Hey there batZ please lets try to remain civil here. I know you can.
Amazing! Whether or not you think it’s a buff is immaterial both for me personally and for this discussion as a whole becuase we are talking primarily about bad design and balance is of secondary importance (see above where I say I’m prepared to do arbitrary tweaks to balance the game from there). Anyway we finally have white smoke! Let’s celebrate!! 
So somehow moving hydras to hatch tech will make early BC stronger? How does that work?
“It’s only bad when others do it!”
What a pathetic argument!
How many Hive tech stuff does Zerg need?. It’s insane how Zerg must rush to Hive or Die as it is.
The way blizzard has designed Zerg is to defend, defend, then attack. You can’t attack pre-lair because zerg’s anti-air is locked behind lair. By the time you reach lair, you can’t attack because your mid game army is more expensive and less supply efficient than his, meaning any trades you take will be at your deficit. You buffer this by taking defensive fights on creep, which offset the disadvantage. Only once hive tech is reached can zerg actually trade off of creep.
That’s how zerg is designed. It is super-glued to creep. Creep is zerg’s biggest disadvantage. You can’t attack until the 12 minute mark or you have to accept a 1000 mmr deficit to your performance.
I don’t understand if this is an argument against the proposal to gate the dps or what.
Would you prefer to give Zerg a T1 unit with 10 dps per supply basically the equivalent of a pair of marines that can be produced en-mass as soon as a single building goes down?
Do you think any (non-zerg) race would be able to hold a 3-base hydra all-in? If you do please explain how? If not what is your objection exactly? Do you want to nerf their dps completely and not just gate it?
Nerf Hydralisk range, introduce Lair tech to get the range back. Fixed.
But how will that solve the problem of Zerg coming to your base with 15 hydras (300 dps!) at the 5 minute mark and just starting to wreck everything? I’m sincerely asking, i may be missing something.
Hydralisks are extra slow outside creep, so I would just trade them with Zealots/Marines, and win on both the minerals and gas fronts.
Maybe some kiting can do a bit but I’m not sure how ~16 Marines (and i’m being very generous assuming you’re doing some kind of 3 rax otherwise you won’t be able to get to this marine count at the ~5 minute mark) can hold off 15 hydras even with godlike micro.
As for Zealot did you really mean that? Zealots would disapear so fast i doubt they’ll even damage the hydras.
Zealot + Sentry would trade well.
That doesn’t sound right to me at all. Be that as it may I’m actually very lenient about the specifics of my proposal as is evident. If you think gating the range is enough, I may not agree but still, by all means, let’s try that. As long as we’re giving Zerg actual early AA and relegating the Queen to being a Macro-unit/support-caster, i’m in.
16 marines should never be able to defeat 15 hydras (if you let the costs untouched), since hydras are far mor expensive. By the time the hydras hit your door, you would have 1-2 tanks ready to defend.
And Protoss would have Shield Baterries.
Well, that was my point. Tanks would do a lot in this case I agree. But moving out would be extremely dangerous. At the very least I think it will be very exciting to see how meta would develop around this.
Hydras are slow, so there would be no issues. We would also see Hyrdras directly interact with Hellions, something we almost never see.
You are whining about how easy zerg’s defense is, saying they can go on autopilot for the first 4 minute of the game. You are angry that zerg can make multiple queens and want mass queen to be “punishable”. You are CLEARLY talking about nerfing zerg’s defense.
All the changes you’ve listed wouldn’t be nerfs, they’d be buffs, because the things you are whining about are actually weaknesses, not advantages. Having to mass queens in the early game is NOT an advantage. Giving zerg the hydralisk would be a huge buff. Zerg would have early game AA that could leave creep. That would be broken AF. Separating zerg’s defense and macro would be a huge buff, too. It means zerg’s macro couldn’t be interrupted by attacks. Right now queens have to respond for defense and this hurts the zergs economy by delaying injects and creep spread.
These are disadvantages and you are crying about them like they are bonkers overpowered.
If you don’t like mass queen, the way to solve it is to remove Zerg’s dependency on it. Zergs don’t like mass queen, either, because it’s a disadvantage. Zergs have to do it, have no choice to do it, because it’s the only AA they can make in the early game.
There are two solutions. Either buff queens so that zergs don’t have to make as many, or nerf enemy air based harass so that zergs don’t have to make as many. Problem solved! Otherwise you are just talking about nerfing zerg’s greatest weakness even harder, and that is pathetic.
Let me repeat, because it seems like you are missing my point. Whether or not you think these are buffs or nerfs is absolutely immaterial. My complaint is about the game being boring now. Zerg does the same freaking opening every game, even the difference between vsT and vsP is pretty mild. This doesn’t happen with any other race.
My suggestion is not a balance suggestion. It is a (maybe even dramatic) design suggestion i.e. give the Queen an exploitable weakness which would make massing it disadvantageous.
It’s nice of you to try to help with identifying what will nerf/buff Zerg. But I am just not very interested in this at the moment. I proposed this change not because I care about average winrates and/or aligulac rating etc. etc. I’m proposing this because I want to see Zerg do something different in the first 4 minutes of a game once in a while (and not because they do a all-in). Once we have a non-boring early game with actual real time strategy going on then we can talk about how to balance things so that races have equal opportunities.
The problem is that zerg is boxed in with no other options. By definition you would be buffing zerg.
I already clarified twice that I could care less about balance at this point. Putting this aside for a moment, the most difficult thing for me to understand in this discussion is how, given that this is your stance, can you possibly be against this change?
You keep repating how Zerg has no options besides mass Queens, that it is laughably weak in the early game, that Macro/Creep suffers from Queens having to serve dual purposes etc.
Then someone comes along and proposes to change exactly this dynamic, gets a pretty healthy positive reaction from this forum’s community towards the change, on top of that you yourself come along and explain how it’s actually a buff and will help fix the situation.
And somehow after all that, you are admminetly against it?
You must be disatisfied with the current state of the game according to your statements. So the only reason I can imagine for you being against this change is that you have an even better idea. Well, let’s hear it then, i’m all ears (not being sarcastic here).