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Not having read the entirety of this 37 page thread, I'll leave a few comments, take them or leave them
As a toss player there are two main issues. One is the lack of early game flexibility. You're almost forced to open with gate, cyber into a tech path, while by that point terran and zerg have had the opportunity to go 2 rax expo, 1 rax expo, fast factory, etc. Or zerg going between roach rush, FE, speedling expo, etc. The fact of how toss works is that your second building is essentially forced, while terran and zerg have a bit more flexibility. Obviously things like this can be overcome with the appearance of 15 nexus, double stalker openings, and others, which are good, they are just a little late to the party :p
You're tech switches and game plan come into the picture later with regard to timing, so long as you don't want to die to an initial push. Your only means of fending off such a push is with gateway units...obviously. Now, having to open in this manner somewhat forces toss into certain tech paths, specifically robotics for obs to not die to banshees against terran, and to get out a relatively fast immortal against zerg roach. The timings leave you with few options after having to prepare for early game pushes. Zerg naturally has fast respond times, able to produce many units suddenly inherently from the larvae mechanic and terran can easily bunker up, but toss NEEDS to preemptively make units. You can not just wait for your first warp in cycle, nor should you. Your reaction time in general however is slower, at the cost of arguably more efficient units. I say arguably as your units are more efficient than zergs tier 1, but zerg becomes progressivly more efficient as they mass. Terran's tier one (1.5) (maurader) beats toss's tier 1 but in good unit composition, toss can get away with defending with less units because of the composition of units. (Key to kcdc's fast expand strat)
As toss, like any other race, scouting is key in order to react, but there are other impairments. In broodwar, there was dragoon range which in itself allowed for some varied early game play. Voidray play somewhat replaced this kind of variety in the early game, until nerfed. Not going to comment if it was warranted or not. Hallucination is not a comparable substitute as it has no real effect on the early game and doesn't allow for "sentry pushes" etc...
As a consequence of the opening patterns, toss is funneled into having to play in accordance with zerg and terran's game plan. Toss then has two choices, to be the agressor and try to set the pace, aka 4 gate, 2 gate, 3 gate expo, type of strategies. Or toss can try to play the controller, survive long enough until he can just out macro and break the enemy with the generally more easily accessible higher tier units. (colossi, high temps, ...) Strategies include kcdc's fast expand, 15 nexus, etc.
This restriction on Toss's game plan leads them to either be predictable with early game pressure and generally fail as a mild form of all in, as most high level players can fend off this pressure easily, or Toss players have the frustrating task of having to play as a mid-ranged fighter. They can't completely set the pace, but they have a slow reaction time to their enemies making it difficult to control the pace as well. In some sense, they have the same challenges as zerg but harder. (although obviously zerg faces other difficult challenges that Toss doesn't.)
The second main issue with toss, is the lack of unit capabilities. Toss units generally are not very mobile once higher tech units are added. In comparison, most of zergs units are mobile, with the exception of hydras and terran banshees, medivacs, ravens, mini bio groups are all mobile.
On the toss spectrum you may have groups of stalkers and chargelots/sentries as being mobile. Gateway units are VERY mobile, but as the game progresses (aka when mobility becomes more important) toss lacks units that are both mobile while granting buff to their army composition.
Colossi and immortals NEED to stay with the army in order to survive, while phoenixes are rather situational when accompanying your army. Depending on their energy levels etc. However if their energy levels are high, then you haven't been harassing workers much against terran and so their mobility is somewhat limited. This argument is less so for pvz where phoenixes are more useful. However in pvz, phoenixes often force hydras which are also quite the difficulty for gateway units.
Other units you might consider are DT's but as pointed out, they're too expensive to use early on and are easily countered as the game progresses to the later stages. Massing DT's with your army is somewhat viable in PvZ if you can limit the detection, but that mostly ends up being gimicky so far as your opponent doesn't decide to simply spawn multiple overseers.
High temps and warp prisms are a great form of harass, but warp prisms are generally not useful and high temps storming scvs means not storming ground units. And even then, they are much more expensive than the zerg and terran harass making them high risk, high reward plays.
