Units that need a buff

In my humble opinion, there are units underperforming a little too much and I’ll balance suggest so here we go:

Terran:

  • Reaper, it could use a midgame upgrade, maybe give Vulture Mines to them via tech lab upgrade, there are plenty good suggestions in the forum.

Zerg:

  • Broodlords: it disapeared from the game and for a solid reason, 10 range for a super slow unit is not good enought, I feel the same with Tempest but BL has ground attack only, you can’t micro them anymore so it’s a glass cannon specialy vs Terran, so give them 1 more range would never hurt TvZ if the Thors stop being a direct counter but a support to Vikings that should be the counter, this would be good to the game since Thors direct counter almost everything in the game, it should have more weakness.

  • Ultralisk It’s almost the Mothership of the Zerg, it do something in rare situations, to be honest, it’s to easy to counter Ultras. Give an passive to the +2 upgrade that if the damage the Ultra receives is above 20 it reduces 25%, this way they don’t get deleted by Immortal/Tanks/Libs/Lurkers. Another important thing is to give Ultras the ability to push small units out of the way so it doesn’t stumble in the first Ling it touches.

Protoss:

  • Adept: This unit needs something, it doesn’t need to be harass only, make it transitionable, give the ability to change weapons that increase range and can attack air while sacrificing Shade, make it permanent change, just like you would evolve an Hydra to a Lurker.

  • Tempest: I’ll leave to the imagination but this unit need a good rework.

  • Mothership: I see why you don’t want to take away Viper ability to pull the MS, but 2 base armor realy? For a flying city? Give it at least 4 base armor, it’s 8 supply heavy for Artanis’ sake.

16 Likes

Why is this IQ1Mechanics guy even allowed to post? Every single comment is just 100% troll with nothing useful added to the conversation.

That aside, I like your ideas and changes. The Ultra and Brood Lord need to be reworked, so that Zerg has a Late Game against Terran again.

4 Likes

Agree

Agree

Not sure tbh

Sure but preferably a late game upgrade that can’t be abused.

A rework would be nice.

YES

2 Likes

100% agree, these are the units that should be buffed.

Reapers with spider mines would be awesome and could help with runbys. Maybe 50/50 43 second tech lab upgrade?

Broodlords getting +1 range would be great, a movespeed buff could work too, either/or.

I think your suggestion for the ultra is OP, just give them higher push priority would be excellent.

Adepts hitting air could help protoss vs mass muta or even mass phoenix, I think the best building to put it on would be TA. Also don’t think they should have to sacrifice shade for it, they already fall off pretty hard.

I think tempest just needs to be long range anti-massive unit, make it have 1 weapon, 12 range, 60 damage vs massive, and 1 less supply.

Mothership should also definitely have more armour, 4 sounds good.

3 Likes

In my opinion Ultras are too weak vs anything that’s not Terran bio, and ofc last Blizzcon when Serral got robbed in the semi finals by Reynor because he went Lurkers.

You might be right that the push priority might be enought but it’s so silly when Zerg goes Ultras when I’m playing Protoss, I just right click and kite for ever and my Immortals one shot them one by one and they don’t even scratch my Archons.

I don’t think reapers are underperforming. They are good for cheeses and standard for openers. Adepts fall off from the early game too. Honestly? Reapers would be extremely effective in bio vs. bio fights. It’s just no one bothers to make them because having only marine/marauder to micro is much easier. We don’t need more explosive damage from Terran. You already have widow mines. I’d be okay with your suggestion if it also included removing widow mines, but if there’s vulture mines AND widow mines? Then we’re stuck with that mines co-op mutation, and I don’t want any part in that. At all.

The main reason why you don’t see broodlords anymore is because of how broken thors are. 2 thors can beat 4 brood lords. 5 thors can probably eat through 12. A 300/200 GROUND unit is capable of punching down a total cost of 300/250 extremely hard to make unit. It is mind baffling that anyone would find this even remotely acceptable. It’s not that broodlords need a buff, although they could do with something to make them more durable or do more damage, it’s that thors have no in game counter. Thors need a nerf. A huge one.

