With bonfire night on the way, Blizzard are hoping to reduce the risk of accidents around the StarCraft home. They’re reducing the damage of sentinel missiles after reports that they were plowing Protoss and Zerg into tiny pieces. Of course, such accidents can really ruin a BBQ.
The beta patch also makes changes to the Protoss Oracle.
Blizzard have published a new version of the StarCraft II Balance Test Map. Playing Bel’Shir Vestige LE (2.0.11 Balance v1.1) will allow you to try out the changes for yourself.
The changes are actually tweaks on the last balance patch. Speaking about the nerfs to the Terran Widow Mine, David Kim said “we feel just straight downgrading to the 1.25 range is too big of a nerf. Therefore, we’d like to try a change where widow mines don’t do full damage. Units within the 1.25 radius will take 100% damage like we’re testing right now. From 1.25 to 1.75, units will take 50% or 25% of the full damage. This way, the total splash radius is the same as is on live, but the actual damage output is still nerfed.”
Here’s the list of changes:
Protoss
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Oracle
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Revelation casting range has returned to 9.
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Units that burrow or cloak while under the effects of Revelation will once again be revealed after unburrowing or uncloaking.
Terran
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Widow Mine
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Sentinel Missiles splash damage radius has returned to 1.75.
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Sentinel Missiles now deal reduced damage to units caught within its splash radius based on their distance from the target:
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40 damage within 1.25 radius
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20 damage from 1.25 to 1.5 radius
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10 damage from 1.5 to 1.75 radius
We won’t see these changes applied to the game proper until they’ve been through further testing.