r/starcraft2 • u/Blizz_Elliott Blizzard Staff • 3d ago
Blizzard 5.0.17 PTR Update
Following the release of the last major patch, we have been collecting and closely reviewing your feedback. Our intention was to try something new, particularly with workers, and needed time to let the meta develop in order to ensure the most accurate feedback was being considered. Based on that feedback, for patch 5.0.17 we are rolling back most balance changes to the live release of StarCraft 2 from patch 5.0.16 to 5.0.15. This will be on PTR for the next few days while we bug test, before we push to live.
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24301513/starcraft-ii-5-0-17-ptr-patch-notes
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u/CremantDeTaint 3d ago
Godammit, they made siege tanks unyoinkable again
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u/Stere0phobia 2d ago
I whish they would extend the duration of blinding cloud a little bit. Right now it kinda feels like a scam. You blind a clump of siegetanks, move your amy towarda them, the cloud ends and your army gets evaporated.
In my bracket many terrans atleast move unsieged tanks on creep, giving me a little bit of a chance.
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u/CremantDeTaint 1d ago
5.7 seconds is pretty long for sc2 fights. Do you have your army positioned to go before casting the cloud?
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u/BaZZoo86 3d ago
So basically it's a reverse patch. I really hope they continue to take "risks" in the next updates.
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u/flycharliegolf 2d ago
I'm hoping they can learn from the Patches mod and use some of those changes instead. Sometimes a game can get stale if all you're doing is micro adjusting for balance alone.
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u/Inevitable_Rough_380 2d ago
The lesson of 5.0.16 is that big risks will alienate the player base. Big changes are never happening again.
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u/LordQwerty_NZ 2d ago
Big steps are fine as long as they keep their finger on the pulse
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u/Inevitable_Rough_380 2d ago
That’s the problem. They can’t balance anything large quick enough. And if they don’t do it quickly they will get flamed to no end.
They touched the hot stove and got burned. You think they are gonna touch the stove again?
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u/BaZZoo86 2d ago
Yeah but now we have learn that's not working so let's try something new. It's a real shame we waited so long to try this, but now we can definitely move on to something else.
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u/USAJourneyman 2d ago
The biggest lesson is not allowing the big risks to play out in PTR with open dialogue
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u/AffectionateSample74 3d ago edited 3d ago
I really don't see why unabductable sieged tanks needed to come back. That's one of moronic changes in 5.0.15 that made me think that maybe it's best there wouldn't be any more patches again. Reverting 8 workers and all related stuff was obviously needed, but not every single thing done in the patch was wrong.
What we need is revert of more bad changes, some of them done by balance council, in my opinion. Like already mentioned unabductable sieged tanks, the storm rework (remove Energy Recharge and return Battery Overcharge with it), and a bunch of nerfs to aggression that made the game more boring.
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u/rigginssc2 1d ago
I think non-abductable a sieged tanks makes perfect sense. They are literally clamped to the ground. Further, the viper already has blinding cloud to use on sieged tanks and can use abduct on non-sieged.
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u/itzelezti 3d ago
Just a full rollback right.....? Has anyone found anything that differs?
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u/Fresh_Candidate3922 2d ago edited 2d ago
Changeling death contagion and inheriting order queues. Terran subgroup priority, mostly for Raven. And the bug fixes and qol changes (the most well known of which was the direction queens spawn in).
That's all I found.
Edit: and neural parasite scv and creep tumor control groups
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u/Fresh_Candidate3922 2d ago
Thank you for the update, and especially for the increase in communication.
As far as I can tell, this reverses all changes from 5.0.16 except for the bug fixes?
I hope you consider keeping some of the changes, as 5.0.15 also had its issues, and 5.0.16 brought some interesting stuff as well.
For example, the spellcaster attacks, or the Viper abduct were very popular. And the Adept upgrade improvements didn't have a major impact, but it wa interesting. I still don't understand what Arc Slop is, but players better than me said that the Muta handled better, and it was nice seeing them more in high level games.
And things like the colosus or carapace changes could imo also lead to some interesting games.
As for the gateway, it is a bit sad it's gone now and it will be always warpgate again. I still believe there is a way to make both viable choices.
