I wonder what the logic behind some of your changes is, I know this is just a wishlist of changes rather than carefully thought balance but I find some very odd.
For example I get that for Alarak you want to replace pylons with prisms but that sounds like a terrible time to me. Forward pylons are always better than prism unless you are already going for robo for some reason. Also prism already has the same area as pylons.
For Nova you want to increase the cost of airstrike substantially even though she already has a hard time not running out of minerals.
I did suggest Warprisms being made from the Nexus so I don’t understand your problem with it?
I find that calldown to be way too powerful, probably the most broken thing in the game, that’s why I think it should be nerfed. Although I do have to say, I’m not sure if increasing mineral cost is better than increasing cooldown. Maybe cooldown is better, I’m not entirely sure. But the concept of the calldown is that it is a short cooldown limited by your resources, so I just kept that idea and nerfed from there.
The reason why I say they are better for robo is because robo require less micro since the only unit you are microing is Alarak. With ascendants just being able to overcharge the pylon and not think too much about it is much better so that you can properly micro Alarak and your ascendants. I do think I didn’t word it properly though so I apologize for that.
They being build from the nexus is a problem by itself to me considering how easy it’s to deploy a pylon and overcharge it while it’s constructing. I don’t know… maybe I’m just too set in my ways that I can’t possible see prisms working like you want them to.
As for airstrike yeah it’s strong but 350 more minerals per use is too much if you ask me. Constant airstrike is one of the things that differentiate good Nova players and if you are also doing mines then as things are right now you already run out of minerals very easily.
That makes total sense. So the microing, and things you have to worry about when playing gate would increase considerably?
Hhmmm… I didn’t think too much about that because I already use Warprisms with Ascendants anyway. But with these changes the amount of Warprisms to manage could increase. That could be very draining.
I think it would be fine, but nothing can be certain until changes are tested. Personally since I use 3~5 Warprisms with any comp anyway, I just thought of making the use of those more straightforward, while improving economy at the same time.
But I didn’t consider the fact people might prefer to just use Pylons. I thought the problem was with Warprisms being so expensive, time consuming to build, costing supply and being gated behind the Robotics Facility, but didn’t think about the extra micro aspect.
As for Nova, without testing I can’t say much else. This is a “I think” x “I think” situation here. Whenever I play her I have no issue with minerals, and I play a mineral heavy comp (Marine/Hellbat/Marauder/Ghost/Raven). Maybe I play wrong, I don’t know.
I started typing up some ideas and never quite finished. Here’s most of my Protoss rework ideas. Some are very conservative, some probably pretty awesome, and some very out there (Karax and Artanis particularly). I lost it at Zeratul as I don’t really have answers right now to what to do with e.g. Stasis Beam.
Mostly want to post this so I can start responding to some other ideas and stop having this as a perpetual draft!
Protoss
Chrono Boost
Chrono Boost can now be used on structures under construction. A Nexus's own Chrono Boost still doesn't become operational until the Nexus has completed. Karax's Chrono Field and Chrono Wave also apply to structure construction speed.
Zeratul’s Chrono Boost is removed and replaced by an alternative ability, Chrono Surge. This functions more like the Versus version of Chrono Boost.
Artanis
Artanis can now build Carriers (as Karax's), but can no longer build Tempests.
Orbital Strike removed by a toggled top bar ability, Shade Warp/Standard Warp. When toggled to Shade Warp, Artanis's combat unit warp-ins no longer cost resources, supply or warp charges, but instead cost Spear of Adun energy and disappear after 45 sec.
Artanis's Orbital Strike isn't a very unique ability, and Artanis doesn't have as clear a fantasy as most commanders. This ability is about focusing on Artanis as a master of warp technology, and as a commander who relies on the flexibility of his army. Shade Warp is extremely versatile, letting Artanis players experiment with options like early game Zealot/Dragoon power spikes, constantly mixing in Immortal shades to aid attrition, or banking energy to create temporary armies to bolster map presence.
Karax
All of Karax's combat units gain +25% weapon damage, rounded up to the nearest integer. Weapon upgrades stay in line based on adding +10% damage per upgrade, rounded up to the nearest integer.
Colossi are no longer considered to be a ground unit for the purposes of Blinding Cloud. Also applies to Fenix's Colossi.
Karax's Colossus upgrade Extended Thermal Lance renamed to Advanced Thermal Lance, and in addition to its existing effect it now additionally allows Colossi to attack air units. Each sweep of their attack can attack either ground or air, not both.
