A gigantic StarCraft 2 patch has arrived, adding chat channels to Battlenet and applying a ton of bug fixes and balance changes to the game. The StarCraft 2 editor has also received a lot of attention with new tips and hints and a suite of new tools. The patch also adds a Master League for the very best StarCraft 2 players in the world.
The patch notes are huge, but you can see the whole list on the Battlenet blog . The major additions made by 1.2 are the chat channel function that lets players communicate via public and private channels. Customisable hotkeys are now supported and there is a new 'Extreme' graphics option that lets the beefiest PC's squeeze a bit of extra polish out of the StarCraft 2 engine. As well as all this, the following balance changes have been made:
General
- Players can no longer block off ramps with two 2×2 buildings.
Protoss
- Hallucination research time decreased from 110 to 80.
- Observer – Cost decreased from 50/100 to 25/75.
- Phoenix – Build time decreased from 45 to 35.
- Void Ray – Now deals 20% more damage to massive targets.
- Flux Vanes speed upgrade removed.
Terran
- Repairing SCVs now assume the same threat priority as the unit they're repairing.
- SCV construction movement has been made more consistent.
One of the biggest sections in the patch notes belongs to the StarCraft 2 editor, which has received additions like "a behavior flag to suppress fidgeting" along with a bazillion other improvements that should make the powerful editing tools even more flexible.
For more on StarCraft 2 check out our review , and find out why it was chosen as our strategy game of the year .
