Zerg getting a steroid-shot in upcoming SCII patch

Hmmm, second piece of Zerg-related news I’ve posted today; I think my psyche is trying to tell me something.

The Zerg are awesome; they are my race of choice when playing StarCraft II. Sadly, I suck. A lot. What’s more, according to new stats released on Battle.net, my love for the Zerg is not necessarily something that is echoed amongst most players. What the hell? They’re not really that evil – they’re just misunderstood.

According to a post by Dustin Browder on the community page of the Battle.net website, the Zerg are the least played race online by quite a margin. The Protoss and Terran are split very evenly with 38.5% of players choosing Protoss and 38% opting for the Terran. This leaves the Zerg being picked only 23.5% of the time; less than a quarter. In an attempt to make the race siding a little more even, (and also in response to community concern over the weaker Zerg) Blizzard has a patch up its sleeve that will significantly impact the Zerg’s performance on the battlefield.

Some of the changes don’t necessarily alter the Zerg at all, but rather gimp the other races a little so that Zerg can take advantage.

The following are changes currently planned, so things might be altered between now and when the patch goes live. No date for the update has been provided.

• We’re increasing roach range. This will allow roaches to be more effective in large groups, giving the zerg more options in the mid to end game.
• Fungal Growth will now prevent Blink, which will give zerg a way to stop endlessly Blinking stalkers which can be very challenging to deal with in large numbers.
• The Barracks are going to require a Supply Depot, which will impact a lot of early terran reaper pushes.
• The reaper speed upgrade will require the Factory, which is meant to weaken a lot of the early terran reaper attacks that dominate so many matches, especially in team games.
• We’re making a number of increases to the health of zerg buildings, which will make the very vulnerable zerg technology structures more resistant to raids.  We don’t expect these hit point changes to have a super significant impact on the game, but the current numbers felt way too low.

The increase to Roach range is awesome, as are the increased requirements for Reaper production. Man, the amount of times I’ve had my ass kicked thanks to early Reapers… I hate those guys!

Source: Battle.net Community Site [via Eurogamer]

Last Updated: October 8, 2010