Queen is picked in basically every scrim, but not because it's the best ultimate (debatably), but because it transitions out of all builds really well, and if you're already ahead queen can make any fight extremely deadly.

Reasons why queen is a problem when the team in 1st gets it:
hit every lift? you trade evenly. Do that 10 more times and you might catch up (assuming you can constantly get vision to know the queen isn't on your ally's side)
miss one lift? you lose potentially all your elites/heroes
20k bounty (around when people get queen) you don't have enough HP upgrades for overseers to be close to enough to push the queen away
Went spec? You'd better micro this like crazy and permanently deny vision, because you'll never kill the queen vs a good player and if you make one mistake / miss an emp / get leeched, that spec is instantly dead.

These problems mostly go away once you're at ~35k bounty, ex:
can stun medi with os to actually kill the queen if they play too brave
getting a lift on queen when you have strong marines(or blink)/mercs you can actually right click the queen and kill it (depending on where it was lifted)
can stun queen with os
higher bounty on everyone means being in first matters less, since you won't hard win the trade if your queen is lifted.

would be cool if queen fungal only slowed heroes/elites like infestor, starting at 50%, maybe higher % slow with dmg ups so it returns to same power at higher bounties.
edit: alternatively, 40% duration on elites/heroes


other stuff:
why is mothership 500 now instead of 400???
this nerfs it at any point that it's actually useful, and then when it's strong (around 20k bounty) the 500 barely matters and you're unlikely to lose it with all the hp ups. This just nerfs the meme cheese builds

oracles: can these please just be immune to emp? they already suck compared to other elites and getting all my energy drained by 1 unit that can also kill me seems pretty lame.

voids: counter says they lose to lancers, but try using lancers vs them with the voids down in ups and see who wins, the only way lancers win is if the voids stick around after they lost their shields, but before that they'll kill 35 lancers losing 2 voids, in about the best concave the lancers can get. Probably just make voids do less dmg to their armor type so they don't get hyper deleted.

scouts: might need a faster start to their attack, as it is they actually kinda lose to snipers that are stuttered back and forth with a vulture, since the snipers can shoot instantly and the scouts have to afk for a second to start shooting.

edit: also untouchable probably needs a buff, marines suck early especially with untouchable, and it falls off later anyway when people swap to temples, maybe increase it to 50% dodge? not sure about this one

Queen isn’t the only ultimate strong from being in the lead. Nearly all of them are besides a few, I would personally like to see DT stun reverted or something because right now DA can’t do anything against nix it’s honestly easier to play versus spec with it. Right now the game play against nix is blink in void prism pick up in medi/prism rinse repeat it feels like a non invisible DT that is scary to lose.

The thing queen has over every other ult is the root, which means if you win the fight they absolutely can't leave, no microing medi to pick up your spec/mando/whatever, and you can't make any ravens/air elites vs it without risking a -1k fight every time you engage.

DTA feels pretty trash now though agree with that, I don't think the problem is DT since it's still useful vs air and some elites/heroes. I think with the rapid buff it just hyper nerfed dta, might be good if it had some kind of anti-armor pen so it didn't get so deleted. and/or make the lift last like 20% shorter on it so nix can't perma lift it.

Queen is insane with its movespeed and its ability to root everything, if your ahead with a queen its for sure game over because they are losing everything if they engage with you. Should remove root or decrease move speed and fungal range. You are going to have people who love to spam queen tho say it doesnt need a nerf hopefully akash can see that they dont want it nerfed because they are spamming it every game and dont want to play something else.

I agree with starelf on almost all the points, one thing i would like to see is some elites and heroes getting some TLC. For example:

Battlecruiser
Yamato time needs to be reduced more with the upgrade, currently its impossible to try and yamato with all the counters to it.

Mother ship
Cost decrease, its more then some heroes and only has support abilities, would reduce cost down to 350.

Oracles
Give them 2 more attack range and then you can probably use them not for troll purposes, and then give the stasis wards a time before they expire like turrets.


Mini thor
need to have stun back on there ability or decrease cost by 50. Right now they are 0 percent worth it.

Lurker
needs deep burrow to basically blink, or give it 2 stuns like it used to have, right now its by far the worst hero and that includes HB.

Odin
Its anti air capabilties are really bad vs most air like scouts and wraith. Would recommend buffing odins splash vs air as it gets leveled and at the morph being a lot better splash.

HK
give push, there is a 1000 counters and most elites out farm them anyway. Not to mention lurker is really trash, so push for hk would be nice.

Dear Akash,

I've been closely following the recent discussions around balance changes and felt compelled to share my thoughts on the subject. My response is specifically aimed at the suggestions put forth by darkness. While I appreciate his enthusiasm for tweaking the game's balance, I believe some counterpoints need to be considered.

1. Queen:

Fungal: It's important to note that it's an instant cast that has to be within range to affect units, contrarily to say a storm which lasts 2-3 seconds affecting the target area. Abilities like Phoenix lift, Spectre stun, Spectre EMP, HTA feedback, HTA storm and Odin Barrage outrange fungal, meaning every time you land a fungal, you risk a queen death and are in range of very punishing abilities, therefore root should also have punishing potential.

Balance from Ahead: It's not reasonable to say a queen is strong from ahead since every hero can exploit such an advantage. Balancing should assume players are equal in skill and bounty. The only time bounty should be considered in balancing units is when we are speaking of scaling per upgrade.

2. Battlecruiser:

A suggestion was made to reduce Yamato time, but I find the Battlecruiser to be balanced. It works well in lower skill games as it's a lower skill unit, and skilled players can counter it effectively.

3. Mothership:

Cost Claims: The claim that the Mothership costs more than some heroes is false, as no hero costs more than 500 minerals.