So Toss is forced, for the most part to simply roll with one giant ball, making their lategame play linear and easy to abuse. You see top players often moving a group of stalkers around and keeping their main army seperate in order to try to retain some form of mobility. I feel though that this is somewhat weak due to the stalkers general lackluster in the late stages. They have low damage upgrade. Blink can be useful and resorting to proxy pylons across the map is the only form of harass, and it's more of an implicit contain and denial than any direct damage in my opinion.
So those are my opinions, take them or leave them as you will. These are my concerns on pvt and pvz. Any feedback is appreciated as I wish to understand the game better, and flames and like will simply be avoided. You can question my reasoning and I'll be glad to respond. I'm by no means a "high level" player. I'm ~1700 diamond if that accounts for anything substantial. I often experiment on ladder and lose massive amounts of games, but I suppose that's the most conventional estimate of strength.
-Aletheia
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I honest think Vehementus either is trolling or just doesn't understand Protoss at all save for maybe skimping through a couple of articles in LP or Starcraft Wikia, sigh.
The 2 inherent big problems with Protoss at the moment
It is VERY hard to tech swap from Robotics to Stargate. Before you ramble about "well you can just drop a Robotics/Stargate for 200/100 150/150 LOLOL". That takes both construction time AND resources. Terran has a very linear tech path (barrack> Factory > Starport), has shared Tech Labs, and can produce their "tech-swapped" units from the same buildings. Zerg is in a similar position. Once you build the tech requirement, all of your Hatcheries will be able to build that unit. This forces the Protoss player to either 1. choose the "correct" tech to begin with or 2. Get 3 bases and just build everything. What this means is that
-If a Terran wants to go from spamming vikings to Banshees, they just need to swap their Starports with Barracks/Factories with Tech Lab and they can immediately build as many Banshees at the same time, as they have Tech Labs and Resources
-If a Terran wants to go from Roaches from Mutaisks. He needs to drop a Spire. After the Spire completes, all Larvae can be morphed into Mutalisks, as resources allow, at no additional spending
-If a Protoss wants to swap from Immortal to Phoenix, He needs to build a Stargate, or MORE if he needs it immediately. This is the key difference here. The additional resource sank here is not readily available every game.
So how do determine the correct tech path to go down? Scouting, obviously. Then this leads to the next problem. Protoss has very poor map control without observers, and that is only through poking or timing pushes. Zergs have Speedlings (25 minerals each) to scout AND to deny scouting, while Terran have scans to use. In addition, Terran don't even need to scout Protoss because he knows the Protoss will 9/10 time go 1/2/3 gate robo due to need for Observers and Immortals against Marauders.
At the moment the Protoss tech tree, while very powerful by themselves, are just not versatile enough to respond to tech swaps of other races.
I saw a suggestion of moving Observer to the Nexus after a Cybernetic Core has been built, and I think that's not a terrible idea. I definitely don't think Protoss is severely underpowered, but I feel that a lot of tweaking is needed to fix some fundamental design flaws.
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I should clarify, if anyone wants to discuss Toss strategy or such with me, send me a message as it's unlikely i'll regularly skim through this thread as I have a life and all. But I'd be glad for the discussion and company.
As for the Op I feel this thread could be better organized. Perhaps highlighting main/current topics of discussion and ideas in the beginning so as to allow the current discussions to be up to date. Similarly having parts at the beginning that have been covered so that discussions don't repeat unnecessarily. Still as such, thank you for opening up such a discussion, no matter the chaotic nature. Toss definitely needs to find some creative measures of changing their play and game style.
I personally don't feel this is attributed to balance issues, but a more difficult inherent creative limitation than terran and zerg. But as such, creative limitations should be overcome. I mean just look at how long the bisu build took to create in BW before it was actually effective.
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On November 03 2010 14:36 bokeevboke wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 14:11 Jumbled wrote:On November 03 2010 13:36 bokeevboke wrote:
There are two major problems with PvT.
