SC2: Die geplanten Spielbalanceänderungen für Vorazun

Co-op Mission Update – Vorazun Revamp

We’re back—and just in time to talk Vorazun, Matriarch of the Nerazim, specialist of crowd control and cloaked units! Vorazun’s Corsairs and Dark Templar are extremely powerful cloaked units, and we feel that their power ends up pushing players to neglect some of the other strategic options she has in her kit. Let’s see what we can do in this department.

Strike from the Shadows

• Strike from the Shadows now provides cloaked units with 25% additional energy regeneration in addition to its current functionality.

We wanted to provide a small buff to Vorazun’s caster units (Oracle, Dark Archon) and, at the same time, reinforce Vorazun’s stealth theme. This ability will also work with allied units, so it will be even important to carefully place Dark Pylons to support allied casters such as Ascendants and High Templar.

Centurion

• Dark Coil now grants Centurions an additional 100 shields for 10 seconds in addition to its current functionality.

The Centurion is a difficult unit to adjust because it fills many of the same roles as the Dark Templar— it’s a melee ground unit that only hits ground enemies. We therefore believe that if the Centurion were to ever have a proper niche, we would have to differentiate it more from the Dark Templar. As a result of this conclusion, we decided to lean the Centurion towards a more crowd control, tank role to help distinguish them from the Dark Templar’s more fragile, high-DPS role.

We imagine this cheap mineral-only unit would be best used as a tank in combination with Vorazun’s more gas-intensive units such as Dark Archons.

• Dark Coil range check increased from 0.1 to 1.

This change will allow Centurions to cast Dark Coil more often in a large group of enemies.

Stalker

• Stalker damage increased from 10(14 vs armored) to 13(18 vs armored).
• Ground weapon upgrades now provide Stalkers with +1(+2 vs armored) damage, up from +1 damage.
• Phase Reactor now restores 80 Shields over the duration of its effect, up from 40.
• Phase Reactor now cloaks Stalkers for 5 seconds in addition to its current functionality.

Stalkers are another unit that we’d like to improve both offensively (with a damage increase) and defensively (with a Phase Reactor shield restoration buff). Stalkers will also now cloak for 5 seconds after Blink, which in addition to defensively hiding the Stalker from enemies, has offensive synergy with Strike from the Shadows.

In addition, we’ll be increasing the damage of Amon’s Stalkers from 10(14 vs armored) to 13(18 vs armored), as we felt they were slightly underwhelming as well.

Dark Archon

• Dark Archon Mind Control cast range increased from 7 to 9.

Dark Archons were bumping into each other a bit too much previously when trying to take over their often high-range enemies. This change makes the cast range of Mind Control as long as it is for Confusion.

Oracle

• The Stealth Drive upgrade now permanently cloaks Oracles in addition to its current functionality.
• Pulsar Beam energy activation cost decreased from 25 to 0.
• Oracles now benefit from air weapon upgrades, +2(+3 vs Light) per upgrade.

Oracles were being targeted by Amon a lot because they were often the only uncloaked unit among an otherwise purely Corsair/Dark Templar army. After these changes, you will have the option to permanently cloak all your Oracles, opening them up to buffs from both Veil of Shadows (400% shield regeneration) and Strike from the Shadows(+15% attack damage, +25% energy regeneration).

We’d also like to push Oracles a bit more in the direction of combat units, so we’ll be removing a few barriers to entry in that department by removing Pulsar Beam energy activation cost and allowing them to benefit from weapon upgrades.
In addition, we’ve anticipated the following related requests, so here they are:

• Raynor’s Banshee Cloak energy activation cost decreased from 25 to 0.
• Swann’s Wraith Cloak energy activation cost decreased from 25 to 0.
• Stukov’s Infested Banshee Cloak energy activation cost decreased from 25 to 0.
• Han & Horner Asteria Wraith Cloak energy activation cost decreased from 25 to 0.

Void Ray

• Prismatic Alignment maximum bonus vs armored increased from +4 to +6.

We wanted to give a slight boost to Void Rays to reinforce their anti-armored role.

Mastery

• Shadow Guard Duration Mastery increased from 0.5 seconds per point to 2 seconds per point. Maximum duration increased from 15 seconds to 60 seconds.

The numbers on this Mastery are a bit underwhelming, so we’d like to bring them up to a point where they’d be more competitive with the Time Stop Unit Speed Increase Mastery. This new Mastery will also help shore up Vorazun’s relatively long ramp-up time.

Going Forward

These are all our planned changes for Vorazun. We hope you have fun with our upcoming weekly mutations, and make sure to tune in next week as we go over upcoming changes for Alarak, highlord of the Tal’darim!

Kevin Dong
Lead Co-op Designer