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Hi. Long time reader, first time poster. I am a 600+ Diamond protoss player, hardly a pro but I've played probably 600 games counting beta.
I greatly enjoyed MasterAsia's ZvT thread, highlighting some of the issues faced there. I'm going to try to do something similar to PvT, although I am in no way in his league. Would love it if a pro Toss could do so, but I'll just have to try and fill in.
This matchup is NOT as bad a ZvT from what I can see, but it is very defintely skewed in the Terran's favor.
1 - Gateway Units
Terran gateway units are generally dominant over Toss early. The zealot is extremely slow, and the stalker is destroyed by the cheaper marauder. This allows Terran to apply early pressure very easily. Conversely it is very hard to pressure the terran much, outside of a very very brief window when stalkers can harass marines before marauders with concussive shell come out.
2 - Stim
This changes the dynamic again, for a small hp hit terran gateway units are suddenly doing 50% more damage. What is often worse I think is the speed, it allows them to kite even chargelots, and run out of psi storms.
3 - EMP
I could write for days on this ability, lol. Suffice it to say that for the cost of a ghost academy, 150m 50gas, you can produce an emp machine with a lot of hp that also does decent dps. Ghost emp is a fairly hard counter to EVERY single toss unit, stripping on average 40% of their health. It also instantly cripples sentries and high templars.
4 - Medivacs/Vikings
The starport gives terran access to these two units at once, including the option to put on a cheap reactor to double their production. The medivacs are brutally effective, while also giving the terran the option to make drops at no extra cost. The funny thing is terran players would still make medivacs EVEN IF THEY COULD NOT ACT AS TRANSPORTS. They are that effective. And vikings hard counter colossus, one of the two possible counters to the MMM ball.
5 - Planetary Fortress
The only expansion in the game that can defend itself. When repaired, this thing can be a monster to take down. Particularly as the SCV targetting priority is screwy. You have to manually target the repairing SCVs or your zealots will circle for ages getting killed. And stalkers do poor damage to the fortress and take a ton.
6 - Tech Costs
Terran's tech the cheapest and have full access to their full range of units cheaply.
To sum up, the following are the results
A - Protoss can not effectively fight with equal cost of gateway units to barracks units
B - Our counters to this are much higher tech, Colossus and High Templar. However Terran has hard counters to our counters that are much lower tech and easier to get. I.E. Vikings and Ghosts
C - Toss can not effectively counter attack. Losing a big fight with a terran means he will roll right over you. However unless you win with very few losses, Terrans can effectively defend against your remaining forces.
D - Terrans are largely unscoutable, and have a variety of effective attacks, all of which require different counters. However they can scout you, and you can not prevent it.
E - Terrans can control when they engage. They are extremely mobile, can outrun your force, and chase it down.
F - There are several effective timing pushes (detailed in other's posts) where the terran has the tech he needs and toss does not have his, that are devastating if executed right.
Comments are appreciated. I am not trying to make a whine thread, just pointing out that there is a very real imbalance in the current state of the game. Thank You
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I'm a protoss player. You're not pointing out ANY advantages that Protoss has against Terran. High Templars, with an easily attainable level of micro, cripple the piss out of any bioball that Terran can throw at us. Charge on your Zealots with 2 storms will make the biggest bioball fall to its knees. A 2:1 ratio of CHargelots and stalkers, throw in 2 or 4 templars and 3 sentries and you can melt any bioball. Forcefields can hold off forces if used correctly, theyre your friend and help short the time the Terran have to take advantage of the Tier 2 advantage. When Protoss reaches tier 3, and storm or Collossi is out, the Terran are no longer in the "GG lawl 1a gogogo win" mode. Sure Planetary forces are lame, but nothing too unbelievably powerful. Over all, it might be a little imbalanced, but not unbelieveably so. It's winnable.
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I didn't say it wasn't winnable. Skewed, but winnable.
And I do agree that once tier 3 is reached things become better. The problem is surviving till tier 3 on equal footing.
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TrueSyzygy, you are completely missing the point here.
You're basically saying "tech t3 and then there is no problem" instead of looking at the bigger picture. While I do not know if you can instantly throw out chargelots/HT's out of your gateway as soon as it is built I (and most others) have to go a pretty long tech pattern to get there.
Of course P has a chance of winning, but the edge terran has against P is as real as the one they have against Z.
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I want to go through the gateway unit composition, but chargelots are a solid unit against all of the terran barracks units. (and I'm only making this post because you mentioned marauders can kite them as well)
For the same food, a-click chasing chargelots will smash stimmed and conc shell kiting marauders, because of several mechanical reasons, and they do even better against the marauder if there is limited kiting room (and of course worse if the marauders can funnel the zealots.)
EMP also only has half the effectiveness against zealots, since they only have 50 shields, and most of their survivability comes from their health, and if you're going with HTs, it'll force the ghosts to either EMP the HTs (which should be quite far away), or go for the toss for their shields.
I think protoss go with to many stalkers against terran bio, and that a heavier mix of zealots with some stalkers in the back to provide constant DPS while the marauders do their kiting thing, while having 2-4 sentries to provide the guardian shield and wall off as best they can should be their main priority for their earlygame until they get charge and eventually storm.
For terran bio to get all the upgrades (and the ghosts add more on top of that), they need to invest a decent bit of minerals into research, those minerals could be used by the protoss to either fast tech zealot speed or get more sentries.
The reason chargelots kill the stimmed conc shell kiting marauders is because they only take 10 damage/shot from a marauder, requiring 10 individual shots before they're taken down. The zealots don't all charge in at the same time as well, but come in waves, i.e the closest zealots charge in, get some hits off, get shot by the marauders and slowed, the other zealots further back come closer and charge in to get some hits of, rinse repeat. This way the marauders are forced to spread their damage out on all the zealots since they keep overtaking each other because of charge cooldown and the front line of lots being slowed by conc, while the zealots constantly hammer the closest marauder units with each charge, and thus wither down their armies by auto-focusing the weakened units. The fact that lots take a lot of hits to die, and that the damage is spread out among them will force the marauders to stim multiple times, and each stim wears down on every single one of them until they're all in the lower HPs.
Of course with different unit compositions this can change a bit, but the general principle stays true. Higher emphasis on lots of zealots with a small force of stalkers in the back constantly shooting, and some sentries for guardian shield+some good force fields works well against terran bio, until you can get charge, at which point zealots+HTs become extremely strong against any bio composition.
I understand it takes a decent bit to get charge, but as I said with the upgrades section. Marine health, conc shell and stim costs 250/250 (or 150/150 if you don't get marine health). You could invest those 250/250 in a larger size army or even sentries (think of the sentries as your early game upgrades) to stop or delay him until you get charge, in which case your ground army does start smashing his.
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"A - Protoss can not effectively fight with equal cost of gateway units to barracks units"
Well, I guess this is true later in the game. If the bio ball becomes too big, standard gateway units just won't do. However, a protoss player can pick the fight where his units will come of more use. Such as if a terran player applies early pressure, don't meet him in the open. You can easily hold your ramp, making his push much less effective. Also, chargelots are dangerrous up to that point where he has too many units to surround.
