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Toss has so many problems and all their builds can be summed up by x gate + robo into blah.
Gateway units are totally reliant on super force fields to survive any fight which shuts down any early aggression because your ramp is the only area to make low numbers of FF effective. One bad FF early is gg.
Toss dont have any low cost, low hp, high dps units. This makes their harass and drops wimpy. They can't take advantage of mobility or positioning to protect fragile units with high dps.
Toss are super reliant on the colossus and the templar to win a fight because only aoe can pull them equal when the core units of their army are super crappy. The colossus is stupidly easy to hard counter. Templar take too long and cost too much especially because it doesn't give you another usable unit on that tech path like the immortal is for the robo.
Toss lack solid air control strategys. Which leads to massing of stalkers. Which leads to losing to any solid combat unit because stalkers are a jack of all trades master of none unit.
Toss upgrades are kinda crappy when compared to other factions. Shields means defencive upgrades are split.
Ok they dont have a ranged/melee/vehicle/infantry split instead but if you are sticking purely to one type like pure mech play or MMM it doesnt matter much.
Toss upgrades also do cutesy shit like blink and charge for their core units. Terran stim and shields are straight up good dps and life upgrades. Zerg get dps for lings and range upgrades for hydras which is a dps increase in effect because more units can fire.
Toss have the hardest time defending expansions because they are so immobile and tied to their slow colossi/templar. Terran have it easy with PF and MMM mobility. Zerg also have great mobility off creep and amazing mobility on creep.
But frankly with all these problems protoss are still winning matches because AOE can be so frickin good.
The current balance around the strength of FF, collossi and HTs are holding back protoss. Because they can turn a fight so quickly it would be dangerous to make them viable without using them heavily.
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My take on it: It's not so much about balance, as it is about players not yet being good enough to use the race to it's full potential. One of the problems that Protoss seem to have is dealing with the wide variety of Terran timing pushes that can instantly end the game, from stimpushes to thor all-in to marine/banshee attacks. These builds can allow a weaker overall Terran to beat a Protoss. If those builds are well executed with strong micro, you auto-lose unless you scout it in time, know how to counter it and micro perfectly. One little micro slipup can insta-lose you the game due to high marine dps and concussive shells being a bitch. And Protoss simply haven't reached the point yet where they can pull this off consistently (see Sangho v Foxer). As players get better, they will simply stop losing to these kind of builds and the entire playing field changes.
Compare to to BW, where in TvP there are certain early game pushes you can do with marine/tank/vult. To counter this at the pro-level you need near-perfect dragoon micro. One misclick causing you to lose a dragoon can often just end the game right there. Yet we don't see these pushes work that often at the highest level, because Protoss simply don't fuck up that micro anymore.
And on a completely different I also think the warp-prism is completely underused. It's one of the best units in the Protoss arsenal and in a few years I expect to see it used almost every single game in mid/late game.
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Beyonder
Netherlands15103 Posts
On November 02 2010 06:18 Sqq wrote:
On the top of my head i can't think of many Protoss players that has me in awe with their fantastic play. Tester at times, Genius at times. Aside from those two, none of the european or american protoss players make my blood center to my pelvis area.
There is little a protoss can do to create this awe.. Boring race 
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On November 02 2010 06:13 Bosu wrote:
Unless huk figures out how to make motherships good I don't see too much untapped potential for P. Hopefully somebody proves us wrong.
I do think that the warpprism hasn't been used to its full potential yet, especially in PvT
The problem - like with everything - again is, that warpprism isn't something that helps you early on. It costs 200 minerals and can just warp in stuff, no healing, no nothing. More importantly, it "blocks" the robotics that you could use to build observers, immortals or colossi. The main reason why I don't build more warpprisms is simply that I almost always have something more important to produce out of the robotics.