1. Banshee - adds huge luck/random factor to the matchup. This unit singularly can decide the outcome of the game. I don't say its OP, its easily countered but it depends if lucky not on skill. Also this unit singularly dictates or rather restricts builds and strategies in early game against Z and P. But I find its stupid that one unit can win the game
2. HT - totally owns terran. Actually, Psionic Storm owns exactly one Terran unit: the marine. Although there are a couple of other fragile units it can be effective against, like the hellion and reaper, you won't ever see those massed enough to make it worthwhile. Other Terran units do quite well against Storm. Marauders, for instance, survive quite well as long as there are a couple of medivacs available. Storms don't stack, and so if you look at any high-level play you'll see that storms kill almost no marauders simply because the marauders have enough health to escape and heal up quickly, even if the Protoss player is spamming storms. You forgot the warp prism+HT against SCVs. Its the most powerful harass tool in the game. You just suicide couple of HTs for bunch of scvs. Terran needs alot of time to rebuild them hence weak eco.
completely wrong. by the time you can get out HTs its late game, not the best time for harass. your apm will be spent elsewhere and the terran will have at least 2 orbitals, and losing 10 or even 15 SCVs will not be that big of a deal
seriously when was the last time you saw someone using worker harass past the 20 minute mark? its just not worth it, plus by then its very easy to spot incoming drops with good map control. harassment units are units that come out early or midgame, so HTs are no harassment units. there is a reason you never see storm drops anymore.
edit: i also really like the idea of observer being bult at nexus. even if it requires a robo it would still be an improvement since it wont require precious robo time any more. also observers should be faster and/or cost less gas. right now they are so slow you need at least 2 if you actually want to use one for scouting (send over your obs to your opponents base, see cloaked banshees or DTs, you can just leave now cuz the obs wont be back to your own base in time)
2nd edit: i still really like my idea of making zlots faster by splitting the charge ability upgrade into a 100/100 upgrade that only gives charge and a 100/100 upgrade that only gives speed but gives them REAL SPEED like in BW
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On November 03 2010 20:35 david0925 wrote:
It is VERY hard to tech swap from Robotics to Stargate. Before you ramble about "well you can just drop a Robotics/Stargate for 200/100 150/150 LOLOL". That takes both construction time AND resources.
You absolutely can open 1-2 gate Robo + Stargate off one base. The primary drawback is that you're gas-restricted to Zealots from your gateways if you want to use both the Robo and the Stargate.
That said, having both Void Ray and Warp Prism could be pretty vicious. Aerial harassment + elevator + warp-in?
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On November 03 2010 20:55 Severedevil wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 20:35 david0925 wrote:
It is VERY hard to tech swap from Robotics to Stargate. Before you ramble about "well you can just drop a Robotics/Stargate for 200/100 150/150 LOLOL". That takes both construction time AND resources. You absolutely can open 1-2 gate Robo + Stargate off one base. The primary drawback is that you're gas-restricted to Zealots from your gateways if you want to use both the Robo and the Stargate. That said, having both Void Ray and Warp Prism could be pretty vicious. Aerial harassment + elevator + warp-in?
if you want to do that you just put a pylon next to your opponents high ground and harass with void and stalkers
that strategy can be successful in pvt but it sure wont be sucessful if you waste 400/150 in unneeded tech
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i feel like the stalker is the main problem in PvT. in early stages its is necessary to hold off anything but still feels weak. i have no clue how people can pull of FE vs terran.
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On November 03 2010 20:39 Aletheia27 wrote:
I should clarify, if anyone wants to discuss Toss strategy or such with me, send me a message as it's unlikely i'll regularly skim through this thread as I have a life and all. But I'd be glad for the discussion and company.
As for the Op I feel this thread could be better organized. Perhaps highlighting main/current topics of discussion and ideas in the beginning so as to allow the current discussions to be up to date. Similarly having parts at the beginning that have been covered so that discussions don't repeat unnecessarily. Still as such, thank you for opening up such a discussion, no matter the chaotic nature. Toss definitely needs to find some creative measures of changing their play and game style.
I personally don't feel this is attributed to balance issues, but a more difficult inherent creative limitation than terran and zerg. But as such, creative limitations should be overcome. I mean just look at how long the bisu build took to create in BW before it was actually effective.
You deliver your point in a well constructed manner. Its easy to read and understand. I agree with all of your points. Why don't you make your own thread and provide all what you think? Adding some analysis of notable games (from GSL maybe) would be great too.
