Patch 1.1.2 Officially live!

So the new patch it out. I believe it came out sometime yesterday as I logged on and I was updated. I'll give you the release notes then follow up with my own thoughts and what this means for the meta game.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – Patch 1.1.2

General
•    Players will no longer receive achievement toasts while their status is set to "Busy."
•    The messaging when attempting to load a saved game or replay from a previous version has been clarified.
•    Adjusted the amount of points earned and lost by random team participants to properly reflect the strength of a player's teammates.

Balance
•    PROTOSS

o    Buildings

•      Nexus life and shields increased from 750/750 to 1000/1000.
o    Void Ray
•      Damage level 1 increased from 5 to 6 (+4 armored).
•      Damage level 2 decreased from 10 (+15 armored) to 8 (+8 armored).
•      Flux Vanes speed upgrade bonus decreased from 1.125 to 0.703.

•  TERRAN

o    Buildings

•     Barracks requirement changed from Command Center to Supply Depot.
•     Supply Depot life increased from 350 to 400.

o    Medivac

•     Acceleration reduced from 2.315 to 2.25.
•     Speed reduced from 2.75 to 2.5.

o    Reaper

•     Nitro Packs speed upgrade now has a Factory Requirement.

o    Thor

•     Energy bar removed.
•     250mm Strike Cannons is now cooldown-based on a 50-second cooldown. Ability starts with cooldown available (useable immediately after upgrade is researched).

•    ZERG

o    Buildings

•      Hatchery life increased from 1250 to 1500.
•      Lair life increased from 1800 to 2000.
•      Spawning Pool life increased from 750 to 1000.
•      Spire life increased from 600 to 850.
•      Ultralisk Cavern life increased from 600 to 850.

o    Corruptor

•      Energy bar removed.
•      Corruption is now cooldown-based on a 45-second cooldown. Ability starts with cooldown expired (must wait for full 45-second cycle before usable).

o    Infestor

•      Fungal Growth now prevents Blink.

o    Roach

•      Range increased from 3 to 4.

So there ended up being quite a few changes actually with a bunch of game changing new attributes.

First off is Protoss. The Nexus shield boost seems warranted. The Nexus goes down pretty quickly if left undefended and a 250 shield boost seems fair. I don;t think this will make their expos or anything imba. I think the void ray fix is great. Sure the initial damage level is increased, but probably to help with an early harass or early battle as they are very weak against larger muta/viking armies possible by the same time. Level 2 decrease is also good as their damage was way too much in the later game. 

The biggest change is definitely the speed decrease in the Flux vane upgrade. This will prove to be very critical I believe. It will be much harder for them to escape so easily when faced against an army that's too large. The speed of the void rays before made them too hard to track down and destroy. This will help in the much later game if someone goes mass void ray.

Next up is Terran. Like I said before, making supply depot a requirement for the barracks will really help against early proxy/reaper rushes. The increase in supply depot life will slightly increase the resistance hat a wall provides which will become more crucial as terrans will probably be more likely to turtle in from now on.

The speed and acceleration of the medivacs decreasing will change the drop game probably. It will be somewhat harder for people to get off early drops with mmm spam or even some tanks. IT will no longer be so easy to pick up and leave as quickly. This shouldn't affect the mmm army strategy though, because medivacs are already plenty fast enough to keep up with that army.

Reapers have been noticeably cut down in usefulness. Now with a later barracks, and nitro packs being so much later on, it will be much harder to get an effective reaper rush out. This will allow other races/enemies to gain a larger defense on their mineral line to protect against the reapers. 

The thors also got an interesting change. Strike cannons are now cooldown based instead of energy based. This will allow immediate use of the strike cannon and will probably be used more often as it won't require a building of energy. We might see some major gameplay changes with the approach to Thors since this update.

And finally we get to zerg:

Virtually all important zerg buildings are getting a health boost. I think this is long overdue and will be a worthwhile update. Hatcheries I noticed died far too easily as well as the spawning pool and spire. The lair increase will give a bit of a boost and should help in protecting expos early on. The spire and spawning pool life are really critical because these are truly critical buildings that can be built (and destroyed) very early on. Ultralisk cavern was also a bit low on hp, but should be able to be amply protected at that late point in game, so I would say it's a bit moot.

Similar to the Thors, the corruptors now no longer have energy and is based upon a 45-second cooldown. This is actually something that could change the meta game quite a bit. Later on in the game, corruption becomes an extremely valuable tool, especailly being able to hit multiple targets with only a few corruptors. It will allow newly spawned corruptors to use corruption, but now we will probably be seeing a lot more micro trying to protect them as they wait for the cooldown.

Infestor restricting blink is a good point, but I feel like it should have been that way since the beginning, so all I have to say is that it's about time.

The roach range increase from 3-4 will actually probably be huge. This will allow roaches to tank even better against melee units and start attacking from farther out. It will allow roaches to hit walls from farther away and chip away at terran bases with more security. It will also help the later metagame in a hydra/roach strategy. This gives zerg a few more strategies later on and allow roaches to stay apart of the army instead of evolving past them. I have yet to play any games in this patch, but there will probably be a lot of changes in total gameplay. Once I have some more experience I might do another recap. Thanks for reading guys!

I'll try to have that cast up later. I was able to record it and apply the watermark, but it can't upload successfully for some reason. On youtube it just says upload failed once it hits 100% :(