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NOTE! When I use the words 'imbalanced' or 'overpowered' in this blog, I am using it to refer to the public's opinion, not what I believe to be fact. So when I say "PvZ is imbalanced", I mean "the public opinion is that PvZ is imbalanced."
This is my very first blog on TL. I just wanted to pose a question to the TL public that's been bothering me quite a bit recently, and I thought a blog would be a good place to do it.
There will, obviously, be balance discussion in this blog and the replies to it. I only ask you to please try and keep it civil.
My thoughts are in the spoiler tags. However if you want a TL:DR,
Why has Protoss suddenly become so grossly overpowered vZ, when they've had few buffs and even an entire strategy (VR/Colossi deathball) nerfed?
+ Show Spoiler +The overwhelming opinion of PvZ at the moment is that Protoss is overpowered. One just has to look ... well, anywhere really to find countless people vehemently declaring the matchup completely broken.
My question is why? What has caused this imbalance? I know the reasons Zerg players give, that Colossi are OP, force fields are too effective, zerg is too weak early game etc etc, but why has the shouting of "Protoss OP!" reached such a crescendo lately?
If we look at the last two patches and their changes to Zerg and Protoss, we see:
Patch 1.2
Protoss:
Hallucination research time decreased from 110 to 80.
Observer cost decreased from 50/100 to 25/75.
Phoenix build time decreased from 45 to 35.
Void Ray now deals 20% more damage to massive targets.
Flux Vanes speed upgrade removed.
Some fairly strong buffs there. However I have not heard any complaints, at all, that protoss scouting is too good.
The void ray got a decent buff against ultralisks and broodlords. The pheonix got a pretty massive buff, and with it we've seen a big rise in early pheonix/void ray play.
There were no changes to Zerg in 1.2. It was after patch 1.2 that the Void Ray/Colossi deathball became a hot topic. General consensus among Zerg players was that it was overpowered, and something needed to be buffed/nerfed desperately.
Let's look at patch 1.3
Protoss:
Archon toilet was removed. A nerf, but not one that really had any great effect on the matchup.
Warp-in storms were removed.
Charging zealots now hit their target at least once. As far as I am aware, this really had no effect on PvZ.
Zerg:
Fungal growth duration halved (From 8 seconds to 4 seconds)
DPS of Fungal doubled to compensate for the reduced duration
+30% damage to armoured.
With this change, at least from what I've seen/heard, the Colossi/Voidray deathball fell out of favour - fungal was just too good against it. In an interview, the zerg player IdrA even said that protosses are favouring more gateway centric armies in a response to the fungal buff.
So doesn't that just leave the pheonix as a unit that got buffed without a counter-buff to Zerg? And yet I see and hear no-one saying that the pheonix is the unit making Protoss overpowered.
I should mention the new maps here as well. Are they contributing to the PvZ imbalance? As far as I am aware, Shattered Temple is considered good for Z, are the other three additions P favoured?
From what I've seen, (and I stress that this is just my opinion) there are really only two things people believe are breaking PvZ.
The first are Colossi. The second are force fields.
And since neither of those things have gotten any kind of buff recently, why has protoss suddenly become so imbalanced? The way the community is reacting to PvZ at the moment is insane.
I guess I kinda rambled a bit there, haha. I apologise if my thoughts were hard to follow!
Whether they were or not, please, respond with your own! If you thought PvZ was always imbalanced, why has there been such an explosion in "Protoss OP!" opinions recently?
If you think they only recently became OP, why do you think that is?
And if you DON'T think they're OP at all, why do you think people believe they are?
I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys think about the whole thing. Because I have absolutely no idea.
  
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Netherlands236 Posts
the main reason is because when you make 2 stargates when you have forge FE'd, he needs to go hydras because you can pump a rediculous amount of phoenixes in no time. When you are getting hydras, the toss is alrdy getting his robo facility down and pumping colossus and void rays. This makes it rly hard to survive the initial pushes without any severe losses.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
Has to do with maps, larger maps encourage Protoss to Macro, and there is no way to stop it as Zerg has little to no aggression save from huge investements(such as drop play). Mutalisks aggresive gets shut down by phoenixes ezmode. Because Protoss is able to Macro up to a certain point their deathball becomes unstoppable.
It has more to do with maps in my opinion then patch changes, that is not to say that maps should revert or whatever, but it is a possible explanation.
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It's just the fact that the Protoss ball is so hard to beat head on. It's so easy to win a PvZ if you just go for the deathball mix and a-move. There is no counter to colossus, which is kind of a big deal (and no, corruptors aren't a counter to colossus).
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Ahhhhhh I forgot about the maps! Thanks for bringing that up Kipsate. I will add that to the OP, to make sure nobody misses it.
And disco, why do you think people are so vocal about it now? Considering that Colossi haven't been buffed or anything.
