It is a shower thought game, how the not so used units and structures can be tweaked so they see more play without breaking the balance of the game, so I came up with:
Protoss:
Shield Batter - placed next to another structure, it will not allow small units like zerglings/marines to squeeze between the structures. It will add a strategical option for protosses with a fair trade off.
Scout - The vision range upgrade is exchanged for detection ability upgrade. Now scouts can see invisible units and provide alternative detection route for protoss.
Dark Archon - Its born with 85 initial energy, so its a better reactive unit vs mutalisks and carriers
Zerg:
Queen - can infest protoss gateways and they can produce infested zealots (same values as infested terrans) but without the ability to move the gateway around the map. So, this ability is not completely useless in ZvP match up.
Queen - Parasite can not be destroyed by medics. So it can be used in ZvT too.
Terran:
Medic - Restoration cost 150 and is a small AoE, like 1/4 of plague area so it can fight it off to some extend but on a high price.
Ghost - It comes with a researched invisibility upgrade. The unit is too costly anyway and has too many costly upgrades to become even remotely useful, so getting one of the upgrades for free might make it a more desirable option.
"Scout - The vision range upgrade is exchanged for detection ability upgrade. Now scouts can see invisible units and provide alternative detection route for protoss."
And that's how protoss has never build an observer again and killed all terrans with 2 base mass dragon/ carrier. :D
I also believe that units like ghost, DA, queen are very useful, it's just the pure mechanical complexity of the game that makes them very unpopular. I can totally see few queens casting parasite/broodling on different targets, ghosts lockingdown T/P units or DA maelstorminng, feedbacking and mind controlling whatever target shows up. Problem is it's just hard to do, because there are many other things to do at the same time.
Dark archons should have some radiation like magic ability with long range that can use like irradiate to kill lurkers hydras and bio things. ~75 energy. Scouts , increased movement speed should be standard. Move disruption web from Corsair to scout. Shield battery- can uproot and walk around the map, and dig itself into strategic locations. ~25 energy.
Queen, replace brood ling and prasiite with a map vision ability, similar to Comsat scan, ~50 energy. Move plague to queen and combine with ensnare as just 1 ability with a new name. ~ 100 energy.
Ghost , upgrade to launch nuclear mussels without red giveaway indication. New ability to climb up and down terrain cliffs without drop ships. Defensive matrix ability moves from science vessel to ghost.
On October 10 2018 19:43 Yanokabo wrote: Dark archons should have some radiation like magic ability with long range that can use like irradiate to kill lurkers hydras and bio things. ~75 energy. Scouts , increased movement speed should be standard. Move disruption web from Corsair to scout. Shield battery- can uproot and walk around the map, and dig itself into strategic locations. ~25 energy.
Queen, replace brood ling and prasiite with a map vision ability, similar to Comsat scan, ~50 energy. Move plague to queen and combine with ensnare as just 1 ability with a new name. ~ 100 energy.
Ghost , upgrade to launch nuclear mussels without red giveaway indication. New ability to climb up and down terrain cliffs without drop ships. Defensive matrix ability moves from science vessel to ghost.
On October 10 2018 18:45 M2 wrote: Queen - can infest protoss gateways and they can produce infested zealots (same values as infested terrans) but without the ability to move the gateway around the map. So, this ability is not completely useless in ZvP match up.
Protoss has zero units in their arsenal against Infested Terrans. Dragoons fire slowly, deal low damage, and often waste shots on a single unit. Templars aren't bad but they require energy and Infested Terrans are fast enough to run through storms. Reavers have terrible pathing for firing, and again tend to waste shots on a single unit. Besides, a gateway is much easier to find than a command center.
If you want to see how broken Infested Terrans are against Protoss, check out the map Holy World.
EDIT: also the ghost idea wouldn't work. Not for balance reasons necessarily, but because the game is coded that if you're invisible and have energy you lose it. Essentially the ghost will be invisible, but you can't use lockdown anymore. You can test this by giving dark templars energy in EUD.
On October 10 2018 18:45 M2 wrote: Queen - can infest protoss gateways and they can produce infested zealots (same values as infested terrans) but without the ability to move the gateway around the map. So, this ability is not completely useless in ZvP match up.
Protoss has zero units in their arsenal against Infested Terrans. Dragoons fire slowly, deal low damage, and often waste shots on a single unit. Templars aren't bad but they require energy and Infested Terrans are fast enough to run through storms. Reavers have terrible pathing for firing, and again tend to waste shots on a single unit. Besides, a gateway is much easier to find than a command center.
