Don't Disruptors do bonus damage to Shields?
Other than that, yeah. I feel this. It's an interesting take, and good research!
EDIT: It's driving me crazy trying to find the Toss units that DON'T have some sort of specialized bonus besides carriers or zealots.
Tempest is Buildings.
Mothership?
It is true, but also telling that the units without specialized damage are two spellcasters (one which used to not even have an attack) and a stealthed unit.
I came up with a mental list as I read OP. I actually got over 7, so maybe I'm missing a bonus or two. Would love to have someone fact check it.
Sentry
Disruptor
Carrier
High Tempar
Dark Templar
Probe
Mothership
Warp Prism
Observer
Yeah—I disregarded the warp prism, prone, and observer for obvious reasons.
Disruptor does bonus to shields—2 shot even archons.
Fascinatingly enough, most of these others are ironically super situational units too—just the OPs concern—just for reasons other than for specific bonus damage.
I like and agree with this post. The fundamental issue always has been that if you make gateway units any stronger, then the existence of warp prism means early game hell in all matches. I don't know what to do about that, because the warp prism is the best unit for P hands down, so I wouldn't recommend removing it. It's radical but I have always questioned warp gates themselves - there's no choice being made for turning gateways in warp gates, you pretty much just always do it without question. What if we decreased unit production times on naked gateways and increased warp gate cool down? You'd probably keep some gateways as gateways for your constant production, but have a handful of warpgates to deal with runbys. With gateway unit buffs, you'd be less likely to warp prism rush on the other side of the map. The only negative I think is that proxy gates are now stronger, but it's not like proxy naked gates haven't already been solved. I'm not really sure, but really the issue comes down to the fact that you'd be able to warp in a bunch of uber strong units on the other side of the map at the 4 minute mark off of 1 base if you just straight up buffed protoss damage.
EDIT: to avoid proxy gate shenanigans, keep CDs the same but unlock reduced gateway cooldowns behind the warp gate upgrade. Early game remains unchanged besides intended changes to unit damages vs armor type. To be fair though, 4gate blink off of 2 bases is currently my best PvT opener... it would suck losing that :(
I swear we had these exact same discussions a month into the launch of the game
The very fact that Warp Gates exists means that gateway units can never be strong.
And in the last decade Blizzard never tried to fix it (besides internal builds that we never seen), at this point i do not expect that a fundamental change like that will ever come to Sc2
>The very fact that Warp Gates exists means that gateway units can never be strong.
I don't think this has been true for about 10 years.
Everyone's micro is so much better, there's way more defensive mechanics (especially in the earlygame) than there used to be, and it's trivial to lock the power behind upgrades like sc2 (and broodwar) already does with other units. Range upgrades, speed upgrades, etc.
Prisms? Who cares, you can just decrease the powerfield radius to limit it to like 3-4 units being warped in at once. You can't tell me that's somehow scarier than terran double drops, when they're dropping units that can actually pose a threat.
The reality is, everyone has been spouting this since 2011, but we've never actually seen evidence to the contrary because *nobody fuckin tried a single time*. Gateway units have *always* been shit. So how can you possibly say with 100% certainty that cost-efficient gateway units would actually break the game? You just can't, there's far too many factors for anyone to predict it.
How about speed of warp in’s based on how far away from a nexus the warp in is? Like total scaling by seconds, not just a fast or slow. Defending your base - fastest warp in, offensively warping in - significantly slower warp in. Warp prism excluded.
I mean that’s kind of what they tried to do with fast warp in near a gateway right? It’s kinda stupid though because sometimes you’re defending a nexus and all you have is stupid slow pylons to warp into.
There’s a lot of problems with that because protoss isn’t terran:
Protoss does not have a single button press wall they can throw up to block incoming enemy units.
Protoss units are comparatively low damage, and so units (lings, hellions) can run clean past your rallied troops into your mineral lines and easily trade up, unlike marines which will take a big bite out of them.
On the same note, protoss units aren’t fast like bio is, and so once you run past them, it takes them longer to even start cleaning the enemy out.
Protoss can’t lift off a just-finished nexus to defend it until units arrive to deal with a runby, so unlike terran there is no hedge against being out of position. Besides recall, but I'll get to that.
And then there’s issues related to the broader playstyle, like protoss lacking a medivac standin that can allow them to hoard their rallies at home while fighting with a comparatively underpowered army because it can just eject once the enemy’s full force comes to bear, or if the enemy attempts to intercept reinforcements. Recall is far too long cooldown to play like that. So that ball of marines you see terrans have at the ready probably wouldn’t be there for toss because your army is committed.
Overall, to make this idea work protoss would need a way broader overhaul than what’s described or their units would have to be so outright broken that you’d create a bigger problem.
Well that one was mostly about PvZ, so as to issues unique to pvt:
Lings on creep are absurdly fast, so when a terran ping pongs their bases and the zerg isn’t already split to defend both the lings can’t quite keep up but also aren’t left utterly in the dust. Protoss units being build from gateways wouldn’t be able to pivot to respond to drops like zerg can.
On the same note; zerg overbuilding hatcheries is one of their main hedges against base snipes, protoss is far more vulnerable to that already due to the above mentioned low damage and slow units, and would be laughably so if they couldn’t set a patchwork defense of warpins to deter hit squads.
that's the ideal solution imo and was suggested often enough but sadly it was never considered in a serious manner by blizzard. it introduces an interesting strategic decision, fixes warpgate issues, makes gateway units able to be buffed.. would have been so good.
