Tempest Ability Removal + New Ability Add
For the Tempest ability, we agree that the current state isn’t working out. In response, our process is to first identify the issue (which we believe our community has done well), and then to make changes accordingly. In this case, the current ability was functioning more as worker line harassment, but that wasn't the intention, and we agree with your points that Protoss already has enough worker harass options. With that in mind, we’ve been testing a few different abilities instead of the current one. We’re currently leaning towards this: Tempest targets the ground, has a 5 second cast time, and then blasts the target location with electricity, stunning enemy ground units in the target area for 10 seconds (these numbers are obviously subject to change). Enemy will be able to see where the Tempest has targeted when the cast starts, and will also hear an under attack warning.
This change should keep Tempests focused on the front lines rather than on harassment. In combat, we are thinking something like this is more interesting because the correct response for both players will vary in different engagements. An ability like this will be stronger against units like Siege Tanks or Lurkers, which is what we need to target more so than the mobile units or worker lines. We’re hoping to start testing this right away, so we’ll get the changes out as soon as possible if you agree with this direction.
Tuning Changes
We’ve also been testing other changes, but for now we’d like to focus on the changes that we can begin testing out as early as next week.
First, we’d like to test a slightly slower attack speed for the Siege Tank. We agree that the damage is quite powerful right now, and we suspect it’s better to adjust the attack speed here rather than nerfing the damage. We’re thinking something like 2.8 to 3.
Second is a slight damage nerf to the Swarm Host. We agree that the buff has been too much in the current pass, and lowering the cost barrier was a good change. However, the effectiveness especially after we upped the swoop range seems too high right now.
For both of these changes, we will be moving in small steps so that we can make sure both units are in a much more powerful state than in the live game.
Cyclone
We’re seeing a lot of discussion regarding how the Cyclone currently in the live game (on ladder) is turning out much better than before, players are figuring out cool ways to micro them, and they’re seeing more usage than before. Unsurprisingly, this has led to feedback indicating that we should just revert the Cyclone back to live, and instead discuss buffing to the unit. This is definitely a possibility, but we do see the pros and cons of the live Cyclone vs. the Cyclone being tested. Therefore, we’d like you to focus your discussions around which Cyclone would be the best for the game, especially when considering all the other changes with this major patch.
This is an important topic at the moment, so let’s get constructive discussions going so that we can decide the best direction going forward.
Discussions Within the Community
We’d like to encourage everyone to try your best at working towards having productive discussions. Being negative towards something you don’t like is fine, but contributing no ideas and just being negative for the sake of being negative isn’t helpful. We’re definitely seeing good conversations, but also some of the less useful conversations as well.
Another thing we’d like to mention is that we totally agree with the feedback that we should be making tuning changes more often towards these last couple months of testing, so we’ll aim for patching at least once every two weeks at the latest.
We’d like to remind everyone that working on in-progress changes is difficult, but continuing to work at it together with the goal of making the game better will feel extremely rewarding once we get there. Let’s always keep this goal in mind when we get frustrated with some of the details—collaborating with the StarCraft community is of enormous benefit to the game, so let’s just stay focused and work on it together as one team!
