EPT
Zealot: Still the staple ground unit for the Protoss army. I must say that they have a pretty ridiculous stance. Zealots now have one solid hit, as opposed to the quick double hit from SC1. Leg upgrade from SC1 is no replaced with Charge. With Charge upgrade, Zeals feel slightly faster in mobility (than without the upgrade), but not as fast as Zeals from SC1. The obvious bonus is that zeals now dash into combat when they engage enemy units. Not much has changed here though.
Stalkers:
The new dragoons for SC2, they even share the same dragoon death sound, sans the blue soup that we will all miss. No range upgrade present anymore, but instead they are given Blink. With Blink, stalkers are able to teleport a short distance away, granted that you have sight of the area (another words, you can blink to anywhere where there is no fog of war). I have great hopes for this unit and its ability. While pathing in SC2 has greatly improved, stalkers are still bulky units. However with Blink, they can teleport up to high ground to do a few raids, then run away. Observers with stalkers are a must. Stalkers have a Blink radius that is slightly larger than its line of sight, so take advantage of this with an observer. Not to mention blinking onto a cliff is not possible without an observer or a prior unit/building already up there.
An in-game experience I want to mention: against another TL.netter team I was playing, the other Protoss FE’ed. The natural was located on high ground right next to the choke, accessible by ramp. The Protoss FE’ed and cannoned on the high ground, making it suicidal to approach his base via choke. So I opt to build stalkers and an observer asap and managed to Blink up next to his expansion nexus, take it out, and blink out before his horde of slow zealots could take out the stalkers. Blink enables Protoss to conduct successful attacks on greedy FE players that build defense at a small choke only.
Stasis Orb: Not much to say about this unit, comes from Gateway and requires Cyber Core to build. It’s a flying unit that slows a single unit’s attack and movement speed. They are probably most ideal to slow units such at tanks or colossi that have high damage output with high cooldown between attacks.
Immortals: Protoss’s new anti-heavy artillery unit. I only built this unit twice and didn’t have much unit interaction with it. In the big screen SC2 demo that played continuously at BlizzCon, 4 Immortals took shells for 3 Siege tanks and all of the Immortals were still green by the end of the battle. It is still difficult to discern how much damage is required to activate the Hardened Shields. The obvious big units like Tanks and Colossi can be countered by Immortals though. In the same demo, 15 Reapers were able to down those 4 Immortals with minimal losses for the Terran. Immortals require the Twilight Council to be able to be produced from the Gateway. If these units were in SC1, they would definitely lead the charge for Protoss against a Terran siege, they are able to shrug off tank shells like nothing.
High Templars: Ahh, the elite Templars are back. Like the Zealots, I feel not much has changed for them. Again, they are built from Gateways and require the Templar Archives. HTs retain their Psionic Storm albeit with what seems to be a much smaller Area of Effect. Like WC3, AoE spells now appear as a circle so you know exactly what area will be stormed.
Playing testing the HTs really made me realize how much of an improvement Blizzard has done in coding SC2. Units are so very fluid. Both having used storm and have storm used against me at BlizzCon, units react very fast. If the player is aware and ready, it’s rather easy to dodge storms because of how well the units react. My best experience with HTs is to bring 2-3 HTs along in my army when I attack another player’s base. When Zeals engage in battle, I run the HTs around to the other player’s mining area and storm the workers. With a reduced AoE radius and what seems to be faster unit reaction time, storming workers seems to be the most efficient usage of storm at the moment. Granted workers have the same fluid mobility as I said other units have, but at 40 hp, workers definitely can’t stay under storm as long as say a Zealot. The most effective use of HTs at BlizzCon was doing worker raids.
Dark Templars: And what would the Templar caste be without its dark side? DTs make a return and like all the other units, they have a sweet design upgrade. Cloaked units are now clear and see-through. They are very, very transparent, as oppose to DTs in SC1 who were just translucent. Not much else to say here for DTs, they are built from the Gateways but require a different tech building in SC2: the Dark Obelisk. I guess Blizzard wants Protoss players to have to commit to one type of Templar early on before teching to the other.
Twilight Archon: Fuzzballs are back. Twilight archons are the new SC1 archons. Movement is smooth as ever and I believe they still levitate (though I didn’t test it against a Reaper mine). Their attack visual is a range bolt of energy, not as big as the SC1 archon’s shockwave but with longer range. Attack is still does a small area of splash.
