Just to let you know, we’ve had added a little bit more content to the site in the past couple of days.

The new Screen Shots page has slide shows of the Screen Shots of the Month and Screen Shots from StarCraft II taken by Puppet Master and I.

The Blizzard Battle Report Videos for StarCraft II have been collected and put into one page.

A collection of StarCraft themed Wallpaper is now up on a page for download.

The Tech Tree listings from the in game Help are now up at the Tech Trees page.

And finally the StarCraft II Terran Units Page is complete.

The Zerg StarCraft II Units Page will be up soon too.

The poll for February ended a week ago. Finally starting a new one. Here are the results!

Zeratul and the Protoss in general seem to have more fans so far. Poor Kerrigan being there in 3rd place.

The new poll for March starts now:

And below is the Screen Shot of the Month and this time it’s from StarCraft II’s Beta. And because it’s hard to make out the details, this and any others I put up will be in 1094 x 819, just click on the image to see it enlarged. Don’t forget, you can post your submission in the thread on the forums and we’ll put it up and credit you. Here are some Battle Cruisers (and a Yamato blast) finishing up an enemy Terran base on Twilight Fortress.

Screenshot by Quelex.

Chronozeal

This strategy dominated the early days of the beta and can still be seen quite often. It is simple to execute, fast to achieve and quite devastating – especially before the Chrono Boost nerf, the 10 point reduction in Zealot shields, and the 30% increase in Gateway build time made it a little less quick and easy. This strategy involves quickly getting 3 gates up while building one assimilator for gas. While constantly pumping out Zealots and Chrono Boosting the gates, a large group of them could be amassed rather quickly. The attack is best timed with the completion of Charge research, which greatly enhances the effectiveness of Zealots. Not only does it become impossible to dance around them, they also surround enemies very quickly since the added distance already attacking Zealots add is negated by the superspeed. The toughness and relatively high attack damage of Zealots make this one of the first winning strategies for the Protoss in the StarCraft 2 beta. Evolutions of this strategy involve adding a Sentry or two, helping the Zealots take less damage from ranged attacks or trapping enemies with the Force Field ability.

Counters:

• Well-defended choke points.
• Mass Roach.
• Marine and Marauder balls with a couple of Hellions for flavor.

Quick Colossus

After players began exploring the game some more, many have found the awesome power of the Colossus to be too good to pass up in just about every match. Soon enough, Protoss players understood that the Colossus literally wipes the floor with just about any ground unit, and so, many now rush to get one out as soon as possible. The most common strategy involves getting a Zealot wall to be used as fodder along with a handful of Stalkers and Sentries, with the Colossus laying back and lasering everything in sight with its huge, sweeping beams of scorching death. The upgrade found in the Robotic Bay is a critical one, increasing the Colossus’ range of attack from 6 to 9. Most players seem to understand that despite its cost (200/200), this upgrade is more important than getting a second Colossus out. Indeed, upgraded Colossi are a mainstay unit for the Protoss: not only are they easy to use effectively, but with a little micro, positioning the Colossus so that the the beams inflict maximum damage or dancing with it up and down cliffs is extremely rewarding.

Counters:

• Immortals, Void Rays
• Banshees, Vikings, carefully handled Marauders with EMP support in the early game
• All Zerg air units

Void rush

The Void Ray is a very unique unit with a distinct Protoss feel. Few tier 2 units in the game can inflict so much damage in such little time, and so it did not take long for Protoss players to abuse the potential of this unit. Requiring only the Cybernetic Core as a prerequisite and the Stargate to manufacture, the first 200/150 Void Ray can be brought to the field very quickly – especially with some help from Chrono Boost. Protoss players would quickly block off the entrance to their base, hopefully prohibiting the enemy from knowing what they’re up to, and then send 2-4 Void Rays to attack their unsuspecting enemy right inside their home.

The usual harassment at this point of the game focuses on the mineral line, but Void Ray rushers do not compromise for such petty means and go straight for the Town Hall. Players who lack any sort of anti-air will lose immediately, while others who can defend will spend the next few minutes losing various units and buildings to hit and run attacks while the Protoss player solidifies his economy and expands. Players who wish to use this strategy must make sure they possess the ability to micromanage these attention-requiring units, which are quite slow and not heavily armored, while also taking the time to take care of their economy and production.