If you want to see how broken Infested Terrans are against Protoss, check out the map Holy World.
EDIT: also the ghost idea wouldn't work. Not for balance reasons necessarily, but because the game is coded that if you're invisible and have energy you lose it. Essentially the ghost will be invisible, but you can't use lockdown anymore. You can test this by giving dark templars energy in EUD.
I agree that inefsted terrans are very strong vs protoss, but the getaways placements will be decided by the protoss, additionally they cannot be moved around the map, so protoss should be able to destroy them most of the times after they get infested and zerg will have to invest in queens for this so it should be a fair trade off, additionally it will promote the queens usage.
On October 10 2018 19:43 Yanokabo wrote: Dark archons should have some radiation like magic ability with long range that can use like irradiate to kill lurkers hydras and bio things. ~75 energy. Scouts , increased movement speed should be standard. Move disruption web from Corsair to scout. Shield battery- can uproot and walk around the map, and dig itself into strategic locations. ~25 energy.
Queen, replace brood ling and prasiite with a map vision ability, similar to Comsat scan, ~50 energy. Move plague to queen and combine with ensnare as just 1 ability with a new name. ~ 100 energy.
Ghost , upgrade to launch nuclear mussels without red giveaway indication. New ability to climb up and down terrain cliffs without drop ships. Defensive matrix ability moves from science vessel to ghost.
What are you smoking. :D
The da ability would be a red energy fire type of graphic, looking kind of like feedback/maelstrom with flames too. Affects 1 unit at once with splash damage. Queen ability would be called infernal sight, and perhaps even allows Zerg to see researching abilities or making units in enemy structures in a fps type of sight while it’s active. I do feel pretty high right now so I’m coming up with extra smart ideas. Medic, restoration should be aoe, and actually medic should get defensive matrix and not ghost. Fits more with the medic unit identity of healer. Optical flare moved to science vessel. Ghost new ability called entrench, increasing hp + 100 and damage +25. Ghost goes to a prone position and increases its fire rate speed too so it can defend tanks and fortify positions better then vultures.~75 energy. Ghost could also have a ~200-~250 energy ability called killshot that can snipe units from up to like 50 hexes away, or maybe even entire maps range, doing a 200 -300 hp sniper shot, to help Terran break turtling late game opponents.
Well, discussions like this are purely mental wanking, as none of them will probably ever be implemented because there are no balance patches to be coming, but…
On October 10 2018 18:45 M2 wrote: It is a shower thought game, how the not so used units and structures can be tweaked so they see more play without breaking the balance of the game, so I came up with:
Protoss:
Shield Batter - placed next to another structure, it will not allow small units like zerglings/marines to squeeze between the structures. It will add a strategical option for protosses with a fair trade off.
A wall-against-everything-no-worries building (with few few HP though) that also insta-recharges the shields of all defending units nearby? Newbies who are bad with wall-ins would probably like that, but something tells me that this would be completely broken in more capable hands…
Scout - The vision range upgrade is exchanged for detection ability upgrade. Now scouts can see invisible units and provide alternative detection route for protoss.
So Observers are now very fast and super tanky (so nevermind permanent cloaking, who needs that if you can just shrug off the shots?) and can attack (with some heavy punch against Ovies, Vessels…) and are effectively available only about 1 game minute after Observers (you can produce a Scout right away and pre-position it anywhere on the map you need it before the upgrade kicks in). Again, how is this not going to be completely imbalanced? Cheaper Scout upgrades and maybe a +attack range on the range upgrade is really all the would be needed to make it more viable (with its short range, high cost per unit and slow attack animation it loses out in every aspect against Mutas and Wraiths as far as harassment potential goes, some more attack range would help a lot with that).
Dark Archon - Its born with 85 initial energy, so its a better reactive unit vs mutalisks and carriers
Just get the energy upgrade.
Zerg:
Queen - can infest protoss gateways and they can produce infested zealots (same values as infested terrans) but without the ability to move the gateway around the map. So, this ability is not completely useless in ZvP match up.
Well, this would either end up basically never used anyway (how many CCs are actually being infested?) or completely broken (if you take over a Protoss base with multipe Gateways that would be a lot of Infested Terrans/Zealots, so you could start literally carpet bombing the Protoss with them).
Queen - Parasite can not be destroyed by medics. So it can be used in ZvT too.
