Hey everyone,

Over the past month, we featured two sets of possible changes on the testing tab. After digesting all the discussion and feedback, we’re ready to announce the final set of changes in the upcoming balance update. These changes will be updated to the balance test mod later today, and the final set of changes will go live on the ladder on August 20th, the start date of season 3.
Before we reveal the final list of changes, we’d like to go over some of the changes we decided not to move forward with:

• Warp Prisms no longer start with the Warp Conduit passive ability and warp-ins will take 11 seconds when not near a Warp Gate or Nexus, up from 4. The Gravitic Drive upgrade now has the added functionality of granting Warp Prisms the Warp Conduit passive ability, reducing warp-in time from 11 to 4.

We saw a lot constructive discussion surrounding this proposal, and we believe a change along these lines could have a lot of interesting consequences. However, we felt the impact of the change using the numbers proposed would be too great, especially for a mid-year patch.

• Zealot Charge additional impact damage decreased from 8 to 0. After researching Charge, Zealots will still retain the ability to always hit a fleeting target at least once.

This change was originally proposed to address multiple concerns, such as the potency of all-ins in PvZ, the frontal pushing power of the Protoss army, especially in PvT, and the overall potential for harassment when used with Warp Prisms. However, after further consideration, we now believe the totality of the remaining changes proposed are sufficient to address these concerns for now.

New Change

• Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon cooldown increased from 0.95 to 1.14.

In the last community update, we proposed fixing a bug, which allowed Infested Rockets to ignore armor. This was in lieu of a different proposal from a previous update to decrease Infested Rockets attack damage from 14 to 12. Though these two changes are comparable, the bugfix is a much greater hit to the Infested Rocket’s effectiveness against naturally high-armored air units.

Following this last update, we received additional feedback that even with the bugfix, Infested Terrans would be still too powerful against Protoss late-game armies. While we considered going forward with both the bugfix and the damage decrease, we thought the combination would synergize too much at weakening their damage output against high-armored air units. And while this is desirable to some extent, our primary intention was to temper the Infested Terran’s strength against Interceptors. Thus, we’d instead like to go with an approximate 20% weapon cooldown increase, which would more evenly reduce the Infested Terran’s effectiveness against all air units. This brings us to our final list of changes:

Final Changes
Terran

• Stimpack upgrade research duration decreased from 121 seconds to 100 seconds.
• New upgrade: Enhanced Shockwaves: Increases the radius of the Ghost’s EMP Round from 1.5 to 2. Cost: 150/150. Research time: 79 seconds.

Zerg

• Overlord/Overseer Pneumatized Carapace upgrade research cost decreased from 100/100 to 75/75.
• Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon cooldown increased from 0.95 to 1.14.
• Bugfix: Infested Terran Infested Rockets weapon will no longer ignore armor.

Protoss

• Warp Prism cost increased from 200 minerals to 250 minerals.
• Warp Prism pick up range decreased from 6 to 5.
• Carrier Interceptor build time decreased from 11 seconds to 9 seconds.
• Nexus Strategic Recall cooldown increased from 85 to 130 seconds.

The remaining changes proposed over the last month have generally been well received, and we’re confident in moving forward with this finalized list. As always, we thank you for your valuable continued feedback. We’ll see you on the ladder!

–StarCraft II Team