I’m all for trying out big changes, but these are just too swingy going all in at once. Try out one of the buffs (earlier Spire, or cheaper gas cost for Mutas, or a durability upgrade for Mutas) and see if that fixes it. If not, then adjust.
Regarding Widow Mines, reduced splash damage vs air might be something easy that could be looked into, and that doesn’t even need any Muta changes.
All that said, I have a love-hate relationship with this dynamic in units:
Same reason I’m not a huge fan of lots of Medivac drop play. I want to see small skirmishes on the map that aren’t in Mineral lines. Yes, this is just a personal preference of mine.
This I absolutely agree with, but it’s difficult to accomplish.
So the way I would approach it is:
- How can we make them good in low numbers but not in high numbers? (This means maybe reducing the strength of splash damage against them is not the way to go)
- How can we improve them in small combat scenarios without making them too strong in harassment? (Mutas are used mostly in combat for picking off units, so how can we lean into that?)
To me, the “surprise Muta switch” was always my favorite part about Mutas, because it emphasizes strategic choice. Opponent went too hard on Robo to counter your Roaches? Hit them with the Muta switch and kill their Immortals. Maybe you even plan out opening with Roach/Hydra to “encourage” certain composition choices so you can hit with the switch after.
So all that said, here are some variables that play with these things:
Damage and weapon speed values. In high numbers, the glaive bounce is very good at shredding workers, but against combat units it isn’t that great except against tiny clumps of low-HP units. If we want to make them worse at harassment and better at unit sniping, one route could be:
- Increasing the damage on the initial shot, decreasing the rate of fire, and decreasing damage of the glaive bounce.
Intended result: Fewer Mutas needed for 1- or 2-shotting some combat units, and less damage efficiency against workers because of overkill and slower firing rate. Encourages morphing a handful of them to strike critical combat units, but doesn’t change their susceptibility to splash damage. It does potentially have the same risks as mentioned in the next paragraph.
Damage types. Decreasing overall damage but increasing it against Massive or Armored, etc, could allow them to be used to take out specific targets (with less needed for critical mass against those targets) whilst weakening them against workers. This could be dangerous, though, since it has the potential to invalidate some units/static defenses that are meant to counter Mutas.
Build times and gas costs. If we wanted to encourage easier transitions into Mutas or the ability to just build a handful of them, making the gas cost cheaper and/or the build time faster could make doing so easier/less risky. These are along the lines of some of the changes in the OP. Maybe one of the changes would be enough, maybe a couple would be needed. However, with no other changes, this does buff mass Muta, which I’d like to avoid.
Supply cost. If Mutas are improved as individual units to make them better at lower numbers, increasing the supply cost to 3 instantly makes them worse if they are massed.
Not all of those changes would need to go in at once. One or two could be tested, and if they prove to cause more issues than not, tweak or try other ones.
It really can’t be understated just how badly SC2’s balance has been mismanaged.