Also Protoss has a huge variety of highly situational units. The archon is only a shadow of its old BW-self and the mothership is a ridiculous joke compared to the arbiter....man when I think back to the awsome arbiter-action that we saw in BW and now think about the crazy hard to get, super-slow mothership....really big protoss-tears on this one. The phoenix is awsome for harass, but that's about it. Opposed to the mutas it's completely useless if the opponent doesn't have banshees or mutas. Even vs tanks I'd prefer immortals/colossi to phoenixes any day.
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On November 02 2010 06:08 Sceptor87 wrote:
The whole thing with Protoss, in my opinion of course (which is automatic shit), is that there really hasn't been enough time to delve deep into the complexities and potential of the race. Something simple like Warp Prisms, something that should really be used more, hardly ever show up in a lot of the games I see. Sure they're like paper airplanes, but the potential is there to tactically use them for more than storm drops. And that's just one single unit. Protoss has plenty of tech options, viability is the question. And nobody fully realizes that yet.
Strategies can and will be developed more and more as time goes on. People can't and shouldn't expect things to just be automatic 3 months after launch. There were things still being learned in Starcraft 10 years later. Strategies with Protoss will get there eventually and hopefully.
And while there might be some balance tweaks that need to happen down the road those things need to be done subtlety. You gimp something to much and something else becomes to strong. Then it's just a seesaw. Everyone wants their natural race stronger since they want an advantage. It's just human nature that people want an advantage.
My opinion is shit as well, because I am terrible player, but my posts here are only directed at pro-level games I watch. And I think I have a right to expect SC2 to be a 3 race game rather than 2. What you said is very similar to what Morrow said, he is good with l2p stuff. After the competition in Germany, he said nobody figured out Protoss or along those lines.
The reality is, in current balance, Protoss is extremely limited. So limited that trying to be creative might end up in you getting embarrassed out of tournament like oGsMC managed to achieve.
Zerg was very limited as well before patch, and now, suddenly, everything is rosy. A patch is needed, I wanna see some protoss action.
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one reason for sure is the collossus, i dont understand why they still mass this unit while it is countered so easy, i havent seen someone building like 1 or 2 and switching to immortals for a strong groundarmy, while the T is wasting ress for vikings...
i also dont see stormdrops often, why? they murder Z eco if done properly, queens cant be the reason
someone mentioned that P-players are not good enough, i think he was right...
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On November 02 2010 06:14 Goldbug wrote:
I think one of the main things missing from protoss is the ability to harass. Terran have drops/hellion/banshee etc, zerg mutas/speedlings. Protoss can....... well warp prism harass?? But with the low hitpoints and speed its a very high risk. DTs? comes really late and is useless once they have detection. Protoss needs an early game harass unit. Just my opinion.
Agreed. In SC:BW, you have reavers which can kill a lot of scv's or drones with one hit, or you have stronger HTs and better shuttles. DTs are easier to get as well. In current SC2, a protoss harass is a big no no.
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On November 02 2010 06:18 AidanS wrote:
The current balance around the strength of FF, collossi and HTs are holding back protoss. Because they can turn a fight so quickly it would be dangerous to make them viable without using them heavily.
This
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On November 02 2010 06:23 Willes wrote:
someone mentioned that P-players are not good enough, i think he was right...
Clearly, the most popular race in the game has just broken all statistical likelihood and failed to produce any great players...
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Almost every former BW star that made a late switch to SC2 chose Terran or Zerg as their race.
Not because Protoss are grossly underpowered but because the race is at an inherent scouting as well as tactical diversity disadvantage until late game. Players like Boxer or Nada opted for a race that can determine the pace of the game through out-multitasking or, at least, out-microing their oppononts, the former one being not viable at all for Protoss users.
Creativity isn't rewarded at the same degree. Unorthodox strategies are far weaker than standard play (at that level, they usually even lose you the game outright if scouted early enough).
Furthermore, small mistakes in the early to mid game are far more likely to lose you the game instantly, as opposed to putting you behind. Badly placed FF? Good game. Overextending your one collossus? You're done. Add to the mix that top level players aren't the robot-like creatures people see in them and it becomes apparent why a) better Protoss players lose to worse opponents (even Protoss) more often than Zerg/Terran users (the so-called "upset") and b) new players making the switch refrain from using said race.