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On November 03 2010 12:01 Vehementus wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 11:36 GoldenH wrote:Personally, I don't feel as though the Protoss game is very developed. I only have experience playing against them, but I feel as though their strategies are incredibly limited and easy to prepare for. I think part of it has to do with the lack of pro Protoss pioneers who delve into new strategies and the like, but we'll have to wait and see awhile. Its more like every strategy is nerfed into the ground. Early Zealot Pressure - timing nerfed Sentry Forcefields everywhere - energy and damge nerfed Void Rays - speed and damage nerfed Warp Prism - energy field radius nerfed Mothership - nerf nerf nerf High Templar - storm radius nerf, more nerf next patch Basically leaving us with Phoenix (Very good unit but also quite limited to harassment), Colossus (Still alright after being nerfed to 15 from 23 damage, due to splash stacking allowing critical mass, probably could be nerfed down to 12 damage without making it useless), Carrier (This lackluster unit viable only because it can't be hit by marauders, zerglings and roaches), and Immortal, which is mostly superior to the stalker but has a litany of hard counters, but at least they don't melt as fast as stalkers. Other units are simply bad - DT, Archon, Stalker, Cannon (2 Stalkers on hold move) or the required Observer. People really want to put Observer on the nexus to completely negate any economic advantage granted by chronoboost?! That should tell you just how desperate Protoss are to get out of being locked into robo play. Hey! Thanks for replying to something other than Zerg shit in this thread! I think Zealots are fine, personally. I think there's a misunderstanding between early pressure and cheese. The timing nerf affected cheese, that is, the 2proxy gate play you'd see prior to it. However, I don't think the pressure works out so well with Zealots as they're frankly, really slow. If you spawn far positions, then you're probably going to be out of luck. Zerg will typically tech to Roach to prepare for Protoss, and they can kite, and Terrans will have their wall up. I'm not adamant on the timings of all of it, however, but if you have replays to share that'd be awesome. -THAT SAID- I think Protoss has crap for early pressure. I also think that's a bit by design. Forcefields are absolutely amazing. I've lost to Protoss where I had a massive lead because of forcefield micro. I'd be willing to call them imba but I'm seeing them used less and less, which frankly confuses me. Forcefield is the strongest spell I can really think of. Void rays are still fine. I think they grow a bit underused in the higher tiers; but, they're not bad units by any means. Protoss use warp prisms? They should, but I'm not seeing it. Can't speak for the mothership. I know HuK uses them pretty flamboyantly, and I've seen some good play out of him with them, but I've also seen him horrifically mismicro one and lose a game. [Don't worry, that's Halo.] High Templar are also pretty incredible. I think they'll continue to be as such. I -do- think they come out a bit late, however, if at all. I'm going to preface this with "I don't play Protoss, but.." I don't really see a whole lot of neat sentry play when it comes to TvP. I have a pretty small breadth of the subject, I've only seen a few of the bigger matches, but to me it seems like when P is faced against a bioball, they just keep throwing Stalkers and Zealots at it. Knowing full well that they're at a disadvantage doing so until Colossi/HTs come out, why the insistence on sticking with those 2 units? I know the whole "Forced robo tech" mumbojumbo about the observer, but since it's pretty easy to split a bioball with forcefields, why aren't immortals used more to counteract Marauders?
Unfortunately by making this post and the arguments in it you're missing the point, that Protoss has been developing strategies all along but that they have been nerfed into the ground until nothing is left but robo play. Not just A strategy but multiple strategies. Not just good strategies but INCREDIBLE strategies that were TOO good.
So of course they were nerfed, but the nerfs went too far and they are no longer viable strategies.
Look at the losses in GSL. The thing to think of here is that a lot of those "gimmicky" non-robo plays were actually effective before certain patches. What you are seeing is people trying to be innovative but being unable to be effective even with the best improvements on their play.
I will not respond to the specifics of your post here because as others said, you need to watch more protoss games, and play it some too. I like to play random in 2v2s so I get a feeling of what is possible when with all the races. Previously I felt like Protoss had some good options and a good variety of choices... Stargate was viable, and if you could get a 2nd up, getting Templar could be too. Especially as the game moves towards economic play, you need to appreciate what a Protoss needs to do to expand and get templar tech.
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I just want to mention that regardless of balance issues that some people may feel the game has right now, not being in the GSL RO4 is not equal to doing bad by any means. I think people are overreacting a bit when they see that. I mean in NA/EU tournaments which occur more often protoss is doing quite fine right now.