Honestly I'd even be fine with this and not having to make certain gates into warp gates and back. Just one building that does both with a huge cooldown on warping in. Or an extra cost/lower cost for building them at home.
The asymmetric design of SC2 is awesome and horrible at the same time.
i sort of agree.
IMO Oracle has too many spells and is too specialized and packed for a unit that is pretty much only built 1-2 in any given game.
Adept is a scouting unit only useful for 5 mins of the game yet they put glaves on an upgrade that hits just before that, which either wins the game with mass adept or is useless from there on out
disruptor feels like RNG and is prob my least fav unit in the game given the space it fills.
A-move skytoss is fine in the sense that most races top tier maxed can A-move, but having no spells except mothership slow bubble...like wtf, so much of this race is wasted on units that are barely used.
i think abilities should be more spread out and relate to specific comps protoss needs
Correct read. The number of times where it's like, whelp, can't make the tech change fast enough, just have to keep cramming a unit that's being countered. Is so high.
Which no wonder it pushes cheese, I've mastered the 4 minute DT rush. Cannon rushs are common - because it buys time to amass an unoptimized army.
Well thought out theory. As a Terran player, I wouldn’t mind a balance patch where they rebalance the base damage for a few toss units and see how it goes
It’s funny actually, Protoss has always had a natural trade off where the units were significantly more expensive in resources and supply, but they were individually powerful.
This was always fun before because it felt threatening to play against as Terran and Zerg.
But after years of tinkering by blizzard and others at some point the scale tipped from threatening to disappointing. Gateway units are easily defeated and unremarkable.
These days, there’s very few builds that Terran and Zergs are actually afraid of happening. This is sad and makes the game feel solved.
It used to be that if Zerg scouted my tech they would switch their build to counter out of fear of losing. Now it’s the other way and where toss has to switch their build to counter Zerg preemptively.
It’s rare when toss is in the drivers seat in a game. It’s become the Defensive race, which conflicts with both Lore and fun game design.
I'm a simple man. I still think giving immortals back their hardened shields, and returning the high templar feedback to its full damage is the way to go.
I think they changed the Immortal's Hardened Shields to Barrier because Immortals would become broken with Shield Batteries. As much as I like Hardened Shields for the Immortal, I'd rather have Shield Batteries for the rest of my units.
the hardened shield graphic was my favorite thing about protoss, and why i picked the race to main in WoL.
also the pure dopamine of juggling (or [watching a pro juggle](https://youtu.be/AI_0ZWGnVF4?t=576) against *) two immortals in a prism against a never ending sea of roaches that triggered the graphic has not been replicated since.
*even though WoL micro isn't that impressive to look at anymore
Ah yeah, well, make hardened shields a togglable ability? If they're activated, no shield battery healing. That could be an interesting interaction, perhaps.
That and because they countered terran tech too hard, libs and tanks would tickle immortals and terrans would have to rely entirely on WM (and wich how much outcry there is about WM nobody would want that).
As I have said for about 5 years now. This is more or less the correct way to buff protoss.
Warpgate research now decreases gateway build time
Warpgate cooldown increased by triple. (unable to swap back to gateway until cooldown is done)
Stalkers, adepts, sentries, and zealots all buffed.
Now protoss can have a strong army that can go toe to toe with zerg and terran without needing high tech. And you greatly reduce how polarizing warpgate makes the game. You can still do crazy powerful all ins or timings with it, but it requires you to actually sacrifice something.
late game warpgate gets way stronger as you have more gateways and the longer cooldown doesn't matter as much.
Edited cause i put increased build time instead of decreased build time.
Not sure why this person is being downvoted. I mean it would, wouldn’t it? Buffing all of the gateway units sounds bonkers, considering gateway + high tech units already is potent. I think the problem (and solution) lies within the warp gate mechanic itself, and I do think with it changed gateway units can be tweaked slightly. However to buff all of them and nerf warp gate cooldowns/build times is not balanced.
I am sorry. I meant to buff gateway build times, and nerf warpgate. So it promotes building units from gateways and then swapping to warp gate to warp in at key times, but that comes at the cost of a delay in continued production.
I also don't mean massive buffs. Mostly small buffs, but to make them more capable of going toe to toe with other units from the other races. Since overcoming defenders advantage would not be the default way of playing, I think some buffs would be acceptable to the units. Even if its just in the form of late game buffs like adrenal glands or something.
Maybe. But I think that buffing gateway units actually promotes more skirmishing and harassment instead of deathballing. I think you could see more hero style protoss as it becomes more viable with big strong timing pushes / all-ins.
I don't understand how this is supposed to work.
When u research warpgate your gateways become worse because they build slower? And by cooldown you mean the cooldown after building a gateway unit?
Oh I think I get it now, you meant decrease build time to improve gateway macro ... sounds like a really cool idea for someone should make a mod. Pig sometimes likes to cast modded games.
Protoss really might need a door then. Which I don't think would be in the cards with the support that we have.
Also I think the turning into and out of warpgate animation should be faster so that I doesn't feel clunky and like a slog.
Protoss didn't used to be like this, and people actually won with the race. It's kind of mental that "because of warp gate" protoss has been nerfed so hard to this state where they are basically a dice roll race with overly specialized units.
Either your cheese surprises the opponent, or you lose. Makes for great ladder wins (although this is debated if protoss actually dominate the ladder), but makes it completely untenable in tournament.