So for me, Protoss is not underpowered per se.
Why they aren't doing as well as they could is a combination of being able to lose far more easily to worse opponents and new players being afraid of choosing a high risk race without the option of imprinting their pace of the game unto the opponent.
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On November 02 2010 06:16 rackdude wrote:
It's the same problem that Protoss had before the whole macro revolution for P in BW: detection. Basically, every other race has detection in its build path so it doesn't die to something stupid. T always has orbitals, and Z will always get a Lair. Likewise, if you don't want to straight up die to banshees, you have to get obs (or cannon everywhere and not move out... not even going to comment on that). That forces robo to be in the build path of any Toss game plan.
Therefore, we see two things happening, both based on detection. Either the Protoss opens one base into robo or tries some kind of cannon build. These cannon builds will have to eventually get a robo and are supposed to play out like BW FEs. However, as seen in the last GSL, due to the recent patch, this route has not been very successful. Therefore there's one other safe way to play, open robo. But now you're predictable, making the game tougher to win.
Is this a balance problem? Maybe, but I think that these cannon builds just need to be explored more. You may say roach builds have nullified the forge FE, but I think it looks exactly the same as a hydra bust in PvZ of BW. It has that "wow, he's just pumping units and going to break the wall because any unit P builds will die to that until he has something big". Right now, the response is just make units. However, I think the adaptation will be scout the roaches, throw down 6 cannons, sac the forge wall, and you're safe with about equal economies and higher tech.
These things haven't been explored all the way but I think with more exploration of forge builds in both PvZ (as I mentioned above) and PvT (though weak against marine tank, but maybe into fast chargelot after the tank nerf?) will change all of this.
Cannons against maurders are bad ,cannons only are good at defending against banshee play imo.
Also Dropships make terran to mobile to just wall up with cannons
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warp 1 sentry and 1 ht in , ff the passages where the drones pass if moved away, and storm the eco away ^^
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On November 02 2010 05:57 Raiden X wrote:Everything that makes Protoss boring can be derived from 3 thingsCollosus-A-move unit, no counter in pvp, Who cares that it can climb cliffs!!!! , Very boring unit to watch. Void Ray-Forces Bio play, Without the void ray Protoss could play against mech rather then mass MMM Kydarian amulet- Why the Storm was nerfed Mothership- Gimmicky name, gimmicky unit, ARBITERs RULE 
I agree, Blizz really, really dropped the ball with the mothership. It should have just been a single-player unique unit. If it didn't exist then toss would have a flying caster!!
I also agree that Toss is very weak early game vs. T. Marauders destroy every gateway unit, and with stim they're unstoppable. You're forced to 1base and FF the ramp while you desperately wait for collossi.. and if you miss a FF, it's game.
Then, this leads to my chief complaint with toss: after this point, you're forced to form the collossus/stalker ball of death, which I see every single game and which bores me to tears. And at this point you have a timing window to seal the deal vs your opponent, or lose all your collossi to viking snipes. And when they've sniped enough of them off, they push again with MMM.
I've also seen some high-level play recently of using ghosts to EMP sentries... they get one good EMP off, and it's game over. Hell, even if they miss they'll still do more damage than an entire good psi storm (100 hp of shields gone).
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Protoss is really strong once you get your really unit mix and just attack with your big ball of units but in the early game its mostly "Oh god please don't bust my ramp oh god FF, get another sentry, FF".
During the Blizzcon panel they mentioned that they felt P was weak against T in the early game but strong in the late game. But then they went on to give a whole bunch of stats that made it seem like P was OP and that they were going to nerf storm. If they nerf Protoss again and don't give us something to deal with early game I'm going to switch races
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I think one minor change that would help Protoss a lot without having much impact on other aspects of gameplay is to reduce the cost of FF to maybe 20 or 15 energy.
Edit: Or change the shape/size of forcefield.
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On November 02 2010 06:28 ApoNow wrote:
Almost every former BW star that made a late switch to SC2 chose Terran or Zerg as their race.