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The best harass unit in the game, hands down, is the hellion. 4 blue flame hellions in a drop will decimate worker lines, and can end the game. Nothing else comes even close for the cost. And it's not necessarily a suicide either - you can just pick them up and run away if you feel like it.
Zerg harass is very limited, mostly just sneaking zerglings past the wall and attacking workers until they turn on them and kill them... kind of sad.
Protoss has.. ?
Before I talk about drops, let's discuss the warp prism, it's enormous cost, the fact it's made of glass, and the production of it interferes with production of observers (which you need). Even though the warp-in mechanic is cool, units you warp in will not fit in the prism when you go to escape, and must be sacrificed. Storming worker lines is awful, an observant player will just move his workers away and you will get one, maybe two kills before stimmed bio runs in and assassinates your slow HTs and then gets the prism.
DTs... don't get me started. Terran has the best detection in the game: click, scan, dead DTs. You can never catch them "off guard" without having built detection, they automatically have it. And once they realize there are DTs, they build a few turrets (which cost nothing and build instantly), and the "harass" is over... critically, with nothing left to do down that tech path. It's over, waste of a dark shrine.
Reaper harass? Transition to marine/marauder.
Banshee harass? Transition into medivacs and vikings (you were going to build those anyway).
It's a shocking state of affairs.
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On November 03 2010 11:27 Silidons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 10:52 Vehementus wrote:On November 03 2010 10:02 Zealot Lord wrote:
I don't think Protoss needs too much changes to the individual unit stats themselves, as that may break the balance of the game, but a lot of the tech/research needs a complete overhaul in my personal opinion.
If they change storm, which they will for sure I think, I really hope its to do with the k.amulet and not the storm itself (nerfing that would make it essentially useless).
But I'd be fine with that if they compensated it with changes like:
-Charge research cost and time down to 150/150 instead of 200/200 (thats just WAY too expensive).
-Warp Prism movement speed research moved to Cybernetics Core instead of Robo Bay. This could encourage much more warp prism usage, and thus creative plays as well.
-Merging templar archives with dark shrine, that way you can tech up to storm tech tree while able to maintain some sort of harassment/defensive ability. As of now, due to the cost/time investment, DT's are pretty much a gimmick all in more often than not. But damage should probably be lowered slightly to compensate for easier accessibility.
-Hallucination energy cost down from 100 to 75.
-Archons should not be affected by concussive shells? Not sure on this one.
-Carrier build time cut at least by 25%
-Void Ray needs to be completely reworked again.
Finally, I don't know what would be fair, but Protoss needs one more detection method - no race is as prone to getting outright GG'ed by cloaked units. For a race thats supposed to be 'most advanced' kinda funny how they have so much less options than terrans when dealing with banshees/dt's etc. Charge is a VERY powerful ability, but it doesn't see much use. I think it has more to do with people opting not to take it than it does the cost. I like the idea of moving the Warp Prism upgrade to the CCore, as I'd like to see them used more. I think they stand give Protoss considerably more variety than we're seeing. No to the merging. That doesn't make any sense. DTs are EXCELLENT base defense. I rarely see people use them this way, but unless you're Terran and can drop a scan right then, Dark Templars can completely obliterate attacking units on a ramp, block them, and mess up their pathing. They can also often take out 3rds and on, with a good bit of ease. Zerg is equally prone to getting 'outright GG'd' by cloaked units. It's much more likely that a Zerg hasn't gotten/finished his lair by the time they're hit by a cloaked push, banshees or DT's, than it is for a Protoss to be caught without a robo. You make observers right? What kind of Protoss doesn't make observers? Sorry, I can't emphasize with this last argument of yours. Zerg is in much worse shape in this regard. I've never seen a zerg downright lose because of cloaked banshees. You can suicide a 100 mineral overlord to see what their doing...where as we can't even scout yet with the exception of putting a probe up the ramp and getting instantly killed by marines/marauders and seeing 1 barracks.
Would it be fair to say the robo facility build time or the observer build time might want to be partially decreased? Perhaps even a cloaked observer at a much faster build time with a paid upgrade to detection?
