Beta Patch #6 - a.k.a. "Hellbat"

[DemolitionSquid]

Interesting. Link here: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6863526811

Greetings all -

We will be bringing the beta down shortly to make the following balance changes. Thanks again for all the great help you have contributed in testing Swarm; we look forward to receiving more of your input on the changes listed below. Hop in there, play a bunch of games and let us know!

Protoss
Mothership Core
- When Purify is cast on a player’s Nexus, it now also grants detection to 13 range. Energize has been removed.

Oracle
- The cost of Entomb has been lowered from 100 to 75, while the duration has been increased from 50 to 60 seconds.
- Revelation has been changed to the following:
This ability will now also work on buildings, granting 3 vision around every unit it hits. The duration has been increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds, and the cost has been increased from 50 to 75. This ability will no longer grant detection. This ability will not affect cloaked targets, even if you have detection of them at the time. The button arrangement for this unit has been adjusted to list Void Siphon first and Entomb last.

Tempest
- This unit’s native bonus damage to massive units has been removed.This unit no longer requires a Fleet Beacon.We have added a new weapon upgrade called Quantic Reactor at the Fleet Beacon which will grant Tempest attacks +35 damage to massive units.
- Quantic Reactor costs 200/200.The cost of this unit has been changed from 300/300 to 300/200.The supply cost for this unit has changed from 6 to 4. The scale of this unit has been lowered from 1 to 0.9.

Sentry
- Hallucination no longer requires research.

Zerg
Viper
- Viper acceleration has been increased from 2.125 to 3. The radius of Blinding Cloud has increased from 1.5 to 2.

Spore Crawler
- This unit no longer requires an Evolution Chamber.

Terran
Widow Mine
- The setup time for this unit has been increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.

Battle Hellion
-This unit has been renamed to “Hellbat.”

[Pr0nogo]

Hellbat

died.

[RODTHEGOD]

Hellbat

Is that supposed to be a joke?

[Hawki]

I'm going to call Satan. Hopefully he has some vacancies for the "hellbat."

Seriously, who on Earth thought that "hellbat" was a good name?

[MulletBen]

Didn't people (DSquid) start calling the Battle Hellion the Hellbat because of its similarities to firebats? It's like they're not even trying to pretend it's a different unit.

In other news, revelation is nearly pointless without detection now, void siphon is still useless, tempest has no idea what it's supposed to be used for, widow "mine" still OP.

I do really like the option of using the mothership core for detection. I still don't like the direction they've gone with making the mothership core used offensively, i.e. adding to the deathball, but this specific change I like. Not so sure about the reasons for removing energize, it seemed like a pretty cool ability to me, with a lot of utility. I like that sentries no longer require a research for hallucination. It might be a little strong early game, but nobody really researched hallucination anyway, no matter how many sentries they got.

Blinding cloud buff seems reasonable, I don't have beta so I don't know if vipers were to slow before, it seems like zerg could use a couple of slower units, but whatever.

I can only assume that the spore crawler change was made as a response to widow mines, which I think is just intrinsically wrong. As someone who has often forgotten to get an evolution chamber, and faced dire consequences from banshees, phoenixes, void rays and DTs, I think this change makes it far too easy to respond to cloaked units or air threats. It might be necessary against widow mines, but it's certainly not necessary in WoL. I think this is a problem with widow mines, not spore crawlers, but it does bring zerg detection closer in line with Terran and newly-bufed protoss.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9hLcRU5wE4

[Quirel]

Honestly, I think "Hellbat" is infinitely better than some of the alternatives, like "Hellbringer".

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pop over to the Protoss thread to hear the theorycrafting.

... nothing?

[Hawki]

Honestly, I think "Hellbat" is infinitely better than some of the alternatives, like "Hellbringer".

Assuming that's a reference to the Halo Wars unit, I don't have a problem with that name, as we've already got "Helljumpers," and considering the different arms and armament of ODSTs and Hellbringers, it falls into the "similar enough and different enough" territory.

Hellbats, though, doesn't work for me, because at least with "battle hellion" it makes sense, in that the hellion is the base unit. "Hellbat" is a deviation from this, and falls into "too similar"territory for the firebat, making me ask again, why not just keep them separate units? Kind of rhetorical, but still...

[Quirel]

Assuming that's a reference to the Halo Wars unit, I don't have a problem with that name, as we've already got "Helljumpers," and considering the different arms and armament of ODSTs and Hellbringers, it falls into the "similar enough and different enough" territory.

While I appreciate the connection between Helljumpers and Hellbringers, Hellbringers always sounded goofy to me. They bring Hell with them?

And if we want to overthink it (Being the geeks and nerds that we are) if ODSTs jump feet first into Hell, do the Helljumpers bring it with them? Is Hell referring to the pyrosene?

I do what my friend does and call them "Hellraisers" or "Hellrazers", or even just "Pyros".

Hellbats, though, doesn't work for me, because at least with "battle hellion" it makes sense, in that the hellion is the base unit. "Hellbat" is a deviation from this, and falls into "too similar"territory for the firebat, making me ask again, why not just keep them separate units? Kind of rhetorical, but still...

Eh, "Battle Hellions" sounded too wordy in the first place. Other than that, I guess I agree.

[Sheliek]

Hellbat is a joke, right?

[Triceron]

Might as well call em hellbats now, it's definitely easier to say than 'Battle hellions' and helps distinguish it from the regular Hellion units. I don't like or hate the name, I just like that it's more practical to say.