EPTBy that I mean the race, not the players, there are many talented T players out there. Maru, Polt, Taeja, Innovation, Bbyong, Flash, MMA, Jjakji to name but a few.
The issue from my eyes is that Terran is way too limited in what it can do in comparison to the other two races and even then Bio is better than Mech, especially in TvP. Bio is stupidly strong for what are essentially low tier units while the high tier units are pretty poor. Given that I am a Protoss most of you are probably just going to shit on me or call me biased, that is not my aim, I just want to give my thoughts on the most controversial of match-ups from the side that everyone hates in it while attempting to remain impartial, while pointing out some key flaws I feel Terran has as a race.
TvP is fairly standardised in how it plays out, each side has an optimal army that dukes it out with the same upgrades pretty much every game and here's how the upgrades play out in terms of cost + time taken to research across the span of the game as a whole.
100/100 - 110 - Combat Shields
100/100 - 170 - Stimpack
50/50 - 60 - Concussive Shells
775/775 - 570 - Engineering Bay Upgrades
OPTIONAL (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) 100/100 - 80 - Caduceus Reactor
OVERALL: 1550/1550 - 1140 or 1650/1650 - 1220 with Caduceus Reactor
50/50 - 160 - Warpgate
350/350 - 570 - Forge Upgrades
200/200 - 110 - Storm
200/200 - 140 - Collossus Range
150/150 - 170 - Blink
200/200 - 140 - Charge
OVERALL: 1150/1150 - 1290 - Without Chronoboost. With Chrono, time will vary wildly depending on what Chrono is spent on.
P upgrades MAY be slightly cheaper but T army is a lot cheaper and their key upgrades are available much earlier than the key P upgrades.
For Stim/ComShi/ConShell T needs tech labs. So that's three key upgrades available very early on. Also, the bulk of their army comes from Barracks, whereas Protoss need to invest into Robotics Facility/Bay + Twilight Council/Templar Archives.
Barracks: 150/0 - 65 second production time
Marines - 50/0/1 - 25 second production time
Marauders - 100/25/2 - 30 second production time - Requires Tech Lab
Tech Lab - 50/25 - 25 second production time
Reactor - 50/50 - 50 second production
Now lets look at Protoss early production units.
Gateway: 150/0 - 65
Zealot - 100/0/2 - 38 second production time before warp gate
Stalker - 125/50/2 - 42 second production time before warp gate - Requires Cyber Core
Sentry - 50/100/2 - 37 second production time before warp gate - Requires Cyber Core
MSC - 100/100/2 - 30 second production time - Requires Cyber Core
Cyber Core: 150/0 - 50.
From there, T has an incredibly linear teching path. Build a Factory then a Starport and then as the game gets later a Ghost Academy.
For P things aren't as linear and we have to invest in a ton of buildings in order to get our desired tech.
Charge/Blink - Twilight Council, also needed for +2 and +3 upgrades.
Collossus - Robo Fac + Robo Bay, so that's 200/100 + 65 secs for the Robo Facility and 200/200 + 65 seconds for the Robo Bay for a 300/200 cost unit that takes up 6 supply and takes 75 seconds to build
Storm - Twilight Council --> Templar Archives --> Psionic Storm research.
So while a Terran is building up their production, a Protoss is making sure they have all their tech + amassing the army they need to defend/engage with the Terran one. In fact, let's get the total cost of each race's production facilities to see who outlays the most.
Terran (N to be replaced by total number built incase you're not mathematically minded)
Barracks: (150/0 - (65)) x n
Tech Lab: (50/25 - (25)) x n
Reactor: (50/50 - (50)) x n
Factory: (100/100 - (60)) x n
Starport: (150/100 - (50)) x n
E Bay: (125/0 - (35)) x 2
Ghost Academy: (150/50 - (40))
TOTAL: 775/325 - 335
Keep in mind that Tech Labs/Reactors can be switched around depending on what T wishes to produce
Protoss
Gateway: (150/0 - (65)) x n
Cyber Core: (150/0 - (50))
Forge: (150/0 - (45)) x 2
Twilight Council: (150/100 - (50))
Robotics Facility: (200/100 - (65)) x n
Robotics Bay: (200/200 - (65))
Templar Archives: (150/200 - (50))
TOTAL: 1150/600 - 760
That is the base values of each of the two races production. Terran's path to the optimal army, is cheaper than Protoss' as well as quicker. Terran statistically has a pretty large advantage going into midgame because of the sheer amount of resource cost Protoss has to outlay to tech AND produce units. Terran just needs to turn to midgame advantage in it's favour to win by crippling the Protoss economy/tech.
Now onto harrassment potential from both sides.
