Season 2 Changes, Part 1: The game engine balance.

Season 2 balance: three races, eight skills, no one build.

The balance for Season 1 was generally okay, on the grand scale anyway. But when it came to skill balance, there were some serious issues and imbalances that simply couldn't be ironed out before launch. That is part of what Season 2 aims to change. But small waves make grand butterflies, as they say. In this post I will go over some key changes, and what to expect in Season 2.

One skill — Micro — was a Core skill for all three races, and the most important one in most matchups. And there were certain skill-up thresholds where gaining a skill didn't actually improve winrate. Now, there were only a handful of those, and most of them were quite high up the skill tree- so the live world didn't hit this wall yet. Opening all-ins were close to a lottery, the stats didn't meaningfully impact the choice.

Season 2 runs on a rebuilt engine. Here are some of the key changes outlined.

EVERY MATCHUP HAS ITS OWN IDENTITY

Each race now has exactly three Core skills — the single best thing it can bring to one of its three matchups — and no skill is Core twice. The new cards on the Balance page:

Terran — Core: Defense, Micro, Harassment. Strong: Strategy. Situational: Macro, Scouting, Game Sense · Useful: Attack.
Zerg — Core: Micro, Macro, Scouting. Strong: Game Sense. Situational: Attack, Strategy, Defense. Useful: Harassment.
Protoss — Core: Macro, Scouting, Game Sense. Strong: Attack. Situational: Defense, Micro, Harassment, Strategy.

Core is the best skill in at least one matchup.
Strong is on the podium (top 3) somewhere and solid everywhere.
Situational is a specialist: top-shelf in one war, ordinary in the others.
Useful is steady value everywhere and the star of nothing.

The manual will tell you where to expect those core skills to rule, but the rest will be up to you coaches to figure out.

The biggest move is Micro: Core for Terran and Zerg still, a specialist's tool for Protoss. It gained an alternative special role, though — Micro is what executes an all-in and what holds one, for every race.

TRAINING MATTERS

Every skill now earns its keep on every race; there is no dead weight in the kit. What changes is which of a player's strengths decides which match. Specialists still beat all-rounders of the same total — when the peak is aimed at the right war. The "meta zergs" should feel this the hardest, as Zergs had a very optimal build around their core skills.

THE CHEESE OPENING - REBUILT

The all-in is rebuilt around three steps.

Inclination: players built on Attack and Harassment are the ones who reach for it.

Judgement: a strategist gambles where the gamble is good — the right map, the right matchup — and keeps his hands in his pockets where it is not.

Execution: Micro is the most important stat for deciding who wins the early all-in play, for both sides. But it is not the only stat that matters. The attacker also benefits from Attack, Harassment, and strategy. With Defense, Scouting and Game Sense helping the man who has to hold it. These values have been taken into consideration in the above skill rankings.

Everyone still keeps a small chance of rolling the dice, and a badly outmatched player rolls more often, because a desperate gamble is his best chance. For a well-rounded player a cheese is now a fair-to-slightly-losing bet everywhere, not the wildly uneven one it used to be. In a young world like ours you will see about as many as you do now; as the scene matures and true specialists emerge there will be more — and you will know who they are, because the coach's report names a notorious cheese artist when you own one. One practical note: a committed cheeser is strong on rushy ground and a liability on the deep macro maps.

UPSETS

Close games are exactly as close as before: a slightly better player is a favourite, not a prophecy. Big mismatches are a little less certain than they were, mostly because the hopeless underdog now has the sense to gamble.

STUDY THE MANUAL

The manual has gained a specific Season 2 page for the balance section: https://shakurasreborn.com/manual/balance-season-2
The manual is also being updated throughout for Season 2, and it will go live during the off-season.

Full disclosure: This post was written with Claude assistance, as the engine balance and the manual's balance page are still its domain.