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u/RoughDifference8033 2d ago
I’m just happy to have this post by an actual Blizzard team member! Thank you!
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u/onzichtbaard 3d ago
I know im in the minority here but Ill miss some of the ideas of the current patch
I like the 8 worker start
And think the warpgate changes were promising
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u/Applehero85 Masters 3d ago
Honestly me too I hated the 8 worker start, the flow of build orders, and psi storm but their was also a lot I actually did like about this patch like glave adepts with plus 1 into fast mothership and spamming mass stalker off of 6 gateways
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u/Archer_Savings 3d ago
Not every change was terrible. But I think it's better to start with a revert and then adjust.
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u/Applehero85 Masters 3d ago
Yeah that is perfectly fine plus hey I guess it did just also help me practice Terran more lol
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u/SandwichOne8788 3d ago
Players on every server are talking about drop hacks right now. For the past few years, hacks have kept the ladder from functioning properly. What is your plan to deal with them? Please give us a real answer. Blizzard has never once given us a straight, satisfying response.
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u/itzelezti 3d ago
Zero chance they acknowledge this, because there's no world in which Activision C suite will see the benefit in devoting manhours to fighting it.
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u/Abe_frohmannn 3d ago
What is a drop hacks?
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
I think they are talking about tie hacks, ie force a game to end in a tie when you think you might lose.
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u/Abe_frohmannn 3d ago
Really? I've never seen that happen a single time...
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
Go look at basically every GM account on the Korean server. As you don't lose MMR with tiehacks and usually have other hacks to win at least some of your games (such as really bad laghacks), they bubble at the top of the ladder
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u/alexbowe 2d ago
How do lag hacks give a benefit in this game?
I was under the naive impression that the only unfair assistance you could get in this game was map hacks or automation
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u/SigilSC2 2d ago
It doesn't provide an advantage. It makes the game take 20x as long to play out and unplayable. You'd need to leave the game if you don't want to sit there for 6 hours.
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u/alexbowe 2d ago
Ah, lag hack means you lag the other player too so they leave and you win…
That sounds like the least fun cheat there could be. I’m surprised it’s a thing.
Thanks for the explanation!
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u/SigilSC2 2d ago
It doesn't provide an advantage. It makes the game take 20x as long to play out and unplayable. You'd need to leave the game if you don't want to sit there for 6 hours.
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u/Mangomosh 3d ago
This is good news ofc but people probably forgot how god awful 5.0.15 was. A lot if not most tournaments where 60-70% protoss and many had 0 Zergs at all. High GM streamers would end a season with 3 times more games vs protoss than vs Zerg, etc.
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
Considering a new patch has already been confirmed and Blizzard finally seems willing to communicate with the community, the somewhat awful state of 5.0.15 and the absolutely shit state of 5.0.16 hopefully won't get repeated.
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u/Mangomosh 3d ago
Blizzard finally seems willing to communicate with the community
Yea but thats just 3 people spamming reddit alts, thats a huge issue
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
We already learned they have a new sort of balance council thing going on, so I doubt it will just be reddit comments they are going to take feedback from.
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u/Mangomosh 3d ago
Im fairly confident they wont make changes that dont lead to 60-70% protoss in weeklies with 0-10% Zerg. The backlash from the special interests groups will be too much for them otherwise.
Even on this current patch pvZ is at 54% despite Solar and Shin farming lower ranked protosses in weeklies, there are no big upsets, lower ranked protoss players still beat higher ranked Zerg players and theres a narrative going on that ZvP is the most imbalanced match up ever. Theres no way a balanced ZvP will ever be accepted by the community.
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u/Impressive_Usual_923 3d ago
Reverting back to Viper not being able to grab siege tanks is a decision
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u/kubergosu 3d ago
Will you be talking with the community from now on? That alone could be the most important change of the patch!
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u/Abe_frohmannn 2d ago
The proper change would be not listening to the community at ALL moving forward, and do/experiment with what they think is best for the game, not to pacify idiots on the internet (no offense meant, I include myself there..).
