r/starcraft2

All are welcome and should come celebrate StarCraft 2 with this very special event!

This is for anyone who has seen the "arc slop" change to mutalisks and wonders what it does.

Tldr:

Mutas refuse to attack way less and feel a lot smoother against targets running past them or when attacking while gliding over units.

Short version:

1. Projectile attacks cancel if the projectiles travel direction faces to far away from where the attacker was originally facing when he initiated the attack.
2. Mutalisks had a problem, where when attacking while flying over units or fast units running under them, this rule made them cancel a lot of attacks.
3. Arc slop determines how much leeway in the angle an attack has before it is cancelled.
4. The increase in arc slop from 45->180 effectively increased the allowed angle for an attack from 135° -> 270° area around them.
5. That means the target does not have to be in front of them, but could also be sideways of the direction they were facing when ordering the attack.
6. Attacks will only cancel if the attack target is in a 90° cone behind the mutas original attack direction when the attack is fired.
7. Mutas cancel way fewer attacks and feel a lot smoother against targets running past them or when attacking while gliding over units.

Long version:

It is a mechanic for projectile attacks in SC2. That is with a visible projectile like stalkers, mutalisks, unlike hit-scan attacks, like marines, thors, etc.

When a unit attacks, the attack has several phases:

1. Ordering of the command.

2. Attack anitmation wind-up.

3. Projectile created.

4. Attack animation wind-down. (the remaining animation after the actual projectile was shot).

Attack arc:

Units can only attack enemies in front of them or have to turn to attack them. But it does not need to be perfectly aligned in front of them. Every unit has a hidden "arc" stat, that allows them to shoot in a not perfectly straight angle. For mutalisks this is 90, which means it can start attacking as soon as it has turned so the target is in a 90° degree cone in front of it.

Attack canceling:

In most games, you cancel the attack if you order another command before the projectile is created. SC2 works differently. In sc2, to allow you to already turn and move another direction smoothly while the windup is still playing.
However, there is another mechanic at play. Units can "dodge" attacks, or rather the attack gets canceled, if the target is not inside the attack arc from earlier anymore when the missile actually fires.

So what is arc slop?

Arc slop is the extra leeway the game grants before an attack is cancelled due to being out of bounds of the arc angle.
So they do not have to be in the inital targeting angle, but in a wider area. The exact calculation is nowhere 100% confirmed, but most likely this is additive.

The exact way the angle is calculated is important for the mechanics. We are measuring the angle with vertex at the attackers position at the time of the check (missile creation /after wind-up), the targets position at the same time and the direction the muta was facing at the start of the attack (before wind-up). So between the line of the units new positions and attackers old facing direction. If you are imagine the cone, imagine it attached to the attacker, moving but not changing direction with it. That means:
- An attack can be canceled, by either attacker or target moving in different directions
- it can't be canceled by either unit turning.

The muta problem:

Muta are short range and have the flyer deceleration mechanics. The result is, they are often microed to attack while gliding over enemies while attempting to keep momentum. However, the problem was:

1. Attack starts: target is inside arc cone
2. During Attack windup muta glides over the target.
3. At arc check the enemy unit is in many cases to much sideways or behind the muta - attack cancels, muta flops uselessly around.

The angle only covered only 135° or 67.5° on each side. So unless the unit was still almost in front of the muta, it would fail.

The new change:

Much larger leeway for the valid angle of unit to attack direction. arc slop 45->180. Meaning, the cone for the missile cancel check goes from 135° -> 270° (twice as big). This means the side areas are covered and unless the target is almost excalty behind the attacks original angle when the attack is supposed to fire, it will hit.

Come on people, write your own crazy wishes. 😄

Once Zerg hits the three-larva cap, the Hatchery stops producing natural larva. The whole point of the 9.5-second inject timer is getting 6 larva per inject cycle versus 5.

Once it is nerfed to 9.9 seconds, you only get 5 larva, and the 6th is removed from existence. Therefore, the difference between 9.9 seconds and 10.7 seconds is just one larva every 5 minutes.

The 9.5-second timer produces 10 extra larva in 5 minutes. However, that only happens if you never miss an inject and spend all larva on every Hatchery immediately after it spawns. This allows you to sync your natural spawn timer with your inject timer. That said, you are going to hit bottlenecks. For example, lower production efficiency from Hatcheries forces you to build more Overlords. Easier enemy drops also mean building more anti-air defense. Consequently, all 10 extra drones you get in the early-to-mid game are spent on static defense, provided you keep your inject timing perfect to get those 10 workers.

Furthermore, if you are not hitting your injects—and are even off by just 1.3 seconds—you lose your advantage entirely. It is a very tight window to even call that buff overpowered.

We all know noobs can't live without F2, so they gave units like observers and overseers the ability to hold position even with F2, but then the observer lost its cloak in this mode... Er... Noobs can't spy on enemies anymore :c

It's old as fuck, probably over 7 years old

The game ends with one player being down to a zealot, one player down to 2 zerglings and a drone

Toss has way more buildings, and both players have less than 50 minerals

They realize that the zealot can't protect its structures, so they base trade, and the zealot keeps taking chip damage from the broodlings every time a building dies.