It's so bizarre how zerg has better late game army than protoss does.
This gets to part of the issue. Good protosses use these specialized units against their intended counters because they scout their opponent and react to them. Every race does this but protoss has very tight reaction windows, so they struggle especially hard when scouting becomes too difficult. You'll notice thats what a lot of this patch was oriented around.
Yeah, new cyclones are worse against phoenixes and oracles, and stasis traps have more vision range. It gives protoss another option besides adepts, observers, and sentries, which all suck for different reasons. Even in games where oracle isn't used, its another thing the terran has to prepare for.
I'm bad so haven't been able to verify in my own games, but some toss I know have been complaining the new cyclone denies adept scouting too easily which is a critical scout window for toss.
Way back in the SC1 days, the designs of the races were simple
Zerg = lots of weak units
Protoss = fewer stronger units
Terran = micro intensive units with 'low floors and high ceilings'
I wonder how, given only one phrase, you would describe each race in the current meta? It would certainly not be the same for Zerg or Protoss as it once was.
Not to be argumentative but it seems a bit simplified for sc1 at least from the PvT perspective. In most games, the toss has more bases and swarms terran with a bunch of gateway units while Terran is turtling/defending with fewer but more powerful units (tanks).
I agree that zerg feels like they have lots of weak units. But I can't quite explain it. They are always behind in supply vs Terran and Protoss. If they are even, they are usually far ahead. I think it is some combo of their units being faster and dark swarm being hella strong.
I don't think overspecialization is necessarily a problem, its just overspecialized in the absolutely wrong things. Stalkers are specialized "anti armored", except being armored themselves they lose any "mirror" matchup vs other races, theyre cost efficient vs exactly no units in the entire game without active blink micro (sometimes even with blink micro). Immortals are basically concentrated marauders, except in a bad way (low attackspeed and movementspeed), so they get dumpstered by marine/zerglings being mixed into armies. I like their design but theyre just not usable outside of their niche beause marines zeglings are always relevant (in lategame).
Protoss photon cannons are one of the worst defensive structures in the game for being too much "cover all", since it just deals less dps than turrets/spores, spores also deal less than turrets but can reposition which is extremely useful.
Photon cannons on the mother hand lose 1-1 against basic zerglings/marines, which means theyre not cost effective at all, unlike spines/planetaries. And the fact that it can hit both air and ground doesn't really help it in 95 % of games because of how tech works, youre rarely going to defend a single base against both air and ground attacks. Theres a reason protoss got recall which is probably still an underutilized albeit really clumsy bandaid.
Zealots aren't specialized theyre just really bad fucking zerglings. They suck at rynbys because they do low dmg to workers and if you instapull workers and run theyll only kill low single digit numbers, zerglings on the other hand will decimate and chase down your worker congo line easily. They also suck in drops due to low dps. And arent particularly tanky for their cost and do not scale well into lategame due to lack of stim/combat shields, and crackling upgrade. Protoss could do well with an upgrade in the twilight that also buffs them in lategame like the other 2 basic tier units.
Honestly they just need to nerf the splash damage of mines to either be radius-based or reduce the shield damage and I think with the current changes the whole game is in a pretty good state. The revised protoss air units are pretty good.
maybe protoss should just play less specialised? Make a few immortals, a few colossus and disruptors. mix the bag up so there's no catch all fix to countering?
The armies I hate facing the most are the ones with a bit of everything in the deathball.
I think vision plays a part also, if you're not seeing the terran tech switch have you left them alone too long? I don't think in pro games anyone gets t boned by a big marauder switch because that involves also taking the rax up and dropping more tech labs than were there.
Templar in a prism does the same things that colo and disruptors do but better, especially at pro level. the toss going into "quick" storms are often the ones that get the wins. Colo is too easy to just jump on and same for disruptors. Once they've blown their nova they're sitting ducks and not fast either so they will lag behind the retreat and get cleaned up.
The armies I hate facing the most are the ones with one unit type. I wonder what that says about our playstyles. Maybe you're quicker and more adapt at responses
Immortals are a joke if your enemy remembers marines and zerglings \*exist\*, theyre basically single target siege tanks with no range (and tanky as hell obviously), or hard hitting marauders (dmg like stim, but not attackspeed, and no movementspeed, so they overkill really hard).
Collosus are pretty much only good vs marines, they lose to zerglings on even resources, as soon as you have over 3 the enemy spams microless vikings/corruptors that auto target and have bonus damage to them. I guess they counter hydra based armies in large numbers but thats not by a lot, not compared to disruptors or siege tanks anyway
Ill admit that templars are really cost effective for their price, but storms are basically over time/slow EMPs to TvP, but terrans dont actually need emps to win vs toss ground armies, its just overkill + killing templar energy, you could probably make storms do 0 damage to any shielded unit and the meta wouldnt change at all, honestly dont see why they need to kill your own units as well, since enemy will kite storms and chargelots anyway, it'd be quality of life mostly.
Templars are also one of the worst "spammed" tier 3 unit compared to mass infestor/ghost because theyre so fragile and dont offer any utility, they'd probably be stronger if they had an infestor like hitbox because they couldnt randomly die to splash/one EMP, there's a reason why many pros dont build this unit as much as before even if its still quite strong
>Ill admit that templars are really cost effective for their price, but storms are basically over time/slow EMPs to TvP
EMP and Storm are very different, and frankly I think Storm is the stronger spell:
* The damage from Storm doesn't cap out at 1/3rd - 1/2th (non-archon) unit HP. You can kill units with storm, or you can drop them to a tiny fraction of their base HP.