Counters:

• Stalkers with Sentry (Sentries are light and, with Guardian Shield, take little damage from Void Rays)
• Mid-sized Marine groups
• Hydralisks

Dark Templar harassment

Still alive for the most part, and as effective as ever, or more so – now that Overlords are not detectors anymore. StarCraft 2’s Warp-in mechanic allows Dark Templars to be summoned directly to expansions, proxy pylons and to the occasional Warp Prism, hitting where detection is lacking and where the dark ones are least expected. Players lacking detection or an observant eye on the battlefield will take heavy damage before stopping the sneaky, hard-hitting Templar.

Mothership

Before Yo Mommaship got so fat, it was quite the unit to aspire to and get out to the field as soon as possible. Not only did its devastating Vortex ability cost 75 energy units, allowing it to be cast in every battle easily – it was also quite the fighting beast itself. With 400/400 hp/shields, a powerful, rapid attack that could take down workers (sans SCVs) and Marines in a single shot, a base armor of two, and an insta Town Portal button, the Mothership was often seen patrolling the skies all by itself, looking for prey. What was the risk?

Later in the game, the Mothership carried the entire Protoss army (or just cruised around with an air force) under its cloaking veil, vortexing everything in its path and destroying the remnants. Fortunately for the enemies of the Protoss, the wide range of nerfs to the Mothership have reduced it to something resembling more of a powerful Arbiter than anything else.

Counters:

• Sucked into a Vortex

What is the standard?

If one could point out a “solid” strategy, which does not either over-commit the player to a certain route nor expose him to a hard counter, it would be the standard Gateway/Robotics build.

Zealots, Stalkers and Sentries are all availiable practically from the very beginning, and Immortals coupled with Observers provide the early-mid game Protoss player with enough tools to deal with most normal threats. Healthy scouting and pressure that can be applied via the early attainable army would often counter most cheese tactics and allow the Protoss player to force an end to the game right away or comfortably segue into late-game play.

Patch 3:

Balance Changes

• TERRAN
  • Engineering Bay
    • Infantry Armor: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Infantry Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Armory
    • Vehicle Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Vehicle Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Ship Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Ship Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.

• PROTOSS
  • Zealot
    • The maximum shield capacity of this unit has been decreased from 60 to 50.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the Infestor’s Neural Parasite ability could cause Reapers to lose the ability to move.
• Fixed an issue that could use an incorrect HDR format on some ATI cards.
• Fixed a crash that could happen on some ATI cards.

Patch 4:

General

• Korea
  • Added support to display the game rating information on the F10 in-game menu within the beta.

All of this information came directly off of blizzard’s site and can be viewed here:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23094049316&sid=5000

And we are still working on the SCII Terran and Zerg unit pages. They should be up by the end of this coming week. I’ll be updating the screen shot/poll of the month soon too.

• The build time for this unit has increased from 120 to 160.
• The food cost of this unit has increased from 6 to 8.
• The number of shots fired by this unit has decreased from 8 to 6.
• The shield of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350.
• The health of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350.
• The acceleration of this unit has decreased from 1.3125 to 0.3125.
• The deceleration of this unit has increased from 0 to 1.

Then, something epic happened.

A “Yo Mommaship” Battle.net thread appeared, and it delivered. Multiple Blizzard employees have made their contributions to the thread, along with tens of other posters. To spare you from sifting through all the pages of the thread, we’ve compiled the best Yo Mommaship jokes in one Massive (Armored, Psionic) list:

1. Yo Mommaship so fat her food cost has increased from 6 to 8.
2. Yo Mommaship’s so trashy she doesn’t attack Roaches.
3. Yo Mommaship’s so fat she made Jim Raynor say “That’s no moon!”
4. Yo Mommaship so lazy that it takes her almost 3 minutes to be instantly teleported.
5. Yo Mommaship so dumb she forgot to fire two of her guns.  (see patch notes!)
6. Yo Mommaship such a floozy, she took 10 marines in her vortex and still had energy left.
7. Yo Mommaship’s so fat when she sits around the base, she sits AROUND the base.
8. Yo Mommaship so dumb when I said “we require more minerals” she took a Centrum.
9. Yo Mommaship so fat that when she uses Mass Recall, your units are still where you left them.
10. Yo Mommaship so fat, you must construct additional pylons. Always.
11. Yo Mommaship so fat she burns all her energy by turning around.
12. Yo Mommaship so fat she tried to cloak herself but it tore.
13. Yo Mammaship so fat, it takes 3 orbital scans to see all of her.
14. Yo Mammaship so ugly, she blinds detectors.
15. Yo Mommaship so dumb she thinks that the Ghost Academy is where Casper lives.
16. Yo Mommaship is so fat, the map can only hold one per player.
17. Yo Mommahip so fat she hit wormhole transit and got stuck on both sides.
18. Yo Mommaship so fat, Blizzard had to nerf her TWICE, just to fit her through the door.
19. Yo Mommaship so fat, she takes up the entire control group.
20. Yo Mommaship so fat she thought feedback was takeout. (Avarius)
21. Yo Mommaship so fat she needs shields just to keep it tucked in.
22. Yo Mommaship so fat her rear-end is considered a high-yield vespene geyser.
23. Yo Mommaship so fat when she delayed the release of beta 3 weeks because they had to upload her.
24. You Mommaship so fat, she takes food from all players in the game.
25. Yo Mommaship so dumb, she takes financial advice from Infestors.

Balance Changes

• TERRAN

  • Banshee

    • - Cloak: This ability no longer requires Fusion Core to research.

  • Barracks

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 65 to 60.

  • Factory

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 65 to 60.

  • Reactor

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 40 to 25.

  • Reaper

    • - The build time for this unit has increased from 30 to 40.
    • - Nitro Boost: The build time for this upgrade has increased from 90 to 100.

  • Starport

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 55 to 50.

  • Tech Lab

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 30 to 25.

• PROTOSS

  • Mothership

    • - The build time for this unit has increased from 120 to 160.
    • - The food cost of this unit has increased from 6 to 8.
    • - The number of shots fired by this unit has decreased from 8 to 6.
    • - The shield of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350.
    • - The health of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350.
    • - The acceleration of this unit has decreased from 1.3125 to 0.3125.
    • - The deceleration of this unit has increased from 0 to 1.

  • Nexus

    • - Chrono Boost: The duration of this ability has decreased from 30 to 20.

• ZERG

  • Corruptor

    • - The damage done by this unit has increased from 12 (+8 massive) to 12 (+10 massive).

The first patch – of many to come, according to Chris Sigaty – has been released yesterday. Blizzard have been quick to assess the data and feedback gathered from the beta; the patch already introduces some balance changes among various bug fixes. Not only that, but some abilities have been completely removed from the game!

Here are the changes, followed by some clarification on their reasons.

TERRAN

Viking

The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0.
The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).

Reaper

The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30.
The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.

Orbital Command

The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.

PROTOSS

Observer

Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 minerals and 150 vespene gas to 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas.

High Templar

Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game.
New ability: Feedback – Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.

Colossus

The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.

Mothership

Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100.
Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5.
Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game.
Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game.
New ability: Mass Recall – Teleports all of the player’s units in the target area to the Mothership.

Nexus

Chrono Boost can no longer target allies.

Gateway

The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.

ZERG

Infestor

Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36.
Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing.
Neural Parasite: Functionality changed – The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability.

Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.

BUG FIXES

Addressed an issue causing people to receive an “Internal Battle.net Error” message with their game client.

Muting your microphone will no longer cause your microphone to be turned off in the operating system once the program has exited.

Please note that the voice chat functionality has only partially been implemented. There are many known issues with voice chat that we expect to address in a future patch.

The “Medium” graphical settings were reconfigured to work better on appropriate machines. The video settings “auto-detect” functionality has been reset as a result.

Added a frame rate limiter to the game menus to prevent some graphics cards from running at higher frame rates than necessary.

The main change to the Terran has been the tweaking of the Reaper’s attack, making it less effective in hit and run attacks against buildings. A common tactic with the Reapers is to quickly move around an enemy base, switching between harassing (and sometimes completely decimating) worker lines and taking down the occasional Pylon or Supply Depot. With the decrease in damage per attack, and despite the overall increase in damage per time, the Reapers will now have to stop and dedicate their attack to a building in order to efficiently destroy it.