They really need to fix the unit micro of ultralisks. Many people have mentioned they are clanky and unreliable in movement. They are just so… stupid. They need to move more smoothly and directly. And as you said, it’d be great if they didn’t collide into units as much. Maybe give them something like an aberration effect where some units can be under them.

They are completely fine as harass units imo. It’s just people don’t like to utilize them as such because they take up 25 gas and zealots can be better in some situations anyway. If the devs want to see them used in the mid/late game as fighting units, they need to either add back the 25 light damage or make a new upgrade that makes the adept shade an un-micro-able fighter like in campaign/co-op that also shoots but does less damage (and maybe the air attack too).

We either need the old tempest back from 2018 or some of the speed buffs need to be reverted. No doubt here. Blizzard thinks they were slick buffing tempests into a broken but exciting unit into something completely useless.

That’s definitely a step in the right direction, but they HAVE to make it so vipers can’t pull the mothership. Making a mothership in the late game is SUICIDE across all matchups - and it’s because of how easy it is to pick off. Battlecruisers easily yamato it, vipers just pull, and a good group of tempests can just 2-3 shot it.

no

no

its pretty obvious you are a zerg player.

i do agree with protoss ones though i think those units dont really have their place. except for adept which is basically protoss reaper

The Thor is the only terran ground unit that can take down supported broodlords, just like blink stalkers are the only protoss ground unit that can do that. If you took away blink, or that extra 1 range, the stalkers and the Thors wouldn’t be able to reach the broodlords just sitting behind their frontline and their broodlings. That would leave just Tempests or Vikings as alternatives, knowing that corruptors tend to have the edge vs vikings (which becomes even more acute considering the lategame Z casting possibilities, with parasitic bomb and fungle) ; and that Tempest are a liability against anything ground.

Bad idea if you ask me. :confused:

The devs nerfed the 8 armor ultralisk to 7 for a reason : 3 ultras was the critical game ending mass in ZvT in 2015-early 2016. The whole match-up reduced itself to mid or early terran allins (a lot of them abusing the strength of early reapers). Ultras are extremely durable (more than any ground unit in fact), but if they become too durable that’s gamebreaking in some MU, as the MMM counterpart is much more fitted to the glasscanon definition. That’s why the devs felt the little push-up the ultras needed wasn’t durability, but that quite measured offcreep speed boost. They don’t want the ultralisks to mean the end of the game by themselves in ZvT ; yet good Z can exploit that durability to draw the enemy’s fire while 80 banes are going for the kill just behind (and that’s actually a quite certain way to kill a PF), or to induce thors or liberators that will then be useless against a mass lings, or have the terran increase his marauder count while preparing to add more hydras just afterwards.

As for the ultralisk requiring to be positioned (in front of your army), I’m glad to hear it as a lot of players tend to consider the unit is as a-clic as can be. It’s a good thing that a least a bit of positioning is required to make optimal use of them, that’s what can set apart good players from a bit less good, and should be encouraged instead of discouraged through patching. :slight_smile:

I leave to others the discussion of your protoss proposals.

I agree and ppl make entire topics regarding WM but I feel that at this point, to touch WM is too much to ask. That was one idea, there are better suggestions out there.

Not only that but Lurkers now have the same range and comes from Hydras that fits the Hydra Viper composition instead of building Corruptors that not every matchup will require, and BL uses air upgrades, they are slower, is more supply heavy, the only advantage is that they fly and in case of Terran it’s not an advantage at all. All of that makes BL obsolete. And yes, I completely agree Thors are stupid strong.

While I agree that only buffing the BL and leave Tempest as it is would make impossible for Protoss to play Zerg. But in regards of Thors, they are waaay too much of a hardcounter to BL while being waaaay too good vs ground compositions only needing little ground tanking support. 7 Hellbats and the rest of Thors/Tanks beats any Zerg and Protoss composition, only vulnerable to Disruptors.

They are only extremely durable vs Terran Bio compositions because not at all vs Protoss or Zerg. And what I suggest have no intention to affect Bio, only heavy damage that Ultras are extremely vulnerable, don’t you agree?

best buff mothership can get is removal from the game,no one would mourn

Agree with most what you said, but not with this. Ultras are very good timing Flex switch, zerg usually don’t know how to use them.

