EPTCurrently, a lot of people complain about the collosus being to strong in the deathball, and other people complain about complaining people complaining about the problem, finding new strategies.
I think it's just a design issue, which I'll give a great alternative for. I hope you enjoy yourself!
The Problem:
In my opinion, the problem with Collosi being to strong, lies in the collosus having to compensate the gateway units' weakness. Those units are weak because of Warp Gate being so strong. So to 'fix' the collosus without harming Protoss, he have to make Gateway units stronger. Making them stronger is impossible without nerfing Warpgate, so:
To nerf collosi is by buffing Gateway Units is by nerfing Warpgate.
The fix in a nutshell:
The idea I had was to make a proxy pylon less easy to pull of, so I thought about restirictions, and I found one.
What would happen if you could only warp from a certain distance away from the Cybernetics Core? That means, some radius (like the Sensor Towers) gets shown on your map, not the opponents. You can only warp in on Pylons within this radius. This means that to go for some early agression, you need to place a Cybercore reasonably close to the opposing base. This doesn't count for the Warp Prism. Warp Prisms may be allowed to warp in anywhere.
What this does, is bringing back the defenders advantage, or at least making a Warpgate attack a real commitment. Instead of 100m for a Pylon, it'll now be 250m and a lot of time invested, seriously delaying the Warpgate rushes, or making them more obvious and scoutable because of 2nd Pylon and Cybercore being proxied.
Once the Twilight Council is completed, you can research 'Free Warpgate', something like 50/50/80, which enables free Warp-ins out of Cybercore range.
Now, as for Gateway Unit Buffs (I'm no authority on this!!);
- Zealots are hard to take care of, because increasing their attack damage makes them very strong verse Lings. A buff in shields of ±20 might do the trick.
- Sentry can get away with +1 or even +2 in their attack, a buff in Health would be unfeasable because they have to be weak to snipes, still.
- Stalker should get some extra damage in, either with +1 on it's attack and another +1 vs. Armored, or with something I have been liking really myself: One of the 2 lazers fired by the Stalker becomes piercing, so it does 14 damage to the first target, and 7 to the target after that. The 3rd won't be damaged.
- High Templar should get back the amulet, with a certain change to unable Instant Storm.
- Dark Templar are completely different, as they are no Army-to-Army units by design.
- Archons should get 1/2 Shield armour unupgraded, I think it's just silly something existing of pure shields and only useful for absorbing hits doesn't have armour.
I will not go in depth about Collosus changes, but with these changes put in, Collosi can maybe go like -3 attack.
Expected future with these changes:
What will happen when these changes get put into the game:
- Templar Tech becomes more viable as it comes with the ability to freely warp in everywhere.
- Warp Prisms see the light of day more often (if you go Robo, you can't research free Warpgates), and maybe this produces a dance of sniping the Warp Prism with Marines when playing with Terran. Lategame with Vikings it won't matter, you'll go TC for +2 upgrades anyways.
- Stargate Play might see a slight reduce in prefered use, but on the other hand, a forward Cybercore gives you another upgrade structure which you might as well use?
In short:
Warpgate Research from Cybernetics Core gets restiricted to a certain area only. Twiligh Council Research enables warp in everywhere. Warp in from Warp Prisms is excluded from this. This is to delay and make a commitment of warpgate rushes. It also makes those more easilly scoutable. As a result of this, GW units can be strenghtened and Collosi can be nerfed.
Please let met know your opinion on this. Preferable in PM.
Kind regards,
Toastie
EDIT1: Whenever you lose your Cybernetics Core, Warp in can still be done from every pylon within X (I think something like 8) range away from your Nexus, because of Cybercore Snipes, Baneling Busts, or the Cybercore losing power.