Colossi aren't necessarily a bad unit, but they're unique in being hard-countered by the compositions they should be useful against. It makes sense, if Colossi are tall enough to be hit by Scourge, that they're tall enough to be 'above' the battlefield that Vipers are obscuring. These changes should make them much more effective against Zerg, and give Karax a ground unit that can deal with non-mechanical air.
Karax can now build Artanis's Tempests, but can no longer build Carriers.
The Tempest's Disintegrate ability now additionally reduces the attack speed, movement speed and cooldown rate of the target by 30% for the duration.
Tempests gain a new upgrade, Gravity Sling, which increases their anti-air range by 6.
Karax's masteries overhauled to:
1 (a) Unit and Structure Health and Shields 1.5–45%
1 (b) Spear of Adun Energy Regeneration and Cooldown Reduction 1–30%
2 (a) Structure Cost Refund 2.5–75%
2 (b) Research Cost Reduction 2–60%
3 (a) Ability Cooldown Reduction 1.5–45%
3 (b) Spear of Adun Initial and Maximum Energy +3–90
These masteries are much stronger, and allow Karax to choose a combination of army play, static defence and Spear of Adun usage. Structure Cost Refund triggers when a structure is destroyed. Spear of Adun Regen/Cooldown applies to Chrono Wave and Purifier Beam. Karax's units will always have +30% cost, but as well as their intrinsic +25% damage they can now gain additional Health and Shields, and faster ability cooldown, to make them truly powerful.
Vorazun
Structures now benefit from Strike from the Shadows.
Dark Archons now have the same attack damage as Archons.
For every kill, Dark Archons permanently gain +1 attack damage and +0.2/sec energy regeneration, to a maximum of 20 stacks.
Bugs with the Confuse spell fixed.
Summon Shadow Guard now reduced to 25 energy cost.
I don't think Dark Archons will work unless they're a serviceable combat unit, at which point DA/Centurion would emerge as a really viable composition. These changes also would improve their performance vs. Zerg and create synergy with Black Hole. Reduced Shadow Guard cost means one extra Dark Pylon or Black Hole in the early game, and then some viability to using Shadow Guard in the mid/late game.
Alarak
Wrath of the Highlord restored to infinite range.
War Prism capacity increased from 8 to 24, and they now unload instantly.
Force Fields cast by Alarak's Havocs now take 3 sec to dissolve when they would be destroyed.
Ascendants, Wrathwalkers and Vanguards are no longer sacrificed to Alarak.
I know there's an argument for more significant changes, but I don't play Alarak a great deal and am not sure his Robo play is really that far off being viable. These changes would improve his mobility options and make Force Field viable without making them invincible.
Fenix
Legionnaire's Charge ability replaced with Vindicator's Charge, which in addition to normal Charge deals 20 (+20 vs. structure) damage to the target.
Colossi are no longer considered to be a ground unit for the purposes of Blinding Cloud. Also applies to Karax's Colossi.
Fenix's Colossi can research a new upgrade, Overshield, which allows Colossi to auto-cast a 50 hit point barrier onto any unit beneath it.
Disruptor speed increased from 2.25 to 3.15 (as in Versus), and Purification Nova cooldown reduced from 30 sec to 20 sec.
Fenix is almost perfect, so it's just about tweaking lesser-used units. Disruptors are pretty good, just a bit more hit-and-run and wave-to-wave capability would be good. Legionnaires need a bit more reinforcing of their anti-structure role to be more than spare shells. The Colossi change is more significant and I think could be a cool idea, though it overlaps with Immortals' Barrier. The purpose is to give spare Colossi an Aberration-like support role and maybe encourage using a few in the rear with Conservators, or mixing them in with mass Adept compositions to toughen it up.
Zeratul
Zeratul removed completely.
Okay, no... I'm just not sure yet. There's a... lot, and it's not all straightforward. Still thinking.
Amon's Protoss Units
Amon's Protoss bases in many missions are now more strongly defended. Amon will use Shield Batteries in many bases, and makes more use of Immortal and Reaver defenders.
Amon's Arbiters will now use Stasis Field against commanders on Brutal difficulty.
The Shadow Disruption composition now uses campaign Annihilators in place of Phoenixes.
Amon's Towering Walkers composition now includes Dragoons, and Disruptive Artillery now includes Void Rays.
On Brutal difficulty, Amon can harass player bases with either (decided randomly per mission) Dark Templar, Phoenixes or Oracles.