Pushing back will make Ultras op and in general very weird skill.

Zerg besides Mutas, and spell casters don’t need to over micro other units. It makes sense that sometimes you need to micro units.

Thors are giants slayer. And so they’re somewhat giants themselves, and share some of the issues you described for the Ultralisk (without hellbats tanking in the front, they would fall rather quickly to LBH BL, but if you put them too far behind, they won’t be in range of the BLs but only of the broodlings). Their size make them easily concaved, while themselves quite slowly get in line. They take quite a long time to change targets. And most of all (and contrary to the ultralisk) they’re slow and long to produce. So while they’re certainly powerful upfront, can make thor heavy strats quite vulnerable to runbies, harass and counterattacks.

As for beating Thor tanks hellbats in TvP, though playing just like vs bio will certainly end up with awful trades ; as a protoss you have a variety of quite convincing anti-mech options. There was a thread dealing about that if I remember well, though the author in fact wished more to whine than to get answers. Scroll it a bit, you’ll see some suggestions are repeated by different players. :slightly_smiling_face:

As for beating that as a Z : just do vipers, cast some blinding clouds on the tanks/thors/hellbats position, and then aclic your banes and lings timely enough and you’ll be amazed. And it works with LBH and RR as well, as long as you’ve mastered your viper-army coordination. It takes some micro, but the Viper is the game’s chad unit against mech. :smiley:

Ultralisks are indeed a poor choice vs P, and situational vs Z. We agree on that diagnosis.

However :

  • It’s not necessarily bad for the game’s variety that some units have more place in some match-ups than in others. Ghosts for example are important in TvP and TvZ, but infrequent in TvT. Same for gladepts being more common in PvZ and PvP than PvT. And lurkers more common in ZvZ and PvZ. And that’s fine.

  • The protoss, are just since two months seeing the light after years of 40-45% PvZ winrate. Do we want them to go back at 45% right away by buffing ZvP ? It’s too early for that, let’s see first if they stabilize around that 50% and if it’s still above it, or under, then we’ll discuss.

At least that’s the way I see things. :slightly_smiling_face:

Personally I want the Mutalisk to be reworked or fixed.

The problem with them is that they are a harass unit and once enemy gets proper counters, they are pretty much wasted gas.

If they either allow Mutalisk to become a combat unit after the harass phase

OR

allow Mutalisk to also evolve into Broodlords like Brood War allowed Muta’s to mutate into Guardians.

For god sake, they are MUTA-lisks.

If it wasnt for the VR buffs I would say hell no to BL buffs

But with them, yes

Plus BL are one of the few reasons to ever build Tempests

if anything change the speed of the broodlord at this point, if we could micro them better it might give us more of a chance

I agree reaper needs somekind of buff in the midgame…

Though its a tricky one to pull out if you want it to be useful…

A weaker WM like ability could be useful in keeping a bit a map control.

Here are a few things that could interesting

  • Nitro pack comeback
  • Irradiate like ability
  • Parasite like ability
  • Contamination like ability
  • Repair like ability
  • Blind like ability
  • WM like ability
  • Some creep clearing ability
    Etc…

I have a feeling that the developer always has Ultra’s push priority in mind, they just can’t figure out a good way to implement it. Like should the attacking zerlings stop attacking and let the ultras in?

As for tempest, I think they are plenty viable with the new ability. Not just the spine forest, a few of them can start harassing turrets and planetary fortresses and stuffs.

Protoss would build you a monument if you would be able to remove MS and bring back Arbiters.

:grinning: And after that whine and nerf contuniue cause it unfair some terran trade scan to detect deathball

1 Like

just as a little idea.
Thor becomes cheaper by -50/-50 and can only attack air. Then Terra will have the benefit of a unit that is only good in one thing and cannot be used as an all round weapon.

btw if i remember the statement was always that IT was too strong and not BL. and the Thor range was increased because of Tempest not because of BL…
currently it is useless to build BL. Ultra are encouraged simply because they are not so slow, can take more, and are equally strong (not just after 3 attacks to stack Broodlings) and can be used better.