Not because Protoss are grossly underpowered but because the race is at an inherent scouting as well as tactical diversity disadvantage until late game. Players like Boxer or Nada opted for a race that can determine the pace of the game through out-multitasking or, at least, out-microing their oppononts, the former one being not viable at all for Protoss users.
Creativity isn't rewarded at the same degree. Unorthodox strategies are far weaker than standard play (at that level, they usually even lose you the game outright if scouted early enough).
Furthermore, small mistakes in the early to mid game are far more likely to lose you the game instantly, as opposed to putting you behind. Badly placed FF? Good game. Overextending your one collossus? You're done. Add to the mix that top level players aren't the robot-like creatures people see in them and it becomes apparent why a) better Protoss players lose to worse opponents (even Protoss) more often than Zerg/Terran users (the so-called "upset") and b) new players making the switch refrain from using said race.
So for me, Protoss is not underpowered per se.
Why they aren't doing as well as they could is a combination of being able to lose far more easily to worse opponents and new players being afraid of choosing a high risk race without the option of imprinting their pace of the game unto the opponent.
Pardon me, could you list the names of Zerg stars that switched over? OK, I will give you that star terrans indeed switched, but Zerg? Only JulyZerg, and he is not tearing it up yet.
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On November 02 2010 05:52 iNoobSoWhat wrote:
Don't forget that Blizzkon won Toss player. Or top foreigners n00bz compare to koreans?
Arguably the best protoss player in the world won. In Korea hes another fish in the sea... in NA hes a god among men. I wouldnt take blizzcon as an indication.
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TBH, all I want is the mothership to get a buff. To the point that it's as standard as a sentry because it is fn cool.
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On November 02 2010 05:30 Bairemuth wrote:
I think there are several problems with protoss that have caused it's potential to stagnate when compared to the other two races. The two things that seem like the biggest problem are: scouting and units that are too easily countered and not cost effective in many situations.
First of all, during the early game, they are the worst race in terms of scouting. Probe scouting will be easily fended off once a marine or a couple zerglings hit the map. After this, they are not able to scout until they reach T2 units (or a very long tech). They can scout with observers, hallucination, or phoenix. All of these techniques are powerful, but leave one vulnerable in the early game. Since it takes so long to employ these scouting tools, protoss basically has to play safe and hope their build order isn't hard coutnered, or they have to take a risk and gamble in some rock paper scissors.
This is very evident in RO8 with our only remaining protoss. In one game, protoss tries to go blink stalkers and did basically no scouting during this process. He lost the gamble since terran went fast cloak banshee and thus lost. In another match, protoss decides to play it "safe" with 2 gate robo. He builds an observer first, but it's already too late, he's already lost. Terran went with a fast thor with marines and protoss stands absolutely no chance. He could have built an immortal first, but doing such a thing is also a risk. An immortal is quite useless in many situations. So if terran had massed marines then that immortal is worthless.
(obviously zerg can scout easily with overlord sacs and terran has scan or floating rax, all of which can be emploied much earlier than any of the protoss options).
So basically, protoss is really forced to gamble and a lot of the victories / defeats are soley based upon build orders and not actual player skill, which is a serious design flaw in my eyes.
As I mentioned, protoss has issues scouting, but that's not the only problem. Their other problem is the fact that they have too many gimicky units that are also very risky.
Their gateway units are all great and quite effective, but other than that the other units they can choose from I consider "gimicky." Maybe this isn't the right word, but what I mean is this: their units choices are basically great against very specific situations, but against a wide variety of things could be completely useless and worthless. I really think that immortals, phoenixes, dark templar, and void rays fall under this category. All of these units will either dominate or be dominated. Below I will explain.
Immortals: dominate marauders, siege tanks, and thors. However, generally if a terran sees a strong amount of immortals, then they will quickly get a ghost and then immortals are essentially uselss and terrible in terms of cost effectiveness. Therefore, making immortals is very risky business and requires very specific timing for them to be effective. The same concept can be applied to zerg. Immortals are great against roaches and ultras, but useless everywhere else.
