StarCraft II is constantly evolving on every front. Popular among casual RTS players and legendary as an esport, the question of balance is always up in the air. What works for professional players that have trained to know as many aspects of the game as possible might have completely different ramifications among the casual community, or those that are still climbing the ranks.
Blizzard wants the player base to know that their concerns aren’t just being voiced on forums and lost, however. The development team released a blog earlier on their Battle.net client discussing the various matchups and how they feel the balance is currently working, as well as outlining any interests or plans for adjustments therein.
The first matchup the developers discuss is Terran-Zerg, which they don’t have much of an issue with. “After last year’s big patch, we saw a steep rise in Mech strategies followed by a steep decline,” the developers write, discussing dominant strategies. “Though we had concerns with TvZ in last season’s map pool considering the current maps, the matchup looks healthy both from a gameplay and a balance perspective.” They discuss the improvements seen in the endgame, with Brood Lord turtling now thankfully a relic of past metas, both sides now often fighting tooth and nail for all territory.
In terms of Terran-Protoss matchups, the development team believes the matches to be relatively even, but still available for improvement. They discuss that much of the mid-game gameplay is focused on the threat of a two-base tank push from the Terran side, which can cause one-dimensional mid games. Their main focus would be trying to open up mid-game gameplay rather than trying to enact a balance.
Focusing on Zerg-Protoss, Blizzard happily discusses a great amount of diversity from both sides in terms of early and mid-game stages of matches. However, the development team also mentions that they’ve seen a Zerg-favored tilt in this matchup, with Queens and Banelings being an incredibly efficient tool for Zerg against Protoss. Additionally, Protoss has difficulty clearing creep through mid and late game without needing to have their entire army present to do so.
In closing, Blizzard finds the mirror matchups of Terran and Zerg to be in a good enough place that they don’t intend to change much. Protoss mirror matches, however, present two core issues of volatile early game and the difficulty of holding a third base. They intend to bring a few future fixes to help knock down a few heavy hitters and bring up some less useful units for this matchup.
And those are the thoughts that Blizzard shared! It’s fantastic to see the developers being so transparent with their thought process on balancing, and it’ll be wonderful to see the changes they discuss finally be implemented.