The biggest modification done to Archons in SC2 is that they require any two types of templars: HT/HT, HT/DT, DT/DT. This certainly allow for greater flexibility mid-battle, especially with that one odd manaless HT that’s just waiting to be picked off. In a gas-heavy environment, if you plan on teching straight to Archons for whatever reason, it’s probably wise to go the Dark Obelisk route. Not only are DTs 25 gas cheaper than HTs, at least you’ll have an attacking unit around before merging into the Archon. It’s said that Archons have a built in Feedback in their attack; I wasn’t able to test this.
Phase Prism: A shuttle and portable pylon in one! It carries 8 matrices worth of units like SC1 and can be built straight out of the Robo Facility. I imagine these units are key in making Warp Gates effective in battle. Acting as a transport, free pylon for cannons, and warp spawn location for Warp Gates: I imagine it’s hard to find a late game situation where having at least one of these units not beneficial.
Observers: Same as SC1, though their new design reminds me a lot of Sentinels from The Matrix, tendrils and all. Has only one upgrade, sight only, iirc.
Colossus: The largest ground unit for Protoss. Very expensive and takes six psi, I had a hard time finding its niche in the Protoss army. From experience and in the SC2 demo video at BlizzCon, one of these behemoths took down a number of marines, no problem. But in another video demo, they were trounced so easily be zerglings and banelings. Countering one race’s tier 1 unit then being owned by another race’s tier 1 makes it hard to say what the Colossus is good for.
PHOENIX: Jesus Christ… if you somehow haven’t read the blogs of other BlizzCon goers, phoenix are a tier 9 unit, without a doubt. They cost 100 gas, which is pretty damn cheap compared to other flying units and require nothing else except the Stargate. To put things into perspective, Phoenix hit and run better than SC1 Mutalisks, have an attack range on par with SC1 Battlecruisers, and has better damage output than any tier 1 flying unit in SC1. With such stats, it’s no wonder that Liquid`Meat raped the 2v2 Blizzard Summit tourney with Mani. These units have no equal so far in the game.
A number of our 2v2 TL.netter teams revolved around building these POS and we gave a number of serious attempts to find a counter to Phoenix but we couldn’t find any. I found that Archons can stand head-to-head against them but the Phoenix’s mobility advantage is utterly disgusting. A pack of 6 Phoenix was enough to block any attempts to expand by the other team, if they didn’t have one already. 4 Phoenix was enough to take out a probe in one volley, factor in strafing and you’ve crippled another Protoss’s econ 8 minutes into the game.
The build that Hot_Bid and I utilized was Forge first, 2 cannons, Gateway, Core, 2 Stargates. If you don’t anticipate Phoenix coming and don’t have 2 cannons in your mineral line by they fly over, it’s practically GG. Hot_Bid/yubee team abused Phoenix even more by both doing defensive builds by covering their ramp, yubee would attempt to FE while funneling his gas to Hot_Bid to solidify air superiority and map control. Hot_Bid would then deny any expansion attempts by the other team while yubee took another base and continue to build something ridiculous like 30 Vikings. Their one loss came from CharlieMurphy/X_woof_X, who did a strong double 2 Gate rush and incapacitated yubee early on and then played defensively against Hot_Bid.
Phoenix have an ability, Power Overload, that does a small AoE damage to nearby enemy air units. Hot_Bid said the ability was unimpressive but a small fleet of Phoenix all Overloading was enough to take out all the interceptors in an opposing Carrier fleet.
Warp Ray: A new unit, but again, hard to describe their niche. Demo video showed 4 Warp Rays taking down 3 Battlecruisers with the 4 Rays in yellow and red condition at the end of the battle. They seemed to do more damage over time if they focused on just one unit, killing it, then moving to the next.
Carrier: Overall, same as SC1’s carrier. There is very little to say beyond that. Interceptors are somehow smaller in SC2 than SC1, I find that manually focus firing them would be nearly impossible for their size and speed. Good thing there’s hold position.
Mothership: At a whopping 500 gas, Motherships are the most gas-hungry unit at BlizzCon. They are no longer limited at one per game and I had the amusement of massing 6 of these in my first Protoss game. At first glance, there seems to be very little use for something as gas heavy as the mothership, but then again, didn’t everyone used to say that about Arbiters in SC1? The Mothership has 3 abilities: a stationary cloaking field, a large radius force field, and a high damage beam that damages anything right under the mothership. The black hole ability from previous SC2 trailers has definitely been removed.
Buildings
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Manifesto7/Blizzcon/protoss_tech.JPG)
Thanks to Mani for taking the picture and uploading
Nexus: Same as SC1, probes are now hotkeyed as “e” instead of “p”. Etter praises God for this one.
