been improved and simplified.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that could allow a player to join a private lobby when they were not friends with the host.
- Certain hotkeys in the Wings of Liberty campaign can now be remapped.
- Presence information displayed in the Friends List should now display the correct information.
- Fixed an issue where certain Nvidia drivers were causing certain textures to appear pink.
- Typical use of the middle mouse button should no longer cause the cursor to snap to the center of the screen.
Source:
Battle.net - StarCraft II 2.1.9 Patch Notes
The official beta preview for Legacy of the Void has been released. It explains the changes that will be tested during this beta, as well as the various additions to the game. Below is a snippet of some of the general changes coming with the Legacy of the Void beta:
- Resource changes
- For the beta, we’re altering the number of resources at each base. Half the mineral patches have 1500 minerals, and the other half have 750. The main goal here was to make a change that would keep the feel of resourcing rates similar to Heart of the Swarm, while simultaneously encouraging players to take additional expansions more aggressively. So far, this change feels like a very solid way to achieve this and we’d love to try it out further during the beta. It clearly gives additional incentives for players to expand more, and from our internal testing, we feel like this change hits the mark on what we’re trying to do with the resource changes.
- Starting worker count
- You’ll also notice that the starting worker count has been increased to 12. This change is meant to reduce the downtime at the start of games, since the first few minutes of any game often grant little in the way of choices. So far, 12 feels like a good starting point for us, but we wonder if we can increase this even further without affecting early game choices too much.
- Unit Scan Range change
- We’ve improved the target acquisition of ranged ground units. Now, we’re just looking to see if any strange, unexpected behavior is caused by this change. We don’t currently know of anything unwanted that’s caused by this change, but we’d like to make sure that this is in fact the case during the beta. We’d really like to thank our community for locating this behavior, and we also agree with you all in that this could potentially be a really solid change to the game.
To see more details, check out the full post.
Source:
Battle.net - Legacy of the Void Beta Preview
The winners have been announced for the 2014 Blizzard Stream Awards, with over $100,000 being given to various streamers throughout the community. The list of winners is quite long, so check out the official post for more details.
Source:
Battle.net - And the Winners Are …
The dates for this year's BlizzCon has been announced! It will take place at the Anaheim Convention Center on Friday, November 6 and Saturday, November 7, 2015. Tickets will go on sale on Wednesday, April 15 at 7pm Pacific and Saturday, April 18 at 10am Pacific for the price of $199 each and purchasable from Eventbrite. See the full press release for more details.
Source:
Battle.net - Join the Party at BlizzCon® 2015 November 6 and 7
Blizzard - PLAY AND PARTY AT BLIZZCON® 2015
Here comes another Call to Action, testing some Locust, Viper, and Tempest changes:
Balance Test Map Changes
Balance Test Map: “Deadwing LE (2.1.8 Balance v1.1)”
This is an update. For a complete list of changes please also reference our post regarding Balance v1.0.
Zerg
- Locust
- Locust duration decreased from 30 seconds to 25 seconds
- Viper
- Blinding Cloud range increased from 10 to 11
Protoss
- Tempest
- Bonus damage versus massive air units removed
Source:
Battle.net - Call to Action: March 5 Balance Testing
It's been quite some time since the reveal of Legacy of the Void, the upcoming addition to the StarCraft franchise. At BlizzCon 2014, attendees were told that they would be given priority when Legacy of the Void beta access is handed out. Now it seems that preparation for beta is well underway.
The Daily Dot wrote an article a few days ago stating that their sources say, “Blizzard will be aiming for an end of March or early April release." While their article isn't very long, it gives a very tight estimate of when we may see the game.
Another person added: “Blizzard will be aiming for an end of March or early April release. It’s great timing for them. WCS Season 1 will be all but over and this will give players plenty of time to stream the beta and generate some excitement. As things stand the beta is pretty much ready to launch with the balance team just tweaking a few units.”
The source added that the beta will most likely be rolled out in a manner akin to Heart of The Swarm. “It will be initially closed with access to the pros, the press and people’s machines that fit a certain type of spec,” the person explained. “Then increasing waves of requested keys and giveaways before becoming an open beta.”
Other sites have found interesting information that supports a late March beta release. JudgeHype has discovered new images in the Battle.net application, ones that appear to be background images for Legacy of the Void's launcher.
Furthermore, Blizzard announced that the StarCraft II PTR will be taken down on March 5th before being reactivated the following week. This could be in preparation for starting up the Legacy of the Void beta servers.
We'll be taking down the PTR on the morning of Thursday, March 5 and potentially bringing it back online the following week. However, due to our current development timeline, there is a chance that we will not bring the PTR back online and will simply release the build to our live servers a few weeks later.
For those Arcade developers who have been hard at work with the new Warcraft III assets, make sure to save your projects before Thursday.
Thank you!
Any more news about the beta will be covered on our site, so keep an eye out.
Sources:
The Daily Dot - Legacy of the Void beta 'to arrive end of March, early April'
JudgeHype - Premières traces de Legacy of the Void dans l'application Battle.net
Battle.net - PTR Coming Down March 5
A lengthy explanation of the StarCraft II ladder, where it currently stands, and where it's expected to go has been posted.
Adjust league distribution
As mentioned, we’ve identified that the current league distribution percentages aren’t in line with our target percentages. The upcoming distribution changes should allow many more players to be in the correct league, and for each league to have the correct percentage of players based on the figures we announced for Heart of the Swarm. Once this adjustment is made, some players will see a change in their current league placement.
For the full post, click here.
Source:
Battle.net - StarCraft II Ladder Update: March 2, 2015
Blizzard has revealed plans to reward outstanding members of the community with a unique portrait. While details on who will receive this portrait is currently being contemplated, the prospect of having recognition for community contributions is reassuring to those that have helped make great strides in StarCraft II.
The portrait, called the StarCraft II “Community Commander” portrait, looks like this:
For the full post explaining the StarCraft II “Community Commander” portrait, click here.
Source:
Battle.net - Community Commander Portrait
A new multiplayer development update for Legacy of the Void has been released, asking for feedback on currently proposed changes to units new and old
Scan range experimentation
We've also seen some community feedback about changes that can be made to the scan range to increase the responsiveness of units in combat. We’ve made some adjustments internally and we’re initially liking how it plays out. This is something we’re planning on testing further in the beta.
Thor
- The Thor self-repair ability has been removed.
The Thor self-repair ability isn’t really working. As we’ve pointed out before, we don’t like that fact that there’s no strategic decision outside of combat. If a Thor is damaged, players will always use the self-repair ability if they’re not in combat. Our current plans are to remove this ability for the start of beta and see how the Thor works without the added complexity of a different mode or an active ability.
Immortal
- Barrier is no longer an upgrade
- Damage absorbed has been reduced to 100 down from 200.
Immortal Barrier ability being an upgrade isn’t working out well for us, so we went back to no upgrade and reduced the damage absorbed. It was too buried in tech, and in order to use Immortals with max efficiency, you had to have the additional building. So we’re trying to just balance the unit without the ability being an upgrade.
Roach
- Roach burrow move now works when Burrow is researched and no longer requires an upgrade.
This ability allows for some cool micro that we’d like to see more of in Void, so we made it a bit more accessible for now. We’re also considering increasing the movement speed of Roaches while burrowed.
To read the full post, click here.
Source:
Battle.net - Legacy of the Void: Multiplayer Development Update: February 12, 2015
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