Meh. I mean, few Terrans even get the restoration upgrade, and if they do, just to get rid of Parasites, than you actually forced them to spend resources on that, which is already a win.
Terran:
Medic - Restoration cost 150 and is a small AoE, like 1/4 of plague area so it can fight it off to some extend but on a high price.
Because Terran need help in TvZ…
Ghost - It comes with a researched invisibility upgrade. The unit is too costly anyway and has too many costly upgrades to become even remotely useful, so getting one of the upgrades for free might make it a more desirable option.
think to really make Ghosts more feasible you'd have to something with the Lockdown ability actually (maybe give it a slight AoE – although that would completely wreck air, so better not). What else do you want to do with them? As a fighting units they are mostly useless.
These posts are great ! I always laugh a bit when I read them ! I can think of something that FBH said before: vultures to kill workers (probes and drones) in 3 shots, not 2! This is the only thing I propose ! Those with queen acting as a defiler + comsat station and a moving Shield Battery are great
I use ghosts on regular basis in every terran matchup. The only thing they are missing is lockdown working also on biological units, so that they could be used to deal with mass ultras when playing SK Terran. But still their range is useful when pushing against lurkers. Would be nice if nuke worked on burrowed units just like on unburrowed, so that you can destroy wide spreaded lurkers under swarm. but this is related to nuke and splash damage mechanics.
On October 10 2018 19:14 Rovant1c wrote: I don‘t think it's useful for pvz(hydralisk rush),maybe reduce the photon cannon build time 1~2 seconds better?
that would break everything, like cannon rush vs. 12 hatch for example
On October 10 2018 19:14 Rovant1c wrote: I don‘t think it's useful for pvz(hydralisk rush),maybe reduce the photon cannon build time 1~2 seconds better?
that would break everything, like cannon rush vs. 12 hatch for example
or 12 nex vs. overpool
maybe 12 nex should be viable against overpool? and why would 1-2 seconds make cannon rushes that much more viable? generally when a cannon rush works it is not because the cannons finished 1 or 2 seconds too quickly; it is because drone maneuvers were poor or cannon placement allowed for it and were not accounted for by zerg no?
edit: to my first point, that 12 nex should be viable against overpool, is what needs to be addressed about pvz-- it is too easy for zerg to be greedy and keep protoss in the dark meanwhile protoss has to either play perfectly on even terms or play way too safe and fall behind no matter what. this is what the discussion is
edit2: when is the last time you saw a good zerg lose to a cannon rush even on good cannon rush maps? link??
I think the only real common sense change, something no one can disagree with, is to give scouts their (+2) upgrades and Devourers their (+3) upgrades because they're pretty far left of the dps scaling curve for no discernable reason (these fixes would still put them behind the carrier, corsair, and valkyrie, among others, in upgrade efficacy)
the rest of the units are just designed for slower game speeds and lower unit counts and would need radical redesigning to make work. if restoration autocasted like heal does, if devourers could attack both ground and air, if nukes had a reasonable supply requirement, if ensnare was a reasonably easy transition out of spire ZvZ, etc. I would start smalller and then start asking questions about those units if they still sucked in the new meta.
On October 11 2018 09:33 Mirabel_ wrote: I think the only real common sense change, something no one can disagree with, is to give scouts their (+2) upgrades and Devourers their (+3) upgrades because they're pretty far left of the dps scaling curve for no discernable reason (these fixes would still put them behind the carrier, corsair, and valkyrie, among others, in upgrade efficacy)
the rest of the units are just designed for slower game speeds and lower unit counts and would need radical redesigning to make work. if restoration autocasted like heal does, if devourers could attack both ground and air, if nukes had a reasonable supply requirement, if ensnare was a reasonably easy transition out of spire ZvZ, etc. I would start smalller and then start asking questions about those units if they still sucked in the new meta.
What do you mean by that? As in +3 or +2 attack and armor right out of the gate? That’s be very imba I think. I think vulture needs a buff of some kind, maybe just 5hp, or 4 mines instead of 3. Ghost could be all out replaced as a unit, if nukes can’t be 4 supply instead of 8 no point in really having them. Maybe a “seal team” type of trooper unit, drops nukes and made from barracks like other infantry. Ghost had its own game in sc ghost and if they weren’t gonna develop that into a full fledged game at least pay attention to the ghosts shortcomings of sc1. I liked the ghost “Snipe” ability of sc2, so for more of a anti bio style perhaps make a “poison” shot type of ability that can freeze a unit like an ultralisk, let’s say, that gives Terran fits, and insta-posions it so it dies in a short lifespan time. ~ 150 energy.
