According to the proposal for the changes blizzard set forth, TvZ is in a good place. That is why the proposed changes are so weird. Less baneling health, less queen range, and earlier widow mine cloak all seem set to tilt the matchup in the terrains favor. And while the patch notes make reference to these helping in PvZ and TvP, none of the changes actually do that.
Early widow mine cloak does nothing at the high levels of play and will only become a source of frustration to anything under that. It was a good change when they added the uncloak whole reloading, and adding that back in now is not a good idea. The Queen has found a good spot and with the addition of the Battlecruiser. It’s not really a good time to nerf them. Besides you should avoid nerfing the defense if at all possible and focus on buffing the attacker. It should be the attacker’s job to find chinks in the armor, not the defender’s job to simply be unable to stand up to the attacker. The bane change will have zero impact on PvZ. It’s only real application is in tvZ vs. marines. So instead of making 3 changes that could disrupt otherwise balanced matchups. How about buffing a unit that sees minimal use one a consistent basis.
And so, here is my proposal for the Banshee buff. It’s simple. It’s clean, and it let the banshee be a threat at all stages of the game, even if there is no cloak.
Banshee
-New ability: Self Repair The banshee becomes immobile and unable to attack and recovers HP at a rate of 2 HP per second.
-This is a much better change than the widow mine because it causes less frustration for players. It also gives the Banshee some teeth. The banshee was supposed to be the unit that harassed the enemy, but we’ve seen its role get taken over by other units. The liberator can harass, and it’s easier to get because it’s a reactor unit. It also gives Terran some good set up later in the game. The battlecruiser got some huge buffs that make it a good harasser (which is weird since it’s a capital ship.) But the banshee has slowly lost its toll. On top of that, it’s only really useful with cloak, and even then a couple shots from anything will take the wind out of its sails.
So giving it an ability to fly away and recover would give it a more substantial role in being a constant annoyance all game long without being super insane,
The heal ability isn’t like the mutas where they always regenerate, nor is it like the reaper where as long as it doesn’t take damage or attack then it heals. The Banshee’s heal functions like the Gargoyle from warcraft 3 or even the Thors old Mechanical Rebirth. The banshee must find a safe spot to hide before it activates it’s ability because it cannot do anything while the ability is active. So the travel time + the recovery time gives the enemy a window to do other things before having to worry about the banshee again.
This will always give some way for Terran to harass zerg even if the queens are out. No longer will a couple queens end a banshees run because it will come back at full HP. So even getting a couple drones over the course of several minutes will add up. And that is on top of the player having to keep the banshee in the back of their mind. It will also give TvP some harass option even once stalkers are out.
So buffing the banshee by giving it the potential to recover HP without using minerals and letting it stay active out on the map will help all the matchups without influencing the balance significantly like the proposed changes would. It would also give more function to a unit that has had its main role supplanted by others. It’s always a better idea to buff lesser used units than to nerf the main units that see use.