Starcraft 2 news » Legacy of the Void Beta: Balance Update Preview - May 21

For this balance update, we focused on the new Terran unit and tightening up in areas where we’ve made previous changes.

A quick note before we get to the changes: We’d like to explore various maps a bit more during the beta, so we wanted to get your thoughts on testing old ones, as well as new Season 3 maps from HotS in order to be able to pinpoint what’s best for Legacy of the Void Season 1. We want Void to support map diversity and are eager to test out various scenarios with the new units and changes.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the changes we’re planning on for the next update.

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Liberator added to the Starport

Liberator is an AA splash damage unit that can target a specific ground location to deal high single-target damage to enemy units in that location.

Mech air and ground upgrades are split again

With the updates to the Starport units as well as the Liberator add, we felt the Starport is rounded enough to split into two different upgrades again. This will create more specific choices in unit composition and strategies in Terran matchups. Our hope here is that we see a good variety in the Barracks/Factory/Starport units be used in various matchups and situations.

Cleaned up structure subgroup priorities

We heard your feedback regarding subgroup priorities for structures in SC2. We did a cleanup pass on all three races in this area, so please check it out. After these changes, subgroup priorities will generally be as follows: Production buildings > global upgrade buildings > buildings with one time upgrades.

Geyser amount increased to 2000 (to match the ratio of new minerals)

We’re currently seeing that the last mineral amount tweaks are working out well for the game. Therefore, we cleaned up the Vespene Geyser amounts to be equal to the ratio of the current mineral patches per base.

Roach burrow move now requires an upgrade again

Roach burrow move is another area we’ve cleaned up. We felt the double buff in this area was too much. To remedy this, we decided to keep the speed buff for Burrow move Roaches, and added the Tunneling Claws upgrade back. We feel that the strategic choice this upgrade provides as an investment option on Roaches is cool, thus factoring in to the decision to revert this nerf from the two changes we did in this area.

Swarm host doesn’t burrow move

The new Swarm Host is looking good so far, but we wanted to reduce the number of complexity on this unit by removing its ability to burrow move. Going forward, if Swarm Host needs to be changed, we’ll be looking to make numbers changes, and avoiding adding rule changes that add to the complexity of the unit.

Missile turret build requirement changed back to engineering bay

We felt this change didn’t get used much, and the choice to just build Turrets easily didn’t feel like a good add to the game.

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Closing

As always none of this is final, so please share your thoughts and feedback so that we can work together towards a better Legacy of the Void. After this patch, we’d like to focus the beta testing efforts on the new Terran unit, and how different strategies and races interact with different unit compositions that utilize the Liberator. After the update goes live, please focus your playtesting and feedback around using or going up against the Liberator. Thank you.