I've been noticing the banshee attack speed is amazing, 2 shots for a dead worker and quick to rush to, I wonder if they will nerf it any time soon (perhaps attack speed or build duration)
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well, i wrote this question to stog and it even got asked.
nony just felt, that toss players played bad.
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On November 03 2010 22:15 ensis wrote:
well, i wrote this question to stog and it even got asked.
nony just felt, that toss players played bad.
Not even being sarcastic, I'd love to see what kind of Harassment Boxer is able to pull with Protoss, or any kind of Proxy play against a Terran timing push with Marauders.
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On November 03 2010 10:02 Zealot Lord wrote:
I don't think Protoss needs too much changes to the individual unit stats themselves, as that may break the balance of the game, but a lot of the tech/research needs a complete overhaul in my personal opinion.
If they change storm, which they will for sure I think, I really hope its to do with the k.amulet and not the storm itself (nerfing that would make it essentially useless).
But I'd be fine with that if they compensated it with changes like:
-Charge research cost and time down to 150/150 instead of 200/200 (thats just WAY too expensive).
-Warp Prism movement speed research moved to Cybernetics Core instead of Robo Bay. This could encourage much more warp prism usage, and thus creative plays as well.
-Merging templar archives with dark shrine, that way you can tech up to storm tech tree while able to maintain some sort of harassment/defensive ability. As of now, due to the cost/time investment, DT's are pretty much a gimmick all in more often than not. But damage should probably be lowered slightly to compensate for easier accessibility.
-Hallucination energy cost down from 100 to 75.
-Archons should not be affected by concussive shells? Not sure on this one.
-Carrier build time cut at least by 25%
-Void Ray needs to be completely reworked again.
Finally, I don't know what would be fair, but Protoss needs one more detection method - no race is as prone to getting outright GG'ed by cloaked units. For a race thats supposed to be 'most advanced' kinda funny how they have so much less options than terrans when dealing with banshees/dt's etc.
There are some hugely radical suggestions in there which Blizzard just simply wouldn't even consider. Beta is over and big big changes will be few and far between.
Blizzard have ALREADY started using the line "you might have to wait for heart of the swarm for that one,...." at the Blizzcon panel.
Charge decrease, fuck yes - it's ridiculous right now, specially as it's not only expensive but the build time is awful.
Faster warp prism would be nice but you won't see this change, despite what people say, Protoss is now the immobile team, the other 2 are vastly faster.
Most of the rest - you just won't see, period.
I will say this though, marauder slows down over NINETY percent of all Protoss ground forces, including Archon - which I find ridiculous considering how shit the Archon already is :/
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On November 03 2010 18:46 sleepingdog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 14:23 Ballistixz wrote:
also DTs are bad. they are just as good as they were in broodwar. have no idea on where u got the impression on where they are bad. a tech switch to DTs in the middle of any game when your opponent is not expecting it can be game changing. learn how to use DTs. Yeah, "L2P" is everything people can come up with it seems. But hey, awsome, let's just sink 250 gas into a DT-shrine in the middle of the game that can ONLY be used to produce DTs and nothing else, no upgrades whatsoever, because I have nothing better to do with my gas. Posts like this are a perfect example what's wrong with such threads...it inevitably turns in a "QQ" vs "L2P" - war. I've never played BW competitively (meaning my BW-experience resembles the knowledge of a SC2 silver player), but even I know that DTs were much better in BW because the templar-techs were not split upt...Jesus... EDIT: also SC2 stupidly removed the Dark Archon, that was an amazing unit vs Zerg thanks to maelstrom. Just another reason to get DTs, either for harass or for merging them into Dark Archons. Splitting the Templar techs up not only means a tech-choice for protoss (because both templar-buildings together need rofl-450 gas...hahaa yes), but ALSO means it is incredibly easy to scout for. Not being able to "surprise" your opponent with either DTs or HTs and make him prepare for both (in case of zerg: also against Dark Archons) is a HUGE setback, I'm surprised few have realized/mentioned this. The funniest thing is: the better I get at playing SC2-protoss, the more I want to play BW because BW-protoss seems to provide so many more awsome strategies....lol....
without that shrine think of how powerful DTs would be. if all you needed was the council then you have instant access to make permanent cloaked units at any time or at any point you so choose. that would be very imbalanced. the shrine is there for a reason. and it did get a buff, it use to take 110 seconds to build u know.