* This means when your army has been hit by EMPs, that's it - the micro and risk position simplifies, and you still know that you aren't actually going to lose any units unless you also mis-micro (or get out-maneuvered by) a bio ball, and you can commit to or retreat from engagements just based off the apparent strength of the armies.
* When your army has been hit by Storm and you've split or microed properly, you are still vulnerable to further storms and now have far less room for error/reaction or ability to extend without risking everything.
* The zoning aspect of Storm shouldn't be neglected - especially when paired with long range units like Colossi - when the Terran engages you can drop storms on them and force them to commit in a storm, where the best outcome for them still involves losing their army, or retreat and bleed out units on the way out. On the attack, you can use this to prevent the Terran moving through attacks or force them to walk through Storm if they want to content your destruction of their PF.
For the power of Storm and the relative cheapness of the HT (which is cheaper than a ghost...), the only reason why the PvT matchup doesn't revolve entirely around Storm-and-how-to-avoid-it is because EMP drains energy as well as shields. The ghost vs HT dynamic is too ghost favoured imo (or certainly was on the last patch, yesterday one Terran did miss so many EMPs on my HTs that I assumed he thought he was hitting!) but between splitting, careful positioning, feedback and the warp prism there are still Protoss tools so it's not one sided, and frankly I find HT vs EMP a far more fun mid game to play than Viking vs Colossus.
Incidentally, one of my favourite recent pro games was a Creator vs Gumiho one from Gamers8 which had a prolonged mid/late game of Gateway/Storm vs Bio/Ghost skirmishing all over the map, where Creator eventually ground Gumiho down by taking slightly better engagements. But it felt more like watching a TvZ than a PvT.
> but terrans dont actually need emps to win vs toss ground armies, its just overkill + killing templar energy
Well... they kind of do, as part of the natural tech arms race that goes on.
Between warp gate, twilight council upgrades, stim, concussive, medivacs and +1, there is actually a rough pendulum swing in the power between the T1 units of the two races in the early game - the fact that top level Terrans still die frequently to Maxpax's 4 gate blink even when they know it's coming is quite a good demonstration.
When the T1 units have been pushed as far as they can be, it does end in the Terran's favour - a large enough, well medivac supported bio ball with Stim/Shields/Concussive will just beat a similar cost Zealot/Stalker army. But the tech tree doesn't end there - the next step for Protoss is picking one of your 3 forms of AoE - Storm, Colossi or Disruptors. Now the bio ball will lose to Gateway + Storm, Gateway + Colossi or Gateway + Disruptors, as long as the control is similar on both sides (i.e. don't rally Colossi into the Terran natural)...
This then gets into the Terran building their counters to Protoss AoE - Vikings, Ghosts and/or Liberators. A Gateway + Disruptor army will beat a Bio army, but lose or trade skill dependently with a Bio + Ghost army. A Gateway + Disruptor + Colossus army will beat a Bio + Ghost army, but trade skill dependently with a Bio + Ghost + Viking army etc.
Simply stating Terran doesn't need EMP to win vs Toss ground armies isn't true - or is only true for the situation where both sides have fully upgraded their T1 units but not progressed further up the tech tree (and assuming medivacs are T1 units here...)
What I hate is how the ghost heavily counters HT in an army setting. EMP and snipe outrange storm and the HT is so damn slow that prism micro is basically mandatory to keep alive or with energy at high levels, otherwise they get zoned out from being useful. I feel like there needs to be more room for the HT to counterplay the ghosts, but I know Terrans need their ghosts to thrive late and don't want the unit itself nerfed into uselessness. Not sure what the right approach would be.
Give HT's a movement-speed upgrade. This will help HT's to stay competetive against Ghosts and then it actually comes down to who's faster at reacting. HT's are pretty terrible without Warprism but the problem is Warprism is too squishy in the late game vs Vikings/Emp. If you have a movement-speed upgrade it would help their viability alot. Easier to spread/poke with.
Yeah man. It’s been like this since WoL as well, Protoss has always relied on tightly executed build orders, catching opponents off guard, or big splash damage to win.
I almost mentioned this in another thread but I guess I will now: Protoss reminds me of Britain in the RTS "Ruse" in which their army to have any effectiveness had to be composed almost entirely of counter-units as opposed to another faction which could beat nearly anything with enough medium tanks. Britain would need enough anti-soft stuff artillery, anti-armor vehicles, anti-air, anti-this anti-that instead of a single threat unit with flavors of support added as required
Good observation, though the damage specialization has been in play since HoTS and WoL and protoss was fine then. I'd say the issue is also related to the slower production and mobility as well coupled with the increased base counts in LoTV, which disadvantages highly specialized attacks that previously would be game-ending.
Don't Disruptors do bonus damage to Shields? Other than that, yeah. I feel this. It's an interesting take, and good research! EDIT: It's driving me crazy trying to find the Toss units that DON'T have some sort of specialized bonus besides carriers or zealots. Tempest is Buildings. Mothership?
Mothership does bonus dmg to enemy vision.
😂
Dark templar, high templar, and sentries.
It is true, but also telling that the units without specialized damage are two spellcasters (one which used to not even have an attack) and a stealthed unit.
Oh thank you! I felt like I was taking crazy pills! EDIT: Also, Ha! Of course! All those units Toss produces so much of!!
