[D] Why is protoss doing so bad in the GSL? - Page 21

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.

I think that protoss by far takes the most intensive micro.

Macro.. pretty easy other than the insane skill it will take to keep up on chronoboosts for a long game.


The micro... you really can't make mistakes... and you have to be so quick in countering the moves the

opponent's army makes.


or maybe protoss doesn't "take" the most intensive micro. that might not be the right word.

protoss necessitates the most intensive micro.

Protoss are doing bad because if you make a single mistake you are dead.

That's the problem with Protoss. Limitations on choice of strategy and variance. Each tech is expensive and specialized, and similar concept applies for units as well.