Thanks for the maps, but I'm gonna use this post to make complaints about the biggest balance issues. Don't take anything personal, I'd just like to see TS be a long-lasting, competitive game, and that requires balance. And if I mention anything that's already fixed I apologize; I'm basing most of this off of games on MT and M3. I decided to put it in this thread because it's still beta so I imagine you are still changing things, and hopefully will consider some of the things I say. I'll only mention issues I see with 3v3s, since this really is made for a full 6 players because of the 3 paths. It can't be balanced for both 2v2s and 3v3s.
First off (not a balance issue), the mission briefing needs to be short and to the point. Mission briefings are to give you a quick overview of how to play the game, and tell you who made the map, not tell you a story or thank 75 ppl. Since you can't really describe TS quickly, it should tell you how to read the in-game tutorial, list your name (maybe moose and mneox), and then automatically start. In MT and M there were at LEAST 60000 MS of WAIT triggers (I think it was 75000 or 90000). Because of that, every other game someone goes afk, reads, or forgets to press start...so someone else presses cancel. Then after you've already waited 2 minutes sitting through the intro, you find out someone left and you have to rehost. As most TS players play it quite often, I'd say a max 15000 MS intro, preferably 5000-10000.
I think almost all of the changes from MT to M3 were beneficial for balance. It weakened the obviously overpowered mutant, ops, and summoner, and slowed leveling for DM and LM, who already leveled faster than most heroes.
AssimilatorsAssims were too fast in MT and arguably too slow in M3. In MT, games are often decided in the first 2 minutes: if one team gets 3-4 of the protected geysers, they pretty much won. In MT, you can build every geyser at night without protection and it'll pay off even if they die the next day. In M3, the geysers you can't protect with structures are NEVER worth building. I'd say split the two timings in half.
OP SpellsI'm a strong believer that simply getting your level 4 spell shouldn't be a free win, yet there are a couple notably overpowered spells still. It's cool if a hero completely shuts down a couple other heroes, but when he shuts down almost every hero, there's a good chance the game will be decided by the random hero beacon. The 2 I'll point out will win most every 1v3 once they get their l4.
Engineer (formerly Ops' spells)
Indestructible mines I still feel are a bit overpowered. Once you get it, it shuts down every hero except warrior (L4), mech (vulture mode), volt, and possibly mutant (L4), but I've never seen a mutant stop it. The engineer can sit at temple spamming l4, farming at 4-5 times the normal rate because of splash. Only the heroes mentioned can come near it, so he just waits until he's leveled to 100% health and mana with obscene ups before he leaves base. He can even spend his money on spawned units to feed even more off splash kills. Once he's cast 2-3 L4s, there is nothing a medic, LM, assassin, archer, summoner, DM, phantom, or lurker can do to win, and it's difficult for psion and assault (because marine quickly kills arb/dship). When one of 3 or 4 out of 15 heroes needs to be on your team to not lose a 3v1, that's not balanced. The mines either need to be destructible, or there need to be fewer of them.
Assault
Nuke with a dropship is probably also OP, and moreso in 1.5 based on the changelog. Obviously engineer stops it with any of its spells, but besides that there's not too many options. Archer can cover their base with spores and sunkens, but that hurts his leveling, since he usually levels with camps or L1, so I'm the only archer I've seen do it. Mutant can stop it with L1 and L3 (assuming he webs the ghost), but then he's locked in or just outside his base all night. DM can stay in base all night waiting to ensnare, or get lucky with a maelstrom, but that's pretty unlikely. Technically any hero can stop it with cannons, but this is incredibly unrealistic: you need a probe and at least 4 cannons and 4 pylons just to detect (so 325 mins in 1.5), and since he can web from dropship before he unloads, you really need about 10 cannons to stop a good assault, which you'd never have enough mins to do. So Engineer and Archer stop it, and mutant and DM can stop it by staying home at night. Even in a 3v3, in most games the other team won't have any of those heroes. Hopefully the switching of which unit had the nuke will help, since the marine will level more slowly than the bat, and (I'd imagine) won't be able to nuke until the 3rd night instead of the 2nd as a firebat. Still, I think either giving purchasable player-controlled detection (even if it costs 100 mins a turret/cannon), or removing the dropship/ghost combo would make it a lot more fair. Assault is already a lot more effective in 1.5 as an assaulting unit because marine/web can actually kill structures, unlike the firebat. The easiest change would just be a new L4 that doesn't involve a nuke (the lurker's L4 would be quite good with web), or a different L3 that doesn't involve a transport. Even without the transport, nuke is OP because you can kill your own warp gates and deny them any feed.