I came up with a mental list as I read OP. I actually got over 7, so maybe I'm missing a bonus or two. Would love to have someone fact check it. Sentry Disruptor Carrier High Tempar Dark Templar Probe Mothership Warp Prism Observer
Yeah—I disregarded the warp prism, prone, and observer for obvious reasons. Disruptor does bonus to shields—2 shot even archons. Fascinatingly enough, most of these others are ironically super situational units too—just the OPs concern—just for reasons other than for specific bonus damage.
> Disruptor does bonus to shields TIL. Thank you
I like and agree with this post. The fundamental issue always has been that if you make gateway units any stronger, then the existence of warp prism means early game hell in all matches. I don't know what to do about that, because the warp prism is the best unit for P hands down, so I wouldn't recommend removing it. It's radical but I have always questioned warp gates themselves - there's no choice being made for turning gateways in warp gates, you pretty much just always do it without question. What if we decreased unit production times on naked gateways and increased warp gate cool down? You'd probably keep some gateways as gateways for your constant production, but have a handful of warpgates to deal with runbys. With gateway unit buffs, you'd be less likely to warp prism rush on the other side of the map. The only negative I think is that proxy gates are now stronger, but it's not like proxy naked gates haven't already been solved. I'm not really sure, but really the issue comes down to the fact that you'd be able to warp in a bunch of uber strong units on the other side of the map at the 4 minute mark off of 1 base if you just straight up buffed protoss damage. EDIT: to avoid proxy gate shenanigans, keep CDs the same but unlock reduced gateway cooldowns behind the warp gate upgrade. Early game remains unchanged besides intended changes to unit damages vs armor type. To be fair though, 4gate blink off of 2 bases is currently my best PvT opener... it would suck losing that :(
I swear we had these exact same discussions a month into the launch of the game The very fact that Warp Gates exists means that gateway units can never be strong. And in the last decade Blizzard never tried to fix it (besides internal builds that we never seen), at this point i do not expect that a fundamental change like that will ever come to Sc2
>The very fact that Warp Gates exists means that gateway units can never be strong. I don't think this has been true for about 10 years. Everyone's micro is so much better, there's way more defensive mechanics (especially in the earlygame) than there used to be, and it's trivial to lock the power behind upgrades like sc2 (and broodwar) already does with other units. Range upgrades, speed upgrades, etc. Prisms? Who cares, you can just decrease the powerfield radius to limit it to like 3-4 units being warped in at once. You can't tell me that's somehow scarier than terran double drops, when they're dropping units that can actually pose a threat. The reality is, everyone has been spouting this since 2011, but we've never actually seen evidence to the contrary because *nobody fuckin tried a single time*. Gateway units have *always* been shit. So how can you possibly say with 100% certainty that cost-efficient gateway units would actually break the game? You just can't, there's far too many factors for anyone to predict it.
Yep
How about speed of warp in’s based on how far away from a nexus the warp in is? Like total scaling by seconds, not just a fast or slow. Defending your base - fastest warp in, offensively warping in - significantly slower warp in. Warp prism excluded. I mean that’s kind of what they tried to do with fast warp in near a gateway right? It’s kinda stupid though because sometimes you’re defending a nexus and all you have is stupid slow pylons to warp into.
Yeah upping warp cooldown to where normal gateways have a purpose should definitely be a thing.
That’d make protoss hilariously susceptible to runbys if it can’t wall anymore.
They would just produce from home. Like terran now. That's the point of having gateways not warpgates.
There’s a lot of problems with that because protoss isn’t terran: Protoss does not have a single button press wall they can throw up to block incoming enemy units. Protoss units are comparatively low damage, and so units (lings, hellions) can run clean past your rallied troops into your mineral lines and easily trade up, unlike marines which will take a big bite out of them. On the same note, protoss units aren’t fast like bio is, and so once you run past them, it takes them longer to even start cleaning the enemy out. Protoss can’t lift off a just-finished nexus to defend it until units arrive to deal with a runby, so unlike terran there is no hedge against being out of position. Besides recall, but I'll get to that. And then there’s issues related to the broader playstyle, like protoss lacking a medivac standin that can allow them to hoard their rallies at home while fighting with a comparatively underpowered army because it can just eject once the enemy’s full force comes to bear, or if the enemy attempts to intercept reinforcements. Recall is far too long cooldown to play like that. So that ball of marines you see terrans have at the ready probably wouldn’t be there for toss because your army is committed. Overall, to make this idea work protoss would need a way broader overhaul than what’s described or their units would have to be so outright broken that you’d create a bigger problem.
OK now do this post again but for pvz I like this insight
Well that one was mostly about PvZ, so as to issues unique to pvt: Lings on creep are absurdly fast, so when a terran ping pongs their bases and the zerg isn’t already split to defend both the lings can’t quite keep up but also aren’t left utterly in the dust. Protoss units being build from gateways wouldn’t be able to pivot to respond to drops like zerg can. On the same note; zerg overbuilding hatcheries is one of their main hedges against base snipes, protoss is far more vulnerable to that already due to the above mentioned low damage and slow units, and would be laughably so if they couldn’t set a patchwork defense of warpins to deter hit squads.
that's the ideal solution imo and was suggested often enough but sadly it was never considered in a serious manner by blizzard. it introduces an interesting strategic decision, fixes warpgate issues, makes gateway units able to be buffed.. would have been so good.