Falcon, thank you for your input. That's one of the kinds of things I want to see - builds or tactics that have been influenced by the latest patches or metagame shifts
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On April 13 2011 18:38 Sarang wrote:
[...]
And disco, why do you think people are so vocal about it now? Considering that Colossi haven't been buffed or anything.
Probably because protosses only recently started macroing more (and figuring out unit mixes). It's the reason why I (as a Zerg) started to play more agressive instead of trying to outmacro the P.
It could ofcourse be that zergs are not doing it right. For instance dealing with the Stalker + 3 to 4 colossus mix. Pure hydra/ling would take care of the stalkers no problem but they would get demolished by the colossus. So people decide to put some roaches in there to take some damage and use corruptors to kill the colossus. The problem is that even if your corruptors manage to take out the colossus in time (before they've already done significant damage) you will have still wasted tons of resources (and food) on now useless corruptors.
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Possibly silly question, but why do zerg players try to fight 200/200 with protoss armies? surely since the dawn of starcraft, protoss has been expensive strong units while zerg has been cheaper massable units?
I very rarely see zerg players load up 50 supply and nydus into the protoss main then remax quickly. Even if lost completely, wouldn't that 50 supply of units be better spent killing a few gateways, pylons and possibly tech structures, than lost for the price of a few collosus and stalkers?
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On April 13 2011 18:35 disco wrote:
(and no, corruptors aren't a counter to colossus).
Thats ridiculous, since when can colossi attack air units? therefore corrupter's are a counter. Anyway... in PvZ, most zerg are contempt with letting the protoss get 3-4 base nowa-days, which is kinda bad. This allows the protoss' macro to be very good and achieve the goal of 200/200. If a zerg puts pressure on and stops the toss getting maxed out he will most likely win.. but then it will come down to toss' forcefields and if he can micro effectively. In my opinion Protoss is not over powered and i play Zerg, people just QQ because they don't realize how important it is to deny the toss' expansions and stop him getting maxed out.
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Idra had 20 corruptors against void ray + colossus and got wrecked in the TSL. They arent a terribly efficient unit unfortunately.
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Thats ridiculous, since when can colossi attack air units? therefore corrupter's are a counter. Anyway... in PvZ, most zerg are contempt with letting the protoss get 3-4 base nowa-days, which is kinda bad. This allows the protoss' macro to be very good and achieve the goal of 200/200. If a zerg puts pressure on and stops the toss getting maxed out he will most likely win.. but then it will come down to toss' forcefields and if he can micro effectively. In my opinion Protoss is not over powered and i play Zerg, people just QQ because they don't realize how important it is to deny the toss' expansions and stop him getting maxed out.
I completely agree, I don't get why this blog was made. A lot of people whine about Protoss being overpowered. And they have for quite awhile.
I guess to some degree I do understand though, one could argue that the deathball is harder to prevent from ever happening than it is to make it.
But then again there's a lot of easy to execute strats which you need to take time to figure out how to deal with them.
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On April 13 2011 19:30 Linkirvana wrote:Show nested quote +Thats ridiculous, since when can colossi attack air units? therefore corrupter's are a counter. Anyway... in PvZ, most zerg are contempt with letting the protoss get 3-4 base nowa-days, which is kinda bad. This allows the protoss' macro to be very good and achieve the goal of 200/200. If a zerg puts pressure on and stops the toss getting maxed out he will most likely win.. but then it will come down to toss' forcefields and if he can micro effectively. In my opinion Protoss is not over powered and i play Zerg, people just QQ because they don't realize how important it is to deny the toss' expansions and stop him getting maxed out. I completely agree, I don't get why this blog was made. A lot of people whine about Protoss being overpowered. And they have for quite awhile. I guess to some degree I do understand though, one could argue that the deathball is harder to prevent from ever happening than it is to make it. But then again there's a lot of easy to execute strats which you need to take time to figure out how to deal with them.
No they haven't. Terran was always the main target for complaints. Protoss was rarely complained about, and before patch 1.2 Protoss was considered underpowered even. After Patch 1.2, Zergs started acting as if protoss were too powerful (the voidray buff was a bit too much but nvm), and Terran players just joined in because they wanted to attack protoss as payback for all the Protoss QQ about Terran. Now with Patch 1.4 all of a sudden Zerg QQ increased at a rate of x^4, with the amulet nerf, saying protoss needed more nerfs....
Protoss is difficult to play against as Zerg in early-midgame, but late game it becomes easy. Masses of Ultralisk, lings, and banelings annihilate ground no question. The problem I have is with the voidrays. I think this is really the main problem with most players. A lot of them think it is the collosus, but if it really was, then mass mutalisk would pwn (mutalisks do destroy stalkers at equal upgrades so those are not a problem). Mass corruptor would also be another solution, but voidrays do too well vs those. Also in PvP mass voidray is a massive problem. People say it is collosi, but reall once the enemy has 15 voidrays, gl with your stalkers LOLOLOLOL. A bit off topic but really voidrays are the problem in this case.