Amon seems to be half a difficulty step down most times he rolls Protoss. The bases are the easiest to push into, and many of the compositions are easy. Even the tough ones tend to have really defined weaknesses. I think these changes would spruce up some of his compositions, add some Viper-level nastiness and keep us on our toes a bit more.
I think Nova’s almost perfect, but Griffin Airstrike is the one thing I might eye up nerfing. But I’d consider an alternative route here:
Griffin Airstrike Cost mastery replaced with Unit Cooldown Reduction -2 to -60 sec.
700 is a bit too cheap for Airstrike, but this mastery is always going to be the clear winner over Nuke and Holo Decoy Cooldown, so why not just remove it? Instead, replace it with a ‘nice to have’ mastery many people call for, but which doesn’t necessarily make Nova stronger. That makes the Power Set 1 choice more uncertain.
(I won’t die on the hill of “this mastery isn’t strong”, but my Nova play usually mixes enough unit types to not be cooldown-limited.)
Why increase the cost when you can just remove the mastery?
Of course! I’m thinking things in such a convoluted manner… Although I’d prefer the unit cooldown itself to be removed, there is a nice design philosophy behind it that I don’t know how important it is, which is:
By having cooldowns you are forced to diversify your army composition.
Maybe that is such a core point of Nova that, by removing, could destroy the commander completely. I mean, being able to just mass marines could be very lame after all.
But decreasing the cooldown could be this middle ground in which you can get a little more of a certain unit type, without allowing you to just mass a single thing. That might be better indeed.
There’s not been a single revamp where I haven’t either thought that some decision was wrong or didn’t go far enough to actually fix the underlying problem; There’s stuff with all the commanders that could use fiddling.
I don’t know about six months, but if I were in charge for a few weeks this is what I would do, this and have someone actually fix all those those things Maguro has pointed out in his Bug Hunts Zagara:
Give Abominations +1 armor and have them regen faster on creep, or alternatively just have all her units regen faster on creep. (It would make spreading creep feel more worthwhile for her.)
Change Queen transfuse to only cost 25 energy to make them worthwhile support casters, and remove the armored tag. (Again it would make spreading creep more worthwhile.)
Add a Hive tech upgrade to increase supply to 125
Give Bile Launchers their old Smart cast, while keeping a separate button to bombard ground.
Slightly increase base Corrupter damage, and have Corruption ability stack, and most importantly let them pee on buildings (because it’s fun)
Stukov
Lower Bunker supply cost back to 4
To make them less efficient unit spawners remove the 20% spawning rate boost from the lvl14 talent, and instead give 20% cooldown reduction on barracks and factory.
Have Missile Turrets benefit from bunker upgrades
Increase Banshee base damage and upgrade bonus so they are less meh, or give them aoe like Raynor’s Banshees
Make Tank’s long range attack targetable, it’s a bit of a pain that you can only target within spine range
increase Queen cast range by 1
Kerrigan:
Change Nydus cost to 150/150
like with Zagara; Change Queen transfuse to 25 energy and remove armored tag
Give mutas 50% extra damage against armored with the severing glaives research (They were pretty crazy when we had 100%damage to armored and bounces that did More damage than base, but removing it entirely in the nerf felt like too much since they are basically glass cannons, but with fairly limp cannons post-nerf considering how fragile they are.)
Raynor:
Bring back double mule, (wouldn’t be OP at this point, and I don’t think the majority of players are ever gonna get that they should build extra CCs, which isn’t particularly beginner friendly anyway)
Vorazun:
Either bring back the option of chronoing buildings, or have her Dark Shrine not require Twilight council.
(Her start has always felt like a bit of a pain, and building chrono was a god-send, making the start much more enjoyable)
Lower Shadowguard cost to 25 energy
(using them later on feels like such a waste of energy compared to dark pylons or black hole)
Dehaka
increase base muta damage a tad to 16 while keeping the current air damage
Buff Guardians to still make them the more attractive choice against ground by decreasing explosive spore delay, or removing it entirely
Karax:
No unit tax, change mastery to either +30% unit hp and shields, or a unit cooldown reduction
(The latter would be more interesting and fun, I think, would help with shadow cannons, energizer reclamation, and make energizer buff slightly faster, would also help Mirage I guess, but no one builds that unit anyway)
Increase base Mirage damage to something like 12 (+8 vs Light)
(there’s really no reason to build them currently except for fun, so I think they need a significant damage buff to be a worthwhile and more mobile alternative to mass immortals or carriers)
cut all unit researches by 50 gas (getting units out is very slow with all those expensive upgrades Karax has)
Han & Horner
Have the Galleons benefit from out of combat regen like Horner’s units
cut gas cost from Widow Mines
(you lose them easily, so it feels like any gas spent on them is just thrown away, and would be better spent on more Horner units instead)
I would add random attack wave spawns so that it’s harder to spawn camp as well as make attack wave timings random (+/- 45 sec so 90 sec window) and then tie attack wave strength to the game timer. You could have a small attack wave be sent towards you early on like on Rifts to Korhal map except on any map now. You could have no attacks for a while an then a giant **** attack wave is spawned to kill you. Should add a lot of replayability.