"B - Our counters to this are much higher tech, Colossus and High Templar. However Terran has hard counters to our counters that are much lower tech and easier to get. I.E. Vikings and Ghosts"
Truth be told, if Terran didn't have this, any mid- or lategame fight would be a breeze for the protoss. It's as easy as that. Storm is ridiculously good vs pretty much anything except units with very high HP (Thors, Battlecruisers), and the firepower of the Colossus combined with storm can incinerate any ground army in seconds if there are no effective counters out.
"C - Toss can not effectively counter attack. Losing a big fight with a terran means he will roll right over you. However unless you win with very few losses, Terrans can effectively defend against your remaining forces."
This is true. So...what to do instead? How about expanding and teching up? His army can't do crap to you while it is in his base? Take advantage of that! Keep in mind that if the terran loses a major battle, it's pretty much game over for him. If you don't push into his main, you can for sure rip his expansions apart.
"D - Terrans are largely unscoutable, and have a variety of effective attacks, all of which require different counters. However they can scout you, and you can not prevent it."
In my opinion, observers are the best scouters in the game. Sure, turrets prevent observers from seeing too much of his base. Instead, you can however tell where is army is, when it is there, where it will move next, and when he expands to pretty much any point on the map. You could also sacrifice a Phoenix if he's got alot of turrets as they can soak up some damage and costing less than a ton of terran defensive structures.
"E - Terrans can control when they engage. They are extremely mobile, can outrun your force, and chase it down."
The bio ball is highly mobile. His mech units are not. And although his static defenses are very powerful, most of the higher tech units require a small gap of time before they can do much. If you catch a terran army out of position as a protoss, he's toast. Just as dead as if he was to catch your army out of position.
"F - There are several effective timing pushes (detailed in other's posts) where the terran has the tech he needs and toss does not have his, that are devastating if executed right."
Yes, this is absolutely true. Terran has some powerful timing pushes. Most of them include the fact that protoss tech units take quite some time to get out. However, a protoss who defends correctly can still vanquish a timing attack from a terran player, as standard gateway units can hold their ground for quite some time until the more important units arrive. It's sad, but it's just something us protoss players must live with : an early pressuring terran is best handled by defending properly while getting out the appropriate counter.
I'm a diamond protoss player myself, and PvT used to be my worst matchup because of stuff you list up here, so I know how you feel. However, once you play alot more of it, you'll see that terran ain't that strong as it first seems. By now PvT is my best matchup, and although I often have to be defensive in the early stages of the game, a terran player usually lose if his initial push fails (which it usually does if I'm prepared and me and the terran are about equal in skill level).
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great post...was just thinking about all of this stuff today...
dalavita i dont know what level you are playing at...but the main problem are marines...so much dps...the concussive shell is really the best part about a marauder...besides the fact they hard counter stalkers and render zealots useless...
my biggest problem with the matchup is that terran controls the ENTIRE game. top level pvts consist of the toss player sitting back scouting and trying to expand enough to hold the next attack...it is impossible to be aggressive.
my question is, it seems that concussive shells were put in the game not only as a cool ability...but to serve a role...what role is this? why does the marauder need concussive shells? it already costs half of a stalker and beats it 1v1...am i forgetting something?
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I prefer a Sentry Charglot build vs terran with few stalkers because they are both light andf take few damage from the maurders (it cuts the DPS nearlly in half). I like to sit by their ramp and whenever they try to push out just cut the first quarter of the army off and ROFTL stomp it. Making it essencially with good reflexes impossible to move out with out medivacs. Use their ramp against them. Ok so now they have tanks get a robo bay and chrono a warp prism out, because of your heavy army they will most likely have high armour units so after the first prism keep getting Imortals. While your waiting for a decent number of immortals (3-4) zeralot bomb the crap out of them. YES IT STILL WORKS. So many terrans just go maurder tank and you can either go zealot + sentry Hallu + immortal back up or Zealot VR. Zealot bombing (esp wiith charge up) works wonders.
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On August 22 2010 07:25 Dalavita wrote:
I want to go through the gateway unit composition, but chargelots are a solid unit against all of the terran barracks units. (and I'm only making this post because you mentioned marauders can kite them as well)
For the same food, a-click chasing chargelots will smash stimmed and conc shell kiting marauders, because of several mechanical reasons, and they do even better against the marauder if there is limited kiting room (and of course worse if the marauders can funnel the zealots.)
EMP also only has half the effectiveness against zealots, since they only have 50 shields, and most of their survivability comes from their health, and if you're going with HTs, it'll force the ghosts to either EMP the HTs (which should be quite far away), or go for the toss for their shields.
I think protoss go with to many stalkers against terran bio, and that a heavier mix of zealots with some stalkers in the back to provide constant DPS while the marauders do their kiting thing, while having 2-4 sentries to provide the guardian shield and wall off as best they can should be their main priority for their earlygame until they get charge and eventually storm.
For terran bio to get all the upgrades (and the ghosts add more on top of that), they need to invest a decent bit of minerals into research, those minerals could be used by the protoss to either fast tech zealot speed or get more sentries.
The reason chargelots kill the stimmed conc shell kiting marauders is because they only take 10 damage/shot from a marauder, requiring 10 individual shots before they're taken down. The zealots don't all charge in at the same time as well, but come in waves, i.e the closest zealots charge in, get some hits off, get shot by the marauders and slowed, the other zealots further back come closer and charge in to get some hits of, rinse repeat. This way the marauders are forced to spread their damage out on all the zealots since they keep overtaking each other because of charge cooldown and the front line of lots being slowed by conc, while the zealots constantly hammer the closest marauder units with each charge, and thus wither down their armies by auto-focusing the weakened units. The fact that lots take a lot of hits to die, and that the damage is spread out among them will force the marauders to stim multiple times, and each stim wears down on every single one of them until they're all in the lower HPs.
Of course with different unit compositions this can change a bit, but the general principle stays true. Higher emphasis on lots of zealots with a small force of stalkers in the back constantly shooting, and some sentries for guardian shield+some good force fields works well against terran bio, until you can get charge, at which point zealots+HTs become extremely strong against any bio composition.
I understand it takes a decent bit to get charge, but as I said with the upgrades section. Marine health, conc shell and stim costs 250/250 (or 150/150 if you don't get marine health). You could invest those 250/250 in a larger size army or even sentries (think of the sentries as your early game upgrades) to stop or delay him until you get charge, in which case your ground army does start smashing his.
As you are probably aware, chargelots do quite well in the mid-game, but once the bio balls get larger and are accompanied by medivacs, the zealots dps isn't enough. Terran infantry upgrades stack better than protoss ones because of shield armor being a seperate upgrade. Against a 80+ food bio ball, zealots get focused down extremely quickly.
Ht's have their own set of problems. One emp on the majority of your templars will spell an almost certain loss, a bio ball can chase down a fleeing protoss army like nothing.