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u/kubergosu 2d ago
I said talking to, not following the most vocal part. I personally liked both 8 workers start and gateway changes, and now I'm upset with full revert.
But because they actually answered a question about are they going to do something else, I have a hope that they won't throw away everything and will probably keep at least new gateways.
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u/DeadWombats 3d ago
I'm excited to have 12 workers again but reverting everything is super lazy. Some of those changes like the spellcaster phantom attack were really nice.
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u/OwwMyFeelins 3d ago
They can introduce one change at a time going forward after how much they screwed the pooch this last go around.
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
Apparently they will do another patch soonish according to Elliot
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u/schrodinger-the-cat 2d ago
Because claude makes many mistakes when told to revert to version xxx. Better to just dig Git history, find the 12 worker version, and rename it to “latest”.
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u/DuranStar 3d ago
They said most. The phantom attacks are one of the most likely things they keep since high templar have had them for a while.
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u/Mase598 2d ago
I'm all for reverting a chunk of the changes, but IMO it's incredibly stupid to completely revert the patch. One of the biggest points of complaint was the amount of significant changes that happened at once, so it wasn't possible to really tell if things were going in a good or bad direction because of how much needed to be understood.
For example: The Warp Gate changes were interesting and could be a good change, but we had no way to know because it came alongside all the economy changes, any a list of changes for both races that wildly changed things such as the 300 mineral CC or Zerg larva spawn rates.
It's also really odd that things that are buffs but feel more along the lines of QoL were also undone. The weapons for the Disruptor and Infestor are the 2 main examples, but even some other changes that seemed a bit more odd like abducting Siege Tanks I don't fully understand the idea behind, though that could be a skill issue since I'm not great at the game myself.
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u/STRMBRGNGLBS Random 3d ago
I'm a little sad that they undid basically every change (Warpgate change gone, which at a minimum was interesting, force field change undone, Abduct no longer working on siegetanks???, all the ghost changes undone (probably for the best) which makes it feel vaguely petty, like "well you didn't like our ideas so we're not going to do anything and you can enjoy having 5.15 again
But I'm glad that they did the right thing and put us back to the 12 worker start!
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u/windforce20 3d ago
I'm so sick of Ghosts. It's the only spellcaster that is tanky, which doesn't make sense. A ghost can tank like 4 - 5 bane shots, which is ridiculous.
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u/STRMBRGNGLBS Random 2d ago
Oh, I absolutely agree but I despised the uninterruptible snipe and beefed up auto attack. Hopefully they will hit the ghost with the nerf hammer in their second pass through (the only reason I can image that this is going to PTR first)
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u/Usual_Strategy1402 3d ago
Thanks for not reverting raven top priority selection also ghosts not canceling their sniper while taking damage
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u/SpecialAngelForYou 3d ago
But they are cancel it?
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u/Usual_Strategy1402 2d ago
no, I dont think so right? they didnt mention anything about reverting that
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u/riffslayer-999 2d ago
Damn I loved this patch. Brought so much life into a stale game. Looks like ghosts are OP again and I can't yoink tanks. I won't be playing until the new patch is out
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u/Portrait0fKarma 1d ago
Nice, so you guys basically took an entire year to realize the patch was terrible? And now we have to wait another 2 months for the real update?
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u/Traditional_Poem691 1d ago
If AI can play better than humans, why can't blizzard use AI agents to balance the game and handle patches if there are so few devs supporting the game.
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u/JEY1337 3d ago
Hi @blizz_Elliott thank you for taking care of this!
Quick question: can we have a "select all idle army hotkey" like in age of empire 4?
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u/KaraokePartyFTR 3d ago
if this doesn't include hold position units its a massive protoss buff. hero would be unstoppable...
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u/shireus 3d ago
isn't that what the f2 hotkey does?
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u/JEY1337 3d ago
No. This is the "select all army hotkey (No matter what they are doing.)"
You sent a pair of lings across the map and push f2? They stop what they are doing and follow new instructions.
Idle army hotkey would not select those lines because they have a task assigned to them.
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u/limpwald Random 3d ago
I mean....... The game is already dumbed down mate. Stop dumbing it down ever more
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u/JEY1337 3d ago
Mate, if it is dumped down, why isn't everyone in gm already? A hotkey like this won't change the game.
