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i think bairemuth summed it up nicely.
toss gateway units are basically pretty weak, especially in tvp
so you have to back them up with one of several tech choices
the problem is each of those tech choices is extremely expensive to get, requries even more expensive upgrades to be effective, and is generally countered hard, especially by terrans
and the problem then is that if your gateway army is caught without its colossi or its HTs because they got countered by vikings or emp, it will just melt to rine/rauder/medivac and you instantly lose.
i think the main design problem with protoss is that its most versatile unit, the stalker, has very low dps. it has to have very low dps because it has its blink ability, so mass blinked stalkers would be unstoppable if stalkers were actually cost efficient units without blink, thus forcing them to suck :/
so you are stuck with cost-inefficient gateway units, cannot fall too far behind economically against either z or t, and have to rely on easily countered expensive inflexible tech choices without being able to scout effectively before hallu/obs
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On November 02 2010 05:50 mols0n wrote:
Seriously how the fuck are you guys so bad? I play Terran(1400 diamond) and switched to Protoss for like 20 games, lost 7 of my first 10 then won 11 out of 3 and destroyed terrans. Seriously that race is a joke to play, 1 gate fast expo sentries, into 4 gate 2 robo collosi = gg. l2p
You should give HuK, Genius etc some tips how to play.
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On November 02 2010 05:57 summerloud wrote:
i think bairemuth summed it up nicely.
toss gateway units are basically pretty weak, especially in tvp
so you have to back them up with one of several tech choices
the problem is each of those tech choices is extremely expensive to get, requries even more expensive upgrades to be effective, and is generally countered hard, especially by terrans
and the problem then is that if your gateway army is caught without its colossi or its HTs because they got countered by vikings or emp, it will just melt to rine/rauder/medivac and you instantly lose.
i think the main design problem with protoss is that its most versatile unit, the stalker, has very low dps. it has to have very low dps because it has its blink ability, so mass blinked stalkers would be unstoppable if stalkers were actually cost efficient units without blink, thus forcing them to suck :/
so you are stuck with cost-inefficient gateway units, cannot fall too far behind economically against either z or t, and have to rely on easily countered expensive inflexible tech choices without being able to scout effectively before hallu/obs
Its not that their weak is that they never touch the Bio ball !!!
To fight marauders you need to out mass them, or out dps them- Marines,zerglings,hydras
This would essentially be the zealot, but the zealot can FRIKKIN touch them.
If zealots could reach the bio ball. Conc shell is just to much of an over kill against the zealot, because unlike the zergling, you don't have a million of them.
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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.
this i fully agree with. the collosus is the prime example of a bad and boring unit. very easy to use, is insanely powerful and the only "fun" thing about is that it shoots laz0rs and burn tons of stuff fast. its nothing but a glorified roach gameplay wise.
P got dumbed down a ton in sc2 which is why its so boring and so hard to balance.
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My own feeling about P is that they were balanced around certain cool abilities(forcefield), and these are, in of themselves, very overpowered tactics. To compensate for this, however, they have to take major hits in early game production/threat lest these cool, powerful abilities hit the field too early.
Not to mention the fact, as Bairemuth noted, that some of the units are stuck in molds whereas the other races have more dynamic units and abilities.The units perform their roles well, mind you, but the tech time between branches is rather extreme, forcing P to spend time 'invested' in their choice, whereas it is easier for the opponent to get what they need.
This is NOT to say P is "under powered" or some bullshit whining, but that the race is very reactionary and, against skilled opponents, this can be very difficult to handle--it's also not that fun to have to FF your ramp for minutes, get robo because they *might* go banshee and then move out. There has to be a better way than this. Balance surely can be achieved through what we have, but it is likely not to be rewarding, creative or interesting.
EDIT:
Also, yes, Colossi are *very* boring. I'd take reavers in a heartbeat over them. Though, for all you marauder haters out there, keep in mind that the Marauder would survive a damage buffed reaver with 1 HP. :p
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Top level play is normally dominated by a kind of creativity that sees all units used in some novel or unexpected way. I don't think top protoss players are actually missing this creativity. I think the issue is that there's only really two viable tech paths (HT/collo). They're both strong, they can both win games. It's at the point where I see top players teching both immediately after they get 2 base set up.
But it's universally understood at this point that stargate tech is cheesy, easily countered, and not viable as a tech path. There's only two units people ever really consider making, and neither of them require fleet beacon tech. This makes protoss predictable. There's really no need to scout out a robo bay, it's the most obvious play in the game. Against other races, you need to ask yourself what they're going and what you need to do to stop it all the time. There's no unknown for your opponent, he knows collo/ht is coming and can react accordingly.
