Starcraft 2 is a great game, but there is still room for some improvement, but actually not that much. Since we’re coming up on when we could possibly, get a new big balance post, I figured I’d write a few posts about some possible changes to consider. Let’s get a couple of things out of the way
- Don’t get hung up on numbers. Numbers and values are there to give an idea of how strong something is. People get too caught up in numbers and instantly go to, “That ability can’t do that much damage it’s op.” No numbers are to help compare things. It helps to visualize. “Oh, so this ability is supposed to be comparable to storm.”
- There’s aren’t changes for the sake of. It’s not, “Hydralisks get +1 range vs air just because.” That doesn’t have any meaningful or interesting impact. That’s something for smaller patches to work out. After thinking about it for a while, there are only about 3 big changes per race that I think would make a positive impact on the game and help smooth out some units and give them some more love.
Let’s start with zerg.
New Unit: Miasmalisk
-Morph off the Mutalisk
Speed Between 4-5 (Faster than corruptor but slower than muta)
HP: Between 130-190 (More than muta but less than corruptor)
Air attack range: 7
Ground attack: range 6 (Single target)
Ability: Dissolving Acid: Whenever the Miasmalisk kills an enemy air unit, it deals 100% damage to 2 nearby enemy air units. This only applies to the main target. It an enemy unit is destroyed via the splash effect, it does not activate this ability.
Currently, the mutalisk doesn’t have a good transition. Either you go ham on them and try and go for a base race/pick apart the enemy or you get a few and then just let them die after a while so you can replace them with something else. The mutalisk is the original morphing unit, and it is now one of the few that has no morph. Well, now it can.
The miasmalisk keeps the fast speed play style of the mutalisk. It is slower than it’s previous form, but it can still dart around the map and do raids on the enemy base, but its real strength comes from fighting air units. The miasmalisk gives the zerg a consistent way of dealing splash. As opposed to parasitic bombs mass destruction, the miasmalisk slowly chips away at enemy air units. Every time it destroys an enemy air unit, 2 nearby enemy air units take 100% damage. It’s not much, but over time it adds up. So it’s ideal for straight up fights. The longer it attacks, the more damage it does to the enemy. It’s not very tough still, so corruptors will be needed to soak up damage in air vs air fights.
We’ve seen mutalisks start to make a comeback, but this unit will open up that playstyle more and give an alternative to the brood lord for spire tech. It doesn’t have the siege potential of the brood lord, but it compensates with its speed and ability to combat air if left untouched. It also gives zerg some more dynamic vs was air. Currently, it’s either mass corruptor and then one or both of the viper or infestor. Now there is another option for dealing with air armies. It doesn’t deal with High HP targets well, so it’s not the best choice vs masses of capital ships, but against lower HP units like Vikings, Phoenix, or mutalisks it shines. So the corruptor still has a place in dealing with the massive units.
Now on to the changes.
Swarm Host:
Locust-
Damage reduced to 8.
Attack speed increased from .4 to .8
Duration decreased from 18 seconds to 15.
Cooldown remains at 41 seconds.
New Upgrade: Rapid incubation: When the swarm host is within range X of an allied creep tumor, locust cooldown is 50% faster.
The swarm host has been a pretty niche unit for a long time because of its strength. It’s kind of a one-hit wonder. It launches its locust and then does nothing else for about 40 seconds. The developers wanted to make creep more meaningful awhile ago and tested out some changes with the infestor. They didn’t pan out, but this is another opportunity.
Why creep tumors and not just creep? Well, this prevents things like nydus worm creep or overlord creep from being used to speed up the cooldown. It also prevents the discouragement of creep in zvz. Because it’s a creep tumor it encourages good creep spread, it encourages the destruction of creep by the enemy a bit more, and it helps on the defensive. Right now, there is a huge window after locust are defended for the enemy to punish the zerg. Now the swarm host is a lot better on the defensive. So it can launch its locust and then pull back to creep to have locust recover faster. Using creep tumors helps keep swarm hosts from dominating, but also gives them a defenders advantage. Even with 50% cooldown, it will still only be able to launch 1 wave at a time. The cooldown would at most be reduced to about 20 seconds with this effect. To compensate for this, the locust strength has been decreased. Hopefully, something like this would make swarm hosts more interesting and less dead weight while also stopping them from being OP.
Viper
Parasitic Bomb
Damage changed from, 120 to between 60-90 (Possibility of +0 to30 bonus damage to one of the following: Shields, mechanical, light)
added function: Units under the effect have their attack speed reduced by 75%.
With the added Miasmalisk and its constant splash, this change takes away the, “I blew up your whole air army!” that the parasitic bomb is supposed to do now and makes it more of a softening up spell. The addition of slowing the attack speed of units under its effect gives a parasitic and zerg like feel of hampering the enemy, So, yes it still does damage, but it also slows down fast attacking units and gives other units more time to deal damage.
I’m interested in hearing what people think. I tried to find meaningful ways to improve on things and not “Change just because of change” I’ll put up the terran and protoss ideas later this week. Hopefully, we get good discussion out of this. They have been good about making meaningful changes in the balance patches so hopefully, we get another one this year because there are still something that can be improved upon.