On August 22 2010 07:07 Ascendant13 wrote:
5 - Planetary Fortress
The only expansion in the game that can defend itself. When repaired, this thing can be a monster to take down. Particularly as the SCV targetting priority is screwy. You have to manually target the repairing SCVs or your zealots will circle for ages getting killed. And stalkers do poor damage to the fortress and take a ton.
Out of all the pvt problems, I think this one is the most clear-cut case with tangible evidence. The planetary fortress takes highest attack priority. Zealots end up pointlessly circling the PF, unable to find a place to attack among the ring of scvs. It is extremely difficult and arguably unfair that the protoss must target fire every single scv in an effort to reduce the PF to mortal levels of durability. It is pretty absurd that 20-30 stalkers can not kill a planetary fortress.
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On August 22 2010 07:20 ellep200 wrote:
but the edge terran has against P is as real as the one they have against Z.
Oh god this makes me want to rage.
Toss winrate is 49% atm.
Zerg is 40%
You could not be more wrong, I'll leave it at that.
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On August 22 2010 07:37 BADSMCGEE wrote:
great post...was just thinking about all of this stuff today...
dalavita i dont know what level you are playing at...but the main problem are marines...so much dps...the concussive shell is really the best part about a marauder...besides the fact they hard counter stalkers and render zealots useless...
my biggest problem with the matchup is that terran controls the ENTIRE game. top level pvts consist of the toss player sitting back scouting and trying to expand enough to hold the next attack...it is impossible to be aggressive.
my question is, it seems that concussive shells were put in the game not only as a cool ability...but to serve a role...what role is this? why does the marauder need concussive shells? it already costs half of a stalker and beats it 1v1...am i forgetting something?
If the Marauder had no concussive shells, Chargelots would be way too powerful against them, in my opinion. And yes, you are correct about the part where protoss has to be defensive. However, terran is very very badly screwed if his attack fails as that means you can either contain him or eventually destroy his expansions. A terran can basically do the same, but FF on ramp combined with stalkers and eventually some immortals can be very hard for an early pressuring terran to break as well.
Marines are strong. With stim, they own. Alot. But they are fragile. Sure, in the open field, they would destroy the protoss. However, if their retreat is cut, or if they get flanked, they're toast. A protoss needs more control and to think somewhat ahead, I'll agree. But I wouldn't express it as bad as this.
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As you are probably aware, chargelots do quite well in the mid-game, but once the bio balls get larger and are accompanied by medivacs, the zealots dps isn't enough. Terran infantry upgrades stack better than protoss ones because of shield armor being a seperate upgrade. Against a 80+ food bio ball, zealots get focused down extremely quickly.
Ht's have their own set of problems. One emp on the majority of your templars will spell an almost certain loss, a bio ball can chase down a fleeing protoss army like nothing.
By the time medivacs come out I'm hoping the protoss has gone beyond his standard gateway opening of course. HTs having their problems a matter of course, they need weaknesses. One EMP after they get their storm off is a wasted EMP. It's a matter of who can get their spell off first and the best way, which I guess is obvious. Spreading your HTs out even slightly will ensure multiple EMPs are needed to get rid of all the storms.
The Storm vs EMP battle I believe is one that's actually quite balanced, since both casters can take each other out. I even saw an observer HT feedback snipe on an enemy ghost a couple of days ago in some stream, I believe it was Huk playing but I'm not sure.
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One thing that's incredibly underused is feedback. Almost all of Terran's units have energy. Medivacs, Ravens, Thors, Banshees, Battlecruisers and Ghosts. Feedback instantly kills medivacs, ravens, and banshees. And most of the time you'd be getting Templars anyway, for storm.
Obviously they can EMP your templars, but it's still food for thought. Leaving a templar at your mineral line to stop a banshee rush, etc.
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On August 22 2010 07:37 BADSMCGEE wrote:
my question is, it seems that concussive shells were put in the game not only as a cool ability...but to serve a role...what role is this? why does the marauder need concussive shells? it already costs half of a stalker and beats it 1v1...am i forgetting something?
Well, marauders would suck without shells. It's there as a researched ability rather than innate so Blizzard can mess around with cost and time and such if need be (iirc they needed to in the beta, it used to be innate).
Marauders are annoyingly overrated. It's the marines that kill you, the marauders just slow you down (literally and via being high-hp meatshields).
Comments are appreciated. I am not trying to make a whine thread, just pointing out that there is a very real imbalance in the current state of the game. Thank You
I'm a toss and this sounds like, well, whining TBH. PvT is possibly the most balanced matchup. If there is a balance issue it is a small one affecting only the very highest level. And things can of course change rather quickly. ZvT doesn't look nearly as bleak today as it did a week ago.
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About the early pressure thing and gateway vs barrack units:
Its not really true. It depends mostly on where you engage the fight, and micro.
Gateway units, zealots mostly, actually rape barrack units, if both 1a into each other.
If you 1a, and the terran is stimming, and kiting, then ofc you lose as toss, but then again, he is greatly out-microing you.
If you split his army in half at chokes/ramps with a few forcefields, then again, the advantage is for protoss.
Now ofc, if you engage in the open, and he is kiting, and you are attack moving, then yeah, he wins. That is not unfair, imbalanced, or anything like that, that is you engaging in the wrong place, and him having superior micro.
Zealot sentry with forcefields to stop retreat/split the army in half, and guardian shield to reduce marine dps by 33% and marauder dps by 20%, is incredibly good, and will easily beat any equal amount of marine marauder, at least before the numbers get too big.
Protoss can do a lot of fun stuff, like making void rays to force terran to make marines, while chronoboosting charge, or micro stalkers to kill marines and supply depots, forcing marauders, and then coming in with stargate units, for example. You dont have to just sit back passively.
[edit] Actually, nvm, its 40% less damage from marines, and 22% less from marauders, forgot to take base armor into account
marines have 5.8 dps vs zealot sentry, 8.7 with stim. By using guardian shield, you bring it down to 5.2 (stimmed). Using guardian shield more than counters stim from marines.
But while all terrans stim, it is rare to see a protoss player put up 4-5 guardian shields.
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On August 22 2010 07:52 morimacil wrote:
About the early pressure thing and gateway vs barrack units:
Its not really true. It depends mostly on where you engage the fight, and micro.
Gateway units, zealots mostly, actually rape barrack units, if both 1a into each other.
If you 1a, and the terran is stimming, and kiting, then ofc you lose as toss, but then again, he is greatly out-microing you.
If you split his army in half at chokes/ramps with a few forcefields, then again, the advantage is for protoss.
Now ofc, if you engage in the open, and he is kiting, and you are attack moving, then yeah, he wins. That is not unfair, imbalanced, or anything like that, that is you engaging in the wrong place, and him having superior micro.
Zealot sentry with forcefields to stop retreat/split the army in half, and guardian shield to reduce marine dps by 33% and marauder dps by 20%, is incredibly good, and will easily beat any equal amount of marine marauder, at least before the numbers get too big.
Protoss can do a lot of fun stuff, like making void rays to force terran to make marines, while chronoboosting charge, or micro stalkers to kill marines and supply depots, forcing marauders, and then coming in with stargate units, for example. You dont have to just sit back passively.