I would simply make hydra movement speed and atk range upgrades much longer or more expensive one or the other so that in PvZ hydra busts are less strong and more all in than they have been. By doing this it doesn't affect the other 2 match up balance. Because no one builds hydras in ZvZ and ZvT hydras aren't really used except against mech builds.
It seems like zergs can still get away with these aggressive builds by forcing protoss to get cannons and block/suicide probes to survive that it just evens out. If an aggressive strategy loses it should be punished if defended successfully but that window is so thin, this concept of high risk and high reward has always been the case in broodwar in every match up and game except in PvZ where zerg can do something high reward hydra bust and win but don't outright lose serious advantage if it doesn't pan out.
And the ZvT match up I'd simply make queens start with more energy and perhaps cheaper for some queen strategy against bio. It may make sense for zergs to make queen muta to snipe bio armies traveling across the map.
I think if you change the unused units too drastically to the point where they are actually used it may shift the meta and create potential balance problems, which will create another issue where other units have to be changed to compensate. So I'm down for changing the unused units if that means we get patches periodically to change the meta every so often.
On October 11 2018 12:08 Moopower wrote: I would simply make hydra movement speed and atk range upgrades much longer or more expensive one or the other so that in PvZ hydra busts are less strong and more all in than they have been. By doing this it doesn't affect the other 2 match up balance. Because no one builds hydras in ZvZ and ZvT hydras aren't really used except against mech builds.
It seems like zergs can still get away with these aggressive builds by forcing protoss to get cannons and block/suicide probes to survive that it just evens out. If an aggressive strategy loses it should be punished if defended successfully but that window is so thin, this concept of high risk and high reward has always been the case in broodwar in every match up and game except in PvZ where zerg can do something high reward hydra bust and win but don't outright lose serious advantage if it doesn't pan out.
And the ZvT match up I'd simply make queens start with more energy and perhaps cheaper for some queen strategy against bio. It may make sense for zergs to make queen muta to snipe bio armies traveling across the map.
I think if you change the unused units too drastically to the point where they are actually used it may shift the meta and create potential balance problems, which will create another issue where other units have to be changed to compensate. So I'm down for changing the unused units if that means we get patches periodically to change the meta every so often.
I think hydra range/speed upgrades should be extended as well. it would not affect other matchups and would only give protoss more time to react which they obviously need. maybe one or the other rather than both, but one of them should be +10-20 seconds because it is too easy to bust a protoss even if they make 5-6 cannons which is overkill in every other situation and still dies to the all-in a lot of the times in high level games
edit: protoss scouting the all-in asap, with a corsair because probes and zealots get eaten by speedlings, and still losing to it despite preparing for it with all resources and cutting probes is not how rts is supposed to work afaik
On October 11 2018 09:33 Mirabel_ wrote: I think the only real common sense change, something no one can disagree with, is to give scouts their (+2) upgrades and Devourers their (+3) upgrades because they're pretty far left of the dps scaling curve for no discernable reason (these fixes would still put them behind the carrier, corsair, and valkyrie, among others, in upgrade efficacy)
the rest of the units are just designed for slower game speeds and lower unit counts and would need radical redesigning to make work. if restoration autocasted like heal does, if devourers could attack both ground and air, if nukes had a reasonable supply requirement, if ensnare was a reasonably easy transition out of spire ZvZ, etc. I would start smalller and then start asking questions about those units if they still sucked in the new meta.
What do you mean by that? As in +3 or +2 attack and armor right out of the gate? That’s be very imba I think.
I'm sorry, I sometimes forget that there are some on this site that are still learning what the word "upgrade" means in the context of RTS.
In Starcraft: Brood War, all auto-attacking units except for resource gatherers and kamikaze units have three successive damage and armor upgrades available at key tech structures, except for the reaver who has a special one-time upgrade at the Robotics Support Bay. The damage upgrades give a flat increase to damage of each hit before factoring in the multipliers of the counter system (normal/explosive/concussive attacks vs small/medium/large targets), which is then divided by the attack cool down to give damage per second over time against ideal targets with 0 armor.
Subtract the damage prevented by armor in that arbitrary length of continuous attacks to get a more general damage equation. The majority of likely targets in the game range between 0 and 1 armor by default so it's a good starting point.