Forge: Same three upgrades, weapons, shields, armor. No changes here
Phase Cannon: Photon cannons with a new mobility upgrade. Phase cannons have the ability to makeshift into a ball of energy and redeploy anywhere there is pylon power, this includes pylon power made by the Phase Prism. They cannot jump between the blue pylon power, the moving Phase Cannon must remain in pylon power.
Gateway: Ground unit production facility, can morph into a Warp Gate for a 5 second duration. While in Warp Gate mode, it can warp spawn any unit to anywhere where pylon power is present. After Warp Gate has been activated and warp deployed, it reverts back into a Gateway and there is a 20 second cooldown before that Gateway can be used again.
Cybernetics Core: Building for Air Weapons and Armor upgrade, as well as place to tech Warp Gate upgrade.
Twilight Council: The new and improved Citadel of Adun. Allows for Charge upgrade for Zealots, Blink upgrade for Stalkers, and Hardened Shields for Immortals.
Templar Archives: Allows for psi storm upgrade and additional mana reserves for HTs.
Dark Obelisk: No upgrades here, purely for opening tech tree.
Robotic Facility: Produces Phase Prism, Observers, and Colossi
Null Circuit: The new and improved Observatory. Allows for increased sight range for Observers and increased speed movement for Phase Prisms
Robotics Support Bay: Allows Colossi to be built at Robo Facility. Not sure of any tech upgrades here.
Stargate: Aerial unit production facility, same as before.
Fleet Beacon: Allows Overload tech for Phoenix and some other things I fail to remember.
Personal Commentary
If there is one aspect of the game Blizzard improved the most on from SC1 to SC2, it would most definitely be pathing and unit control. Remember how in VODs, we could see Korean progamers do crazy dances with their scouting probe? Yeah, you can do that with just about any ground you in SC2 now. Units respond to every click and order impeccably. I feel virtually no lag response each time I tell a Zealot to move from point A to point B or to take a turn whenever, wherever. Units not only move and react promptly they also succumb a lot less to bad AI pathing. Out of 25+ games, only once was there a pathing issue: that was when I place a phase cannon next to the wall and there was a small crevice where units could fit into but not pass through. A number of queued High Templars got stuck in there while Zealots were smart enough to walk around. I ended up killing the cannon and rebuilding it a matrix down and pathing solved.
I anticipate SC2 to retain the high micro feeling from SC1. The SC2 engine now utilizes the alt HP bar that is implemented in WC3. I found it very beneficial to find which enemy Zealot to blink towards and focus fire with my Stalkers. I definitely don’t find the alt key to be dumbing down any aspect of the game. If anything, it allows for greater combat precision.
Hotkeys have been updated as well. You can still bind to keys 1 to 0, a limit of 24 units per hotkey.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/Blizzcon/maxout.jpg)
Thanks Hot_Bid for the screenshot
However, there seem to be an additional 5 tabs within the same hotkey where you can bind additional units beyond the first 24, to the same hotkey. I am definitely not a fan of that. 24 units per hotkey are definitely more than enough.
The main thing I would like to see changed is the macro aspect of the game. I echo the opinion of all the other BlizzCon goers: Macro is far too easy at this stage of the game. The ability to bind 20 gates under one hotkey and mass produce at a press of a key is just unnatural. My suggestion to restore some of the old macro sense from SC1 is to allow buildings to bind together simply for rallying purposes, but not for production. I find it ok to select all your gateways and have them all arrive at one key location or to have newly produced probes to all go your new expansion to mine. But macro does not feel like macro without 5z6z7z8s9s0s. Keep the mass hotkey rally, remove the mass hotkey production and I think some aspects of macro are restored.
Lastly, I want to share why I wholeheartedly believe Blizzard is looking out for their gamers and doing what is best for us. I am colorblind red/green. On jungle terrain maps, it is somewhat demanding for me to stare at the minimap since I can’t just glance at it. I literally have to focus on the minimap with the green background on. As a result, I have been accustomed to turning the minimap to black background since vanilla StarCraft. When playing SC2, I tried to shift+tab, it did nothing. Not deterred, I just moved over and manually clicked to change the minimap background to black. About 2 minutes into the game when I started to scout, I started to notice the minimap was different: instead of the solid black background like SC1, the new minimap I could differentiate between where I have scouted and where I haven’t. The areas on the map where I have visited had different transparencies of black; I could clearly distinguish the areas on the minimap. Such improvements are not something I thought of nor would I have asked for, but the fact that Blizzard pays such attention to detail and always looking for ways to improve the game sincerely impresses me.
I tip my hat off to you, Blizzard, you have one dedicated gamer who has been with you for over a decade and perhaps another decade to come.
