The end of Battlecruiser supremacy and Warp Gate shenanigans is at hand, folks. Blizzard Entertainment has patched StarCraft II up to version 1.1. Anyone logging into Battle.net to get their pylon on will automatically be prompted to download this latest version.
Patch 1.1, which I have unofficially titled, “Man, I hate running into Siege Tanks”, sees a slew of changes to StarCraft II, including NVIDIA 3D Vision support, enhanced editing tools, bug fixes, map fixes, and balance alterations to all three races.
Looking at the patch notes, however, it doesn’t look like Blizzard has addressed that recently discovered worker command queue trick described on last week’s Bombcast (where workers can queue up “gather" and “return to base” commands in a way that decreases the time it takes them to gather resources). It’s hard to know at this time whether this means that Blizzard is condoning the actions as a valid strategy or whether they’re still waiting and gathering data to make a decision about the validity of the “trick.”
== TEASER ==But these are the changes we know for sure. You’ll see a full list of the changes in this latest patch when you start up the game, but, in case that StarCraft II icon is a little too far away, here’s the full list of the important adjustments.
Protoss
- Zealot build time increased from 33 to 38.
- Warp Gate cooldown for Zealots increased from 23 to 28.
Terran
- Battlecruiser ground damage decreased from 10 to 8.
- Bunker build time increased from 30 to 35.
- Reaper build time increased from 40 to 45.
- Siege Tank's siege mode damage changed from 50 to 35 (+15 armored).
- Siege Tank upgrade damage changed from +5 to +3 (+2 armored).
Zerg
- Ultralisk "Ram" ability removed. Ultralisk will now use normal attack against buildings.
- Ultralisk damage decreased from 15 (+25 armored) to 15 (+20 armored).
Those are the big adjustments. Now it’s time to put them to the test! Or you could play Civilization V, which comes out today. Hexagons are pretty cool too. It all depends on whether you like trebuchets more than templars.