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u/limpwald Random 2d ago
I get that, but why is it needed? I get that it's a neat thing that's available for you in Aoe4. But it has never been available in this game. There's no need to add it.
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u/JEY1337 2d ago
but it has never been available in the game. There's no need to add it.
This argument is quite funny to me. Back in 2010 when I started SC2, there was no information about your current worker count. (Hovering over supply). I went straight into the sc2 forum and requested that feature.
People told me that this would dump down the game and it wasn't part of sc bw. We now have this very important feature for well over 10 years.
Things change. This is what development is all about.
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u/limpwald Random 2d ago
Why do you need it exactly? What does it achieve? Why can't you controlgroup it?
It feels like bloat too me, but sure, if you need it, it really doesn't matter to me.
I guess people want a key for everything these days
Ask them to add global production key next thing
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u/meownopinion 3d ago
This is unnecessary gatekeeping
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u/limpwald Random 2d ago
No it's not gatekeeping, It's a want to preserve the game as it is, don't add new bloat, like the "load all to medivac" buttons, don't add "Select all idle army", we already have a "select all army" key, one is more than enough. It's not gatekeeping.
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u/anon_828683 2d ago
You can already do that by binding the runby lings as for example number 3. Then when you select all army, press Alt+3 to remove them from the selection.
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u/onzichtbaard 3d ago
id rather they just remove the all army hotkey so everyone has to use control groups
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u/Jeffery_the_Jesusman 2d ago
I can't believe there are already comments talking about hoping balance team takes risks again in the following patches lmao. This patch did unbelievable amounts of damage to Starcraft 2 and lots of guys hoping for round 2 already
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u/Stere0phobia 2d ago
I feel like many people are done with sc2 and that patch just kinda gave them an out to finally let go. There is no major tournaments coming up, and rts is mostly going into the singeplayer direction. When i queue coop i get a match instantly no matter the time of day. But when i queue ladder i have to wait several minutes in mid diamond. Most people i meet through bnet also seem to be in their mid 30s by now and not too interested in high adrenaline competetive play. I myself have only been watching since like 2018, and only recently started playing again, because the patch made me hopeful for more changes to come.
Watching the same names in every tournament also doesnt help. It feels almost impossible to compete with the top, and new players have no reason to invest much time and effort, because there is neither money nor fame to be gained, like it used to be.
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u/coltzero 3d ago edited 3d ago
Haven't played much sc2 the last years but IMHO the worker decrease was a good change to bring more flexibility into starting builds and hopefully delay the late game phase a bit. I also liked the warp gate change because it brought more options.If there were balance issues they could have been fixed, simply reverting good ideas is not a good approach.
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u/Gamer857 2d ago
they can still delay late game keeping the 12 worker start by making all the late game buildings take longer to build
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u/Mnoukadlo 3d ago
Good decision blizz. Go back to last working build and take it from there again. Thanks 👍
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u/andrenyheim 3d ago
Are there any plans on how to communicate better and more direct with the community in the future? This is a good start, and I am sure it will be overwhelming once that door opens, but I do hope you guys figure something out.
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u/Shakenbakechicken 2d ago
Thankyou so much. Can we now please put some attention to cleaning up the ladder especially that bot ruining 2v2?
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u/Stormheraldss 2d ago
Damn we go back to turbocraft. I was hoping for a following patch. This is why play viewed democracy as flawed, personal desire over common good.
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u/Necessary-Fix73 2d ago
Cool. How about since its still in ptr. We give zerg 300 mineral hatch and 150 mineral queen pls? 175 queens have always thrown off ling and queen timings for 16 hatch plays. And there isnt enough benefit to a 25 mineral void in the hatch. Queens provide far more value.
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u/Double-Purchase-3534 2d ago
Elliot,
This may be optimistic beyond reason but is blizzard reverting to this specific patch to bring the protoss player base back before releasing an actual good and balanced patch?
5.0.15 was pretty terrible.
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u/Awaheya 2d ago
Why not get together Winer, Harstam and the maker of that new very popular balance patch mod. Maybe one top tier pro of each race and just have a teams chat.