I think the main reason people hate barracks units is because stimmed units are so easy to control and to dish out damage with. Although I completely agree with you, you just have to control your units well (easier said than done, but it's still possible). As you say, FF and flanks combined with zealots (especially if charge is in the picture) are very deadly to any barracks unit terran has to offer.
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Granted I'm a terran player, I feel like the mentality of most mid level diamond players(my neighborhood  ) looks to beat terran the wrong way. We're immobile, but strong. So protoss shouldn't bang their heads against our brick wall. I have a lot of difficulty when the game gets to the late stages and the protoss is warping in units at several different fronts(even using warp prisms to create new openings in the back of my base). I can't slow push because by the time I reach your base I've been crippled by your harass, and I can't sprint up because I'll likely be caught in poor positioning by a flank while unseiged, AND it's too tough to feel safe controlling space to expo because I've got to bounce my army around to deal with your warps. The idea is a lot stylistically like the way PvT was in BW, and I think it's how the matchup will evolve.
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what you can rush a voidray while chrono boosting charge, impressive.
My real problem lies with ghosts, Terran gets them before you get high templars (AND FORCE YOU TO GET HIGH TEMPLARS) and can just remove 40% of your armies survivability without any actual effort cause its the only spellcaster in your bioball and is automaticly selected, and to make it even easier for you emp is instant, cannot be dodged and has a radius the size of your entire frigging natural.
Not to mention if you go voidray and he goes banshee rush he can easily counter your voidray with some extra marines while you die because you have no observer WHICH EVERY PROTOSS also needs or they die to any invis hero or get crappy scouting (phoenix is a choice but hey, a phoenix won't own that invisible banshee for you)
oh and we can't go dark templars because the terran that should be getting his ghosts either can emp it, or just use his scan because hey, if you forget to use a mule you actually get rewarded.
What would be awsome was if the shield upgrade would remove the emp effect partially like upgrade 1 33% less dmg from emp , upgrade 2 66 and upgrade 3 negate emp's shield effects maybe even energy, because no one actually gets shield upgrades anyways because they're so expensive, and most of terrans units deal to much dmg to even care about that -1 dmg.
And the part about Terrans tech tree, couldn't agree more. They finish their entire techtree so easily while we have to choose 1 of 3 techtrees and if we wanna get another we have to pay more then terrans single tech tree. And you could argue that their units arn't as strong as ours well, they're also not as expensive.
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So i'm a terran player and once high templars are out its a who can hit the other first. emp vs storm/feedback. a raven gets 1 shotted by a feedback if there's enough energy. stops the pdd from coming down. medivacs can go down very quickly too. then you can guardian shield which reduces damage taken.. i dont think many people realize that as its VERY underused. I think sentries in general are underused... with both ff and gs they can be a game winning unit imo. if a terran doesnt have ghosts out early game you can also harass depots that block the ramp as well.. your shields recharge up and unless they have concussive shells to slow u down you could pick a depot off or even ff the units so they are out of range and u can harass the wall. dont forget dt's. as a terran my raven comes out lategame... if we dont have an engy base up you could fast dt and spread them so they all dont die in 1 scan as most terrans dont save up 200 energy b4 muling and scanning so 1 scan no missile turrents and your good to go. use dt's to harrass b4 getting your ht's and storm researched.. slows them down so we can't be agressive during the time your tech'ing up.. now i'm not a pro player or anything ;p but hopefully this helps a bit
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I'm a mid diamond protoss and I generally agree with most of what you're saying. Nothing on your list is that outrageous in and of itself but they all collectively compound on each other.
As far as barracks vs gateway units go, i actually think the protoss has the advantage before stim and medvacs come out, and the reason why is forcefields. I think most protoss tend to fight the early mm ball with a stalker heavy combo and that's a mistake, if you attack with about a 50% zealot, 30% stalker and 20% sentry ball and get some good forcefields you can obliterate the terran. Obviously the terran can wall and bunker their ramp to hold the push but you have the advantage in the open.
The real problem with this matchup is tier 2 terran compared to tier 2 protoss. Once stim and 2 or 3 medvacs as well as possible ghosts come out the protoss is pretty much forced to tech to tier 3 either colossus or high templar to try to deal with it as nothing they have tier 2 (pheonix, vrays, immortals, chargelots) can deal with the tier 2 terran. This is also coupled with the fact that terran has so many options and most terrans wall their ramp and bunker up so the protoss is pretty much forced into a 3 warpgate + early robo build because they need to get the observer in the base.
If the protoss can last from tier 2 into tier 3 and the game goes long I think there's a strong argument to make that the advantage swings back into the protoss favor mainly because high templar are so versatile and strong. Yes, ghosts can emp them but with the ht energy upgrade you can warp in ht's that storm immediately and the storms just annihilate the mmm balls. Plus a lot of the higher terran tech (bcs, banshees, ghosts, thors) are all extremely vulnerable to feedback. Archons are also very strong against terran since none of the terran units get any kind of damage bonus against them (sans emp). Blink stalkers with some stargate support can absolutely wreck tank lines and the mothership being able to vortex and mass recall is really strong and underused.
As for balancing the matchup, I think some of the terran tier 2 advantages need to be mitigated and I wouldn't be that opposed to slightly raising some of the ht's energy requirements. Bunker salvage is one thing that bothers me, it should only recoup 50% of the res cost, not the full amount so terrans can't just blindly make some when they're teching and then recoup the full cost when they move out. The medvac healing rate is, I believe, 13 or so hp per second. I would try lowering it a bit to 9 or 10. Stim needs something, make it take away more hp than it does, remove marauders capacity to use it, something along those lines. I would also consider reducing the damage emp does to shields from 100 to either 50 or 75.
Lastly I just want to say that PvT is much more balanced than TvZ. It really isn't that bad once you play a lot of it.
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As I experiment more and more with Immortal openings, Phoenixes and Colossus, the more I start to think that PvT is actually a Protoss MU.
Not conclusive, but I definitely feel that it's too early to call the mu imbalanced. I want to test way more things before I say that.
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Although its an issue with everyrace I want to point out the effectivness of PDD from the raven in combo with an emp.
The ability to take zero damage and cut the hp or overall life of my army by 40% with one skill that doesnt require upgrades is a little bit crazy IMO.
I want to point out that every race has unit compositions BIO ball, mech, banshee viking, ling muta,hydra roach, ling infestor ultra, but the protoss player has gateway units plus tech choice
EMP plus PDD shuts down the dps of the stalkers and the skills of the sentry thats 2/3 of your army not to mention the loss in hp. HT and immortal dont make much of a comeback as emp takes away their effectivness 100% and as said before viking counter collosi really quickly and are extreamly cost effective
I know the match up isnt as cut and dry as terran wins and every race has this massive uphill battle but I feel something needs to be done about this
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As far as scouting goes. Instead of going early robo -> observer (200, 200 65 secs build) -> (50, 100 40 secs build), can protoss not get (100, 100, 110 secs build) hallucination and make a hallucinated phoenix to scout with? It happened to me once and I actually thought I was getting void ray/stargate pushed and overcompensated and lost, not even considering the fact that he got to scout my full base.