Usefulness: The Mothership is an incredibly useful elite and sees play at the highest levels. Changing it might not be in the best interest of game balance.

4. Mini Thor:

Stun and Cost: While a 50 mineral decrease seems fine, the Mini Thor's is another strong unit that is a low skill unit and works very well at lower levels of play but can be countered or rather out maneuvered at a higher level of play due to its lower mobility. A complete rework might be more appropriate than a simple buff if we want to bring Mini Thor into the high level meta.

5. Lurker:

Stealthy and splashy, the Lurker is by no means a weak hero. Its perceived lack of usefulness might be due to the current meta favoring Phoenix's lift. It also has the highest feeding non-ultimate hero (HK) and is also a lower skill cap unit which is fairly strong. I would say lurker is in a good spot right now.

6. Odin:

Anyone who thinks Odin is bad against air needs a closer inspection. A community vote might be helpful to clear up this misunderstanding.

7. HK:

HKs are still potent early game heroes. Past experiments with adding push made them dominate the meta, which might not be healthy for the game's balance.
A Final Thought on Skill Cap:

*** It's vital to avoid flat buffing low-skill units. Doing so may lower the overall skill cap, which is counterproductive for a game that has been around for so long. If anything, we should be looking for creative ways to increase the skill ceiling for a game that has been around for 10+ years. ***

I trust you will find these points well-reasoned and worth considering. Your commitment to keeping the game engaging and balanced is commendable, and I look forward to seeing the direction you'll take with these complex challenges.

other heroes/ults from ahead are punishing, but queen makes it so if you miss one grav beam/lash/emp, you literally lose all your elites and heroes. No other ult hero punishes this hard and it's not even close. A well microed archon can probably contend better with a nix/spec/etc, but a well microed queen can be game-ending the second you get a good engagement, which is just too punishing. With a slow (or reduced duration) on fungal, you still have that kill pressure (which other ults don't have), but it's not a case of hit one fungal end the game.

most of these elite problems are just a problem with ghost, making it do % hp dmg destroys minithors/abberation/bc. Maybe just give these elites some % dmg reduction to snipe so they don't get deleted by ghosts.

Maybe ms should start at 350 and cost 25 minerals more every 10 minutes. Would make it less of a meme early while making it punishing to lose later (when it's actually strong)

lurker gets turbo fked by ultimate nix and spec, since it actually has to walk to the front and stop for a second to shoot, unlike tass/queen, and the hero has no utility. I'd be for the double stun charges.

Odin sucks against air if the air is allowed to split, especially since you're losing out on making another good hero. it's more just a problem of odin gets progressively worse the better your opponents are. I'd like if odin shot faster with smaller splash so it would still be reasonably good vs split air, while making it so splitting still matters. Whenever I'm playing air and someone gets an odin, I just think "phew no dt/queen on the way" and either avoid the odin completely or only engage when I'm super split.

Hks kinda meh, I don't like buffing them since they are one of the more amove heroes. Probably just making lurker not feel like a bait ult would be enough to make them a "good enough" hero.

I forgot to add ghost need the snipe reverted, the way it currently is completely nullifies bigger elites like BC and MS that cost a lot and just makes the game focus more on cheaper and easier to use elites like reaper. If snipe damage was put back to what it was it would make a lot more sense.

Queen:
I would highly recommend you think about who is giving suggestions on this hero because theres a lot of people who will spam this hero and dick ride just to make it stay OP. Its badly in need of a nerf and if i had to say one thing needed to be nerfed the most it would be this for all the reasons starelf already pointed out.

Lurker:
Hasnt been used in any scrim since nix/spec was buffed. So it really needs something, i think two burrow strike stuns would be usefull or a deep burrow blink type skill. Other wise its unusable.

Marine arena gets boring when only some units are usable and the rest are terrible so I would HIGHLY recommend buffing some things that are complete trash to keep the game interesting and flowing.

Herro,

QUEEN:
In regards to queen I agree it needs a nerf.

In short its too fast and too punishing.

the comparison everyone likes to make to it is the HTA and to compare HTA is far slower and storm may do more dmg but units be easily move away from it or see it coming.
Queen has way more way to come at a player, with their speed, burrow -> fungal when the player isnt ready and not to mention just straight up on crack with speed by just running at you..more skilled players eg. MicroJ will hide the queen in the medi or warp prism. SO many possibilities and if the player they are against doesnt see it coming or play perfect against it they most of the time lose everything.

My suggestions would be to either slow it down or nerf fungal so it doesnt have a root but rather slow, similar to fest.

I prefer nerfing fungal first so too many changes arent made at one and see how it goes.


Ghost:

Snipe seems insanely long range, often I see the snipe starting and I think i moved back far enough and it still goes off. I think just a slight decrease in range of that would be good, also a slight increase on att rate and more emp impact on units/builfings. Trying to emp and radar tower or CCs does nothing, not sure if intended but it really does nothing.

P

Vikings:
they are really strong early and with reaper nerf they will the best opening, the capability to farm early and shut down air elites is pretty OP. They are supposed to be anti air so my suggestion is to decrease there attack rate, and decrease there air range but buff the splash of the air attack.

Science vessel:
Increase temporal field AOE and attack speed gained bonus by 10% with the upgrades. In return nerf the bio plague ability damage.

I think it's just viking aa damage scales too well vs elites, I can basically ignore it from 0-10 minutes but past then it starts being really strong.
sv temporal field is garbage and a buff would be good, and irradiate being weaker would be great since a sv appearing from cross and irradiating a low hp prism isn't really fun or skilled gameplay.

Ghost really needs a nerf, the range is insane and the it still auto attack farms pretty decent. Would recommend reverting snipe or increasing the damage scaling of it by a good amount.