The damage upgrades affect many units and, if applicable, both their air and ground attacks, and tend to provide larger additive bonuses to bigger, slower attacks. The range is between (+1) and (+5) per hit, although some units will hit multiple times per strike. The Scout missile, with a base damage of 14, hits twice and has a (+1) upgrade attached to it which is thus applied twice. This may seem as innocuous and fair to you as it once did to a blizzard programmer, but the Scout air attack gains a smaller percentage of its attack power per upgrade than any attack in the game except for the delicately-balanced siege mode attack.
The parentheses are a liquipedia convention to indicate that this is additional damage that is multiplied by the number of times an upgrade has been researched. So the proposed (+2) upgraded scout would not be any stronger "out of the gates" as you put it, but rather, its strength would range from (14+(2*0))*2 to (14+(2*3))*2, or 28 damage to 40 damage before armor and target type were factored in, depending on how long your cybernetics core has been spinning. Armor always increases by 1, and armor upgrades are beyond the scope of this discussion. So no, there's no indication that any of this would be overpowered.
If you still think going from (+1) to (+2) is a ridiculous upgrade for the scout, note that this upgraded unit represents a 43% increase in power after three upgrades rather than the 60% increase in power that the corsair and goliath air attack presently enjoy (this is a big part of why goliaths can keep up with carriers). I mentioned the Devourer because it's got the same attack damage as the battlecruiser, with a small fraction of its attack rate, and still is far to the left of the upgrade efficacy curve alongside the scout at 8% increased damage per upgrade while Battlecruisers are sitting on the right side with their 12% increased damage per upgrade.
I would agree on the point that scouts do need a buff, as I mentioned they should come out of a stargate with momvement speed in one of my posts. I’m wondering how your idea would work, so if default they’re at +2 attack, + 1 armor, then obviously there’s differences between air to air damage and air to ground with the space gun. So at your cyber core from the start of the game, all a p player can do is research another +1 attack or + 2 armor and shields, to make +3 +3, how does this affect other Protoss air like the carrier arbiter and Corsair? They start upgraded as well? I don’t intrinsically disagree with your point scout should do more damage though. One thing I thought of would be to extend scout air-ground attack range by about 2 points. Would make them a more effective siege style unit, and would make hydra Zerg ground to air a softer counter to a scout build then a concrete hard counter like it is now.
On October 11 2018 15:19 Yanokabo wrote: I would agree on the point that scouts do need a buff, as I mentioned they should come out of a stargate with momvement speed in one of my posts. I’m wondering how your idea would work, so if default they’re at +2 attack, + 1 armor, then obviously there’s differences between air to air damage and air to ground with the space gun. So at your cyber core from the start of the game, all a p player can do is research another +1 attack or + 2 armor and shields, to make +3 +3, how does this affect other Protoss air like the carrier arbiter and Corsair? They start upgraded as well? I don’t intrinsically disagree with your point scout should do more damage though. One thing I thought of would be to extend scout air-ground attack range by about 2 points. Would make them a more effective siege style unit, and would make hydra Zerg ground to air a softer counter to a scout build then a concrete hard counter like it is now.
He's not suggesting a scout starts with upgrades. He's suggesting the upgrades give more bonus damage than they do now.
That's a very interesting idea, that the game was developed with a lower game speed than "fastest" in mind. Has there been any recent tournaments that were played on "faster" or perhaps "normal"? Would be interesting to see if any more mechanically demanding strategies would surfac or not... But I guess most people would just die in the early game of boredom.
I played few games on slowest back in the days, some super fancy moves were involved as you could utilize 100% of each unit. A lot of things that are very "pace" based become redundant. There is always time to block the ramp, pull workers etc. so game becomes much more strategic.
Ghost could be all out replaced as a unit, if nukes can’t be 4 supply instead of 8 no point in really having them. Maybe a “seal team” type of trooper unit, drops nukes and made from barracks like other infantry.
On October 11 2018 23:09 kogeT wrote: I played few games on slowest back in the days, some super fancy moves were involved as you could utilize 100% of each unit. A lot of things that are very "pace" based become redundant. There is always time to block the ramp, pull workers etc. so game becomes much more strategic.
I had this idea back in the day that I should create a turn-based version of SC... To be honest, I still think itt would be super cool...