I highlighted those two heroes because they will win 95% of 1v3s when they don't face any of the 2-4 heroes that can stop them, just by getting to L4. There are still other imbalances and OP spells, but they all require 2+ players to be game-breaking. Medic's L4 is the main culprit, with really no way to stop a decent team once they get the first full heal. To fix it, it'd either have to be not as mobile (can only FH in base, or you have to return to base for it to work or something), or it can't heal everyone all the way. I can't think of an easy way to fix it, unless you simply made it heal to 50% or something.
Summoner will always be strong late game, but aside from removing adrenals or making goblins +1 per level, I don't see how you can easily fix it without making it too weak early. The 75 mineral adrenals and speed were a good change in M3, but maybe even going to 60 for speed and 125 for adrenals would help more, and force you to wait to get adrenals.
Terrain imbalancesThe terrain is so non-symmetric it's difficult to pinpoint imbalances and problems, but I think I can still identify a couple. I think everyone knows the south location is better for a couple of reasons. A small issue is that it's slightly closer to 2 out of 3 beacons for warp gates. This can be seen in how the south and middle spawn will meet each other on the north temple's side of the beacon. This is pretty trivial though. The primary issue is the high ground connecting the south and central paths. Not only is the high ground an advantage for vision and ranged attack, but the short path allows the south team to more easily evade being trapped and killed, and heroes like the assault can lay mines, stim, and run across it, farming 2 locations at once. Moreover, 2 geysers are not only very close to each other (so easily protected), but are within view of farming locations (bottom and central) for the south. The north has a geyser pretty close to the bottom near-cannon farming location, but it's just far enough that you'll lose it at night without noticing. Another major issue is the narrow pathing. Both bases have a narrow choke on the top path, but for the south base the choke is protected by cannons. This means heroes for the south team don't get blocked by spawn running back to heal until they are already safely behind the cannons. I doubt there's anyone here who hasn't died a few times because of this when playing on the north team. This is why so many hosts only play South Temple, and when you add them all up, it's quite an advantage for one side. The north temple does have a couple advantages, like the multiple routes you can take when returning to the central path, but it doesn't come close to making up for the south's advantages.
Other terrain problems that don't involve imbalance are the chokes and some of the rocks/doodads. The narrow choke on the top route is a problem because there will always be newbs who block the spawn. Unless you can make the spawn reroute or attack allies if blocked, the chokes should probably be widened. The rocks and other doodads that block movement also create a lot of problems with broodwar's archaic routing AI. I don't have a problem with doodads that require you to micro around to avoid being trapped, but half of them are very difficult to make out in the terrain, which can be frustrating especially for people not familiar with the map.
Aside from that, the location that disrupts the top warp gate is much smaller than the high ground, so it is difficult to tell if you have disrupted it or not. This is another advantage for the south team, since they will usually disrupt from their near side, which is easier to do. I know terrain revamps might be the most difficult and most upsetting to some people, but with all the imbalances and issues it really needs to be done eventually.
That's what I can think of of the top of my head as far as major issues are concerned. I hope people reply with things they agree or disagree with, and add other issues I may have looked over or not thought warranted enough to mention. Thanks.
None.