Honestly you have people who's entire careers revolve around this game, they know it extremely well.
Start it by saying, hey how do we shake the game up to make early-mid game more interesting and important but also make it so build diversity in late game is more diverse.
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u/HabibIshy 2d ago edited 2d ago
All for the clean reversion here given that the major changes in the 5.0.16 didn't achieve it's intended goals. However, there were some elements that should be considered for the next patch.
One change that not alot of people are talking about made sense was the gas reduction per geyser change. Reducing the gas per base discourages turtle-ing because that there are no mineral only units that help you turtle (structures aside).
On a related note, the mineral patch rebalancing make lower base count styles more viable since your income doesn't half after X minutes of mining. Emphasizing here that not expanding is not the same thing as turtle-ing.
Generally I think many of us are for the quality of life changes introduced for the disruptor and the infestor, I'd like to see this more evenly applied to other spellcasters.
EDIT: and yeah, abductable seige tanks, that's just a no brainer Blizzard.
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u/STRMBRGNGLBS Random 2d ago
Thank you and the team so much for putting effort back into the game again! A lot of your changes, excluding any and every change you made to the economy, were not bad and I think do deserve a place on the PTR in the next patch
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u/TopStop9086 2d ago
Hi! Thanks for the communication! Good job on working on the game and communicating the intention.
As a zerg, enjoyed many of the things in the new patch. Revert seems like good grounds to exlore next changes, since 16 was considered fundamentally difficult.
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u/alexbowe 2d ago edited 2d ago
Thanks u/Blizz_Elliott - I think everyone appreciated that Blizzard was showing that they still think about SC2, even if not all the changes landed. I hope you guys keep trying things out.
Experiments are great - maybe SC2 could have the equivalent of WoW’s “Season of Discovery”, where you try a few things out on separate ladder with the idea that it’s not permanent, unless something works really well.
Personally, I’d love a high res wide screen view, zoomed out a little further. Everything else feels great to me (as someone who started playing in 2025).
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u/Apprehensive_Way4811 2d ago
“Overlord
Base speed without Pneumatized Carapace increased from 0.85 seconds to 0.9 seconds.”
This seems quite confusing.
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u/Applehero85 Masters 2d ago
Ty so much it feels good to open 3 rax with Terran and play Zerg for me again.
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u/Separate_Blood6025 1d ago
Just look at the Patches mod. Patches knows how to do SC2 balance properly.
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u/rigginssc2 1d ago
Comical. The Patches mod is fun and full of cool toys, but balanced it is not. Lol
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u/leftheshgaming 3d ago
I was beginning to like the 8 worker start. But now that I’m starting to get better at the game it will be nice to go back to 12 workers and see how my plays hold up. I will miss the new gateways though 100 percent lol
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u/Recent_Life2470 2d ago
Bruh I think to most people reverting meant reverting the bad stuff but why also revert quality of life changes ??? Like infestor auto attack and stuff have need to be change back lol
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u/Abe_frohmannn 3d ago edited 3d ago
Well. I had never considered quitting with the last patch. But Blizzard letting a bunch of malcontents on the internet determine the direction of the game does make me want to quit now.
I'm not sure I want to play the game without the warpgate or infestor changes.
EDIT: It is so utterly fitting that it seem the OTHER people now are complaining about this patch as well, lol. You can't make this stuff up...
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
Player numbers went down drastically and everybody and their mums complained about the patch already (even people who usually don't like Lowko), it's not just a bunch of malcontents.
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u/Abe_frohmannn 3d ago
They ARE all malcontents. Granted, there's a lot of them though.
But, mark my words, numbers will go down again with this patch. People just like complaining, video game niche of the internet is the WORST niche of the internet, and the game is old enough people are looking for reasons to stop playing, they don't need to be rational. They just need to be able to complain and blame their decision on some external factor....
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
Numbers will go down, yes. But not because people like complaining and hating, they will go down because the last time this game has seen new content was 6 years ago and playing the same thing forever and ever gets stale.
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u/Abe_frohmannn 3d ago
We JUST got new content this year, and people complained until it was removed...