Terran - Drops
Protoss - Warp Prism
How to stop a Warp Prism? Turrets + some bio units
How to stop a Medivac drop? Scout it, make sure units are in position
Terran drops are the bane of a Protoss, Photon Overcharge pretty much illeviates the manouvrebility of the Terran drop force compared to the Protoss army. If a Terran drops 2 medivacs of Bio into a Protoss base and stims, things will die. Pylons, important tech, probes. Terran has the ability to snipe stuff, if the Protoss activates Photon Overcharge? Pick up and move to another base. Outside of Blink Protoss has little to deal with multi-pronged drops, we can't split our forces up or the stimmed bio army will just tear it apart.
I won't deny that Protoss has the advantage going into late game if they hold off/don't get harrassed in the mid-game, but again, that isn't the fault of the Protoss, we have weaker early game tech and need to stay economically stable to get out our deathball while Terran just has no lategame tech options outside of ghosts but that's the whole point of harrassing the Protoss in the mid-game, you outright lose if you don't, is that fair? No, no it is not.
In regards to openers, yes Protoss have more options and yes it can be hard to guess whether the Twilight means Blink or DT but guess what? Protoss have the same problem when they can't get into the Terran base, how do we know you're going to play greedy or whether we're going to find a large substantial bio force on our front door, how do we know how many barracks you have or whether you have a factory ready to drop mines into our mineral lines? Until we get a robo we have no idea what you're doing in your main. So while Protoss can play greedy, we can't be overly greedy or we will die.
That aside, onto some of the more major gripes I've seen from Terrans concerning facing Protoss and some of the things people have said could help fix the issues.
Now I've seen a few people suggest that MSC abilities should be researched at the Cyber Core, given how much a Protoss has to tech to begin with, this really doesn't feel viable to me at all, we still have to be able to build units, adding extra tech so we can survive stim pushes early on from T? How are we supposed to build units to survive a push from Terran while researching PO? We can't have both PO and WG researching at the same time. Without Warp Gate our slower unit production times will basically eventually mean we will get overwhelmed by the Terran force, it'll also cause issues with very quick pushes from Zerg because again, P has very slow unit production times from gateways.
This isn't to say I feel the MSC is perfectly fine in it's current capacity because I honestly feel it isn't, even in PvP it's flawed and that is down to the spells but having to research them is not the solution. I feel Time Warp/Recall (not Photon Overcharge) should be locked until a certain tech structure is built, which tech structure, is a whole different question. Perhaps Recall/Time Warp should be research locked (and even then, locked until the correct tech structure has been produced) and Photon Overcharge to remain there from the get-go. You lock Photon Overcharge then quick Stim pushes will just kill a Protoss outright and I don't even think I need to mention how horrible PvP will be.
Then there's the one thing that gets spewed out a lot concerning Protoss. Protoss is the a-move race, this is incredibly wrong and narrow-minded of anyone to think that. In order to accurately engage a Terran (and Zerg) army, micro is needed, it may not be as flashy as the Terran stutterstep but it's still a neccessity to get right or the army dies. A misplaced forcefield could screw up a simple engagement, leading to Protoss units getting stuck. Whiff a storm? That's your gateway army snuffed out by the Stimmed Terran army, don't pull your MSC from an engagement, good bye recall and time warp and a dead army. Then there's unit positioning, Zealots get stuck behind Stalkers? Dead. Move your collossus wrong? Going to get sniped and that's 300/200 down the drain.
Next up, the Oracle, one thing I fully agree with Terrans on being stupidly overpowered in regards to speed. I don't even know why Blizzard buffed it to begin with. That needs changing, I can't deny that.
Photon Overcharge, yes I'm giving it it's very own paragraph, this is the most hotly debated thing in PvT ever. Does it need removing? No, it doesn't. Photon Overcharge is what gives Protoss the ability to actually get out of the early game, especially in PvT. As I've stated previously, Terran have a strong early game, marines and marauders get upgrades rather quickly and can outmicro Zealots/Stalkers incredibly easily early on, they're also cheaper than the Protoss units and they build quicker. Photon Overcharge helps defend against that kind of push, does it need reworking? Perhaps.
So while Protoss does have certain aspects that Blizzard need to look into some more, I feel most of the main issues stem from Terran itself. I'll just bullet point a few I feel as a spectator could help:
1) More scouting, outside of scan, T really has nothing in that regard, especially compared to Protoss.
2) More options in terms of compositions/units. Terran is one of the most predictable races out there, that's probably the most major flaw with the race as a whole, you can pretty much predict what they're going to do.
3) Improve late game possibilities, Thors/Battlecruisers aren't very useful for their cost and Bio is incredibly squishy due it being early game tech so if the Terran doesn't play perfectly they're more than likely screwed.
As a small end disclaimer I am just going to throw out there that my numbers may be a little off, maths is not my strong point, hence the very simple calculations overall. If someone is more interested in crunching numbers then by all means do so that and I don't know the optimal amount of structures for a standard T build.
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