Blog: The Patch Failing at First Sight

After playing the patch for about 30 minutes. My first impressions are not even close to what I wanted. The new patch has failed on so many levels I would rather not play the game at all. Personally I am an UD player, and I was eager to see the 5 armor on the Zigurats. I had a few ideas in my mind as to how I would use this to my advantage, same with the Necropolis having a build time of only 100 seconds.

In the game that I played vs a NightElf player from Russia I was able to stop his expo easily and set up my own, the build time of the Necropolis may have been 100 seconds, but I couldn’t notice a difference. As well the armor on the Zigurats, I was disappointed as my 4 Zigurats fell faster then they did before the patch. I don’t understand how that is even possible, but it happened.

The Russian kept complaining about LAG, which was a legitimate complaint as the game was stalled twice on his behalf as the LAG status popped up.

Part way through the game he inquired if I was AFK, I was curious as to why he asked seeing as how I thought I was microing, but to my surprise my units were standing still just dying one after another to his bears and dryads. I noticed that I had a fiend still Burrowed in the ground and thought to myself; “I already told it to uproot, this will be the third time telling it to do so” Finally it uprooted, and I told it to attack an archer close by to gain some easy experience for my Lich (seeing as how my DK would not TP) . I figured the fiend had done as I requested, I was surprised to find out it was just sitting there. Just short of the battle but far enough that it would not automatically engage. It then took me 3 attempts to gain movement with the unit. I noticed that all of my fiends either had a large delay on them or were just not responding to my commands.

At this point I was thoroughly frustrated with the game. However with the game already lost I said to myself, I might as well test the weekend Venom Orb of the NightElf. (Conveniently his Demon Hunter had one, and for quite some time) It attacked my Lich and I told my Lich to run (It had boots of speed so it was able to get away) and the poison time was nurfed properly, my Lich was able to escape when regularly it would not have been able to.

I will continue to test the patch, and update my findings here. I will take a safe assumption and say that the patch is not the problem for my fiends not responding and that maybe it was the server lagging, or maybe my computer/mouse glitching out as this has happened before.

EDIT 1:

I played another 1v1 just so I could test if the Zigurat was indeed stronger and if the build time of the Necropolis was shorter.

Both of these seem to be fine. The Necropolis was build in exactly 100 seconds, and the Zigurat was indeed harder to take down as it took over 8 Raider hits (1-0 ) and a couple strikes from a Blade Master (level 4 with 4 claws of attack + 6).

I am going to test out the Human Race next and see what I can find out there.

EDIT 2:

I am in the middle of my game right now, my opponent has complied with me giving him a free win in order for me to check the patch notes and compare with the game.

I tested the new features. All of which work perfectly. If you have the Health bars on however, it is the complete opposite of having them off. They never go away, until you press ALT. I personally do not like it. They get in the way and cover up battles.

The replays save, and that is a function I will like, becuase I always forget to save my replays after.

EDIT 3:

All of the Human updates are accurate. The knights are buffed, and do a heck of a lot of damage and their attack speed is much faster.

As for the Tower nurf, it isn't much of a nurf seeing as how you are able to upgrade the armor and it still upgrades the Hit points on the Tower. But the repair rate is noticabley slower then previously.

I am now moving on to NightElf.

After I complete each race, I will try and find bugs etc.

EDIT 4:

Ok, I finished testing the fixes as well as the NightElf side of the patch.
As I mentioned earlier, the Orb of Venom' effects wear off faster.
Now onto the Dryads experience gain. If a Dryad dies to a hero, it gives 69 experience. If a Dryad dies to a hero and one unit, it gives 69 experience. And finally if a Dryad dies to just units, it gains 69 experience.

In conclusion their patch notes are true.

In Conlusion

I do however feel that there are a lot of things that the developement team did not even look at (as far as we are told) such as some sort of anti-cheat. I have already played against multiple hackers on the patch server. I find this rather discouraging that Blizzard does not feel the need to stop people from cheating at one of their own games.

As well, the Human race is still buffed compared to the others even with the reduced Tower repair speed. Because with one nurf, they still gained a rather buffed unit; the knight.

Orc was not even touched, I find this rather disappointing as well seeing as how this race just won the recent 'PPLive Race Wars' competition, and it shows a complete dominance over the Undead race.

Undead was buffed a little, but not enough. Ghouls are still walking pockets of experience waiting to be picked up by the other players hero(s). As well the fiends are still awkward to move, it feels like you are controlling two grunts that are tied together at the hip and one wishes to go left when the other wishes to go right. But I cannot complain that with the patch, Undead is able to exo quicker then before which might make matches against Orc a little easier. However I doubt this.

Nightelf is the only race I was completely satisified with. The over used Dryads now have a backlash to them by giving their opponents more experience then before. And finally you are able to run away from that pesky Demon Hunter that chases you around the map with his Venom Orb. This nurf I was so happy about I even smiled a little. My Lich was actually able to run away from it (albeit with boots of speed).

There are a few other things I wish the developers at Blizzard would touch. For instance I mentioned before no anti-cheat, as well they need to balance the Humans Macenary upgrade.

Maybe an introduction of a new unit? (preferabley 1 per race) and maybe a few new items would be nice as well to spice up gameplay for a while. We waited over a year for this patch and it was terrible. If this is the result of a years+ worth of work, I am seriously considering not buying Starcraft II if this is how they treat games now adays.

A special thanks goes to: AllGoodMagic and PanchoPistolas who were kind enough to allow me to test certain things in our games.