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Brood War is never going to be patched again. Even if they tried, it would be royally screwed up by Blizzard so... for the most part I'm glad there won't ever be a change. THEREFORE consider this theorycraft for my own personal enjoyment (and hopefully yours!)
I have been giving PvZ some thoughts recently. On the pro level it seems very hard for P. Yes, map changes can be made and yes the game is always evolving, so it's possible that this perception of mine is "transitory." But in the last few years... in comparison to PvT and ZvT, protoss vs zerg has felt hard to watch.
These are my preliminary ideas for balancing PvZ without greatly effecting PvT and without changing PvP nuances much. I did not want to give Protoss an advantage over Zerg... as P>Z would be just as bad, I just wanted to buff P ever so slightly.
increase observer health from 40hp/20shield to 40hp/75 shield- allows obs to survive one scourge shot (110 damage) by 5hp... does not greatly effect PvT.... makes it a tiny bit harder to coodinate observe snipes for zerg...
give dragoons 100% attack value vs hydralisk instead of 75% (explosive damage vs medium size hydra.) - how exactly this could be done without effecting other aspects of the game is up for debate. One might make hydra a "medium large" unit and give the dragoon "special explosive" damage which is the same as explosive other than it inflicts 100% damage to "medium large" units... "medium large" is treated the same as "medium" by all other units in the game. This change only effects hydra vs dragoon battles...
upgrade at cybercore to increase photon cannon range by 1. - my initial thought is that this will NOT have a great effect on PvT while giving protoss better defensive odds against busts... both early game hydra busts and late game against cracklings... not much, but a tiny bit better. by putting upgrade at cybercore it ensures early game cannon rushes are not made more powerful.
allow archon to deal full damage under dark swarm. - basically keep its attack the same but give it "melee" status so it is uneffected by darkswarm. does not change PvT at all but helps late game PvZ.
As a terran player, I despise protoss... so I hope people understand I am just trying to help the game be more enjoyable for observers.
Anyway. I would have posted this in Brood War's subforum but... who needs another balance thread. I am curious what other suggestions or modifications people might suggest. Cheers.
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I think if Protoss needs a pvz buff it should be in the early game, as they die too often to shenanigans. Therefore out of your proposals I like the cannon range upgrade best. Another avenue wind would be to increase early game scouting abilities. Speed upgrade on the probe?
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The Monthly Theoricraft post haha
BTW you can make a map and give the units those properties to test how it goes (hint it will suck)
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Gotta see Midgame as Protoss we'll never know if the balanced midgame favors Z or P because of the early game pigeon hole. Personally I think an upgrade should be available for Protoss as long as it builds a Cybernetics Core to limit Zerg to either Hydra Den or Spire until Hive. The Zerg player discovers at the start whether Protoss has elected the Cybernetics Core route.
If Protoss elects Cybernetics Core at the beginning of the game then he might forgo Zealot rush so the Zerg is limited to either Lurker or Muta but not both
another idea is to just mod entirely the remastered game. Protoss has some race unique options for 1v1 including Zealot legs granted when the first Cannon is finished or something like that
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Dragoon change will break the game. Ask Bisu.
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Observer buff alone would make a huge difference. The number of times I've had a push stuffed simply because the zerg sniped my obs is mind boggling.
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Just make map that's easy to secure 3rd gas and protoss will be striving
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Of all your idea, the only viable One Is observer, but still as Someone else said, problemi Is at game start....maybe DA with more Energy when morphing? This unit Is almost only used in pvz but right now has a timing problem...but then you don't know how players Will eventually abuse the change....
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I don't think PvZ is imba that it needs a change, but I suppose P could have some more options in dealing with Z's tech ambiguity and mixups. I think Maelstrom and DAs provide the best option for this, as DAs seem to be specifically tailored for use against Zerg and have the abilities to deal with all of Zerg's tech units.
Right now, Mael is a situational spell. It has a supportive effect with an energy cost too high for it to generally stand on its own, and these aspects need to be addressed to make it more accessible and reliable.
Making it cost lower energy like 75 like Storm can address the timing issue P has in deploying it and allow DAs to be used early game.
But even at 75 energy, the spell's effect is generally not impactful enough on its own early on. It needs to last longer to truly deal with whatever it targets, and not affect your own units.
This can make Mael very potent in the early game, and the problem will almost certainly be that it will be too strong later on, especially with other things like Storm. The research cost will certainly have to be greater to offset this early on, like 200/200/75.6.
But that's still not enough to deal with the gain in long term strength. The spell will have to behave in a different way, like an ability perhaps. Perhaps the most unusual but handy solution to "fix" DA would be to make Maelstrom a resource based ability.
Make it so that it operates on charges, like Spider Mines and Scarabs. If a DA has 1 Maelstrom at a time, toss will have to invest in more DA if it wants more Mael, which will come at a cost that can define Mael's new power and role. It can come back with a lengthy recharge, similar to how a scarab needs to be reloaded, at no cost. But only 1 at once.
This will make it so Mael is easily useable and effective from the get-go, solving the main problem with it, but will not get stronger in misproportion later in the game, balancing this change out. So Protoss can't get Mael with 1 DA, max its energy, and transition into Storm and snowball Zerg in a decisive fight with them hand in hand.
It would just help the matchup a lot to have something that can deal with both hydras and mutas, so toss doesn't always have to make sairs for AA and scouting.
Making Mael a non-energy spell would help enable the use of Mind Control as well.
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It was many years ago but the last time I checked Zerg had something like a ~54% win rate against protoss which is similar to the advantage of moving first in chess, so any change has to be small and ideally not affect TvP. I personally think these suggestions are slightly too heavy handed, but if I had to pick one of them it would be the observer change. I would be worried they would be too beefy in TvP though.
If I were forced to rebalance the match up I think I might start by increasing the research time of hydra range. This would delay hydra all ins and I don't think this would significantly affect much else. I might also change gateways and forges such that if they are touching each other they are always ling tight.
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EPT