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On August 22 2010 07:52 morimacil wrote:
[edit] Actually, nvm, its 40% less damage from marines, and 22% less from marauders, forgot to take base armor into account
marines have 5.8 dps vs zealot sentry, 8.7 with stim. By using guardian shield, you bring it down to 5.2 (stimmed). Using guardian shield more than counters stim from marines.
But while all terrans stim, it is rare to see a protoss player put up 4-5 guardian shields.
This can't be pointed out enough. GS and armor upgrades are huge against bioballs. GS before stim makes zealots roflstomp bioballs (marines do 3 damage, scary), and as you say it keeps you level once they stim. Such an underused ability for some reason. It's pretty much an anti-terran spell, what with all their units being ranged.
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On August 22 2010 07:43 ibreakurface wrote:
Toss winrate is 49% atm.
Zerg is 40%
source?
F - There are several effective timing pushes (detailed in other's posts) where the terran has the tech he needs and toss does not have his, that are devastating if executed right.
this is so true, im also a 600 diamond noobie and in PvT im always trying to survive past the 3 rax marauder push ( which 90% of openings i get since they do it to counter 4 gate), then when i manage to barely hold it off with FF i try to survive/expand/tech enough to survive the next wave with tanks... scan + wallin + free drops with heal is so too much of a package for a single race to get
and emp is just icing on the cake, we do need an autospread for ground like muta have vs thors that would negate emp lol
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Overall Protoss > Terran.
-Mech armies are too immobile. Also, the protoss army of robo units + chargelots/blink stalkers actually can do pretty well in a head on battle with a mech army.
-Voidrays are completely retarded in mid/late game since only vikings do well.
-Protoss has instant reinforcement so they basically have defenders advantage.... everywhere. That makes taking oddball expos or hard to defend expos really easy. This also makes lategame super imbalanced because protoss can instantly remake an army IN THE BATTLEFIELD whereas terran has to wait a few minutes to rebuild.
-Chargelot/immortal/HT just beats bio. In fact it does well vs mech too.
-Proxy tech is retarded. There's so many options for protoss and each one requires an informed response. Often a proxy dt shrine or proxy robo can be devastating.
The biggest issue for protoss is stimmed marauders. Fortunately, the 1 gate FE allows you to take on 3 rax openings and consequently get the 2 base you need for the chargelot/immo/ht combo without letting T get economically ahead.
Give it time and I think T will stop winning games vs P.
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Gateway units (without charge) are weaker than MM, but the sentry makes up for it.
EMP vs storm. This is a toss whine which should had stopped a long time ago.
When you go HT you will have to get a lot of zealots. When the terran goes ghosts he will have to get a lot of marines. Emp deals roughly 50% dmg to zealots while storm pretty much kills marines. Im sick of people comparing EMP vs Storm in a vacum. You have to look at the relative dmg
The cost of a planetary fotress is an OC and 150/150. Feel free to invest the same amount in photon cannons or warp in some units. Scv's not taking priority is a whole other issue.
I do not understand the issue with medivacs and vikings. So the starport gives us acces to both of them? Thats OP? You get phoenix and VRs. Thats even more OP... oh wait. I dont get it. And again one of the reasons medivacs are there is to give bio a chance lategame.
"Toss can not effectively counter attack. Losing a big fight with a terran means he will roll right over you. However unless you win with very few losses, Terrans can effectively defend against your remaining forces.."
Starting to think you are a troll.
To sum it up. Your post is full of fail.
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I played a PvT the other day (which I used to consider my best matchup but as I get higher in Diamond I'm changing my mind on that) where I fended off the initial aggression at tier 1 (which IMO isn't too hard) and then we both macro'd up. I out macro'd and had a 20 food lead in army and 30 harvester lead. He attacked, got an EMP off first and hit all my High Templars and Sentries...GG I lose. Chargelots run to the bio ball and their death, sentries can't guardian shield, no storms, no feedback. Losing your shields sucks, but instantly losing all of your casters is the nail in the coffin.
Yeah I should have had my high templars spread out but seriously? Despite the fact that I had a larger army, tier 3, and had a stronger economy I lost the game.
Frustrating.
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thats just a micro issue though.
With high templars, you can also just run them into his army one at a time, dunno why more people dont do that. If he EMPs your templar, you are ahead, since it cost you less, and its faster to build them.
If he doesnt EMP, you can storm, and cripple his army. And if you do get the storms off, then you win even if he does EMP your army after that.
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On August 22 2010 08:56 Torture wrote:
Yeah I should have had my high templars spread out but seriously? Despite the fact that I had a larger army, tier 3, and had a stronger economy I lost the game.
Unit positioning and control are probably more important than army and economy size, when templars are on the field. Control them badly and they're useless, control them well and they're deadly. You controlled yours badly and lost, that's how it goes.
With high templars, you can also just run them into his army one at a time, dunno why more people dont do that. If he EMPs your templar, you are ahead, since it cost you less, and its faster to build them.
Especially with the vision from obs...snipe one ghost with your templar and he's served his purpose. Survival is only a bonus.
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1 gate FE thing does make terran a lot easier.. but also is easy to auto lose if you have a build countered by his. After using the build with like a 90% to 95% win ratio even with telling the terran what I was going to do.. I realized that I would rather use my old build which doesnt expand as fast but survives at least 99% of the time early game rather than 90% of the time..
The biggest problem to me in this match up are medivacs.. Healing + Able to drop stimmed marauders in your base.. its crazy. Watch a good terran player doing non stop attacks from front and back helion / marauder drops and stuff.. I had a game a while ago where I have no idea what I couldve done to win. Even with map hacks it wouldve been a close game especially if he was able to multi task a bit better..
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I find it kinda silly that people are complaining about EMP, how is the EMP any different from the one in brood war?? By the time the terran attacked he always had EMP ready.
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Why does everyone on this site argue the same stuff over and over.
If it is unbalanced then its something like one side has like a 1 or 2 % advantage.
Just play the game its close to balanced, and if its not blizzard will most likely fix it.
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Anyone care to comment on my question about using hallucinations to scout terran with, which is loads cheaper to get compared to robo+obs, and helps you get a twilight fortress/templar archives earlier.
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On August 22 2010 10:06 Dalavita wrote:
Anyone care to comment on my question about using hallucinations to scout terran with, which is loads cheaper to get compared to robo+obs, and helps you get a twilight fortress/templar archives earlier.
I do it all the time. Phoenix scouts are the shit. Nice that they're so freakin' fast compared to an observer too.
If you see tech lab starports though you have to throw down a Robo Facility ASAP.
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On August 22 2010 09:56 MattDamon wrote:
Why does everyone on this site argue the same stuff over and over.
If it is unbalanced then its something like one side has like a 1 or 2 % advantage.
Just play the game its close to balanced, and if its not blizzard will most likely fix it.
Because the game is not balanced at all. ZvT is proof of this. Blizzard also looks like they have no intention of even touching the game balance or making maps that mirror BW maps (closed nats, no bdoors to main, etc).
