How we can fit three new units into SCII (with few issues)

General Discussion
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Hey! So, overall, I had a really strange idea on how to change the Starcraft 2 Meta without making it (completely) broken. It’s not a MAJOR change, but it’s a couple of changes that I would reccomend.

Alright, first off, I must get a couple things out of the way; I AM a Zerg player, so I am semi-biased, but I usually try and keep my mind balanced out. Overall, I’m not here to say “PrOtOsS iZ Op!1!111one!!!”, no, I’m here to suggest something that’d spice things up a little.

First off, buff the protoss mothership. Give it double its health and shields and MAYBE buff the Recall ability to cost slightly less energy. I know, I know, “It’s way too strong already! It cloaks nearby units and keeps everything else safe while it just keeps on tanking, plus it’s a heroic unit! None of the other races have that!” And… Yeah, you’re completely correct. However, I suggest something ELSE…

Give the Zerg and Terran something similar (MAYBE not Zerg cause Leviathans are Generally the strongest units in game so far, but hey.) I’d suggest Zerg NOT get a hero unit, but instead another anti-air unit. I’ll explain terran in a minute.

Give Zerg the Swarm Guardian. Think about it, it’d be easy to code, easy to patch, easy to understand and, overall, would make a great anti-air that Zerg REALLY doesn’t have. “That’s way too op!” You say, and you’d be right. Which is WHY I suggest it be mutated from Mutalisks, turning INTO it for roughly 150 minerals and 75 gas (or something, I’m not perfect with balancing.) Overall, I just think it’s a good idea!

Now, to get to Terran… OHHH boy this is a difficult one… I had quite a few options, but I decided to give them the Gorgon for a “Terran Mothership”, they can only have one, they can attack ground and air, though deal best against ground. It gets Tactical Jump (though it has a longer cooldown and it has a range of roughly 35, making it so that Terran can’t just immediately bombard the enemies home base at will with a buncha BC’s.). It’ll obviously have a Yamato Cannon, but I also propose that it also has a cooldown ability, which I’ll call “Overdrive”. Basically, it increases the attack speed and makes its damage AOE for 3 seconds. Very powerful, but for such a short time that the Terran MUST use it in large engagements or else you’re done for.

Now, I propose a SECONDARY idea. Let’s add three units to the game, one for each race. I suggest the following…
Give Zerg back the Aberration
Give Terran back the Firebat
and give Protoss back the Dragoon.

let’s start with the Aberration. The Aberration is a PERFECT Tier 2 Melee unit that Zerg just… doesn’t have… Example is that Ultralisk is tier 3 and Zergling is tier 1, but there’s just… something missing with the Lair tech… If they added THAT into the game, then Zerg would be able to overwhelm quicker, though that WOULD let things like Siege Tanks and Disruptors be more viable, due to their AOE and the fact that Aberrations tower over taller units (Similar to Colossi.)

Now, to the Firebat. I was thinking that it’d be a (sort of?) replacement for the Hellbat. It’d be weaker, yes, but it WOULD have access to Stimpak, making it just as viable with Terran Bio. I suppose it gets two upgrades, both researched at the Tech Lab, to be used for this…
First, give it Juggernaught Plating, making it extremely tanky, though keep its HP count at 100-110 so that it’s not so strong that it has to have fire focused on it. Secondly, give it a range upgrade, allowing the flames to spread farther and hit a larger area while keeping the Firebat from dying, while also not making it invincible. I know, Zerg would struggle early game against it, but hear me out, just make it so you have to have a tech structure to GET firebats, maybe combine it with the Ghost tech tree, I don’t know.

Now, onto the Protoss, and adding their Dragoons. They’d be a gateway unit, yes, but they wouldn’t be able to be made untill a Robotics Facility was made, Sort of making it a tech-production hybrid at that point, along with THAT, they would only be able to be warped in on Powered Fields (You know, the teal ones.) The Dragoon would be weaker than the immortal but stronger than the Stalker, but more and less mobile than the two respectively. Yes, it would have an upgrade, which I’m going to call “Adaptive Shields”, which would allow the Dragoon to heal its shields WHILE in Combat, though this would be researched at the Twilight Council.

