Some balance proposals from a zerg player
Reasoning for balance changes near the bottom.
Protoss
- Observer speed nerf reverted
- Immortal cost nerf reverted
- Tempest supply reduced to 4 from 5
- Void Ray supply reduced to 3 from 4
- Colossus base damage increased to 11 from 10, bonus vs light reduced to +4 from +5
- NEW Upgrade at Twilight Council 200/200, requires Dark Shrine, 100 seconds, reduces transformation time to/from warp gate to 2.5 seconds. Additionally, newly transformed gateways are automatically chronoboosted for free (to be clear, NOT warpgates). Additionally additionally, warp gate cooldowns now continue while the building is a gateway and does not obstruct gateway production.
Experimental upgrade I came up with, essentially the idea is that by researching this you can fit in another round of zealots after warping in one round and waiting for the next, essentially getting 3 waves of production in the time you’d take to get 2. So the math for say a zealot would be:
20 seconds warp gate cooldown for warping in a zealot
2.5 seconds to transform to gateway
13.3 seconds of chronoboosted production, enough time for a zealot
2.5 seconds transform to warpgate
Total seconds = 18.6/20
Warp gate zealot off cooldown in 1.4 seconds
The downside would be that the zealots are scattered where your gateways are, rather than being immediately available to reinforce an attack. The purpose of this upgrade is to increase protoss gateway production capabilities and their defender’s advantage.
Terran
- Battlecruiser Tactical Jump vulnerability period increased from 1 to 3 seconds
- NEW Upgrade at Barracks Tech Lab, 200/200, requires armory, 100 seconds, removes gas cost from the reaper.
I wanted to experiment with the idea of reapers having a larger role beyond being a lone scout. This upgrade, though expensive, may allow them to serve as a late game alternative to marines as harass, not requiring medivacs to heal themselves or jump from base to base. Additionally, they may be used sparingly to slow down zerg engagements, as we sometimes see in early pushes where the reaper survives.
Zerg
- Infestor Microbial Shroud upgrade removed, * energy cost remains 75
This ability has seen next to no pro play since its release. While the math would suggest it to be effective vs carriers and bcs, a slew of other factors keep it from being used. These include the availability of alternative spells like parasitic bomb and abduct, the lack of zerg ground to air units for it to be used with, and the metagame moving away from slow zerg comps based around the infestor toward faster playstyles involving roach ravager or muta. This change aims to encourage the use of MS by removing an unnecessary upgrade on an underused spell, * being mindful to watch if it is too spammable.
The other balance changes I feel are pretty self explanatory, but I’ll go over them briefly. Although I don’t think one online tournament should dictate balance, I do think protoss is currently the race with the most bad units, mainly the tempest. The tempest’s supposed strength is its long range, and its stats are made weaker because of it, but that doesn’t really work in practice because every unit that wants to catch up to it will, i.e. marine, medivac, mine, cyclone, viking , hydralisk, corruptor, mutalisk, stalker, phoenix. At the least its supply can be trimmed, seeing as usually the protoss dies when they try to transition into them anyway…
The VR change is a revert of a nerf long ago, don’t really know why it was done in the first place, but saving protoss a few minerals on early pylons should be fine, and mass VR doesn’t seem like it’d be a problem for any race.
The observer nerf was stupid and should be reverted, and the immortal cost nerf as well since pickup range got rightly nerfed. There is no reason to keep a nerf for cannon rushes and immortal all ins if those builds have been hit through the prism nerf.
The colossus change aims to make it a bit more dangerous vs roaches and marauders while keeping interactions with ling/bling and marines the same.
The BC TJ nerf is because in TvZ, zerg can build the hardest counter to BC’s they have, corruptors, and still get out traded simply because the terran player can yamato and tj out to safety.
To explain, sum quik maths:
3 Corruptors = the gas cost of 1 BC
28 Corruptors to one shot a bc, 14 to 2 shot, 10 to 3 shot
Corruptors have attack speed of 1.36
Duration of yamato is 3 seconds + 1 second vulnerability during TJ = 4 seconds of total vulnerability
For this example we will assume trades are done with even gas armies, so the zerg player has 3 corruptors for every 1 bc and vice versa.
In trades of 10 > corruptors, there would be 3 bcs because that’s the gas cost of 9 corruptors = 3 dead corruptors from yamato. Less than 10 corruptors is not enough 3 shot a BC before it can yamato and TJ away. Result: free trade in favour of terran.
In trades of 10-14 corruptors vs 3-4 bcs, corruptors are able to 3 shot one before they zapp away. Result: even gas trade, favours terran if 4 bcs.
In trades 20-28 corruptors vs 7-10 bcs, corruptors are able to take out 2 while all but 1 yamato fires if 28 corruptors. Result: gas trade usually slightly favours terran.
In trades of 29-42 corruptors vs 10-14 bcs, corruptors are able to take out 3 bcs, 1 yamato can be consistently cancelled, meaning 9-13 corruptors die from yamato. Result: gas trade usually favours terran, even trade only if exactly 10 bcs.
In trades of 45+ corruptors vs 15+ bcs, bcs will always take a more cost efficient trade when you do the yamato + tj combo vs the corruptor because the corruptors can only one shot 3 bc’s during the cast times for yamato + tj, while bcs can kill corruptors greater than the gas cost of 3 bc (15 bc = 15 yamato = 15 dead corruptors = gas cost of 5 bcs). This is a ludicrous interaction now that you understand that zerg’s best counter to the bc gets consistently outraded in nearly all phases of the game by its counter, when both sides are controlled properly. As such, I propose its vulnerability period during tactical jump be extended to 3 seconds to encourage the ability to be used as a TACTICAL tool, rather than a free getaway after blowing your huge yamato load.
Generally, my feel for the game is that Z and T both are favoured vs P, and TvZ is even, which is why I gave P so many buffs and largely left T and Z alone. However the buffs were aimed at the underused units so that the race as a whole could feel more complete, rather than say reverting the charge nerf and returning to double prism mass chargelot degeneracy.
That concludes the explanations for my balance proposals. What do you think about them? Suggestions and feedback are welcome, as are criticisms 