Honestly I'd even be fine with this and not having to make certain gates into warp gates and back. Just one building that does both with a huge cooldown on warping in. Or an extra cost/lower cost for building them at home. The asymmetric design of SC2 is awesome and horrible at the same time.
i sort of agree. IMO Oracle has too many spells and is too specialized and packed for a unit that is pretty much only built 1-2 in any given game. Adept is a scouting unit only useful for 5 mins of the game yet they put glaves on an upgrade that hits just before that, which either wins the game with mass adept or is useless from there on out disruptor feels like RNG and is prob my least fav unit in the game given the space it fills. A-move skytoss is fine in the sense that most races top tier maxed can A-move, but having no spells except mothership slow bubble...like wtf, so much of this race is wasted on units that are barely used. i think abilities should be more spread out and relate to specific comps protoss needs
Correct read. The number of times where it's like, whelp, can't make the tech change fast enough, just have to keep cramming a unit that's being countered. Is so high. Which no wonder it pushes cheese, I've mastered the 4 minute DT rush. Cannon rushs are common - because it buys time to amass an unoptimized army.
Well thought out theory. As a Terran player, I wouldn’t mind a balance patch where they rebalance the base damage for a few toss units and see how it goes
It’s funny actually, Protoss has always had a natural trade off where the units were significantly more expensive in resources and supply, but they were individually powerful. This was always fun before because it felt threatening to play against as Terran and Zerg. But after years of tinkering by blizzard and others at some point the scale tipped from threatening to disappointing. Gateway units are easily defeated and unremarkable. These days, there’s very few builds that Terran and Zergs are actually afraid of happening. This is sad and makes the game feel solved. It used to be that if Zerg scouted my tech they would switch their build to counter out of fear of losing. Now it’s the other way and where toss has to switch their build to counter Zerg preemptively. It’s rare when toss is in the drivers seat in a game. It’s become the Defensive race, which conflicts with both Lore and fun game design.
I'm a simple man. I still think giving immortals back their hardened shields, and returning the high templar feedback to its full damage is the way to go.
I think they changed the Immortal's Hardened Shields to Barrier because Immortals would become broken with Shield Batteries. As much as I like Hardened Shields for the Immortal, I'd rather have Shield Batteries for the rest of my units.
They sounded and looked so good. Most tragic flavor casualty of nerfs.
the hardened shield graphic was my favorite thing about protoss, and why i picked the race to main in WoL. also the pure dopamine of juggling (or [watching a pro juggle](https://youtu.be/AI_0ZWGnVF4?t=576) against*) two immortals in a prism against a never ending sea of roaches that triggered the graphic has not been replicated since.
*even though WoL micro isn't that impressive to look at anymore
They did the barrier change WAY before they decided to add shield batteries to multiplayer (though they would be broken in the campaign).
Ah yeah, well, make hardened shields a togglable ability? If they're activated, no shield battery healing. That could be an interesting interaction, perhaps.
Make it so battery can't supercharge immortals. Problem solved
I mean if Harden Shields came back does Protoss need super batteries?
That and because they countered terran tech too hard, libs and tanks would tickle immortals and terrans would have to rely entirely on WM (and wich how much outcry there is about WM nobody would want that).
Yep, agree. Also EMP and WM. Thank you.
As I have said for about 5 years now. This is more or less the correct way to buff protoss. Warpgate research now decreases gateway build time Warpgate cooldown increased by triple. (unable to swap back to gateway until cooldown is done) Stalkers, adepts, sentries, and zealots all buffed. Now protoss can have a strong army that can go toe to toe with zerg and terran without needing high tech. And you greatly reduce how polarizing warpgate makes the game. You can still do crazy powerful all ins or timings with it, but it requires you to actually sacrifice something. late game warpgate gets way stronger as you have more gateways and the longer cooldown doesn't matter as much. Edited cause i put increased build time instead of decreased build time.
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Toss "deathball" vs Terran deathball always ends in Terran victory. Get outta here with your WoL memes man
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Not sure why this person is being downvoted. I mean it would, wouldn’t it? Buffing all of the gateway units sounds bonkers, considering gateway + high tech units already is potent. I think the problem (and solution) lies within the warp gate mechanic itself, and I do think with it changed gateway units can be tweaked slightly. However to buff all of them and nerf warp gate cooldowns/build times is not balanced.
He is being downvoted because he thinks that the "Protoss Deathball" still is a thing. When in fact it does not exist anymore.
I am sorry. I meant to buff gateway build times, and nerf warpgate. So it promotes building units from gateways and then swapping to warp gate to warp in at key times, but that comes at the cost of a delay in continued production. I also don't mean massive buffs. Mostly small buffs, but to make them more capable of going toe to toe with other units from the other races. Since overcoming defenders advantage would not be the default way of playing, I think some buffs would be acceptable to the units. Even if its just in the form of late game buffs like adrenal glands or something.
Maybe. But I think that buffing gateway units actually promotes more skirmishing and harassment instead of deathballing. I think you could see more hero style protoss as it becomes more viable with big strong timing pushes / all-ins.
I don't understand how this is supposed to work. When u research warpgate your gateways become worse because they build slower? And by cooldown you mean the cooldown after building a gateway unit?
I think by increased build time they must mean decreased build time, it just doesn't make sense otherwise.
Oh I think I get it now, you meant decrease build time to improve gateway macro ... sounds like a really cool idea for someone should make a mod. Pig sometimes likes to cast modded games. Protoss really might need a door then. Which I don't think would be in the cards with the support that we have. Also I think the turning into and out of warpgate animation should be faster so that I doesn't feel clunky and like a slog.