PLEASE note that I don’t expect these to be in a game, it was just a fun thought experiment, trying to understand if it’s a good idea or not. I know Blizzard’s not ACTUALLY going to do this, though I can (sort of) get why they would; It’s not (purposefully) imbalanced, it’s not rediculously op for one race, and it’s not insanely hard to counter for each one. I tried my best and just… don’t start ranting about how certain parts are going to be nuts… it’s rediculous… Please just… give CONSTRUCTIVE critisism…

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I think the game needs to trim out some superfluous units, not add more.

The Thor and the Viking both cover the same ground the Goliath did in Broodwar.
The Swarm Host could have had a role for stalling pushes, but they kept giving it too much dps, and gave us the Lurker back for that, and now it performs the role of… something dumb, it’s a garbage unit now.

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Swarm guardians only exist in lost Viking minigame. Any gameplay functionality given to them is purely from the community. In this case, you’re going to have to decide what they do. Are they just a light corruptor? Do they have extra range? Do they hit ground and air? Do they do bonus damage vs something? Do they attack slowly? Unless you’re talking about the zerus primal guardians from HotS, but they do like 0 damage to air units so I don’t see how they’d be a good anti air option

So it’s a battlecruiser that’s… pretty much the same? Battlecruisers already have great burst damage with Yamato, and their fast attacks and high armor make them decent for killing small units (overdrive mechanic seems unnecessary to me). Mothership provides added utility, especially with the “information” game with the cloak (very difficult to grasp what’s actually under the mothership). What’s the benefit of making a gorgon instead of just another 1-2 BCs? It’s not like it covers any of the BCs weaknesses or anything.

Zerg never had aberration outside of campaign/coop, never in VS. This kinda raises an issue with Protoss, since these things are pretty dirt cheap and break forcefields. They seem easily kitable is the problem. Like bio doesn’t need to change at all really to deal with it, since you’d already be microing away from lings and banes. I guess you could find a way to use them to smash through tank lines quicker? Vs zerg? What are you using this thing on, roaches? They’ll just kite back. It almost seems like this is the perfect unit to combo with a roach speed all-in, since it murders structures and that’s about it. Where do you see this shaking up the meta?

A replacement that costs a tech lab on a barracks and 25 more gas? Thing about firebats is their roles are slightly filled already. Like yeah, they do AoE and bonus vs light, but marines tend to just do more damage. If you’re using them for the tankiness vs banes, I don’t see why marauders don’t fill the gap almost as well (they have kinetic foam by default in VS). If you wanted, you could just give marauder juggernaut plating and call it a day. Why not just do that?

This already has a name: Trillic compression systems for artanis’s dragoons. I’m not sure what the dragoon is supposed to change. You said it yourself, it’s an in-between of stalker and immortal. Doesn’t that overlap, like, everywhere? The stalker and immortal are already kinda similar (slow attacks, same range, bonus vs armored). Now think about what a dragoon would be: slow attack, same range, bonus vs armored. They’re either going to be a worse stalker or a worse immortal depending on your situation. Also, seems quite clunky to give a GATEWAY unit locked behind a ROBO and have its upgrade at the TWILIGHT. Explain how/what dragoon changes.

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Jesus christ I didn’t think this would get 2% of somebody’s actual attention haha.

For the Swarm Guardian, I’d say it has a high range attack that can attack everything. It attacks slowly (of course), but it has six attacks (not saying six TYPES, six ATTACKS), these attacks each have 10 damage (+6 vs Armoured). It would have a range of 9 (same as Lurkers when they have upgrades), they spawn with an additional 1 armor (meaning they have 4 at tier 3 upgrades.), and finally, their attacks can retarget when an enemy dies. Of course if it retargets the damage is halved, but still, it’d make sure no attack is wasted, even if it attacks every second and a half. Though I would say they need greater spires to be mutated from Mutalisks.

Gorgon was just an idea I had, I didn’t really put much effort into it, but maybe a battlestation instead would be a good idea? It’d be constructed at the starport, with a tech lab (obviously), need a fusion core and would have a carrier-tempest mix style. It’d have a missile attack, as well as fighters which can attack air and ground (similar to a carrier, though it gets 10 instead of the usual 8 interceptors.)

Also, one last thing I HAVE to point out that FRUSTRATES ME BEYOND BELIEF.

