StarCraft II patch rebalances Zerg

A new patch for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will tweak the Zerg race to make them a more tempting proposition, developer Blizzard has announced.

The change has been prompted by stats which show the Zerg are far and away the least popular of StarCraft's three species. A posting on Battle.net reveals that they're only used by players 25.3 per cent of the time.

Not only that but the Zerg are on the receiving end of a disproportionate number of beatings at the hands of the Protoss.

No exact date has been announced for the patch yet, but here's a list of what it does, courtesy of Blizzard's design director Dustin Browder.

• We're increasing roach range. This will allow roaches to be more effective in large groups, giving the zerg more options in the mid to end game.
• Fungal Growth will now prevent Blink, which will give zerg a way to stop endlessly Blinking stalkers which can be very challenging to deal with in large numbers.
• The Barracks are going to require a Supply Depot, which will impact a lot of early terran reaper pushes.
• The reaper speed upgrade will require the Factory, which is meant to weaken a lot of the early terran reaper attacks that dominate so many matches, especially in team games.
• We're making a number of increases to the health of zerg buildings, which will make the very vulnerable zerg technology structures more resistant to raids. We don't expect these hit point changes to have a super significant impact on the game, but the current numbers felt way too low.

Eurogamer's Oli Welsh awarded Blizzard's long-awaited sequel a resounding 9/10 when it arrived on PCs back in August.