Primary objective timings could be made random too. Two bots could spawn in the first wave on mist opportunities for example or the buttom train could be launched first on oblivion express with attack wave patterns also randomized.
Enemy Base reinforcing their own base and spawing army.
Aside from Enemy Waves, can we have enemies reinforce their defences by making more units and defence towers?
They already do that but its slow and much less than we could expect.
Except for the enemies at Train of Oblivion, they reinforce like crazy! The development team should implement like that on other maps!
Since so many of you have already suggested commander specific changes, I’ll add a wishlist of more system wide changes.
Remove cooldowns for energy based abilities. It seems very pointless to have both constraints on so many abilities. If the devs don’t want certain abilities spammed (such as shield overcharge) then remove their cooldown and increase their energy cost accordingly. This would make it more predictable when your abilities will be available, which aids in co-operation.
1-2 more difficulty options. The jump between hard and brutal is very difficult for more causal players and it is very frustrating for us more experienced players to match up with underprepared allies. With a hard+ mode and a brutal+ mode and a standard deviation of 1 for solo Q, players could be much more accurately paired together.
Less predictable attack spawns in terms of both attack timing and location. I think it’s not ideal that the optimal way to play many maps is to spawn camp.
More bonus objectives on some missions. It feels as if some of the longer missions like Dead of Night and Temple of the Past could use more bonus objectives. These maps often feel like you are waiting around for the next thing to happen. Additional bonus objectives would add more tension and decision making and stretch your army more.
And perhaps most importantly, add more mission variety. We already have a fairly diverse group of commanders, so now map variety is the more limiting factor on replayabilty. As someone mentioned above, it would be very cool to leverage the passion of the arcade community to make new concepts. This would increase community engagement and mission replayabilty and be an all around good looking PR move. An easy win-win situation.
I had forgotten about this, since I usually don’t play him, but this or reverting the Stukov bunker supply nerf is probably the first thing I would change: Abathur
Scrap the tedious biomass collecting entirely, and instead have it as a third resource that automatically gets added to when enemy units are killed.
(I simply hate scavenger hunting and it’s annoying when the wrong units, such as queens, pick up the biomass in battles. Since this would make biomass usage more efficient perhaps lower the amount received slightly)
Have an investiture power that adds biomass to a unit or give all units a button that adds biomass.
make full biomass units smaller to make them less clumsy
If I was in charge of coop, I would make brutation worth 1,000,000 xp each time I played it, so instead of 3,200 games to get to 1000, I could do it in 80
========== Cradle Of Death
Make the bonus objectives untimed. On Brutal, you need to do the bonus first, then scurry with 3 min. left for the next main objective. On Hard, you do have the option to tackle the next main obj., then take care of the bonus next.
====== Vorazun
Don’t recall where I saw this, but someone mentioned making Dark Shrine buildable after Cyb Core, not Cit. Of Adun. Shortening the tech tree by one building. Vor. is a DT and void specialist. It’d be thematic and better gameplay to enable that.
====== Artanis
Allow creation of Shuttles from Rob. Fac. To transport Immortals and Reavers easier. I will acknowledge that Artanis deploys units directly to anywhere on the map where there’s a power field, so the initial build at least isn’t an issue.
I would rework all commanders and future commanders with an alternative plat style AND rotate them with a seasonal basics. Also, introducing heroes-only mission map (like TOU,TC,BOB IN CO-OP etc.)while developing heroes, talents, masteries for it.
I understand that some of the commanders doesn’t require a change at all (especially Nova) while some desperately need a twist (like Artanis struggles with mobility for multiple location defense, Zagara struggles in brutation-DOD and ME etc.).
For now, IS ALL for the sake of creativity.
EDITED:I already store some commanders-rework and several commander concept ideas. Will share them lately.