WHY ARE INTERCEPTORS SO FRIGGIN TANKY!?
I just… I don’t think that one should tank a full volley of hydras and survive, but other than that it’s pretty balanced.

Rant ASIDE, I’d say make it so the Aberrations break forcefields, along with that they’d benefit from the Metabolic Boost upgrade (though obviously they wouldn’t be FASTER than zerglings, but they WOULD be faster than Banelings with their upgrade.) Also, I thought that the Aberration was added to Multiplayer back in HotS?
Overall, it’d allow Zerg to get a LOT more DPS in and get an easier surround, sense they’d walk over Zerglings and Roaches and such, maybe giving some armor to those below it.

The Firebat was mostly a placeholder, I have NO FRIGGIN CLUE what to actually give terran, as I don’t know that much about them, though giving Marauder juggernaught plating would be a good idea, but maybe give them +1 armor instead of the firebats +2, sense they’ll be farther back than Marines will, meaning they won’t need it that badly.

The dragoon, again, was another placeholder, I didn’t really have any idea of what to put here… I’m mostly throwing ideas, these aren’t meant to be serious changes, but something that people can polish. I personally don’t think this game would do very well with Dragoons, maybe lock it behind Twilight instead of Robo bay? Cyber core is linked to WAY too many things already, which already makes it a huge loss if it gets shut down.

Other than that, yeah, I really have no excuse, I know this post was poorly made but that’s mostly it, it was meant to inspire ideas between other people, though I do hope to see at least SOME parts of these added one day…

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Cuz they attack slowly, do low-medium damage and have like 2 range. These things have 80 hp each (hp of 1 hydra, which actually isn’t thaaaaat much), and don’t take bonus damage from anything in the game (Except phoenixes but why would anyone make phoenixes to kill interceptors)
I can tell you’re either a coop player and want to see the ideas from there spread to VS (which isn’t a bad thing) or you’ve never touched coop in your life and don’t realize all of this has been done before. (Mostly referring to the battle station with a slow missile attack and interceptors)

I think adding units is a meh approach to balance. Many people liked WoL and BW over LotV and I think a part of that is the personality and counters each unit had. The more generalist the unit, the more hard countered it got (at least until terrans learned how to split marines). Like take the original siege tank: 70 damage to everything: this thing MURDERED ground. But you have the old immortal which almost entirely nullifies it. Nowadays, everything is kinda countered by everything if you try hard enough, and everything else is pretty meh. Look at the banshee for example: it was originally supposed to have a role in sniping off key targets like siege tanks or colossi. Now, it’s “why would I make banshees, no one even makes colossi” and also “why would I make banshees to harass when I have marine drops which contribute to my main army, hellion runbys which are faster, cost no gas, and kill workers quicker, liberators which force an air response, etc.” Adding more units will likely expand on this problem, so I think it’s better to focus on giving the existing units more defined purposes and counters

Of course, anything works if it’s implemented well enough. Swarm guardian has potential, would just need to see it in games.

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Ok.

Almost stopped reading…

… but then a bit interested… Let’s give this guy a chance!

I’m not really into hero units. I don’t like them. SC2 is not a unique hero units wars. It’s not Warcraft 3.

Good idea. Let’s make the game fresh. As long as there are not hero units.

Firebat - overlaps with Helbat/helion,
Dragoon - orevlaps with Stalker (just without blink but a bit stronger),
Aberration - meh… I don’t know. I remember it from campaign but I didnt liked this unit. Boring design, very tanky but EXTREMELY slow which would make this unit useless.

I don’t think replacement is good idea. You should just propose new and fresh unit.

So just almost the same as Stalker just a bit stronger but without blink and available in midgame instead of early game? Weird idea.

I understand it but theyre not fun at all. You suggested to add/replace some units from SC1 with some weird changes.

OVERALL:
I don’t like these changes. Some new units in the game would be fun even if imbalanced at the beginning but these changes are weird. You suggest to add units from SC1 which are a bit modified (actually in a very weird way). I like how you aren’t crying like most of these zerg people on the forum but just want to suggest something to change the game but these changes are not good. Make another thread with new FRESH units proposals so I can comment. I like your attitude but the changes arent good. Peace.

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