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+ Show Spoiler +On August 22 2010 07:07 Ascendant13 wrote:
Hi. Long time reader, first time poster. I am a 600+ Diamond protoss player, hardly a pro but I've played probably 600 games counting beta.
I greatly enjoyed MasterAsia's ZvT thread, highlighting some of the issues faced there. I'm going to try to do something similar to PvT, although I am in no way in his league. Would love it if a pro Toss could do so, but I'll just have to try and fill in.
This matchup is NOT as bad a ZvT from what I can see, but it is very defintely skewed in the Terran's favor.
1 - Gateway Units
Terran gateway units are generally dominant over Toss early. The zealot is extremely slow, and the stalker is destroyed by the cheaper marauder. This allows Terran to apply early pressure very easily. Conversely it is very hard to pressure the terran much, outside of a very very brief window when stalkers can harass marines before marauders with concussive shell come out.
2 - Stim
This changes the dynamic again, for a small hp hit terran gateway units are suddenly doing 50% more damage. What is often worse I think is the speed, it allows them to kite even chargelots, and run out of psi storms.
3 - EMP
I could write for days on this ability, lol. Suffice it to say that for the cost of a ghost academy, 150m 50gas, you can produce an emp machine with a lot of hp that also does decent dps. Ghost emp is a fairly hard counter to EVERY single toss unit, stripping on average 40% of their health. It also instantly cripples sentries and high templars.
4 - Medivacs/Vikings
The starport gives terran access to these two units at once, including the option to put on a cheap reactor to double their production. The medivacs are brutally effective, while also giving the terran the option to make drops at no extra cost. The funny thing is terran players would still make medivacs EVEN IF THEY COULD NOT ACT AS TRANSPORTS. They are that effective. And vikings hard counter colossus, one of the two possible counters to the MMM ball.
5 - Planetary Fortress
The only expansion in the game that can defend itself. When repaired, this thing can be a monster to take down. Particularly as the SCV targetting priority is screwy. You have to manually target the repairing SCVs or your zealots will circle for ages getting killed. And stalkers do poor damage to the fortress and take a ton.
6 - Tech Costs
Terran's tech the cheapest and have full access to their full range of units cheaply.
To sum up, the following are the results
A - Protoss can not effectively fight with equal cost of gateway units to barracks units
B - Our counters to this are much higher tech, Colossus and High Templar. However Terran has hard counters to our counters that are much lower tech and easier to get. I.E. Vikings and Ghosts
C - Toss can not effectively counter attack. Losing a big fight with a terran means he will roll right over you. However unless you win with very few losses, Terrans can effectively defend against your remaining forces.
D - Terrans are largely unscoutable, and have a variety of effective attacks, all of which require different counters. However they can scout you, and you can not prevent it.
E - Terrans can control when they engage. They are extremely mobile, can outrun your force, and chase it down.
F - There are several effective timing pushes (detailed in other's posts) where the terran has the tech he needs and toss does not have his, that are devastating if executed right.
Comments are appreciated. I am not trying to make a whine thread, just pointing out that there is a very real imbalance in the current state of the game. Thank You
First of all, I really dislike how you compare this to MasterAsia's thread, because they're not really very similar. His thread is not only stating what he believes to be the reasons that Terran has an advantage over Zerg, it provides comparisons to Brood War to back up most of what it says. All of his points except for 2, 8, and 9 are completely objective as comparisons to Brood War, and are provable through math or simple logic. In addition, 8 is mostly based on previous points, so it is mostly objective in the same manner. Your thread doesn't provide any calculations or comparisons that prove that any of these things are problems.
Secondly, I'm convinced that most of these aren't problems.
1. I'd like a bit more specificity about what time frame you're talking about here. If you mean before T2 (which I assume you do because you talk about Concussive Shells and pressure, and Protoss T2 stops Marauder pressure very well). While Marauders with Concussive Shell ARE strong versus gateway units, Marauder pressure in itself isn't a large problem early game, because the Protoss can get out a Zealot and a Stalker by the earliest time the Terran gets their first Marauder to the Protoss's base without sacrificing economy, and the damage a Marauder that is brought out by sacrificing economy will do won't be greater than what the Terran sacrificed if the Protoss pulls Probes to defend. I can do the calculations if you want, but the basic idea behind this is that the Terran cannot both produce from his barracks and build a tech lab there at the same time, but the Protoss can construct a Zealot and a Cybernetics Core at the same time, so he can get out a Zealot in that time, but the Terran cannot get out Marines.
In regards to Protoss applying pressure after Concussive Shells come out, it's true that they can't until T2, but this is not necessarily bad. The time when Protoss can't apply pressure with gateway units due to Marauders is not dissimilar to the time right before it where the Terran can't apply pressure with his Marines due to Stalker, which necessarily exists if the Terran builds any Marines before his Tech Lab. It is also similar to the time, directly before that, where the Protoss can apply pressure with his scouting probe, and the Terran is unable to return any pressure, both due to shield regeneration. These are all just timings, and I don't see that there is any imbalance there. If you are arguing that Protoss cannot continue to apply pressure after they enter Tier 2, I argue that this is false as well. Stargate-first openings and Immortal drops are both excellent ways to apply pressure here in this phase, and are still safe from most Terran builds. While Protoss players often don't use these builds and instead opt for more passive play, this doesn't mean that they aren't completely valid or strong options to use.
2. Stim is undoubtedly very strong as an upgrade for basic Terran units, however, Protoss gateway units both also have potent upgrades that allow them to become far more mobile and effective in combat. Chargelots get a permanent boost to speed that's very useful, allowing them to outrun unstimmed Marines and Marauders and keeping pace with stimmed ones in conjunction with Charge, and Charge makes them far stronger in combat by giving them better surrounds, making them take less damage as they approach, and making it easier for them to flank. Blink allows Stalkers to become insanely mobile, easily moreso than any other ground unit other than arguably the Speedling (who is faster, but cannot transverse cliffs), makes them into a great harass unit, and also can make them much stronger in combat by giving them the ability to get a perfect concave literally instantly, and to pull back to safety when their health gets low.
Wow, only 2 in, and I've already created a small wall of text and am running late for dinner. I'll come back and edit the rest in later.
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I find early-mid marauder pushes to be very OP. I once met a player two leagues below me that flew his CC to the gold expansion, went three-racks and still managed to rape my zealot/stalker/sentry/immortal army with ease. It's just ridiculous how effective stimmed marauders are. A T1 unit that basically does the same DPS as a siege tank? wtf were they thinking.
(Side note: This was on a map without ramp, so i could not forcefield effectively. And I know I could have teched to DT's, but I went fast robo to scout and by then he already had a giant ball, so it was too late. Besides, if he attacks on his terms he can just scan to take them out since you can't afford to not send the majority of your dt's in.)
And I also agree colossi are way too simple to counter. By they time they spot one, they can fall back for a few minutes and amass five-six vikings and that's pretty much all they need to do while you've teched for a very long time for something that is now useless. Since most bioball armies have multiple starports with reactors already you're pretty much screwed.