Phoenix: The most gimicky unit in the game really. They can harass a little bit against zerg, but really it's hard to pull this off safely because often times zerg can just go KILL you as Day9 himself has mentioned. So basically the phoenix is amazing against mutas....and not much else. Sure they are quite good for certain situations such as maybe lifting up some tanks and other things like that, but again, they are just too gimicky and are paper weights and if any vikings or corruptors come out then they become useless.
Dark Templar: Such an expensive and time consuming tech choice. Huge gas dump, you are quite vulnerable to early pushes if you don't have your DTs out yet. Once you get DTs on the field you can often win the game outright if your opponent has no detection. But more often than not, your opponent will be able to survive and then be ahead of you economically and then you have a DT shrine that is basically a waste. One could argue that they might be marginal within an army with their sick DPS, but to me they don't seem very cost effective.
Void Rays: These used to be much more gimicky of course, but now blizzard seems to be pushing them in a direction where one could use them within an actual army. But again, they are simply too expensive and too easily countered thus making them very bad in terms of cost effectiveness. Terran can easily respond with a few vikings mixed in with their MM ball and void rays are a non-issue. Void rays seem worse against zerg. Zerg just needs to mass up some queens and get hydras or corruptors or anything really.
Other units I have issues with: Colossus and Carrier. Basically, the colossus is an excellent unit especially at a critical mass. But generally, any good zerg or terran will easily scout this and counter it quite effectively with vikings / corruptors. The Colossus is at its best during a very tight timing window in which you get them out without them being scouted. The Carrier...I won't actually comment on this unit since I rarely see it, but the problem with protoss isn't this super late game anyways.
Protoss have all these units that can just be countered too hard and aren't effective enough in too many situations. With other races, you may have a certain build that your opponent has countered, but generally you can effectively respond to make your build still quite cost effective. A good example is that if you go MM and quite marauder heavy, the protoss may respond with Immortals. All you have to do is get ghosts which isn't that far away tech wise and then you are in great shape until HTs hit the field. However, it takes soooooooooooooooooooooo long for Protoss to actually be able to get HTs. I mean really...you have to build a twilight council, then templar archives, then research storm, oh and let's not forget the amulet. Sure if you get all that, then you are in great shape, but reaching that point is the problem.
Anways, TL;DR: Protoss have a problem reaching late game because of a difficulty in scouting when compared to other races, and the fact that many of their build options are too easily countered, and there aren't any proper responses to make such builds cost effective after being countered.
fantastic post, and spot on!
i think the problem lies within the forcefields: they are superstrong if used correctly, and provide sick defensive and offensive (blocking HIS ramp) potential. but at the same time, they need to be super precise when the toss is under pressure or its gg right away. meanwhile, because of the power of FFs on the open field, the toss early game army must be weaker than they would be without FFs.
my suggestion to fix toss would be the following:
- make charge a cybercore tech. so u can get early chargelots out which pretty much eliminate the early game weakness of gateway armies against T/Z once its researched. this comes at the cost of delayed warpgate tech or an additional core if u want both out early.
- give sentries the ability to cast some sort of detection. something like hallucinated, visible observers that only last for 12 seconds or something like that...
- reduce the amulet tech to +20 energy, so that warped in templars cant storm immediately. this has the effect that toss is not automatically immune to any sort of harass or drop play once amulet is researched. imho this is a huge part of tosses lategame overpoweredness.
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I think protosses are doing ok right now. NexGenius won Blizzcon, and Top 8 is not bad at the super-high levels imo. And remember that GSL (the best of the best) has only had 2 competitions so the sample size is very small.
But if I had to gripe about something, its that protoss seem to have to have a lot of dead-end tech.
As far as teching is concerned, Protoss combine the worst of both zerg and terran. You need a specific production structure to make certain units(immortal), and you need additional tech structures and/or researches to make other certain core units(colossus, DT).
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EPT