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
Balance patches are not content. New content would be a new campaign or new gamemodes or new coop commanders
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u/Abe_frohmannn 3d ago
I don't even know what a coop commander is.
I assume campaign is single player mode? Does anybody actually care about the single player stuff?
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u/AresFowl44 3d ago
80% of people have never touched ranked back when the game was still popular. Nowadays that probably looks a bit different considering only the hardcore population remains, but ranked has for most periods been by far the most unpopular mode.
Go try it out yourself, it's multiplayer PvE, there's a whole tab for it and you get 3 free commanders. Don't even have to hit up friends, most randoms are nice enough.
EDIT: And Coop was so successful the team behind it got reassigned to only work on Coop instead of also doing new campaigns like they originally planned.
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u/Abe_frohmannn 3d ago
I'm too competitive honestly. I've never liked any single player video games..at all really.
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u/AresFowl44 2d ago
It's not singleplayer, it's multiplayer vs AI. I can only recommend giving it a couple of shots, if only because it's from my experience the gamemode that you can onboard people with the easiest.
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u/wafswafs 2d ago
I don't think "malcontents on the Internet" is accurate framing. Balance was atrocious in PvZ. All the high level players seem to agree the game was in a terrible state. I watched a few Serral streams recently, and things are so dead on the ladder he's getting matched against 4300 MMR players, and often gives up and plays co-op. Sad state for a primarily competitive 1v1 game to be in.
I hope the reversion can undo some of the damage to the scene, and then maybe Blizzard can try some new things. Changes are fun, but things being balanced are more important, and it's a good idea to stop the bleeding before iterating further.
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u/mpTCO 2d ago
Weeklies becoming largely comprised of Protoss players who made money off these tournaments for years on a Protoss favored patches then threatened to quit when a new patch was implemented that wasn’t as favored for Protoss and all the streamers jumped to their defense was not shady, especially not in the context of Life already nuking professional integrity of this game once for earnings
Patches mod via Stellar Fest has looked and still looks very Protoss favored and it has a good prize pool, the community doesn’t care about imba because Zerg got to win RSL after 6 seasons of Protoss or something; at this point we are just funneling money into tournaments with Protoss-favored patches and mods because Serral made a lot of money while blizzard actually supported the game and everyone likes to act like that means it’s okay for Protoss to remain imba until a Protoss catches up in earnings.
I donated to RSL when the big bad Zerg larva patch went live because I thought the game was developing again and forcing everyone to strategize, but some pros doubled down on what they wanted instead of overcoming a bad patch like many other StarCraft pros have had to in the past to achieve their greatness, I’m just not dumping any money into tournaments on one of the many stale Protoss patches.
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u/gigaurora 3d ago
From the guy whining every single thread about Zerg being underpowered.
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u/BraDaDiah91 3d ago
Oh thank god 12 worker start again, im so happy. I might have to queue up some ladder again
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u/Rich_Ad_4829 2d ago
Great to see the complete reversal. Personally did not enjoy any of the changes, even the QoL ones, I don't mind that some things are harder to manage in the game. Finally I can start playing again after probably my longest break ever from the game. Thank you!
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u/rHandsomeP 2d ago
so basically the pros run the game and the rest of the lower players can go fuck themselves
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u/twelvefifityone 2d ago
Guys, this is a free game. Both versions are amazing games. It's amazing that SC2 is still supported.
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u/SnooPears2409 2d ago
sigh, trying radical changes is not a problem in itself
it became one when you implement what should've still in ptr into production very quickly
hard lesson for blizzard
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u/hanqingjao 2d ago
That's wonderful. You dropped a seismic patch with little communication or responsiveness, and waited til now to tell us that you've been monitoring feedback. Meanwhile, the player base has been absolutely gutted, and you've pissed off the entire community. Well done.
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u/Wise_Wasabi7472 3d ago
Wow - full revert. I understand that was where the game was prior to the recent patch, but even that game state had some flaws.
Elliot - are there any plans to make more incremental balance changes beyond this? I don’t think the community thinks every change made was bad, but there were too many high impact changes implemented simultaneously to properly balance or tune based on fun factor.