BlueTracker

Hey all,

Historically with our updates, we’ve split up our commanders into small groups, in order to allow ourselves to focus precisely on certain ones with reach revamp. Now that we’ve completed our initial pass on all the commanders, we’re ready to take the next step with a second round of revamps—one that will cover most commanders. Because this is one of the largest revamp updates yet, we’d like to summarize the changes.

Lowering Commander Ramp-Up Time

A common theme for commanders that are currently viewed to be “weaker” is their relatively long ramp-up times. While these commanders can hang with the best of them at maximum supply, they take more time to get a starting army out of the gate and can often fall behind. While differences in ramp-up times are intentional design decisions, we do think there is some room to shore up some of the commanders that are on the extreme end of the spectrum. In the next patch, we’ll be addressing ramp-up for Swann, Karax, Stukov, and Han & Horner, which will generally manifest in one of two forms:

• Lowering the cost of certain “required” buildings and upgrades in the early game, i.e., evolving the Infested Compound.
• Lowering the cost of upgrades that lock the full potential of various units.

Reinforcing Karax’s Identity

The lack of power and identity in Karax’s army has been a recurring topic in the Co-op community. In addition, that he has a mastery that negates his expensive unit trait instead of enhancing it feels self-defeating. For these reasons, we’d like to try the following changes:

• Karax’s level 1 perk now grants all combat units 50% increased Life.
• Combat Unit Resource Cost Mastery replaced with Combat Unit Life and Shields Mastery. This Mastery increases combat unit Life and Shields by 1% per point, up to a maximum of 30%.

The primary goal of this change is to reinforce Karax’s identity as a master Phasesmith. As a commander that typifies strong defense, we wanted to reinforce the fantasy of his masterwork creations being a bit more durable, which synergizes with Reconstruction Beam. While we considered other bonuses such as attack speed and damage, we wanted to avoid pushing Karax’s maxed army to be wholly more powerful than that of other Protoss commanders.

Tweaking “Weaker” Units

Finally, we’ll be doing a power pass on units that often feel weak, including (but not limited to) Kerrigan’s Brood Lords, Abathur’s Ravagers, and Zagara’s Bile Launchers, and various units for Swann and Alarak.

This is just a small taste of what we have in store for everyone, and we’re excited to share with you what’s to come. Stay tuned!

Kevin Dong

Lead Co-op Designer