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On April 13 2011 19:30 Linkirvana wrote:Show nested quote +Thats ridiculous, since when can colossi attack air units? therefore corrupter's are a counter. Anyway... in PvZ, most zerg are contempt with letting the protoss get 3-4 base nowa-days, which is kinda bad. This allows the protoss' macro to be very good and achieve the goal of 200/200. If a zerg puts pressure on and stops the toss getting maxed out he will most likely win.. but then it will come down to toss' forcefields and if he can micro effectively. In my opinion Protoss is not over powered and i play Zerg, people just QQ because they don't realize how important it is to deny the toss' expansions and stop him getting maxed out. I completely agree, I don't get why this blog was made. A lot of people whine about Protoss being overpowered. And they have for quite awhile.
Eh, you can't really deny that the 'whine' has increased dramatically lately though, can you? That's why I made this blog, I want to know what has happened to the metagame to fuel the storm of "Protoss is OP!"
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Lalush made a really cetailed post about it a while back, called "on macro mechanics" or something
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Eh, you can't really deny that the 'whine' has increased dramatically lately though, can you? That's why I made this blog, I want to know what has happened to the metagame to fuel the storm of "Protoss is OP!"
Actually I haven't, people have been whining for quite awhile now about it like I said, ever since I've been active on these forums (Like, since november or so) I've just seen the occasional Protoss OP stuff.
The deathball has been around ever since then as well atleast, if anything the whining should be less since Zergs have kind of figured out how to deal with it.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
I don't think zvp is imbalanced anymore. I don't know about other players, but I been completely dominating zvp after the infestor buff. Even vs colossus, I just mass roach infestor and not bother with corrupters. I think zerg players just have to learn how to use the new infestor properly. Although, I believe that part of the reason that I'm winning in zvp is because protoss players still think they could autowin with forcefields and colossus. I'm in Grandmaster so I think my opinions are relevant in high level NA starcraft.
zvp is only imbalanced on certain maps nowadays. One such imbalanced map is Typhoon peaks. There's so much small chokes on that map that it's impossible to engage a protoss ball properly.
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I think ultras need to be buffed (..or maybe people just need to use them more) to be actually effective against toss (not not too effective against Terran D so their forcefield crushing ability stops making roach/hydra useless. Because good forcefields just nullify roach hydra.
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Once toss gets a deathball, zerg just has to overkill on corrupters. 2 corrupters for every voidray is about right, then throw that at the toss, and remax on hydras.
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I don't think my skill play is high enough to judge the balance of the game but something has bothered me for quiet some time now about Protoss and this thread opens the chance for me to express my thoughts.
I will state something below and id like to see some opinions on it , in the opposite i hope i am seeing this wrong from my eyes.
"High Templar , sentry , colossus have something in common and that's that they can make the opponent dance his way and its up to the opponent to dance or if he doesn't he dies by forcefields ,storms or colossus hits."
My view is that Protoss has the slight upper hand on that matter and its up to the opponent to do some insane micro.
Anyway that's my point of view and just enlighten me if i am viewing it wrong rather than flame me.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
On April 13 2011 21:47 Knap4life wrote:
I don't think my skill play is high enough to judge the balance of the game but something has bothered me for quiet some time now about Protoss and this thread opens the chance for me to express my thoughts.
I will state something below and id like to see some opinions on it , in the opposite i hope i am seeing this wrong from my eyes.
"High Templar , sentry , colossus have something in common and that's that they can make the opponent dance his way and its up to the opponent to dance or if he doesn't he dies by forcefields ,storms or colossus hits."
My view is that Protoss has the slight upper hand on that matter and its up to the opponent to do some insane micro.
Anyway that's my point of view and just enlighten me if i am viewing it wrong rather than flame me.
Only HTs are efficiently countrable with micro, there is no way you can micro yourself out of forcefields, they are already in place.
Forcefield is onesided micro, sure you can try and outmanaveur and engage the Protoss in open ground as opposed to a choke, but a Protoss can create chokes with forcefield. There is no way to insanely micro yourself out of forcefields(not efficiently anyway). While creating forcefields requires micro on the Protoss his part, a zerg has no way of efficiently nullying these things as they are unbreakable by anything bar ultralisks, which come out at a way too late of a stage.
It is one of the flaws of SC2(in my opinion)
That being said however force field is a neccesary mechanic to the Protoss for early to midgame and can not be changed that easily, it is also an interesting spell, so changing it would be incredibly hard.
All in all, balance discussion is not where something constructive will come out really, you can complain all you want, but nothing is going to change.
Be the change you want to see in Starcraft 2.
I'd say Gandhi said that but he didn't play SC2 :>.
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EPT
