First Starcraft II Balance Patch Announced

Yesterday Blizzard released some detailed information about the new Starcraft II patch, which will be available by the middle of September. The patch 1.1 will contain some bug fixes and improvements for the editor, support for NVIDIA's 3D Vision and other "custom game improvements", but first and foremost it will be a balance patch.

In matters of map changes only "Desert Oasis" is affected. Blizzard will add some destructible rocks in order to make early expansions easier to defend.

Analyzes showed over the last weeks that Zealot rushes are a problem especially in combination with proxy strategies. Therefore the Zealot's build time and the warpgate cooldown will be increased by 5 seconds.


Another change affects Zerg's Ultralisks because they are, even with their high costs, simply too powerful and difficult to counter with ground units. Ultralisk damage will be changed to 15, +20 vs. amored (damage against armored units is as a result decreased by 5). Additionally the building attack ("Ram") will be removed.

Most changes will be applied to the Terran race. Reapers currently perform too well against Zerg. Also, with the changes to the Zealots, Reapers would be problematic in combination with proxy strategies versus Protoss. Thus the Reaper build time will be increased by 5 seconds to 45. In addition Blizzard metioned "fast Reaper + bunker, or fast marine + bunker rushes" which are pretty effective against Zerg. To correct this, bunker build time will be changed from 30 to 35 seconds. Siege tanks are another target for modifications. Because their performance in large numbers is too well, the siege mode damage will be lowered from 50 to 35 against unarmored units. The fourth Terran change affects Battlecruisers. Like Ultralisks Terran's Battlecruisers are difficult to counter with ground units. Therefore damage against ground units will be decreased by 2.


[Source: battle.net]