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I know a lot of people have gone on rants about issues with Protoss changes in HOTS, and they are all justifiable, and many are quite sound and have been juxtaposed with some cool ideas (and some a bit whacky). But I wanted to have a small rant on the actual logic behind one of the units - the Tempest.
It seems almost everyone has had a reason to not like it, and some people (like myself) are having some trouble trying to add it into a game and make it worth it. Some hate the cost (300/300 to an already gas-heavy Protoss army), the speed/construction time, the DPS... the list goes on.
But I wanted to ask - does it actually feel like a Protoss unit?
Some of the reasoning from Dustin and others at Blizz have been that it's "about putting a timer on your opponent". I have a serious issue with this, not because of the general implication of "putting a timer on your opponent" - Protoss has always been like that. But we've always "put a timer on the opponent" by building up heavy damage tech, and (from a role-playing perspective) being futuristic with the tech we have access to. In Brood War, PvT saw the Protoss take advantage of the powerful ground units coupled with Arbiters which gave us the ability to cloak units, and Recall around abusing the mobility of the Protoss arsenal. In PvZ you saw powerful Reaver launching large-scale attacks with scarabs, Storms blanketing a battlefield doing all sorts of crazy damage. Now in SC2 WoL you have the "late game deathball" style play, where a Mothership, Colossus, Archons and storms are out in force; putting a timer on our opponents by saying "you've got about 25 minutes, then I'm going to crush you with my "futuristic" army that does loads of damage, because of the time and resource investment I put in to get here".
How does the Tempest fit into this? Believe me, I'm all for adding a little crazy spice or diversity into the mix to make things different - but essentially this unit just says "as long as you don't use one of those anti-air units, I'm going to sit here tickling you and eventually you're going to have less units and I might be able to come attack you." In my eyes, this is not how the Protoss army functions.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cZXKd.png) I’ll kill you Mr Turret! Eventually……………… Then you’re in trouble Terran guy!
We do not sit back and idle while a couple of Flying Siege tanks sit by poking at our opponent, hoping that he'll come out to play and hopefully fall into a trap.
We do not sit back and hope that the Flying Siege tanks will slowly chip away at our opponents army and "whittle them into submission" or anything akin to that.
Terran does that.
We defend, maybe poke a little with some stalkers/immortals/dts/etc and do some damage, while waiting for that big "you're gonna die" army to come up to full force, then proceed to (I'll admit) 1a across the map. Yes that's right, Protoss does kind of 1a once the big ball is up.
I really, really think this unit should be reconsidered on a large scale. Heck, bring back that original design for it from way back in (I think WoL beta?) where it was like a mini-carrier thing. Maybe try out the "reverse void ray" idea that someone posted for it on Reddit. Or better yet; make a tweak or two (it'd be nice to say it was changed at least once before it got thrown in the trash) to Carriers, so that this iconic unit can be brought back and actually have a place. Why would you bring the Carrier back? Because it fits into that late-game army, of futuristic, powerful units that Protoss has to quash our opponents - it isn't some washed up ex-anti-muta, flying siege tank.
Is it just me?
GG
 
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I think the "siege" mentality fits just fine with Protoss (which is what you're describing here) - and further, I think decisions to siege vs. directly invade add greater strategic depth to games between two sets of armies. I do agree, though, that the Tempest in its current form is not a useful tool to add to the protoss arsenal. I wouldn't feel the same way, though, if they greatly buffed the damage, if they added splash, or something to that affect. I'm not sure that would be balanced (or that adding splash would be altogether different than the Colossus, which everyone hates enough already) - but I wouldn't hate it like I hate the current Tempest. I don't think there's anything from the lore saying Protoss is designed for a-moving either, though.
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I like the way the Tempest forces both players to build air units and duke it out in the corner of the maps.
I like the way Protoss has 1 interesting unit now.
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You could say that the Protoss are a religious race and can be compared to the Christians and their crusades, I imagine during those times, catapults and stuff like that were used to attack castles, so a seige unit might actually fit into how the Protoss fight. Oh and btw, saying declarive statements that are true about your own style might not necessarily be true to someone else's style who likes to turtle or likes to harass, so don't try to push one type of style unto other people. To each his own.
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On September 14 2012 00:20 ArcticRaven wrote:
I like the way the Tempest forces both players to build air units and duke it out in the corner of the maps.
I like the way Protoss has 1 interesting unit now.
Do you like it because we are 700-shotting your buildings, you can run our whole base over with maxxed roach armies? Well, do ya mr. zerg icon? /trollface 
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That doesn't look like range 20 in the picture, did they change it?
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On September 14 2012 01:07 Recognizable wrote:
That doesn't look like range 20 in the picture, did they change it?
he couldn't have vision of it with an observer because of the turret I think
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Canada13407 Posts
On September 14 2012 01:20 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2012 01:07 Recognizable wrote:
That doesn't look like range 20 in the picture, did they change it? he couldn't have vision of it with an observer because of the turret I think
Yeah it looks like he had JUST cast preordain on it or whatever it is called to allow vision from the turret.
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Dustin Browder doesn't have the correct mindset to create well designed Starcraft units, and SC2 will suffer from his bad decisions.
Just look at how awesome and successful BW is/was without any overly fancy gimmicky unit, unlike SC2.
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On September 14 2012 01:20 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2012 01:07 Recognizable wrote:
That doesn't look like range 20 in the picture, did they change it? he couldn't have vision of it with an observer because of the turret I think
Technically speaking, the tempest in pic didn't have the upgraded range yet; but he was preordaining and using it to attack from further out
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EPT