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On August 22 2010 10:10 Torture wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 10:06 Dalavita wrote:
Anyone care to comment on my question about using hallucinations to scout terran with, which is loads cheaper to get compared to robo+obs, and helps you get a twilight fortress/templar archives earlier. I do it all the time. Phoenix scouts are the shit. Nice that they're so freakin' fast compared to an observer too. If you see tech lab starports though you have to throw down a Robo Facility ASAP.
Or cannons at key spots assuming you have the forge. The phoenix scout might make him get vikings or spam marines if he doesn't figure out it's a hallucination.
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considering how terrible protoss players do in tournaments, i very much believe that something is wrong in the PvT matchup.
Luciferon vs HasoObs had a few very nice examples of outright stupid stuff in my opinion.
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On August 22 2010 10:11 Floophead_III wrote:
. Blizzard also looks like they have no intention of even touching the game balance
bashiok wrote
Our intent is not to have a game with broken balance in an attempt to sell an expansion. That should go without saying. It makes me sad it isn't.
Our intent is also to not apply knee jerk fixes based on the first few weeks as understanding of the game and strategies are still in flux. The game is young, and we don't feel that it would have been helpful to progressing peoples understanding by throwing in tons of fixes based on flavor-of-the-week (or day, or hour) strats.
We see a lot of variation between the regions. Making a change for how NA players play may be completely ridiculous for how KR players play, and actually mess up a balance there. For instance 10 of their top 20 players are zerg. So that's one place where we have to be mindful and careful and attack balance issues with great prejudice.
That said. There are balance changes coming. What everyone was seeing in beta with tons of quick balance changes are because it was in beta and we feel we can get away with throwing out a lot of 'we think this may help' type fixes. With a live environment we're not going to throw stuff out there unless we're pretty sure. We've played. We've looked at data. We've looked at each region. And then we act. Which isn't to say we may not be wrong from time to time, but it's a more measured approach than beta players may be used to or expecting.
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On August 22 2010 10:11 Floophead_III wrote:
Because the game is not balanced at all. ZvT is proof of this. Blizzard also looks like they have no intention of even touching the game balance or making maps that mirror BW maps (closed nats, no bdoors to main, etc).
Nothing is "proof" in such a young game. The poor Zerg performances (well, except that IdrA guy schooling everyone) are easily explainable by Zerg simply being harder to play, which they quite obviously are.
What have Blizzard said/done that indicates they won't be touching balance or maps?
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Some things you should keep in mind:
medivacs have energy and can be feedback'ed if they try to drop, 1 feedback+2 stalkers will kill a medivac rather easily
HT will destroy marine marauder groups, its not even close...its a useful skill to spread out your HT regularly and have observers with your army to prevent cloak ghost EMPs
before stim comes out, zealot+sentry will destroy marine marauder groups. Just forcefield behind them then zealots own, throw in a guardian shield too. Ive had many games where a small MM group of like 10 marine and 6 marauders shows up at my base and I forcefield behind them closely outside of my base, win with very little losses and the other player just leaves with no GG.
Reason lots of people don't go guardian shield in a zealot+HT combo is because zealots charge forward and are often out of range of the guardian shield because of the kiting MM army. HT are also pushed around rather easily by other units like stalkers/sentry so it makes casting storms more difficult. If you have a separate group for HT and you could manage it well, im sure it would be beneficial to have some sentries.
Thats all I can think of...PvT is one of my best matchups and I open up 3 gate+robo which is safe against every single terran opening. Theres lots of transitions I could do depending what my opponent is doing too. Im not a fan of opening starport because you don't have observers and banshees can work around/destroy cannons.
I think PvT is fine, really fun to play with ghost vs HT
Edit:
I do feel like PvT is rather fragile though.
1 missed forcefield early game and those 3 marauders with conc finish you off.
2 EMPs and your mismicro'ed HT are all out of energy and your army melts to +1/+1 MM.
Your observer just arrives at the terran base to see a starport with a techlab, seconds later a cloaked banshee is in your base.
your immortal happens to be in the front of your army and 6 marauders stim and take it out while only losing 1 marauder.
Its fragile but it just involves more unit control than macro.
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i think the attitudes of players on TL toward suspected "imbalances" is disgusting. every player comes in from their point of view, makes a list of things they consider imbalanced, and then makes stupid game breaking suggestions to fix it. almost every gripe here is something that can be worked around, or is meant to be that way. this game is more complex than "build x + y + z, win." it takes thought and effort to work around your races weak points and exploit your advantages.
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I don't know if there are balance problems, but one thing is for sure: it's muuuuuch easier to fight against stalker-heavy than zealot-heavy armies. Especially chargelot/sentry/HT can be very tricky to beat with MM/ghost.
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On August 22 2010 10:39 fallore wrote:
i think the attitudes of players on TL toward suspected "imbalances" is disgusting. every player comes in from their point of view, makes a list of things they consider imbalanced, and then makes stupid game breaking suggestions to fix it. almost every gripe here is something that can be worked around, or is meant to be that way. this game is more complex than "build x + y + z, win." it takes thought and effort to work around your races weak points and exploit your advantages.
I don't see many "Change XYZ and break the game" suggestions in this thread. Just discussion on the PvT matchup.
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So much whining on this forum.
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I think the issue isn't what many are describing but rather the range and concentration of units of terran. MM are both ranged and can tightly be packed unlike other units in game.
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1 - Gateway Units
Terran gateway units are generally dominant over Toss early. The zealot is extremely slow, and the stalker is destroyed by the cheaper marauder. This allows Terran to apply early pressure very easily. Conversely it is very hard to pressure the terran much, outside of a very very brief window when stalkers can harass marines before marauders with concussive shell come out.
I really hate this as well because the terran dictates the game for most of T1. However, stalkers and zealots are perfectly capable of holding a choke or ramp. Just need some decent micro and you shouldn't have a huge problem.
2 - Stim
This changes the dynamic again, for a small hp hit terran gateway units are suddenly doing 50% more damage. What is often worse I think is the speed, it allows them to kite even chargelots, and run out of psi storms.
T1.5 or so is really strong. Protoss just needs to be able to survive. I do this with a good zealot/stalker with some sentry mixed in and if he really intends to attack, I chronoboost an immortal.
3 - EMP
I could write for days on this ability, lol. Suffice it to say that for the cost of a ghost academy, 150m 50gas, you can produce an emp machine with a lot of hp that also does decent dps. Ghost emp is a fairly hard counter to EVERY single toss unit, stripping on average 40% of their health. It also instantly cripples sentries and high templars.
Again, very annoying, but the way I found to remedy this a bit is to both spread out HT, and then don't engage when they get emp'd. Pull back if possible, and before any battle make sure you have a pylon to warp HT to.
4 - Medivacs/Vikings
The starport gives terran access to these two units at once, including the option to put on a cheap reactor to double their production. The medivacs are brutally effective, while also giving the terran the option to make drops at no extra cost. The funny thing is terran players would still make medivacs EVEN IF THEY COULD NOT ACT AS TRANSPORTS. They are that effective. And vikings hard counter colossus, one of the two possible counters to the MMM ball.
