After a long period of quiet and normal maintenance updates, the StarCraft 2 community is finally getting a major new patch focused on extending the early and mid-game experience.
StarCraft 2 Drops 5.0.16 PTR Patch Notes
StarCraft 2 launched all the way back in 2010 and slowly grew with a few expansions in the following decade. Major content additions wrapped up with 2020’s final Legacy of the Void additions and the popular RTS has remained in balance and maintenance mode since then.
That said, fans were very surprised to see a major update pushing to the game’s Public Test Realm this week. Blizzard is currently testing out update 5.0.16 with some significant changes that will seriously shake up the meta and require a lot of strategy adjustments if and when it hits the production branch of the game.
According to Blizzard, “We’ve tried to make this PTR focus on extending the early and mid-game experience, allowing players to remain competitive on one to three bases for longer periods. We’ve introduced changes to make non-warped Gateway play a more viable path, while also increasing overall strategic diversity across all three races… In addition, a range of quality-of-life improvements has been implemented to enhance the overall player experience.”
The game’s community has already been active on Reddit and other forums discussing some of the bigger changes and how they are going to adjust to the newly-evolving metagame.
Here are a handful of the most noteworthy in-the-weeds changes:
Economy
- Starting workers reduced from 12 to 8.
- Default Large Mineral patch resource count reduced from 1,800 to 1,600.
- Default Small Mineral patch resource count increased from 900 to 1,200.
- Total Default Minerals per base increased from 10,800 to 11,200.
- Default Vespene Geysers’ resource count increased from 2,250 to 2,500.
- Total Default Gas per base increased from 4,500 to 5,000.
- Rich Vespene Gas Geyser harvest return value decreased from 8 to 6.
In addition, Zerg’s Hatchery, Lair, and Hive supplies provided have been reduced from 6 to 4. Terran Command Center supplies provided were reduced from 15 to 13. Protoss Nexus supplies also dropped from 15 to 13. These are big changes that are going to seriously impact the pacing of the early stages matches.
Fans have also taken note of some big changes to the Warpgate:
- Warpgate Research moved to the Gateway from the Cybernetics Core.
- Warpgate Research speeds up Gateway unit production time by 35%.
- ‘Transform to Warpgate’ cost increased from 0/(0) to 50/(50).
- Warp-in Time is no longer determined by ‘slow power fields’.
- Warp-in Time decreased to 3s (from 3.6s and 11.4s).
- Warpgate Cooldown Values:
- Zealot: from 20 to 22.
- Adept: from 20 to 22.
- Stalker: from 23 to 22.
- Sentry: from 23 to 22.
- High Templar: from 32 to 35.
- Dark Templar: from 32 to 35.
It will be very interesting to see how these changes, and all the other adjustments, go over with the fanbase and how they impact the pace of matches. Blizzard will likely continue to tinker with some of these numbers on the PTR before the content change eventually makes its way to the live version of the game for the majority of players to experience.
Be sure to check back in the near future for more StarCraft 2 and Blizzard news and updates.
StarCraft 2 is available now on PC. StarCraft 2’s update 5.0.16 is now live through the Public Test Realm.
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