The Viking’s damage has been changed to allow the Terran to have a flying answer to the constant threat of the Zerg Mutalisk . Since they are light units, Mutalisks will now take 66% more damage from Vikings.

The only change to the Zerg was to the Infestor, the Zerg’s most advanced spell caster, and, unfortunately, quite an underwhelming unit according to feedback from all over the community. The new Fungal Growth ability might prove useful in Zerg mirror matches with its effect on burrowing, but the improved Neural Parasite spell will definitely come into use. Previously, this ability was limited to biological units, leaving out many of the potential threats to the Zerg unaffected. Now, and as seen in the third battle report, Neural Parasite will once more be able to take control of the super-dangerous, anti-swarm Colossus.

The most disappointing and “safest” item on the patch notes list is the Protoss Mothership. This end-game unit, which turned out to be both fun and highly effective to use in competitive gameplay, has been hit with the nerf-hammer, and might as well be renamed “Motherbiter“. Having its “Town Portal” ability removed means the Mothership is quite vulnerable considering its extremely slow speed (think Overlord), and its most deadly spell, the black-hole generating “Vortex”, has had its effect dialed down and its cost increased. Granted, the old Mothership was quite the powerhouse, perhaps indeed an overpowered one – but it’s a shame to see it stripped down of its distinctive abilities and tuned to the exact same characteristics of the Arbiter: Cloaking field, Recall, and Vortex, which is essentially Stasis Field with a cooler effect.

We, among many others, have been testing the voice system integrated into Battle.net 2.0 and the game, but without great success. Communications have been choppy and unclear compared to modern stand-alone solutions, and it was clear that this is an unfinished feature. While it’s obvious that Blizzard will eventually get it right, this is perhaps the most immature aspect of the recently launched gaming platform.

One of the most important patch-related questions has finally been answered conclusively. Will replays from previous game versions remain viewable? Answer:

As has been mentioned before, different display aspect ratios provide slightly different gaming experiences, giving (and denying) a certain edge depending on one’s system setup. Check out this animated gif to get a clear idea about how StarCraft’s field of view adjusts to the gamers’ monitors.

While Blizzard has claimed that the difference will be minor, the above illustration makes it clear that it is not. If you have a 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratio monitor and you intend to play StarCraft competitively, it’s probably time to move on.

Moving on, the thirteenth Blizzcast has been released, and it’s beta all the way. Very interesting comments from the senior people in charge of StarCraft 2, Dustin Browder and Chris Sigaty, which we will highlight here.

• Blizzard hopes to release a patch at least once a week, promising to react as much as on a daily basis.
• How radical can changes get? Dustin Browder: “As much as necessary”.
• Is it possible that units will be introduced or removed from the game? Dustin Browder: “Absolutely”.
• The planned period for the beta was 3-5 months, but Blizzard is currently targeting 3 months.
• The Galaxy editor will be release late in the beta with a “major content patch”. No information on what else this may include.
• The developers believe that the beta and feedback they get from the community is critical to the game’s success.

Some select quotes:

So community, you guys, will be doing a lot of interfacing directly and sort of bubbling up the big points to us.

… if we discover something that is a fundamental mistake, absolutely we will add or cut as necessary to make this game as good as we possibly can by the time it ships.

There’s definitely areas where we’ll be watching, areas where we’re nervous, we’re pretty convinced that we may have made a terrible mistake but we’re going to keep watching and see what happens. So far, things that I am convinced must be broken have not yet proven to be so. This is largely I think because other units are overshadowing them and preventing them from being that powerful, right. As the community plays, we’ll see what they find to be truly powerful and then we’ll see what really shakes out of it.

What we’re really trying to do is get players to have some additional strategy and choices when it comes to their base building and their economy, right. We really want to push that part of the game. We want players to be able to choose which type of player do they want to be. Do I want to be a player who can maximize my economy but maybe is not quite as good at commanding my forces on the battlefield or am I a player who is really good at commanding my troops out on the front line but maybe I don’t focus as much on my economy or do I want to try to balance both together.

… for sure the main central focus of the beta is balance for us.

As we continue to cover the beta, up to date news items, interesting tidbits, replays and videos will be posted on our Official Facebook page. Do come visit us there or check out the feed at the upper right corner of this page.