On October 11 2018 23:09 kogeT wrote: I played few games on slowest back in the days, some super fancy moves were involved as you could utilize 100% of each unit. A lot of things that are very "pace" based become redundant. There is always time to block the ramp, pull workers etc. so game becomes much more strategic.
I'd like to see some progamers playing games on the slowest setting then watch the replay at normal speed, would be quite ridiculous.
I just thought of something what if hydra speed and range was just one upgrade? As someone who plays t main I’ve always thought it’s stupid u need to upgrade twice. Similar to marine range/ stim being 2 upgrades from the same building it’s frustrating to wait. So combine them. Also thought for tech Zerg should be able to spawn a Kerrigan like you see in ums games but perhaps only a max of 2 at once. Would require a new building like a Kerrigans nest. And perhaps give it a broodling type of ability and not psyonic storm. Then you could get rid of queens as a unit or just lower their cost to like 100:75 and it would just be used for infesting command centeres, parasites, and maybe 1 new ability. Kerrigan gets ensnare and consume. Also I think defiler should have 1 new ability but I’m not sure what it should be.
On October 14 2018 04:46 Yanokabo wrote: I just thought of something what if hydra speed and range was just one upgrade? As someone who plays t main I’ve always thought it’s stupid u need to upgrade twice. Similar to marine range/ stim being 2 upgrades from the same building it’s frustrating to wait. So combine them. Also thought for tech Zerg should be able to spawn a Kerrigan like you see in ums games but perhaps only a max of 2 at once. Would require a new building like a Kerrigans nest. And perhaps give it a broodling type of ability and not psyonic storm. Then you could get rid of queens as a unit or just lower their cost to like 100:75 and it would just be used for infesting command centeres, parasites, and maybe 1 new ability. Kerrigan gets ensnare and consume. Also I think defiler should have 1 new ability but I’m not sure what it should be.
Let's just give medics to zerg and be done with it, ey?
I think a really interesting change would be moving D web research to the Cyber Core instead of fleet beacon. Let Protoss be able to research it once a stargate is built. Would be interesting to see how it affects the hydra timing pushes and could even see cairs used more in PvT.
On October 14 2018 08:36 RowdierBob wrote: I think a really interesting change would be moving D web research to the Cyber Core instead of fleet beacon. Let Protoss be able to research it once a stargate is built. Would be interesting to see how it affects the hydra timing pushes and could even see cairs used more in PvT.
Give D web to the scouts instead, IMO. All their abilities are at the fleet beacon anyway.
Toss needs a cheaper air tech building with some of those upgrades and the price of a fleet beacon should be reduced. 1 for scout and corsairs and 1 for carriers. Don’t combine them since the first 2 units get so much play in games that carriers never see any usage.
On October 14 2018 08:36 RowdierBob wrote: I think a really interesting change would be moving D web research to the Cyber Core instead of fleet beacon. Let Protoss be able to research it once a stargate is built. Would be interesting to see how it affects the hydra timing pushes and could even see cairs used more in PvT.
Give D web to the scouts instead, IMO. All their abilities are at the fleet beacon anyway.
Thinking about this some more, shouldn't they switch the names of the Corsair and the Scout? Right now Corsairs are much better at actually scouting (faster and cheaper), and it feels like a "corsair" should have at least some sort of ground attack.
Going back to all the data and history from the Korean leagues suggests to me that any such change would affect the balance of the game. The idea behind underused units/spells/upgrades is not about them being cost-effective or not, but the existance of a better alternative. Optical flare, restoration, maelstorm, scouts and so on are not bad per se, but they are far behind heal, storm, and corsairs wich are availaible for a similar cost or less.
The only real way I can see underused stuff being used is exploring new maps that force it.
Well, flash was going to use optical flare on lurkers in that game 4 against hero in the finals of ASL4. Same with going for nukes in their game 1 when he had a large advantage so there is still a chance to use them. If these units got used more and more, it lessens their impact imo. Seeing a nuke go off is great, but it's even better to see it used rarely than on a constant basis.
I would say optical flare is one of the few spells that doesn’t need any changes. Just the right cost, position on tech tree is good, and it’s useful in the hands of the right person or situation. I think the point of these conversations are to discuss changes that would affect balance but actually in a positive direction and drive a more entertaining esport. While these things we talk of might never make it into ta game, they honestly would be fun as hell and would’ve been great ideas For sc2 or sc3 in the future as well as balance patches in the interim. When bw first started there was a lot of stuff we thought we’d never see that’s commonplace now.