I don't think this is a problem. Vikings are worthless vs a protoss without Colossus, and they make their army so much weaker because they are damn expensive and useless.
5 - Planetary Fortress
The only expansion in the game that can defend itself. When repaired, this thing can be a monster to take down. Particularly as the SCV targetting priority is screwy. You have to manually target the repairing SCVs or your zealots will circle for ages getting killed. And stalkers do poor damage to the fortress and take a ton.
I don't think this is a problem either. Storming SCVs or targeting the SCVs really isn't that hard o_O
6 - Tech Costs
Terran's tech the cheapest and have full access to their full range of units cheaply.
Yes, but the buildings themselves have to be built as well in order to produce those units. Which is where Protoss comes out ahead.
A - Protoss can not effectively fight with equal cost of gateway units to barracks units
Protoss has an army that is much easier to replace. HT/Colossus already do very well vs bio, but if you made the other units stronger (which they are already very strong. Chargelots are AMAZING vs bio early on and later on if you have a good angle of attack/flank), how would terran EVER win a game?
B - Our counters to this are much higher tech, Colossus and High Templar. However Terran has hard counters to our counters that are much lower tech and easier to get. I.E. Vikings and Ghosts
That is what caused me to move away from Colossus dominated armies. Hard to replace, and fragile. I wouldn't say HT are hard countered by ghosts at all. What you can do is preemptive storm which I find quite effective.
C - Toss can not effectively counter attack. Losing a big fight with a terran means he will roll right over you. However unless you win with very few losses, Terrans can effectively defend against your remaining forces.
use your advantage to take another base and outmacro him.
D - Terrans are largely unscoutable, and have a variety of effective attacks, all of which require different counters. However they can scout you, and you can not prevent it.
It's pretty damn costly for a terran to deny your scout. They have to either invest 100/200 into a raven they may not need, a MULE, or 300 or so in minerals.
E - Terrans can control when they engage. They are extremely mobile, can outrun your force, and chase it down.
Protoss is also very mobile. A Protoss force IMO is much more mobile than a terran force. MMM Ghost is great mid game, but it doesn't hold up well late game. Terrans need to add tanks which really kills their mobility late game. Medivacs are annoying, but warpin is pretty useful in this regard. HT tech is pretty much pay 50/150 to shut down harass.
F - There are several effective timing pushes (detailed in other's posts) where the terran has the tech he needs and toss does not have his, that are devastating if executed right.
This is StarCraft.
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Just in my opinion, as a protoss player, playing terran is really frustrating. I wouldnt say there is a huge imbalance in PvT right now but i feel that the margin of error for protoss right now is tiny compared to terran.
Initially, from what i rmb from bw, terran was supposed to be the defensive race (seige etc) but now in sc2, the fact that terran is both the aggressor and turtle very easily is frustrating. Sure.. if Protoss wins a big fight due to a mistake by terran and forces terran to turtle is a huge advantage for protoss since he'll be grabbing expansions and teching but if protoss makes one mistake later one, whether it be huge or small, the game is instantly even or swung into terrans favor. Now if protoss loses the initial fight..its gg for them.
Also imo, terran is the easiest to play right now and a lot of the rage from protoss players comes from losing to a lesser skilled player due to the race they play. Kinda like how in bw everyone raged that protoss was a 1a2a3a win race.
Game is still new though so strats can prob change but until someone finds a safe effective counter to the mmm with a bigger margin of error..we'll still hear lots of qq from Protoss players
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still, nobody explained why Protoss do so terrible in tournaments
i feel like its broodwar all over again, "balanced" but it took maps specialy designed for Forge->fast expand for protoss to become playable.
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Such a stupid thread, the zerg whining has infested toss players too now it seems. This matchup is nothing like ZvT (where there is a terran bias early). PvT is about as even as mirrors; you just need to play to your strengths and exploit weaknesses.
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As a whole, I think the matchup is pretty decent, but there are certain timings where Terran has a significant advantage.
-Stimmed bio ball before chargelots
-EMP before HT
I've had some success with feedbacking ghosts before they can get an EMP off using an observer to scout, but before they can come out I just hope I don't get attacked..
Hallucinated phoenix are fantastic for scouting, but be sure to keep an eye out for tech lab starports, cloaked banshees without an observer can be painful!
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On August 22 2010 07:18 Ascendant13 wrote:
I didn't say it wasn't winnable. Skewed, but winnable.
And I do agree that once tier 3 is reached things become better. The problem is surviving till tier 3 on equal footing.
I agree with this.. It's winnable but it's not in your favor as a Protoss. I'd compare it to playing Blanka against Guile in Super Street Fighter IV. It just feels like he has an easier answer to everything you have.
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The state of the PVT matchup is fine right now. It's very balanced.
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My main issue is that Colossi are hard countered by Vikings. Marauders aren't really even all that bad at 125 life doing 20 damage a pop, not to mention how fast they'll shoot stimmed.
I would say that the match-up is winnable, very much so. But winnable and balanced are not necessarily the same thing. Terrans just have a much, much wider range of options in the mid-game, and a slightly stronger end game. Protoss can answer back at any time, but they just don't have as wide of options as Terrans do.
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So does anyone know if these kinds of posts are actually worthwhile? As in I'm fairly certain a large majority of people have complained and are complaining about Terran through countless posts, but does Blizzard see these posts or does anyone try to contact them with it?
It just seems like there are hundreds of posts about this stuff with pretty similar answers, yet they keep being made over and over again without any real purpose.
Maybe we should try to actually get some answers from Blizzard or get some high-level players to try and talk to them somehow? Would seem a lot more productive then the countless posts and topics we are making.
Of course, I have no idea how hard it is to get Blizzard's attention and whether that has any point either. Maybe we're just stuck with it how it is and we need to start thinking more about how to counter it then simply making a lot of posts complaining about it.
Thoughts?
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I remember back when the Strategy section was about discussion strategy instead of discussing racial balance. >:[
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On August 22 2010 12:51 Vokasak wrote:
I remember back when the Strategy section was about discussion strategy instead of discussing racial balance. >:[
it goes kind of hand in hand, no?
is someone claims that marauders are in need of a Nerf, because they force Protoss to hide behind forcefields, then people can suggest ways to combat them in a way that protoss does not have to give up map controll for the first 10 or so minutes of the game.
wich, then would be a good place for the strategy forums, no?
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On August 22 2010 07:52 Yaotzin wrote:
Well, marauders would suck without shells. It's there as a researched ability rather than innate so Blizzard can mess around with cost and time and such if need be (iirc they needed to in the beta, it used to be innate).
Marauders are annoyingly overrated. It's the marines that kill you, the marauders just slow you down (literally and via being high-hp meatshields).
How the hell does the absence of shells make marauders suck? They would still have great DPS, health, stim and cheap cost. Zealots are supposed to murder marauders. It's the same as speedlings vs stalkers/marauders. No one complains that stalkers get molested by speedlings.
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EPT