Maybe a mobile detector availible somewhere other then the robo would be useful. Maybe making stargate tech viable at all would be useful. There should be less predictability from toss, at least on par with the other races. Right now, that whole scout -> react aspect of the game is limited to DT rushes when you're facing off against a P player.
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Early game weakness is probably the biggest part. This includes the crap fighting power of gateway unit comps compared to zerg/terran t1 units as well as scouting. Leads to a lot of simple BO losses which you can't really correct with player skill.
Another thing is how hard it is to get storm. Protoss don't really become good till you have storm+amulet. This takes soooo long though and so much gas that needs to be used for units to survive early-mid game instead. It also doesn't help that templar aren't along the only safe tech path toss can use (robo). Pretty much have to go robo>bay>colo+lance to defend midgame ground pushes, but then you need to also go council>archives>storm>amulet to get to where you have an advantage.
A few things that might help imo: (note, not saying to implement ALL of these things)
Faster zealots or making charge easier to get (200/200 but on core, lower cost/build time if kept on council)
Storm comes base with templar (makes sense given EMP and fungal don't need research)
Make observers quicker to get to (less build time on bos or robo, faster observer move speed maybe)
Beef up VR health or range slightly (if they are meant to be used with the main army they can't be as fragile as they are, especially after charge damage nerf. same reason colo without lance is usually quite bad)
Perhaps putting DTs on Archives and just getting rid of shrine as they are too gimmicky to be thier own tech path imo.
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On November 02 2010 04:02 Wolf wrote:
Stop making HORRIBLE threads. Please.
Stop making horrible posts, you're not helping.
On topic: The GSL doesn't say everything, if you look at NA tourneys, Toss has been doing fine.
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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.
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I know whatever I write will be buried deep within the overwhelming amount of opinions on this but I just want to say carriers and motherships have always been the elephant in the room for SC2.. Thats an entire tech tree seldom considered or viable. Given this I cant see how Protoss wont be disadvantaged in the long run as players become more and more nuanced and more discoveries are made in the other races.
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On November 02 2010 05:44 Tomfour wrote:
I don't think it is really that there are no good protoss, it's just that there isn't any great protoss. They have been getting knocked out due to their own little mistakes and the amazing play from the players of other races.
However, I don't play protoss, but from watching TvP I can say the whole ghost emp thing should be changed it seems a little crazy that it takes away all the shields as well, but at the same time I guess they should expect protoss players to spread just like terran must spread for storms.
I'm not sure if it's really a balance thing, I think it's more that there aren't any great protoss players emerging yet that a very consistent, and the really good ones right now have just been simply out played.
But this is all just my opinion.
Please, tell me great Zerg players? And tell me where they were before patch, why were they hiding, or doing some stupid mistakes?
Yes, when the race is UP, it's easy to look sloppy, and that is what keeps happening. And it is easy to look good when race is OP. Players like NesTea and TheWind were atrocious, Zenio wasn't too good either in GSL, and it's not because they suck. Very similar situation here. Sangho, NexGenius, Tester, oGsMC etc. are all good players, great players, as great as current Zerg are, just they are too predictable. Because Protoss are predictable. No diversity always. If you try to be creative, you are taking a huge risk.
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I don't think GSL has shown that protoss is bad, however, Protoss definitely feels like it has the fewest options at high level. Now that zerg isn't shit we are seeing huge variations in styles. fruistseller, kyrix, and idra all have very distinct styles of play.
Unless huk figures out how to make motherships good I don't see too much untapped potential for P. Hopefully somebody proves us wrong.
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Just wait for HuK in GSL3. :D
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United States10774 Posts
On November 02 2010 05:30 Bairemuth wrote:+ Show Spoiler +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.
Yep, this is exactly how I feel about Protoss and its weaknesses. Nice post.
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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.
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My favorite part are all the terran and zerg players calling these protoss players bad and acting like the people they match on ladder are significantly better.
Protoss has some significant vulnerabilities early/mid-game and dominates end game if they can get there. The problem is getting there when most people, pretty much terrans, are coming up with all these abusive 1 base or heavy 2 base builds that can really punish protoss quite easily.
I really do think though that people need to give the balance issue a break and let the game play itself out for a while longer.
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I wonder what effect of making fleet beacon a 200-150 structure bring.
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tbh I think it's at least in part because of chance, tester was knocked out early (happends) and oGsinca was taken out by NEXGenius and those are my 3 favourite protosses to get far in the tournament (round 8 + )
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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.
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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.
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EPT