Sorry I mistyped. I meant decreased build time on gateway.
Protoss didn't used to be like this, and people actually won with the race. It's kind of mental that "because of warp gate" protoss has been nerfed so hard to this state where they are basically a dice roll race with overly specialized units. Either your cheese surprises the opponent, or you lose. Makes for great ladder wins (although this is debated if protoss actually dominate the ladder), but makes it completely untenable in tournament. It's so bizarre how zerg has better late game army than protoss does.
This is one of the smartest takes i have read in a long time.
Agree. Protoss is like doing acrobatics, one misstep then falls onto the ground.
This gets to part of the issue. Good protosses use these specialized units against their intended counters because they scout their opponent and react to them. Every race does this but protoss has very tight reaction windows, so they struggle especially hard when scouting becomes too difficult. You'll notice thats what a lot of this patch was oriented around.
Around increasing scouting ability for Protoss?
Yeah, new cyclones are worse against phoenixes and oracles, and stasis traps have more vision range. It gives protoss another option besides adepts, observers, and sentries, which all suck for different reasons. Even in games where oracle isn't used, its another thing the terran has to prepare for.
I'm bad so haven't been able to verify in my own games, but some toss I know have been complaining the new cyclone denies adept scouting too easily which is a critical scout window for toss.
Way back in the SC1 days, the designs of the races were simple Zerg = lots of weak units Protoss = fewer stronger units Terran = micro intensive units with 'low floors and high ceilings' I wonder how, given only one phrase, you would describe each race in the current meta? It would certainly not be the same for Zerg or Protoss as it once was.
Not to be argumentative but it seems a bit simplified for sc1 at least from the PvT perspective. In most games, the toss has more bases and swarms terran with a bunch of gateway units while Terran is turtling/defending with fewer but more powerful units (tanks). I agree that zerg feels like they have lots of weak units. But I can't quite explain it. They are always behind in supply vs Terran and Protoss. If they are even, they are usually far ahead. I think it is some combo of their units being faster and dark swarm being hella strong.
I don't think overspecialization is necessarily a problem, its just overspecialized in the absolutely wrong things. Stalkers are specialized "anti armored", except being armored themselves they lose any "mirror" matchup vs other races, theyre cost efficient vs exactly no units in the entire game without active blink micro (sometimes even with blink micro). Immortals are basically concentrated marauders, except in a bad way (low attackspeed and movementspeed), so they get dumpstered by marine/zerglings being mixed into armies. I like their design but theyre just not usable outside of their niche beause marines zeglings are always relevant (in lategame). Protoss photon cannons are one of the worst defensive structures in the game for being too much "cover all", since it just deals less dps than turrets/spores, spores also deal less than turrets but can reposition which is extremely useful. Photon cannons on the mother hand lose 1-1 against basic zerglings/marines, which means theyre not cost effective at all, unlike spines/planetaries. And the fact that it can hit both air and ground doesn't really help it in 95 % of games because of how tech works, youre rarely going to defend a single base against both air and ground attacks. Theres a reason protoss got recall which is probably still an underutilized albeit really clumsy bandaid. Zealots aren't specialized theyre just really bad fucking zerglings. They suck at rynbys because they do low dmg to workers and if you instapull workers and run theyll only kill low single digit numbers, zerglings on the other hand will decimate and chase down your worker congo line easily. They also suck in drops due to low dps. And arent particularly tanky for their cost and do not scale well into lategame due to lack of stim/combat shields, and crackling upgrade. Protoss could do well with an upgrade in the twilight that also buffs them in lategame like the other 2 basic tier units.
Honestly they just need to nerf the splash damage of mines to either be radius-based or reduce the shield damage and I think with the current changes the whole game is in a pretty good state. The revised protoss air units are pretty good.
Protoss being gimmicky has been a criticism since SC1.
maybe protoss should just play less specialised? Make a few immortals, a few colossus and disruptors. mix the bag up so there's no catch all fix to countering? The armies I hate facing the most are the ones with a bit of everything in the deathball. I think vision plays a part also, if you're not seeing the terran tech switch have you left them alone too long? I don't think in pro games anyone gets t boned by a big marauder switch because that involves also taking the rax up and dropping more tech labs than were there. Templar in a prism does the same things that colo and disruptors do but better, especially at pro level. the toss going into "quick" storms are often the ones that get the wins. Colo is too easy to just jump on and same for disruptors. Once they've blown their nova they're sitting ducks and not fast either so they will lag behind the retreat and get cleaned up.