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About DTs... I really feel that the gas mining rate is far more limiting than the buildtime on the Dark Shrine. The Dark Shrine costs enough gas for 2 DTs, and you still have to get an early 2nd gas. If the DTs came out right then, 45s later you would have enough gas for... 2 dts, then 1.4 DTs every cooldown. 4 DTs early. then one at a time would be scary, but nowhere near as difficult to deal with as Banshees.
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On November 03 2010 22:00 lowercase wrote:
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DTs... don't get me started. Terran has the best detection in the game: click, scan, dead DTs. You can never catch them "off guard" without having built detection, they automatically have it. And once they realize there are DTs, they build a few turrets (which cost nothing and build instantly), and the "harass" is over... critically, with nothing left to do down that tech path. It's over, waste of a dark shrine.
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I raised this point on the Blizzard forums and was mocked mercilessly by people.
I see it as a fundamental design flaw to the game and another prime example of the SC2 team going straight to the drawing board for 'cool units' and not thinking about the dynamics of gameplay.
Each race needs a 'drop' or harass of some kind.
Each race needs detection.
Each race needs a scouting ability.
(you get the idea)
This is pure game design, not 'lore' or anything just pure, core game design.
The terrans fuck up with getting detection? - spam scan
Terrans lose a large amount of worker units - spam mule
Which race has the longest range units for air to air, ground to air and ground to ground (don't ask, you can guess the answer)
Then you've got protection, which race has the best defended expansion? - yep that too, now which race can repair that defended expansion ... oh!
So yeah, from a design perspective, if you were to tick off a checklist of features, sadly Terran wins a fuckload of options. Sure Protoss can warp things in anywhere and Zerg can tech switch fast - but ultimately, what works out for the best and wins the most games?
Look at the core design of the game and say to yourself not "this is too strong" or "this is too cheap" but beyond that - "what can they do, which I simply can't do?" - even at this level, I feel Protoss is behind.
One last thing, I just can't let it go, Marauder concussive build time and cost - as well as Marauder cost - do you know it slows every single Protoss ground unit except for one, every.single.one of them :/
You can see more of my thoughts on this here
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/801800789?page=1
Warning, I get sick of playing nice on there and just turn full asshole in a few posts.
Share your thoughts if any people.
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"Why is protoss doing so bad in the GSL?"
Because nobody did CellaWeRRa's 13 gates build.
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On November 03 2010 22:00 lowercase wrote:
The best harass unit in the game, hands down, is the hellion. 4 blue flame hellions in a drop will decimate worker lines, and can end the game. Nothing else comes even close for the cost. And it's not necessarily a suicide either - you can just pick them up and run away if you feel like it.
Zerg harass is very limited, mostly just sneaking zerglings past the wall and attacking workers until they turn on them and kill them... kind of sad.
Protoss has.. ?
Before I talk about drops, let's discuss the warp prism, it's enormous cost, the fact it's made of glass, and the production of it interferes with production of observers (which you need). Even though the warp-in mechanic is cool, units you warp in will not fit in the prism when you go to escape, and must be sacrificed. Storming worker lines is awful, an observant player will just move his workers away and you will get one, maybe two kills before stimmed bio runs in and assassinates your slow HTs and then gets the prism.
DTs... don't get me started. Terran has the best detection in the game: click, scan, dead DTs. You can never catch them "off guard" without having built detection, they automatically have it. And once they realize there are DTs, they build a few turrets (which cost nothing and build instantly), and the "harass" is over... critically, with nothing left to do down that tech path. It's over, waste of a dark shrine.
Reaper harass? Transition to marine/marauder.
Banshee harass? Transition into medivacs and vikings (you were going to build those anyway).
It's a shocking state of affairs.
zerg has baneling drops. toss still have storm drops but toss players have yet to see the potential of warp prisms... and enourmous cost? warp prisms are not that costly. all u need is a robo bay and most toss have that by default for collousus/observers.
with warp prisms u can drop temps AND warp in other units to assist in dmg. drop 4 templars to storm_warp them into archons once they are done AND then warp in 4 chargelots at the same time from ONE prism. one prism can cause heavy dmg.
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EPT
