IdrA spricht mir aus der Seele!
"The first balance patch for StarCraft2 came out roughly a month after release and consisted solely of changes that were announced weeks ago and that were actually already prepared at the start of phase 2 of the beta. Unfortunately, this is evident in the effect the changes will have on the game. Blizzard patched the state the game was in several weeks ago, and didn't address many developments in game play that have since made the patch almost irrelevant. ZvT and ZvP will remain largely unchanged while the balance issues in TvP will only be made worse, terran will now be even stronger early and protoss even stronger late in the game.
The reaper, as well as the bunker, had their build times increased by 5 seconds in response to the reaper bunker rushes that were popular late in the beta and early post-release. This also slows down the 3 or 5 barracks mass reaper builds that are now popular, but this only slightly weakens one of terran's many aggressive openings vs zerg. Center rax reaper rushes still hard counter hatchery first builds, which is the only thing that was unique about reaper builds. All other terran aggression, hellions, hellion drops, banshees, bio allins, tank allins, thor allins, remains mostly untouched. The balance problems in early game ZvT come down to the fact that terran is simply stronger and much more diverse early on, zerg has to rely on hard counters to have any chance to survive, but cant scout in time to implement them. Blizzard, by nerfing the reaper, only addresses one of the many builds terrans can do instead of the underlying problem and as long as they approach it like this the matchup will remain imbalanced. The tank's damage was also changed from 50 to 35+15 vs armored, but this is essentially irrelevant in ZvT, they will now kill hydras in 3 shots instead of 2, but hydras are not usable vs terran because of their poor mobility and ridiculously low hp. It also has a minor effect on zerglings and banelings, they now take 3 shots instead of 2 in the outer radius of splash damage, but the first and second radii are unchanged. As with the slight decrease in ultralisk damage, this will be important in some specific situations but is not something that is really significant in terms of overall balance.
The zealot's build and warpin times were also increased 5 seconds, and this could have a far more significant impact on the game. At the time the patch changes were decided zealot rushes were the only popular way for protoss to pressure zerg, and as such nerfing zealots should give zerg the time they need to establish a decent footing early game. However, since then protosses have perfected several new types of cannon rushes that serve almost as well to prevent fast expansions. Given that zealots are no longer a big threat early its possible that zerg can find a way to deal with the threat of cannon rush which would allow them to transition into the midgame in much better shape than was possible before the patch. This, though quite likely not large enough, was a reasonable change by Blizzard as it is difficult to tell how large an impact early game changes will have.
These changes would have made for a good patch a month ago, as is it is definitely not enough, and won't have much of an impact on the balance situation. Hopefully if Blizzard takes another month to release the next patch it will be a more meaningful one."
- Greg 'IdrA' Fields