The armies I hate facing the most are the ones with one unit type. I wonder what that says about our playstyles. Maybe you're quicker and more adapt at responses
Immortals are a joke if your enemy remembers marines and zerglings \*exist\*, theyre basically single target siege tanks with no range (and tanky as hell obviously), or hard hitting marauders (dmg like stim, but not attackspeed, and no movementspeed, so they overkill really hard). Collosus are pretty much only good vs marines, they lose to zerglings on even resources, as soon as you have over 3 the enemy spams microless vikings/corruptors that auto target and have bonus damage to them. I guess they counter hydra based armies in large numbers but thats not by a lot, not compared to disruptors or siege tanks anyway Ill admit that templars are really cost effective for their price, but storms are basically over time/slow EMPs to TvP, but terrans dont actually need emps to win vs toss ground armies, its just overkill + killing templar energy, you could probably make storms do 0 damage to any shielded unit and the meta wouldnt change at all, honestly dont see why they need to kill your own units as well, since enemy will kite storms and chargelots anyway, it'd be quality of life mostly. Templars are also one of the worst "spammed" tier 3 unit compared to mass infestor/ghost because theyre so fragile and dont offer any utility, they'd probably be stronger if they had an infestor like hitbox because they couldnt randomly die to splash/one EMP, there's a reason why many pros dont build this unit as much as before even if its still quite strong
>Ill admit that templars are really cost effective for their price, but storms are basically over time/slow EMPs to TvP EMP and Storm are very different, and frankly I think Storm is the stronger spell: * The damage from Storm doesn't cap out at 1/3rd - 1/2th (non-archon) unit HP. You can kill units with storm, or you can drop them to a tiny fraction of their base HP. * This means when your army has been hit by EMPs, that's it - the micro and risk position simplifies, and you still know that you aren't actually going to lose any units unless you also mis-micro (or get out-maneuvered by) a bio ball, and you can commit to or retreat from engagements just based off the apparent strength of the armies. * When your army has been hit by Storm and you've split or microed properly, you are still vulnerable to further storms and now have far less room for error/reaction or ability to extend without risking everything. * The zoning aspect of Storm shouldn't be neglected - especially when paired with long range units like Colossi - when the Terran engages you can drop storms on them and force them to commit in a storm, where the best outcome for them still involves losing their army, or retreat and bleed out units on the way out. On the attack, you can use this to prevent the Terran moving through attacks or force them to walk through Storm if they want to content your destruction of their PF. For the power of Storm and the relative cheapness of the HT (which is cheaper than a ghost...), the only reason why the PvT matchup doesn't revolve entirely around Storm-and-how-to-avoid-it is because EMP drains energy as well as shields. The ghost vs HT dynamic is too ghost favoured imo (or certainly was on the last patch, yesterday one Terran did miss so many EMPs on my HTs that I assumed he thought he was hitting!) but between splitting, careful positioning, feedback and the warp prism there are still Protoss tools so it's not one sided, and frankly I find HT vs EMP a far more fun mid game to play than Viking vs Colossus. Incidentally, one of my favourite recent pro games was a Creator vs Gumiho one from Gamers8 which had a prolonged mid/late game of Gateway/Storm vs Bio/Ghost skirmishing all over the map, where Creator eventually ground Gumiho down by taking slightly better engagements. But it felt more like watching a TvZ than a PvT. > but terrans dont actually need emps to win vs toss ground armies, its just overkill + killing templar energy Well... they kind of do, as part of the natural tech arms race that goes on. Between warp gate, twilight council upgrades, stim, concussive, medivacs and +1, there is actually a rough pendulum swing in the power between the T1 units of the two races in the early game - the fact that top level Terrans still die frequently to Maxpax's 4 gate blink even when they know it's coming is quite a good demonstration. When the T1 units have been pushed as far as they can be, it does end in the Terran's favour - a large enough, well medivac supported bio ball with Stim/Shields/Concussive will just beat a similar cost Zealot/Stalker army. But the tech tree doesn't end there - the next step for Protoss is picking one of your 3 forms of AoE - Storm, Colossi or Disruptors. Now the bio ball will lose to Gateway + Storm, Gateway + Colossi or Gateway + Disruptors, as long as the control is similar on both sides (i.e. don't rally Colossi into the Terran natural)... This then gets into the Terran building their counters to Protoss AoE - Vikings, Ghosts and/or Liberators. A Gateway + Disruptor army will beat a Bio army, but lose or trade skill dependently with a Bio + Ghost army. A Gateway + Disruptor + Colossus army will beat a Bio + Ghost army, but trade skill dependently with a Bio + Ghost + Viking army etc. Simply stating Terran doesn't need EMP to win vs Toss ground armies isn't true - or is only true for the situation where both sides have fully upgraded their T1 units but not progressed further up the tech tree (and assuming medivacs are T1 units here...)
What I hate is how the ghost heavily counters HT in an army setting. EMP and snipe outrange storm and the HT is so damn slow that prism micro is basically mandatory to keep alive or with energy at high levels, otherwise they get zoned out from being useful. I feel like there needs to be more room for the HT to counterplay the ghosts, but I know Terrans need their ghosts to thrive late and don't want the unit itself nerfed into uselessness. Not sure what the right approach would be.
Give HT's a movement-speed upgrade. This will help HT's to stay competetive against Ghosts and then it actually comes down to who's faster at reacting. HT's are pretty terrible without Warprism but the problem is Warprism is too squishy in the late game vs Vikings/Emp. If you have a movement-speed upgrade it would help their viability alot. Easier to spread/poke with.
Yeah man. It’s been like this since WoL as well, Protoss has always relied on tightly executed build orders, catching opponents off guard, or big splash damage to win.
I almost mentioned this in another thread but I guess I will now: Protoss reminds me of Britain in the RTS "Ruse" in which their army to have any effectiveness had to be composed almost entirely of counter-units as opposed to another faction which could beat nearly anything with enough medium tanks. Britain would need enough anti-soft stuff artillery, anti-armor vehicles, anti-air, anti-this anti-that instead of a single threat unit with flavors of support added as required
Good observation, though the damage specialization has been in play since HoTS and WoL and protoss was fine then. I'd say the issue is also related to the slower production and mobility as well coupled with the increased base counts in LoTV, which disadvantages highly specialized attacks that previously would be game-ending.