EPTI'd like to say that overall the balance of the game favors cheese and all-ins too much, and would benefit greatly from increased scouting ability and defensive advantage.
I believe the reason there is such a massive terran dominance in korea is that the korean style of play is to take a cheese/all-in/timing build and perfect it to an absolute science. Terran has the best ability to defend against these kinds of aggression, and thus is able to play a more stable game overall.
That, on top of the fact terran has the most options in their cheese/all-in/timing builds that requires precise scouting and reactions to counter.
You can see the low defensive advantage for zerg and protoss by looking at their mirror matchups. Until infestors come out zvz is dominated by early all-in play, where if you miss the point that your opponent stops droning/pulls his drones from gas to mass speedlings, you can easily be caught off guard and lose without a fight. PvP is similar, where before colossus it's a game of stalker numbers and stalker micro.
I would say that the game would be a LOT better if every race were given better early game scouting, in the window after your scouting worker/overlord is chased out, and before obs/overseer. On top of that additional defensive advantage all round, make it an investment, but reactive, so if you scout the cheese/all-in/timing build you have the option of trading longer term econ/army for a solid defence that can be up in time. This will make the game a lot more like BW, where pressure builds were king, forcing the opponent to over-commit to defence early on to secure an econ lead going into mid/late game.
This will then raise the skill-cap immensely, as it will reduce the effectiveness of the pure all-ins where a player can have 100% of the game mapped out and increase the effectiveness of a reactive style of play.
I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this, as I know David Kim has made a brief comment along the same lines. I have hope that in HotS we see the game shift towards this and away from where the game is currently headed.
Edit:
additional stuff
Most people's complaints/whines about balance center around exactly what I'm are talking about, but instead of looking at the core of the problem everyone is nit picking each race/build. All this does is invite arguments from the race that you say is OP in whatever way instead of constructive discussion. If you want people to take your ideas seriously you have to set aside as much of your racial bias as possible and look at the bigger picture of game design.
I've found the practice of coming up with new mechanics/balanace changes to current units invites everyone to rage at the various things that can be found wrong with the ideas. Regardless I'll give it a try below:
A few statements about the races first:
As said above, a zerg who is given free reign with no pressure on them can drone/expand far faster then the other races and easily overpower their opponent. This forces you to pressure the zerg, but the mobility of the zerg forces means that any units sent out have a very small chance of making it out alive. This then means that the units you send out MUST do a decent amount of damage to the zerg before they die.
A terran base is nearly invincible to ground attacks once siege tanks come out due to the ability to sim city most natural expansions. This as well as the ability for terrans to deny scouting until obs/overseers and the vast amount of different options they have in terms of tech creates a volatile situation for P/Z. The P or Z players must prepare for a large number of possible attacks against them, while having next to no ability to attack the terran with anything but an extreme all-in (baneling bust). When terran moves out with the units/tech they chose, there is rarely enough time for P/Z to prepare reactively, so it becomes either a 'coinflip' or preparing a little for everything and relying on skill to survive (this is how nestea and other top zergs can survive vs terrans) This is why at lower skill levels terran is not dominating as much as upper skill levels, the games are simply the coinflip, where terran wins a number of 'free-wins' where the opponent does not scout them and doesn't prepare correctly at all, and a number of 'free-wins' for the P/Z when they either scout against a terran less skilled at denying scouts, or blind hard-counters the terran. This may create a 50% win-rate, but is not good gameplay.
Protoss has the warp-in mechanic. This mechanic is the defining feature of protoss balance, in the same way spawn larva is for zerg. Protoss are able to entirely remove the defensive advantage gained from reinforcement time at the adjusted cost of 100 minerals. This is because warp-in is not a decision or a loss, the only potential loss is the proxy pylon. Because of this ability Protoss gateway units need to be fundamentally weaker for their cost then they otherwise would be. Otherwise warp-gate all-ins would be entirely unstoppable. Simply think about how overpowered it would be to be able to warp in non-gateway units like voidrays immortals or colossus. Against zerg this enforces the all-in nature of attacks even more, as you need to continually reinforce your army to prevent it from being over-run in the field, especially if your army contains non-gateway units that you cannot afford to lose without doing major damage. In this way the strength of the protoss army pre 100+ food or colossus/HT has been tuned to expect the instant reinforcements.
What I would then suggest is better early game scouting options for P/Z preventing coin flips.
Hallucinate is the simplest way to provide this, but the requirement for warp gate research as soon as possible makes it impractical to get hallu before WG. WG also cannot have it's time reduced due to the strength of the associated timing pushes. What I would suggest is to make warpgate require a twilight council, but reduce the research time by 60 seconds. Then reduce hallucinate cost to 100/100/50 so it can feasibly be gotten within the window of having a cyber core but being unable to get warp gate.
For Z I would suggest overseers be morphable at hatchery, but they have only slightly faster speed then overlords until the lair upgrade. The reasoning here is a slightly faster overlord and the use of changlings. You may also need to increase changling health to 50 and/or have them launched at 7-9 range (and morph in the air as to not show on minimap if launched into sight range) to allow them to get the needed scouting before being killed.
Unfortunately I am in the same boat as blizzard with terran, I have no idea what they need and/or could use right now, as they have scans/reapers already.
On the front of defence, I keep coming back to spine crawler build time, but it cannot be increased for fear of offensive spinecrawlers dominating early zvz like they did in beta. The reason I want to do something with the spinecrawler is that it costs a drone and cannot be then used to attack the opponent after being built to defend, the only problem is that you cannot build them reactively once you see something coming. My first thought was to make transfuse or another queen ability speed up spinecrawler build-times, but queens right now are expected to be low energy, and pooling that much would be similar to simply building the spines in advance anyways. What I would like ideally is some way to spend more money/drones to have a spinecrawler faster, but only in your own base. For example spending 2 drones to make a spinecrawler build in 10 seconds, but somehow require a queen to do it so you can't do it on your opponent's creep. If anyone has any ideas here let me know...
For protoss they definitely need a way to fight off another protoss stalker army without simply having enough stalkers or a fast immortal. The immediate thought is a shield battery type building, but where it can be set to auto-cast and has 3-4 range, so early game you can sit near it and be fine, later game blinking back stalkers to it to recharge shields would be an excellent mechanic.
Again for T they have the defensive advantage they need already, the only think I think they need is a way to better deal with BF helions other then BF helions of their own. I'm at a loss right now for what, but if I think of something I'll post it...