There are 2 zerg structures left, and the zealot only has the HP left to survive killing one of them, but they're right next to each other, so the zealot gets both buildings down to red, and kills them both, dying gloriously to the broodlings

BUT WAIT zerg had 26 minerals left and built an assimilator.

I need this cast. Please help.

Although they're many voices supporting the new patch but people who do stop playing because of this awful patch usually do not speak up. According to a survey 19 out of 151 people have uninstalled StarCraft2 following the first ptr.

So I’ve kind of given up on achievements I beat the Terran campaign yesterday and given the AI difficulty I gave up at the Dig 50 structures was difficult and I didn’t get it I felt I was defending my base too much to be able to.

Now I’m on Hots and I’m thinking of lowering the difficulty and it’s because I am not good enough at Zerg and I’m only on Char taking on General Warfield completing the campaigns on hard has been fun until now and I’m not even having to inject my hives yet lol

I hate how nowadays terran bio is super strong. Just why the hell some dudes with guns destroy entire spaceships? It is supposed to be a viable option for early to midgame, but fall off when they get to late game. Terran has so many different cool mechanical units: thors, battlecruisers, ravens and they are usually overshadowed by some random dudes.

In starcraft 2 trailers we've seen a lot of different mechanical units, for example a monstrous BC falling from the sky in HotS. But in the game some balance council whiners always yap about how terran bio should be the strongest because those people don't want to adapt. Just spam infinite cheap marines, ghosts, vikings and medivacs at any problem. It is so unfair, because other races have to use different army compositions to be unpredictable. Terran just spams. (ghost op, too versatile. No other spellcaster is as good as ghost. They are supposed to need coverage and be weak, but no, ghosts are just cool marines and you can spam them)

They got that one upgrade that makes switching up of siege units faster. Its so stupid. Why don't siege tanks or liberators get a buff from it? Why would u need to transform thors or hellions if you always use one mode depending on the opponent's army composition.

I think smart servos should include siege tanks, liberators, thors, mines and hellions. Therefore, before the upgrade they are slow to switch, but with that upgrade they do it faster (on the same speed as it is right now). I think terrans would be upgrading it more often, just like in broodwar when we had to upgrade siege mode.

For widow mine cloaking just switch drilling claws to mine cloaking field.

I play on Ubuntu. You need to use Steam: Games > Add a non-Steam game to my library, select Battle.net installer, in properties change to compatibility Proton 9, install, CLOSE, add Battle.net the same way (I use compatibility "experimental" here).

2 downsides: Battle.net freezes while you are in the game, and I am pretty sure you get less FPS than on Windows.

Tested for like 20+ hours and still playing.

The original Hatchery and Queen design was built around Inject effectively doubling larva production. Instead of simply increasing natural larva generation, Inject added 4 larva while natural production continued, giving Zerg its intended production cycle.

In Legacy of the Void, Blizzard made Inject queueable so missing a cycle was less punishing. Worried this would make Zerg’s remax too strong, they reduced Inject from 4 larva to 3. That may have been acceptable for pro play, but it made ladder Zerg feel weaker and more dependent on all-ins or surviving until later.

Patch 9.5 restored a larva rhythm much closer to the original design by allowing a third natural larva before Inject completed. While it felt much smoother for Zerg, it was still weaker than the old 4-larva Inject system. The biggest benefit wasn’t raw power—it simply made early and mid-game macro more forgiving.

I think the reaction to 9.5 was exaggerated. Many Terran players rely on well-practiced, cookie-cutter build orders and precise timings. When Zerg’s economy changes, even slightly, those timings no longer line up, making Zerg feel stronger than it actually is. Zerg players are naturally more reactive and adapt to the flow of the game, so they adjusted more quickly.

Patch 9.9 removed that smoother larva timing. To me, the change felt driven more by perception than by evidence that Zerg was actually overpowered. Every race has mechanics that make it easier to play consistently. For example, if Terran lost tools like Scan for detecting cloaked units or Supply Drops for fixing supply blocks, their MMR would likely drop because those mechanics reduce execution mistakes. Likewise, making Zerg’s larva mechanic less punishing improves consistency—it doesn’t automatically make the race overpowered.

Wouldn't it be cool if the general way they fix balance is by tending to buff more and nerf less?

When everybody's super, no one will be.

The game should have incentivized players to use multiple small groups of units to attack. They could have done so by creating units specifically designed to attack and destroy supply buildings, by lowering the health bar of certain buildings, by allowing some units to have higher mobility, by lowering the strength of turrets and increasing the number of units with area of effect spells. The game would have rewarded mechanically skilled players and the esports scene would have lasted longer.

Zerg is the swarmy race. What if larva generation was increased further as well as creep spread speed? To balance tier 1 Zerg units are nerfed in hp and damage.

Terran is the gritty scrappy race. Allow Terran to move all of their buildings except depots. All buildings can be scrapped like bunkers.

Protoss is the warpgate race. Basically revert Protoss back to pre-patch.

I sometimes wonder if identity gets lost in balance patches. Units become too homogeneous and seige units loose their clunkiness to round out the meta. I would prefer if we leaned into racial identity. Make fantasy the priority.

Breaking the record of all those overpowered units... this patch is seriously insane.

Adept Tankivac It even surpassed these!

I really hate ghost. The have a considerably hp, high damage and EMP shoot, which is the most problematic thing. What can I do againts them?